Disclaimer: this is a review, and as such it contains spoilers of the whole series. Please proceed to read at your own risk if you still plan on watching this show or if you haven’t finished it yet. You have been warned.

All I Want For Love is You
(满满喜欢你 / Man man xihuān ni / I Really Like You)
MyDramaList rating: 5.5/10

Hello everybody! It’s been a while, but I’m finally back with a new review. The end of May and start of June were busy periods for me with several deadlines, my birthday and two weekends of shows to play, so I took my sweet time to finish this series in-between. Having said that, this last week I found myself rushing through the final half of this in order to get through it as fast as I could because man, this was a tedious watch. I’ve had my share of Chinese dramas that left a lot to be desired, but this one brought something promising to a whole new level of disappointing. Although this won’t be a very positive review, I’m still excited to share my thoughts on it. I won’t waste too much time on pleasantries, let’s get going!

All I Want For Love is You is a Mango TV/Tencent Video C-Drama with 32 episodes of about 40 minutes each (including the 1,5 minute intro and outro). The story follows two youngsters, Gu Xiao Man (played by Lu Zhao Hua) and Zuo An (Liu Yu Han) as they finish high school and make the transition to college. Besides having been neighbors and childhood friends since kindergarten, Xiao Man and An have also had a massive crush on each other for as long as they can remember. Neither of them has ever gotten around to confess, though.
From the outside, these two are polar opposites: An is the brains and Xiao Man is the brawn. Zuo An has always been the calm and collected handsome genius in school; the top student that every girl yearns for. Xiao Man, on the other hand, is a Sanda martial arts champion who tends to react impulsively rather than rationally. You could say that she only turns into a damsel in distress when An helps her out, for example in studying – much to the annoyance of her other childhood friend Zhan Yue (played by Liu Yin Jun), who wants Xiao Man to stay at his level of young and immature forever.
Against all expectations, Xiao Man manages to get accepted into Nandu Medical University, a school she applied for purely to follow Zuo An in his ambition to become a doctor. Being still relatively bad at studying and having a blood phobia to top it up, Xiao Man struggles a lot, and this is only amplified by the interference of several individuals who just have it out for her, either out of jealousy for her relationship with An or for no reason at all. New love rivals arrive, such as Shen Chen Yang (played by Xie Zhi Xun) and Sun An Ning (played by Han Le Yao), but a love as solid as the one between Xiao Man and An always prevails, even if it takes them a gosh darn century to get together.

When I started this series, I got a lot of vibes that reminded me of other shows I’ve watched and liked, such as Itazura na Kiss, A Little Thing Called First Love and Mr. Insomnia. However, it felt like this show took inspiration from these and then completely lost its way with everything they wanted to put into it. The plot was very straightforward: having two people that already liked each other get together. This alone took 24 episodes. In the meantime, and even after this happened, the writers just kept throwing in more and more stuff and interferences to add drama for the sake of adding drama. Even in the last ten to five episodes, they just kept coming up with new tropes and curveballs to throw in the main leads’ way, and it got incredibly tiring to watch. I’ll elaborate on my specific qualms later, but I just wanted to establish from the get-go that this agitated me greatly.

Let’s start with some character analyses, beginning with Xiao Man. Xiao Man is a tiny yet fierce girl who lives with her widowed father, as her mother passed away in a car accident when Xiao Man was still very young. Despite this sad event from her past, Xiao Man grew up to be a very strong and righteous young lady. I have to say, I really liked how she was established at first. I always love seeing female lead characters in Chinese dramas that aren’t just waiting around for their Prince Charming, but are actively learning to fight for themselves. Xiao Man’s initial introduction reminded me of the girls from Sweet Combat, another Chinese show I really liked.
It was fun to see how she and An complimented each other from the start, they seemed to have a very interesting dynamic. It was sweet how he could help her study while she could physically defend him. I’d really hoped her martial arts background could’ve been a consistent thing throughout the story, and I still think it would’ve been cool to see her actually pursue it. Instead, it faded more and more to the background and was ultimately diminished to the occasional mention that she was phyically strong. I really don’t like it when dramas start their characters off with a very clear characteristic and then just drop it as they succumb to all the drama that happens in their love life.
Honestly, while I love ItaKiss and things that remind me of it, I did feel weird about Xiao Man’s decision to follow An to medical school. Despite her reason of wanting to study medicine to prevent deaths like her mother’s, it still seemed to come out of nowhere. The fact that she was willing to follow her crush to a place that would actively trigger her blood phobia AND her unresolved trauma was bold and unexpected, to say the least. As admirable as it was for her to want to try to overcome her fear and become a nurse, it actually came to a point where I was like: “girl, maybe this isn’t meant for you”. Something that I loved about A Little Thing was that the female lead ended up choosing her own path, even after first trying to succeed at another department. Her journey of growth went beyond her pursuit of love, and she actually grew as a person by following her heart, even if that led her to change departments, away from her crush. In this show, I would go so far as to say that Xiao Man’s uncharacteristic choice to study medicine didn’t do much for her character development at all; in fact, she ended up becoming an incredibly fragile, anxious and doubtful person because her whole world kept revolving around An and what he thought of her. It became kind of unhealthy, even. Of course she also kept trying to sneak in extra practice hours and did everything she could to improve in her studies, but it didn’t feel like the focus was on her growth as a person. As a matter of fact, I didn’t think she really had that much character development at all. She completely lost who she initially was, that fiery martial arts genius, and I don’t know if I liked that change. Heck, even Zuo An tried to persuade her otherwise. In the long run, it didn’t make sense to me that she went from being such an fierce teenager to the kind of person who was too naive to even recognize the lies of several people who had already proved to her more than enough times that they had it out for her. Seeing how she initially just ran after rude people and beat them up, it was a weird transition for her to suddenly be portrayed as someone who always saw the good in people. It was actually quite absurd to see how dense she became in contrast to her original fierceness.
One thing I’ll say in Xiao Man’s defense is that it was WILD to me how people just automatically pointed fingers at her when she literally did nothing to provoke it. She got all the wrong kinds of attention for just existing, which only added to the frustrating nature of the series. Although she definitely wasn’t the best at cutting people off for good and setting things straight in a single conversation, there were a lot of times when people just randomly came at her and I was like: “bro, she didn’t even do anything!”

