Love O2O (2016) [/]
May 01 2024
Love O2O is a Chinese romance-drama. Bei Weiwei (Zheng Shuang) is a 2nd year computer science student and known as the department belle (and 2nd prettiest girl on campus). She plays the MMO A Chinese Ghost Story as a kick-ass female who is the 6th best duelist on her server, though since she's never revealed any personal details there are some who think she's a male player.
Anyway, after getting dumped by her current in-game husband -- marriage being a part of the game for game bonuses mostly and not really romantic for most players -- she is pursued by the best player on the server. It's only about a third of the way through the series that they finally meet and she finds out he's campus hottie and computer whiz Xiao Nai (Yang Yang) who she and every other girl on campus have been pining over. On the other hand Nai knew Weiwei's MMO character earlier having accidentally seen her playing in a computer cafe.
The series revolves around their budding relationship, Nai's startup with his computer buddies, and how Weiwei interacts with his friends and his company. There's a rival for Nai, campus belle Meng Yiran (Ma Chunrui) who kind of indirectly has schemes against Weiwei (it's mostly Yiran's friends doing it as it turns out she is not really that mean). There's top foreign language department student Cao Guang (Bai Yu) who views for Weiwei's affections though that's very one-sided as she has no interest in him.
It's a pleasant story with a very photogenic lead couple but ultimately it's a miss. I like the MMO stuff, which reminds me of Falling Into Your Smile's use of League of Legends, but with Smile the LoL competition is throughout the series whereas here the MMO stuff tapers off after a few episodes and you rarely see gameplay after -- though I did like how they did the MMO gameplay by using the actors in the game costumes doing stuff on CGI game backgrounds that made it obvious it's a computer game.
The lows weren't that low and the highs not that high. It's a rather subdued story where the drama is not extreme and the emotions are blunted. I think I'm starting to prefer Korean dramas which do have more emotion and more extreme drama to the point of nearing soap opera scenarios.
Which reminds one thing K-dramas I've seen do much better is flashbacks that show how the lead characters have known each other all along but had forgotten or had not mentioned it. The last scene in LoveO2O has a slight flashback to when Nai saw Weiwei playing the MMO but it didn't reveal anything new. For some reason that scene reminded of how lackluster Love O2O ran throughout.
Overall I wouldn't watch this one again and feel Falling Into Your Smile is a better implementation of a love story revolving around a computer game.
2024-05-6: Forgot to mention one of the subplots involves this vaguely gay attraction between two characters. It goes on for several episodes appearing every now and then. But at the end it's left unresolved and without saying whether that's what it was about. I guess for a China mainland show that was already a bold subplot.
Anyway, after getting dumped by her current in-game husband -- marriage being a part of the game for game bonuses mostly and not really romantic for most players -- she is pursued by the best player on the server. It's only about a third of the way through the series that they finally meet and she finds out he's campus hottie and computer whiz Xiao Nai (Yang Yang) who she and every other girl on campus have been pining over. On the other hand Nai knew Weiwei's MMO character earlier having accidentally seen her playing in a computer cafe.
The series revolves around their budding relationship, Nai's startup with his computer buddies, and how Weiwei interacts with his friends and his company. There's a rival for Nai, campus belle Meng Yiran (Ma Chunrui) who kind of indirectly has schemes against Weiwei (it's mostly Yiran's friends doing it as it turns out she is not really that mean). There's top foreign language department student Cao Guang (Bai Yu) who views for Weiwei's affections though that's very one-sided as she has no interest in him.
It's a pleasant story with a very photogenic lead couple but ultimately it's a miss. I like the MMO stuff, which reminds me of Falling Into Your Smile's use of League of Legends, but with Smile the LoL competition is throughout the series whereas here the MMO stuff tapers off after a few episodes and you rarely see gameplay after -- though I did like how they did the MMO gameplay by using the actors in the game costumes doing stuff on CGI game backgrounds that made it obvious it's a computer game.
The lows weren't that low and the highs not that high. It's a rather subdued story where the drama is not extreme and the emotions are blunted. I think I'm starting to prefer Korean dramas which do have more emotion and more extreme drama to the point of nearing soap opera scenarios.
Which reminds one thing K-dramas I've seen do much better is flashbacks that show how the lead characters have known each other all along but had forgotten or had not mentioned it. The last scene in LoveO2O has a slight flashback to when Nai saw Weiwei playing the MMO but it didn't reveal anything new. For some reason that scene reminded of how lackluster Love O2O ran throughout.
Overall I wouldn't watch this one again and feel Falling Into Your Smile is a better implementation of a love story revolving around a computer game.
2024-05-6: Forgot to mention one of the subplots involves this vaguely gay attraction between two characters. It goes on for several episodes appearing every now and then. But at the end it's left unresolved and without saying whether that's what it was about. I guess for a China mainland show that was already a bold subplot.