Gamey

For a while now I've put off watching the Chinese e-sports romance drama Go Go Squid, mainly because it's 41 episodes long, but also because I have to be in the mood for a gaming drama. This one is a mixed bag of good, average, bad and really annoying, but I was still able to get through the entire thing. It is not a story that should have taken 41 episodes to tell.

The basic premise: a cute, innocent postgraduate computer programming student falls for a tall, dark and moody legendary former e-sports gamer turned manager ten years her senior. He then falls for her while dealing with the fallout from his inglorious past, which also interferes with their relationship and threatens to end their romance at every turn. Lather, rinse, repeat.

For me it was almost a hybrid version of Love 020 with a bit of Lighter and Princess mixed in, only with elements and plot twists that are decidedly ridiculous:

a) they're both virgins who have never dated, which I might buy for her at 20 but he's 30, come on now.

b) she gets drunk (this habitually happens in Chinese dramas because they think it's cute when it's really disgusting) and basically steals a valuable necklace from him that he has to beggar himself to pay for when his mother demands it. Right, because asking her to give it back when she's finally sober would be too much for her to handle, and he doesn't want to hurt her. Great reason to lose all your money.

c) from the moment she meets him her mother treats him like a walking STD without any justification that makes sense to me, and so does his grandfather, who is super annoying and just yells at him all the time, and he's apparently fine with that because they're elders. Sure.

I think the largest flaw with this series is the poor manner in which the creators showed the CTF games, which are basically hacker fests during which teams try to infiltrate each other's systems. I think. It's never really explained well. You see a few vague computer screens scrolling but that's about it. The stakes, which the characters assure us are quite high, subsequently fall flat because the viewer can't understand or be involved in the gaming.

The romance is tepid but cute at times. Some of the secondary characters (the male lead's friend who switches sides during the series, for example) seemed more interesting than the protagonists. They also made the mistake of giving the female lead a best friend who is far more attractive and adorable than she is, but for me that made a refreshing change from the usual highly annoying shrieking BFF.

Bottom line: it's too long, it's a bit silly, and the romance is pretty lukewarm, but the actors all do a fairly good job in their roles, and a few of the secondary characters made it worth the watch for me. Available on Viki.com.