Doing an end-of-the-year ranking of dramas I watched this year purely on how much I enjoyed them! As usual, I will not be including the dramas I dropped.
There is absolutely no competing with BLs in this house, but no. 1 and no. 2 fought it out bitterly here. I'm serious, there was blood and broken bones and concussions, and all. In the end, 4Minutes won the top ranking because this drama was perfect. Absolutely perfect. I loved every second. It made so much sense. It had such a great message. It was fantastic. Bible was so insanely good in this role. I don't have a single complaint and warmly recommend it to BL and non-BL fans. I'm sad I had nobody to scream with about this masterpiece; it was very lonely watching it, and that was the only downside.
Like I said, it was a battle between this and 4Minutes. I loved, loved, loved this drama to bits and pieces. However, I had some minor gripes with this one. I did not enjoy the Divorce Era™ and was overall frustrated with the whole Wang Shuo subplot. I will never understand why they let that man throw a grenade into their lives like that (not once, but TWICE) and then went on to be friends with him AGAIN. Wang Shuo single-handedly cost this drama the top spot.
This show was such an unexpected delight! I loved it so much! People who haven't watched it and followed (or blocked) it only through steamy gifs on Tumblr might think it is popular just for the explicit sex, but it is so much more than that! It is such a good, thoughtful, heartfelt, healing story: about hiding, about lying, about living an inauthentic life, about the cost of the closet. It is about toxic families and toxic society, but also about friends and found family, and about male loneliness and vulnerability, and also about love! It is perfect, perfect, perfect! This one was also a contender for the no. 1 spot, but ultimately, it is too RL-adjacent in ways that made me squirm, and also about hockey, which absolutely deducted points, so no. 3 it is.
4. Riverside Code and Qingming Festival
Like I said earlier, there is no competing with BLs in this house, so this very excellent drama fell to no. 4. Zhou Yiwei remains one of my favourite actors of all time, and this show is overall so good and so much fun! My only gripe is the conclusion, which was a bit ridiculous, but C-dramas rarely land their ending, so it is what it is. Warmly recommending this to anyone looking for a fun time! It was funny, it was deep, it was mildly horrific at times. Definitely one of the best dramas of the year for me!
5. My Country: The New Age
This one, unfortunately, didn't live up to my expectations, but to be fair, the expectations were sky-high and probably impossible to match. First of all, I ABSOLUTELY ADORED Jang Hyuk as Yi Bangwon, and if it had been just him, this drama would have been my undisputed no. 1. I also loved Seon-ho, he was very tragic and very beautiful, but I disliked Hwi and absolutely despised Hui Jae. They knocked off so many points for me.
This one was also an unexpected delight! Normally, I don't do mpreg, it's a huge squick for me, but sometimes, I will make exceptions. I made an exception this time around, too, because the actors looked so beautiful and so fun! I am glad that I did, because it was such a great time! It even triggered a minor hyperfixation with Sheng Shaoyou, and I DID A BUNCH OF ART OF HIM! I AM FOREVER GRATEFUL! However, at the end of the day, it is still mpreg, and as such, it cannot go higher.
7. When Destiny Brings the Demon
This was an incredibly fun drama, and I love Chen Feiyu so much! I had never watched Wang Yinglu in anything before this, but she was an unexpected delight! I adored her! Sure, the drama had its issues with the pacing and the CGI and some shoddy acting from the second leads, but it was easily overlooked. However, this show faced some really unfair competition (like I said, there is no competing with BLs in this house, especially BLs that are literally perfect), and I have to have a ranking, so it ended up deceptively low on the list.
Another drama I picked up for Chen Feiyu. Unfortunately, I am just not the target audience for this type of show. It is definitely not one of the most fun things I watched this year, but it was OK. It is very much a clone of Lighter and Princess, but I enjoyed it a lot more because Lighter and Princess bored me out of my skull. While she was nothing spectacular, I much preferred the lead here, and for some reason, the story sat better with me. All in all, I don't recommend it unless this type of drama is your thing, but it is good for background noise while you are doing chores.
This is the only drama I finished this year that I can say I absolutely didn't enjoy. Again, expectations were super high, but I ended up really disliking it. Jang Hyuk was fantastic, as usual, and I honestly kept watching just for him because he was awesome beyond words. However, I absolutely hated the other two leads, especially fucking Unnyun. They were frustrating and infuriating, and the side characters either disgusted or bored me senseless. Also, there was a lot of bodily grossness here, which was just hard to watch, and I really didn't need to see any of that. There were scenes where I was literally on the verge of throwing up. Ironically, this drama has been critically acclaimed and won a bunch of awards, so take my opinion here with a grain of salt.
