BeetBit Review: A Little Thing Called First Love

Hello Again, It's been a while! So today, I decided to review one of the latest Chinese dramas available on Netflix. This was recommended to me by Netflix upon its arrival. Since it was still airing, I put it on hold till the airing period ended, and now I am finally done with it. *Spoilers Ahead*

The Actors and Cast

A Little Thing Called First Love is a day to day slice of life drama that discusses the modest but astonishing trip of a group of youth through both high school and university. While from the beginning of the drama, the focus on the female lead (Xia Miao Miao) is undeniable, the rest of the cast in this drama are just as astonishing. Personally, I tend to believe that slice of life dramas are the hardest to both write and act. It is not easy to make people interested in merely watching similar people living a normal unadventurous life with regular day to day situations. The actors in the drama, though, managed to make the slice of life genre as eye-catching as any genre to me. The female lead definitely grew more and more with each day. She moved on from the ugly girls with no self-confidence to a girl who knows her abilities. The writer prolonged the process a bit; however, he/she managed to show each and every stage of the female lead growth. She even became strong enough to ignore the person she loved when she felt he does not need her. That's what a strong girl should do!

The second couple, beside Miao Miao and Liang You Nian, are probably amongst the top couples on my list. While Kaitou's character is a typical bad boy with a good heart, which is kinda cliche. The way He Xin deals with him later on in the drama is absolutely my favourite part in the drama. Sometimes you never know someone's worth until they are far away from you, and that's what happened with Kaitou in this case. I literally hated He Xin character throughout the drama till the final 10 episodes or so, and that is because she was too clingy. She had no problems getting mistreated again and again for the sake of her so-called love, which I believe was more of an obsession at that stage.  When she learned how to value herself more, I could literally see all the different possibilities that the couple had together.

The professor and the parents were also fun to watch as I was literally comparing them to real-life professors and parents. Miao Miao's mom was especially a stereotypical mom to the extreme. She loved her daughters a lot; however, she also did not know much about the correct way to handle them in many cases. Her behaviour when she decided to enrol her daughter in the architecture department against her will is one of the many behaviours I see around me a lot. Although irritating to watch, it was fun to watch Miao Miao grow more and change her major in this situation. She even learned how to handle her mother's temper without following all her unnecessary rules and beliefs.

Story and Writing

This drama had a lot of good events; however, if there were any cons for this one, it is the fact that it is 36 episodes. I do know that Chinese dramas are typically a lot longer than Korean, so I wasn't surprised when I knew that this one was 36 episodes. However, given the genre and the story, too many things in this drama were prolonged to cover the 36 episodes. There were a couple of cliche misunderstandings in the middle of the drama that literally had me bored enough to play a game while watching, which I normally never do. I contemplated dropping the drama before the final episodes started a couple of times because I was worried the cliches will continue. Lucky enough they lasted 4 episodes only which was just about enough to get me interested again. The final episodes had a good pace, so I loved these; however, starting episode 25 to 30, the pace was so slow. I felt lucky I was not watching on TV, so I could skip a bit here and there. I probably would have prefered to have this as a 25 episodes or less drama, but still, that's the only con I could find, so that is very good. If I have to give this one a rating, it'd be a 7/10 which is pretty good for my standards.