Guomin Laogong Dai Huijia 2nd season

What a promising anime… I can’t tell how disappointed I am after having binge-watched two seasons of this. I have been watching Chinese anime for some time, and this isn’t the first Shojo-type anime I am watching either, but it’s probably one of the worst. I am writing this review as a self-therapy, to understand what went wrong and to quickly move on, so let’s begin: %Probably a few spoilers in this review% Story 0,1/10 I think there is an issue with thesummary in S1, as the anime does not comply at all with what you’re expecting when you start watching it ; I mean you may expect a story about forced marriage, how two people stranger one to another are unwillingly married by their families and get to know each other, and step-by-step start to have mutual feelings. This was the promise. But instead, you get a school-life cliché romance between two vegetable characters spending all two seasons *thinking* about how they love each other; basically, you will hear several times per episode things like “next time I tell him” or “but I am sure she is already in love with XX”. Many other Shojo anime have done that, but at least, after 24 episodes, usually there is some result. In this crap there isn’t. Not a single step forward, as the second season ends with THE SAME DAMN SCENE opening the first season!!!! This show somehow just treads water. In extremely rare times (1st and 24th episode lol), you finally get to have some scenes of the anime in present time, and it’s still about “I am not brave enough to tell him/her how much I love him/her”. This scheme is just ridiculous after years spent living together as husband and wife. Come on, just stop getting on our nerves/losing time and start ** already. Art 8/10 I was quite harsh with the story, but I must admit that both art and animation were good; Tencent Pinguin Pictures has produced several excellent pieces (Mo Dao Zu Shi, Quanzhi Gaoshou), and knows how to deal with animation. Some very nice pictures of Shanghai and Hangzhou, beautiful colors and sceneries, character design is also good. Characters 6/10 As I said before, I enjoyed the chara-design, and kind of like most of the characters, especially the secondary ones. However, there is too little development, despite covering several years of romance (from high school to working days) and very little progress in the interactions between the characters. Oh, and the main girl is exasperating, I mean like most shojo’s MCs, but here you don’t get the liberating moment of the mutual love declaration (maybe in S3, who knows? Personally, I don’t take the bet). Sound 4/10 OST is truly important for me, unfortunately here it’s insipid and repetitive. I give 4 because the voices are fine and fit the characters, otherwise it’s 2. Overall I have seen very good anime with really bad art and animation (monstruous CGI), but with good story and rhythm, with nice character development, good OST can be an extra… But without story there is no decent anime, period. This one is a pure waste of time. After being frustrated by S1 (I gave it 6), I wanted to enjoy a few happy times in S2 and some progress in the story, but didn’t get any of that. Just avoid it, and if you are looking for nice Chinese romance anime, I advise you to go for Wo shi Jiang Xiaobai which is just the opposite: good story, average CGI art.