It Started with a Kiss (2005)

"It Started with a Kiss" (ISWAK) was the first Asian drama I watched 10 years ago and it's still my favorite Taiwanese drama to date! (My favorite drama of all time goes to Kdrama "Legend of the Blue Sea" & "You Who Came from the Stars" -- also highly recommended :P).

There are multiple remakes with the same story line, but ISWAK is by far the best. (Please completely skip over the Korean one -- "Playful Kiss", it's really awful.) Unlike the Korean version, the casting/acting here is excellent. Ariel Lin does a really great job of being the silly but still likeable main female lead, Yuan Xian Qin, and is perfect with Joe Cheng, who plays the cold-hearted/genius male lead, Zhang Zhi Shu. The second male lead, Ah Jin, is also extremely funny and played by the awesome actor Jiro Wang!

Plus, the OST is also amazing, especially the main theme, "Practical Joke". There also are a bunch of other background songs that fit perfectly, like "Hear" and "The Whole World Knows".

If you can't tell, I would highly highly recommend this drama! ^__^ It's happy and funny and filled with memorable characters!

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One of the first TDramas I ever watched and still my absolute favorite having bought the DVD for myself so i can rewatch it again and again. I don't know why I like it so much, I should dislike Zhi Zhu for his complete lack of personality and Xiang Xing for her cluelessness, but I love them both. Perhaps it is because the only time you see a glimmer of emotion in Zhi Zhu is when he looks at her and because Xiang Xing is sweetly delighted by every little morsel of affection she can get out of him.

I loved the family in this drama the supporting cast being superb the mother provided some excellent comedy moments, all helped, I think by not having the ususal authoritative grandfather/father character to hinder their relationship; they do that themselves anyway.

All in all a sweet, cheerful, romantic comedy that in my humble opinion is one of the best TDramas out there.

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My favorite drama!

I love this drama, and yes, I am giving it 10/10 all across the board. I have seen every adaptation of this series, the anime, manga, taiwanese, korean and Japanese versions. I will continue to love it, and have seen it over 50 times. The story follows the manga pretty closely, the music is wonderful and catchy, and the actors are wonderful and have great chemistry.

The Taiwanese and Japanese versions are 100x better then the Korean version, I would suggest skipping it as it doesn't cover even half of the story.

Definitely one of the best series I've ever seen, and I'm a huge romcom fan!

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I love this story no matter where it is made. I would prolly never happen where I'm from b/c us chicks don't want to seem that desperate to follow a guy around for 5 yrs. Neway, love the story, love the actors, the music was good (had to look it up so I could dl it). I will watch this 1 again in the future b/c it's 1 of my fave stories. Know I laughed more watching this version than the Korean 1. This was like crack to me had to stay up all nite to finish it & then get my butt to work at 6am. Yeah voted as "crack-drama."



I had a hard time finding links that would play the drama but I looked everywhere & finished it. Glad I did too b/c the end was the bestest!

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For me,this is my 2nd best version after Itazura Na Kiss by Yuki Furukawa and Miki Honoka,although i watched this version first when I was in second year high school,I came to rewatch this again but as we grew up,we may view some things differently,like for example Xiao Qin's character for me back then was a very cute and adorable girl but as time passes,i realized her negative sides,(her life only revolves around a guy and if something happened she cannot function properly already,her stupidity was not realistic,as the story itself isn't realistic,it's impossible that a genius like Zhi Shu will like a girl like her,she was a stalker but i think if it's on Zhi Shu's point of view since he also like her,(he's just using his brain first before his emotion) it's forgivable.
Nevertheless,it's a very interesting story between a guy with high IQ and a girl with high EQ.

Enjoyment - 10 (Because of their contrast character,it's really enjoyable to watch)
Soundtracks- 10
Story- 9.5
Rewatch Value - The story is really interesting so I've already watched all 3 versions from Korea,Japan and Taiwan but if you'll ask me which version has the most rewatch value,i'll go for Itazura Na Kiss(Kotoko and Naoki)

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Loved the story because I have watched it previously from Playful Kiss (Korean version) and Itazura Na Kiss (Japanese version).
The acting of the cast was okay, the chemistry wasn't sizzling like the japanese version! However, I loved the second male lead a lot here. He wasn't annoying and did not over exaggerate his acting  like in the Japanese version (partially due to my bias for jiro wang keke). The male lead was also less cold than in the japanese version .
The music, well, I didn't pay much attention to the osts because they did not stand out. As for rewatch value, I think I would prefer rewatching the japanese version even though this couple was cute too.
Thought Itazura na kiss (Japanese version was better) but what I liked a lot about this version is that the female lead acknowledges the feelings of the second male lead.

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Best Classic Modern Drama Ever

We Watch this Drama every few years because it has so many good parts and the characters are very endearing. I hope the actors are getting their royalties from this drama. I continue to watch it over and over again every few years. This drama is the first or second on top of my recommend list for friend to watch. Along with Go princes Go, and Faith. Good clean entertainment. I continue to watch it over and over again every few years. This drama is the in the first top five, on top of my recommend list for friend to start watching. Along with Go princes Go, and Faith. Good clean entertainment.

