Falling in Love with a Rival (2015)

STORY: This is such a funny show. The loser tries to get back at his ex-girlfriend by getting her new boyfriend to fall in love with him but oops, he also falls in love with the boyfriend he's trying to seduce! A ton of comedy ensues. I'm always annoyed by the strong seme/uke dynamic even though the uke isn't a total pushover in this.

Total run-time: 2 hours 34 minutes over 8 episodes, so each episode is around 20 minutes long. Get this, the intro is 1m 45s, and the credits are 2m 30s! Each episode has more than 4 minutes of bloated credits! Cut that out and the whole show is probably only 2 hours long!

ACTING/CAST: The cast are all very attractive, and play their parts well. I totally loved the part played by the doctor.

MUSIC: Standard drama music. Nothing stood out for me.

REWATCH VALUE: Yes, this is a neat series. Gonna watch with a friend.

OVERALL: Fun series, with cute guys and it's also short. Binge on!

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Cute little story! I'm surprised they got so much "skinship" around the Chinese censors and bans! Great actors with lovely chemistry (the chemistry is even more insane when off the screen). Cute script, interesting plot and plenty of funny moments. The only thing that would've made this series even more perfect for me was if the "seme/uke" relationship wasn't so strong, but at least both characters have some balls and keep challenging each other!

The drama is clearly low budget. You can tell by the costumes/props and at some point, it looks like a home-filmed thing. However! That does not subtract anything from the amount of pure substance in this piece ;)

Considering the Chinese government censors and all that, I'm very proud of what these people managed to put out!

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From the title and the description, I expected something totally different. There was barely any story, except maybe the last episode. A lot did not make sense to me, for example, the doctors role or why Wu Suo Wei lived there, that could have been because of the really bad English sub that I watched, I don't know. There was no chemistry between the main characters and I really don't know what that was between them because they just called each others names and then Chi Cheng groped Wu Suo Wei, who fought against it. And this over and over. That's basically what this is about.

The actors were alright, even though the roles they played were ridiculous.

Music was there, but I don't recall it.

And I will certainly never watch this again.

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Watched this because it sounded really funny- and yes it is funny. But it is really confusing at the same time. This is based off of a online novel so it helps if you had read the novel before. The drama skips around and doesn't add in important details that the novel had. So you most likely will be really confused with all the time jumps and skips. They most likely skipped certain parts because it is not a high budget film. So they can't add in all the details.

I would recommend reading the novel (people online are translating it) because the drama does not give the full story nor character development. The main character is a lot cooler in the novel! He is a lot more cunning and you get to see the development of weak to badass and cool. And those scenes you go "what the????" makes sense!

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Okay, this is actually a hard one. And I'll tell you why.
The story sounded really good at the beginning! And in my opinion, the drama really has potential to be a well-written and funny romance with lots of comical elements. But - and it's a but in capital letters - the potential has NOT been exploited. What I mean is, that there are only eight episodes à ~20min, therefore, the story develops way too fast, and I, personally, couldn't follow it. The whole story actually didn't make sense to me at all, even though I knew what it was about. Also, the subtitles really made it hard to understand (although I have to say, that I'm always really grateful when an Asian movie/drama/whatever is translated!).

But I'm also very conflicted, because I enjoyed the acting and the actors! They main actors have a really good dynamic, the series isn't afraid of skinship and the kisses were fantastic (I hate those series where the kissing-scenes are long and awkward, I mean, come on).

All in all, the series isn't bad! But it's very confusing, the storyline isn't really existent, and it's moving way too fast. I'd actually not recommend it, but maybe it's just my personal opinion!

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its one of that drama that have potentials to be good bl drama but its kinnda looks like low bugdet drama with no sequence of scenes and plots..
for me it has some cut scenes and unprofessional set of scenes with no clear of directions of scenes.
both actors done great job for performing such characters with awkward moments between them as grabbing ass ahahahah , touching dic*s etc... as per china's govt it must be banned ahhaha but somehow it doent fall under that pit that china banned this drama.
romentic eye contact and closeness between them is so amazing i love total chemistry of handling each other through out some scenes.
funny faces especially by wei is so good and rude guy finaly falls in love with his personality.
we need more bl dramas and series like this frm china mainland yes it can be less than addicted or herione ahhaha atleast we r getting something from china in regards of bl .

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Weird

This series is quite weird, some parts just didn’t gel for me. Chi Cheng had a job in the beginning, then his job became “acting as rich man’s son”, Suo Wei was a rolling stone, hell bent on revenge only.

I finished it because I did like the main characters on the whole, and here’s my shallow moment, Wang Qing is very easy on the eyes.

There were funny parts, and the secondary characters almost stole the show, especially Suo Wei’s friend who was his conscience.

Rewatch value- maybe some parts but the BTS videos though!! Fan service or not, their off-screen chemistry is undeniable. And again, (need I say it?) WANG QING, WANG QING.

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Best thing about this show is that it's genuinely very funny. I've seen so many revenge dramas, but this is a revenge *comedy*. The ending is absolutely perfect and you will cheer that our hero got his (admittedly totally petty) revenge in a very funny way. Yeah, it's low-budget, but they do a lot with what they have. Great characters, including secondary characters like the doctor.

As boys' love, it doesn't always work, as a result of Chinese censorship. The editing gives the feeling that significant scenes and pieces of information are missing. But the writers still got away with a lot of refreshingly dirty dialogue and a bit of skinship. There's chemistry between the actors, although the comic nature of the plot downplays it.

Though I think strong seme/uke dynamics are often a dumb narrative shortcut, they don't bother me much here. The dynamics result in a silly, entertaining power struggle between the two main characters, who are reasonably well developed (for a comedy).

I don't recommend this show if you're looking for romance. That's not the emphasis.

I do recommend it, though, as a well-written sex comedy that plays around with the conventions of boys' love. It's sad that Chinese censorship and the new ban on gay content means that we can't see what Chinese writers and directors could do with the BL genre in future.

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My first ever BL :3

Ah :D this is my first ever BL series I've watched!

When I watched it (beginning of 2020, March I think) I had no idea that bl series even existed, and I didn't even knew what that was lol. I watched it because it somehow popped up in my recommendations on yt, and that's when quarantine started in my country, so I was extremely bored and of course I watched it ? and I'm really glad this was my first bl, because if it was some other (newer) my standards would be thru the roof from the start and I'd find other (older) bl's not good enough, I said this because I know myself, that's how it would be ?

Now to my opinion on this drama, I'll start with the things I didn't liked so much in this drama. It's kinda fast paced? I understand it's a 2015 CHINESE bl drama so I can't say much about it being like that but I just didn't like it that way ?and because it was fast paced I was even more confused (the fact that it was my first bl ever explains why I was confused in the first place), but there was no actual scenes in the drama that made me dislike it!

Well that's all I have to say about things I didn't liked in this drama. Now to the stuff I loved :D

It made me laugh for real! And some scenes, now that I know about China's censorship, got me shook ? they sneaked in some touching, those scenes made me feel 2nd hand embarrassment/cringiness but made me laugh as well. I love how actors "presented" (sorry english isn't my native language and I can't remember which word I wanted to use...) the roles they were assigned with! All in all it isn't a PERFECT bl drama, but I loved it, and I'm glad this was my first ever bl :D

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