Pay attention to every character.. Maybe there is someone hiding behind it.
Hello! I’m back with a new Chinese Drama that I found recently. I found this drama while scrolling my social media or you can called it Tiktok. It give me a good first impression in a first glance. It looks like as a mystery thriller drama. The only person I know in this series is Miles Wei. But at first glance this drama makes me interested and it’s quite hard to found this drama on streaming platform. My expectation would be they playing VR games that threatened their life.
The story started when a some people from bus and car accident find themselves into some kind of VR games. Synopsis from MyDramaList said; Unconscious after a car accident, university student Chun Yu and her best friend Qing You mysteriously find themselves inside the dangerous world of a VR game. Several other people have also unwittingly ended up here, and they soon discover they were all involved in the accident — except for substitute teacher Gao Xuan, who claims to have simply fallen asleep. Seeing no other option than to play the game, they eventually beat the level and wake up … only to immediately return the next night. The pressure increases when it turns out that people who die in the game fall into a coma in real life. And then several more students are dragged into the game! The group spends their nights trying to survive the next level and their days investigating who is doing this to them and why. The games they should finish contain beating monsters, mind and trick games, also a loyalty test. Little did we know, it turned out these games is a way to lure someone out. Are the group success completing the games? Is there a winner for the games? Who are the people behind this?
My real first impression when I watch the first episode I thought it was similiar with Alice In Borderland. A few of them get into accident and suddenly lured into games before they who nailed the games woke up in the morning. You’ll understand what I mean if you watch Alice In Borderland. The games equivalent with their lives in real life. But turned out it’s different. It’s real that they dragged into playing a virtual reality games and the games will start every night just before they got into bed. I kinda see that Chinese series often takes VR (virtual reality) game as an idea and concept to develop their story. After watching it throughly, instead of Alice In Borderland I can said that 19th floor just remind me of Derailment and Three Body Problems. Does VR really booming lately on China?
If I have to say based on story plot it started with a good premise, but getting a little boring in the middle, includes when they playing a game. The game started with defeat the monsters while searching a way out, it’s quite interesting like playing an escape room. Then they played another game that need physical activity so it is always give us intense scene and required many action, but starting in the middle they were playing mind games that needs higher concentration and sometimes the one who is lucky who did it. This kind of games only make the drama become less intense and long winded. It’s quite long to get to the point of the story. But if you reach to the point of the story, it would make you stunned. It giving you a good twist and maybe answers to your question that showed up during watch the drama. I always look up and keep attention to this one character and turned out this character was the real answer of this drama.
This drama also not gave us full of action from playing games but we’ll get a pure friendship and loyal brotherhood between them. Also we still get a little romance here and there. For a little break after watch them playing game over and over, while investigate the romance spark between the players. The romance also gives enough part and not too much disturbing the point of the story. Personal opinion of mine is it’s a little bit weird to see Miles Wei acted as a graduate student because I often see him playing a role like CEO or lecturer, that kind of adult successful man so it’s fresh to see him here playing a new role even though he’s still being a leader for the team.
It’s quite a slow paced drama with full intense in the beginning and in the end of this drama. So you need to be patience to collect your motivation to reach the end of this drama because it’s still worth it to watch it till the end. Everything become clear. All things will explained. For me one thing that exceeded my expectation is the characters. Turned out the characters are better than I expected in the beginning. When I think there will be an annoying character that will break their team, the games just make their bond strongee than ever. You still can find the annoying character but it’s just showed up for a second. Their character development surely develop really fast than ever. They realized that the enemy is not between the team but the people behind the VR game development. Not like another Chinese drama who sometimes have a side story between the supporting characters, in here they are focus on the main story because all the characters are involved in the games.
For a Chinese drama that I randomly found and choose, it’s not beyond my expectation but the twist still make the drama more better for me. It’s not a really must watch drama but if you like a fantasy and technology genre maybe you can try watching this. It’s a three stars out of five stars for me .
