Luo Yao Knew What He Meant (2023)

No melodrama, no annoying characters—just normal people growing up

TL;DR at the end with no spoilers.

There's something about early 2000s camcorders that takes me back to my childhood, though to be honest I don't remember ever having one at home. Maybe it's the look of the onscreen interface, or the video quality, but it makes me feel like what I'm about to watch are memories of easier times in my life. Fittingly, the FL of this show makes a point of documenting her life using precisely one of those camcorders: at the end of every episode and also in many other scenes she films herself and her friends, and there are references to these clips interspersed throughout the story. Somehow, this evoked in me a sense of nostalgia for past events in the story as I watched, although I had seen them happen mere hours before; it surely has to be one of the strangest feelings I've experienced lately.

Complementing that is the expansion of what feels like the ending into 5 episodes—which show us glimpses of their growth into adults in between timeskips—as opposed to the first 19 episodes that cover their high school years. The longer ending gives us plenty of room to contemplate what is now 'long ago' for the characters at the same time they themselves look back on those days. It's not just you as a viewer remembering some scenes by yourself: it's you empathizing in real time with what's on their minds. That's very neat, if you ask me. If something leaves you indifferent, that means you've wasted a part of your life on it.

I admit that I wasn't sold on this show at first. I get an irresistible urge to pause when something cringy is about to happen because I hate the secondhand embarrasment, and the FL does a lot of that in the first couple of episodes to get the ML's attention. Thankfully, she drops that soon and instead shapeshifts into the worst nightmare of the government's censorship board: a teenager who is open about her feelings towards a member of the opposite sex. So much so that, in the real world, no sane bystander would be able to deny that she is verbally throwing herself at him, but here everyone avoids acknowledging the elephant in the room. It doesn't come as a surprise, though, seeing how Chinese dramas tend to normalize high schools cracking down on mere rumors of a relationship between two students. Coincidentally enough, the taboo is lifted in the very day of the graduation. This raises some obvious questions, but I won't go into that.

Leaving that little bit of social commentary aside, the dynamic between the ML and the FL is actually quite endearing. I've been past the point of tolerating overly insecure and controlling characters for years now, and I appreciate that these two and their three friends are just normal people. Everyone has their flaws, but they're not exaggerated for melodrama. You just see their relationships evolve over the course of several years. I missed some more development in their background stories, but I suppose the extra screen time was used to flesh them out as a group so it's okay. If I had to complain about something, it'd be that the relationship between the ML and the FL is too perfect: they always trust each other, always know what the other is thinking, always want to be together, and almost never have significant problems or disagreements. It's nice to watch, but real people can't be held up to these standards.

The contrast between the primary couple being obvious about their relationship and the secondary couple dodging the issue until the last minute was interesting, but the fifth friend whose role was just to add some variety and comedic relief... poor guy. The show makes it abundantly clear that this is about two couples in the making who always sit and stand beside each other, which results in the fifth friend always being relegated to the outside of the group. The only time he's allowed to be in the center of the group is when they're all sitting on the stairs in front of the hospital with him after he'd been taking care of his grandma on his own while she was hospitalized. Maybe I'm splitting hairs, you tell me.

All in all, the plot is all about putting them in everyday situations and having them work out their relatable but not life-changing personal problems. There's not much suspense or mystery because you know how it's going to end by the two-minute mark: the opening already tells you that much. You're just along for the ride. And, if you like the characters, the ride is great.

The thing with endings is they have a lot of influence on the aftertaste of the whole story. I'm reluctant to rewatch or reread things that I loved—and know I would love again—even 95% of the way through just because the ending ruins it all. Luckily, in this case the show ends in a satisfying way, arguably not rushed, and also justified by the events that lead up to it without last-minute asspulls to shift the narrative towards a certain conclusion. I think checking this point off is what makes it the best Chinese drama I've watched so far—for a grand total of four, that is.

To wrap up this review, I just want to comment on the pattern I've been noticing of having male protagonists be good at basketball. If I had a nickel for every time I've seen that in a Chinese drama, I'd have four nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it can't be a coincidence at this point considering it's a 100% rate.

TL;DR:

Watch this for a great coming-of-age story with main characters that don't create forced melodrama and are actually reasonable people. It's hard to describe this type of show in just a few words, but it manages to differentiate itself from other works in the way characters and interactions are crafted. Admittedly, this is something more felt than rationally analyzed, but I think a big part of it is just developing characters to deserve the happy ending the show openly promises you from the start—and then not fucking up the ending itself, of course. You won't find heavy drama here, but it doesn't need it either to tell a compelling story.

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