Moving on to Zuo An, he grew up very sheltered, and when the story starts his mother is away in the US – she only comes back somewhere in the last ten episodes. I liked that we got a bit of backstory on how his mother basically kept him from being a kid by prohibiting him from playing with his classmates or even getting his hands dirty. He’d always had to be perfect in every way, but this ended up making him an incredibly lonely person. Xiao Man was like a ray of sunshine, or his “sunflower” as he later phrases it himself, that provided him with the happiest moments of his life. I liked how he was quite literally the water to Xiao Man’s fire. You could say that she got his fire burning while he managed to cool her down, lol. His feelings for her never wavered, and it was cute to see his playful side come out once they finally got together.
One thing I really liked about him during the high school arc was how he instinctively felt the need to help Xiao Man with her studies. I loved it when he made notes for and kept in mind that he had to keep them simple because she wouldn’t understand them otherwise. He never made her feel dumb, on the contrary, he convinced her of her own intelligence and kept coming up with visual ways to make her understand things better. I loved that.
Although I admired how constant he was in his feelings for Xiao Man, I still have mixed feelings about the fact that he too kept holding himself back for so long. Honestly, I thought it was the kind of situation where he already knew she liked him back and he was just waiting for the right moment to confess. Yet it seemed that he too didn’t believe she liked him back and he also kept getting discouraged whenever he saw her with Zhan Yue or Chen Yang. I also didn’t appreciate how he kept hanging out with An Ning, even when he knew she was dangerously hung up on him and had already pulled different petty pranks on Xiao Man, who was rightfully wary of her. Although I can appreciate that he waited for Xiao Man’s confirmation of mutual feelings before he finally made his move, this took way too long. What’s more, the anxiety didn’t leave even after they got together, because the interferences of the second lead characters kept creating unnecessary misunderstandings between them. Having said that, I did like Zuo An and it was cute to see how affectionate he became towards Xiao Man once they became official. The first time he kissed her was really smooth, the way he pretended to pick out a book for her and then suddenly just kabedon-kissed her.🫣 That actually made my heart skip a beat, lol.
In the final ten episodes, the story reveals a childhood trauma that ties Zuo An even more closely to An Ning’s family and makes her reliance on him even more worrisome. As it turns out, An Ning used to have a twin sister, An Xin, and the three of them used to play together a lot. One day, An Xin accidentally fell into the water while fighting over a plushie with Zuo An. Zuo An instinctively jumped after her while An Ning went to get help. She found Zuo An’s mother, who ended up only saving her son and not An Xin. For some reason, and this reminded me a lot of Mr. Insomnia, An Ning’s mother always blamed ZUO AN for ‘killing her daughter’. In other words, Zuo An’s mother never took full responsibility and let her own son become the scapegoat of this tragedy. These kids were like THREE YEARS OLD. Also, Zuo An even JUMPED AFTER An Xin. Blaming this kind of shit on a child, all the more when you know what really happened, is the most immature thing ever. The adults in this show sucked. Anyways, Zuo An has always carried a picture of An Xin in his wallet to remember her by. I’m glad he didn’t go the whole ‘throwback self-pity’ road, even though it still triggered him to a certain extent. He was smart enough to know it wasn’t his fault, and he just carried An Ning’s mother’s anger towards him as best as he could. Although he could’ve definitely been more aware of An Ning’s presence, I still liked that he kept things simple and was always calm enough to dissolve any misunderstandings with Xiao Man. I just loved how much he adored her, honestly.