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As i was reading some the reviews i saw a lot of negative ones and honestly i'm not really surprised. The acting was average, the music was average and some of the story line seemed a bit unrealistic. Now having said that. I have read the manga, watched the anime, watched the original Japanese drama and the newer Japanese drama and watched the Korean version. And this was by far my favourite one out of all of them.
Like i said the acting was average and came off cheesy in most scenes, but it was just one of those things that just for some reason or another captivated me and kept me thoroughly entertained. I guess you could say i in some ways or another related to the main character Xiang Qin. A unrequited love throughout high school not knowing how to call it quits even when the other party does not seem the slightest bit interested. Now i can't say that i ever have lived with one of my crushes before but that was one of the things i loved the most about the story. Was how funny and out there it was.
I guess one of the main reasons why i loved this version so much is because of how much detail they put in the story line. IF you watch season 1 and 2 they cover from their high school years all the way up to the point they are old enough to go out there and try to chase the their careers. I also loved how the portrayed Zhi Shu's character. I thought Cheng Joe did an amazing job portraying that character. At least out of all the other male leads in the different versions of this drama. He was cold, mean, nasty at times and yet could be gentle, kindhearted and loving and not even know it. I will admit for the first time i watched this i absolutely hated his character. I kept thinking is there really a reason to make him so dang nasty all the time. But there was. Out of all the characters in this story he grew the most. From the first episode to the very last you could see how much his character had changed. And yet even though he had changed his character didn't end being one of those wishy washy characters that you just find annoying at the end of the series. Another thing i will give credit was they didn't add in a lot of cheesy dialogue where you are thinking oh my goodness please just end it already. I thought it was rightly timed and executed. It is really hard as well when making a romance to not have cheesy lines, because to most people anything romance related is pretty cheesy. Now i know a lot of people will disagree with my rating of this drama but at the end of the day, at the end of each episode i finished it with a smile on my face and constantly going back in for more. Now if that's not what you want an audience to feel then how should one feel after watching a romantic comedy? But again this is all in my humble opinion.

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This was definitely my favorite romantic comedy, despite the fact that it was the first Taiwanese show I watched. I had already seen Playful Kiss (which was very well-done), but this version was even more amazingly written. Between this show and the sequel (They Kiss Again), the plotline was far more developed than it was with Playful Kiss. The main characters had more depth and emotion in their roles, and while the quality was not always as good, the story itself was far better. Because it is so long, the writers were able to add more though behind why certain characters act the way they do and to make the whole storyline a little less unbelievable. Plus the two leads always work excellently together. They make the romance seem beautiful and sweet all at the same time. I rewatch this show whenever I want to smile, laugh, or feel that glow inside that comes with knowing there are still sweet, naive, innocent, beautiful romantic stories in the world of film.

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I really enjoyed this drama. I haven't read the manga but i've seen the Korean version, and they're both similar enough that I figure they followed the manga pretty closely.

I do think Joe Cheng has some room to improve, acting wise. I know the character is supposed to be cold and taciturn, but sometimes when he was supposed to be cold & taciturn while still showing some other kind of emotion, he failed. You could tell that something was supposed to be there, but his face just wasn't expressing it well enough.

But apart from that, he did a good job. When he needed to be loving and cute and protective, he could do that fine. The rest of the main cast was mostly fine (Tiffany Hsu is beautiful, although maybe add her to the Needs Improvement list too), and I do find Ariel Lin impossibly adorable.

30 episodes is always a bit long for a TV series. As someone who watches far more Korean and Japanese dramas than Taiwanese, by the 30th episode, i'm generally pretty happy for it to be over, no matter how much I've enjoyed it. But with this, while I was still happy for it to end, I'm still looking forward to watching the sequel. I like these characters, and i want to see them through their marriage.

Definitely worth watching.

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Let me start with quickly summarizing the plot: (I may have made minor mistakes with the numbers here, but the ballpark is correct)

⌲ep1-3: The leads meet and them plus their families start living together.
⌲ep4-25: Nothing happens. (Lighthearted comedy with about as much romantic progress as about 3 normal kdrama episodes would have today in 2024.)
⌲ep26-28: Makjang, SUDDENLY everyone wants to marry someone else. (this is like what the plot of ep10 to 15 of a 2005 era kdrama would be like, but fast tracked)
⌲ep29-30: Happy ending.

So basically anyone who is fine with enjoying an aimless & progress-less and a bit lukewarm comedy for more than 20 episodes straight will enjoy this and this mostly applies to me as well. Though I have been rather annoyed by the final conflicts & how suddenly things devolved into THAT.

This is based on Itazura na Kiss, which I have consumed either in Anime or Manga form almost 20 years ago, I'm not even sure anymore.. Anyway the point is that while I'm not sure how accurately this resembles the original work, I can certainly recognize the plot "progression" of a nineties manga/anime from this. The nostalgia has helped alleviating the feeling of boredom for me, but I somewhat doubt a young person that never experienced that era of j-culture would feel the same way..

Oh I almost forgot, the mom in this drama is an extremely adorable character, at this moment I cannot even think of a cuter mom that I've encountered in a modern Asian drama, it's almost worth watching this just for her shenanigans.

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