My initial impression of Midsummer is Full of Hearts was not a good one. I sincerely believe that if I had ANY expectations whatsoever about this series, I would not have given it such a high score. It was because I had so few expectations from this drama that I had such a good time watching it. After watching the very first episode of Midsummer is Full of Hearts, I was fairly convinced that I would not like it. It seemed to have a childish air to it that I did not necessarily find charismatic, and it didn't help that I had never been that fond of Xu Weizhou (it's not him, it's me). However, as a subber for it on Viki, I had made a commitment to deal with the drama and wasn't planning to skip out on it just because it didn't fit with my taste. Though I didn't know it then, that was a blessing in disguise. After skipping through episodes 1-10, I found that the story started to get interesting.

I will start by highlighting the many wonderful things about this drama. The first thing that caught my eye was Yang Chaoyue. As a fan of the girl group she was formerly in, Rocket Girls 101, I was somewhat interested in following her individual work now that the group disbanded. I had skipped out on her other dramas because they were not of interest to me, and I am not the type to sit through something I have no liking for just because I'm a fan of whoever is in it. As a person who really, really likes romantic comedies with some aspect of fame and the media in them, I was quite intrigued by Midsummer is Full of Hearts. I had no gauge on Yang Chaoyue's acting ability, but I have to admit that my expectations for her weren't very high. I was relieved to find that she was very in character at all times. She played the character Luo Tianran so effortlessly, it was as if she were made for the role. I loved the childish, bubbly energy that she gave the character, and it was so much fun to watch her act. I sincerely hope that she will continue down the path as an actress. It seems to suit her. As for Xu Weizhou, I admit that I started out somewhat wary of him. I was never able to get through any of his dramas before, and at first, I wasn't sure if he would pair well with Yang Chaoyue since they seem so different. I was glad that Xu Weizhou seemed to have done a lot better in this drama than he did in the other dramas I saw him in. His character is a man child, arrogant and somewhat bad tempered because of his career as a celebrity. I loved the way Weizhou was able to give off the type of energy the character needed to come alive. The plot was childish and silly without any kind of actual grounding or substance, but even so, it slowly began to become endearing and cute. As I mentioned briefly before, I love dramas that have some aspect of fame and the media in them. It's very interesting to watch relationships develop when one or both of the characters are famous, and it's really interesting to watch what the media in the story cooks up and how the relationship continues as annoying fans get in the way of things. This drama did well to satisfy my love for these types of plots. Some misunderstandings were caused because of the media, but they did not drag out forever and instead added a lot of interesting situations. After just finishing a drama that had a very boring misunderstanding of multiple episodes, I appreciated that so much. The main couple did not have very many kiss scenes or intimate acts, but there were many really cute moments and lots of bickering that was fun to watch. I am unashamed to declare that I also loved the second couple. Yes, Lin Che probably deserved better, but I always love watching relationships where the sunshiney man pursues the aloof, cold woman. That scene where he gave her the keychain frog, silly as it sounds, is my favorite scene from the whole drama.

I only had one big problem that I wasn't able to ignore. Even though the script was not very well written, that wasn't the big problem I had with it. My main grievance with this drama was that EVERY side character is a plot device that kept the story going. Most of them do not have actual personalities, character development, or clear motives. I feel like many of the characters either very flat and had no depth or were a huge puzzle to figure out. The two second leads, Tiffany and Yun Shu, were extremely weird, and it was so, so hard to understand their intentions. One of my biggest WTF moments was with Cheng Shasha, Jin Zeyi's junior. The writers made it clear that she was in love with him, but that is her literally her ONLY personality trait. In the drama, she had a total of probably less than 30 minutes of screen-time and was completely irrelevant for 99% of the drama. However, one episode, completely out of the blue, she plays the role of a jealous second lead. She does something that hurts the relationship between the leads with pretty much no warning for just one episode and then almost completely vanishes from the rest of the drama. It was just so unbelievable and left me completely shocked. The character was clearly used to keep the plot going and then discarded when her purpose was served. There was also a very one-dimensional antagonist named Lin Xiquan who was quite annoying for about two episodes. After that, he completely dropped off the face of the earth but came back completely unannounced a few episodes later to wreak more havoc. He was so unsatisfying as a villain that I almost completely forgot he existed until right before publishing the review. There are like 15 other examples of terribly written characters, but my instinct tells me that I shouldn't turn this review into a full blown rant, so I'll stop here. I get that this isn't the type of drama that delves deep on side character development, and it's impossible for writers to care about every single character and make sure that they are fleshed out enough, but way too many characters in this drama were treated like tools that got dragged in and pulled out whenever the writer deemed it necessary. Besides those problems, there was nothing majorly inexcusable and was overall pretty good.

One more thing is the OST. Though I felt that the beginning and ending OST were both a little bit too heavy and sad sounding than I thought fit (they were both good, just didn't fit as well with the vibe of the show), the middle song sung by Gu Landi was so enjoyable and great to listen to. There really wasn't that much music in the drama, sadly, and there were lots of moments when I thought "wow, a cute song would be so fitting here" However, they did well with what they had.

I think the MDL rating on this show is pretty accurate (7.9 as I write this). I can definitely understand why people would rate it this way. It's not a terrible drama, but people might not necessarily be able to get over the empty plot and groundless characters. Since I went in with low expectations, I had already expected such things to happen, so I wasn't too disturbed by them and learned to build up an immunity to plot flaws and things like that. I was able to enjoy the hilarious scenes, playful bickering, chemistry, and acting of the cast and highly recommend this drama to anybody who likes to watch fluffy dramas to pass time. I would also suggest keeping low expectations in order to be able to ignore all of the flaws of the drama. Overall, there was a lot to love about it, and I hope you give it a chance :)