Regarding the main leads’ relationship in general: seeing how naturally affectionate they became once they confirmed their feelings for each other, it only made me feel like this could’ve happened (at least) ten episodes earlier. The fact that it was that easy for them to become a couple after so much unnecessary delay quite frankly took the wind out of me. With 24 episodes of barely any buildup between them, they just switched to their new couple dynamic as if they’d never been anything else, and that was kind of anticlimactic, to be honest.
Also, whenever they did get a sweet moment together, it was cut cruelly short. As if it wasn’t bad enough that it took ages for them to start a relationship, when it was finally time for their first kiss, they literally cut it after five seconds, same for the second one. As a matter of fact, in most cases they took so long to even LEAN IN for a kiss that it was inevitable for them to get interrupted (which they were, repeatedly). If you’re going to take this long to build up to a relationship, at least make it feel worthwhile when they finally get together. Now I just kept wondering why they couldn’t have been like this from the start. Why did they have to waste all this time on doubts and miscommunications when they could’ve just been frolicking on the beach together from the start?
The transition to their confession was also very typical, by the way. Lin Na Na had just pulled that awful ‘prank’ of posting Xiao Man’s entire diary on the bulletin board (again, for no particular reason) and Xiao Man was completely distraught because this exposed her feelings for Zuo An and “now he would hate her and her life was over”. In the meantime, Zuo An was actually reading those diary entries with a smile on his face because this just confirmed her feelings for him. The way she went to that bulletin board all 😭😭 and then immediately changed to 🥰🥰 when she saw his reply was almost comical. Not gonna lie, him casually going: “hey, so I heard this rumor that you like me. lucky me, cuz I’m crazy about you too” actually cracked me up. The lightness of his remark just took all the unnecessary drama out of the situation. It really should’ve been this easy from the start.

To be completely fair, once I reached the final ten episodes, I’d already been zapped out of the story for the most part. Up to that point, they’d just been throwing so much unnecessary drama and petty acts in the main leads’ (mostly Xiao Man’s) way that I just wanted it to be over. The fact that the second leads – or the Interferences, as I prefer to call them – kept holding on to them even after being rejected 50+ times got very tiring and frustrating. It’s been a while since I got this annoyed by a character who just couldn’t take no for an answer, but now there were TWO equally delusional people clinging on for dear life at the same time, and it honestly ruined the whole thing for me.

To start with Ms. Interference, Sun An Ning. An Ning is introduced as soon as the story switches to college. In ItaKiss terms, she was like Yuko Matsumoto, except in this case she was actually Zuo An’s childhood friend. As dramas go, it was very predictable that she would become a love rival, as she immediately seemed to claim Zuo An for herself at every opportunity she got. My first reaction was the same: I don’t like her. Seeing her get all giddy about other people’s compliments on how good she and Zuo An looked together just rubbed me the wrong way. Still, there were a couple of instances in the beginning that made me wonder whether she was just playing into the rumors and never actually saw Zuo An as more than a friend. Honestly, I kind of liked being kept on my toes about her true intentions. Having to guess what kind of person she was made her at least a little bit interesting, that is, before she threw everything out of the window and didn’t even bother pretending to be nice anymore.
In the end, An Ning was the most obsessive and manipulative second female lead I’ve seen in a while. Not only was she incapable of letting go of Zuo An, even after he already rejected her feelings dozens of times, she kept taking her anger out on Xiao Man. I really don’t like shows where girls don’t stand up for each other, and this show went to the extreme with it. Every girl that got rejected by a guy that liked Xiao Man, took her frustration out on Xiao Man. Even if the guy had played with their feelings, it was all because Xiao Man ‘forced him’ to do so. Seriously, Xiao Man was the bane of everyone’s existence, apparently.
In accordance with most of the characters in this show, Sun An Ning had next to no character development. Up to episode 30 she was still all “😡just you wait Gu Xiao Man, I’m never letting Zuo An leave me😡”. She literally only changed her mind in the very last episode, after spending a year with Zuo An alone in the US. THAT’s when it finally dawned on her that she really stood no chance with him. Puh-lease.
I was really disappointed that they chose to go this route with An Ning. I think she would’ve been so much cooler as a nice character that played into the rumors but actually rooted for Zuo An and Xiao Man. She just became more and more ugly throughout the story and went to the most petty levels to get back at Xiao Man for ‘causing Zuo An to reject her’. She was the kind of person that would help someone out or do them a favor to showcase that she was a saint, only to turn it around and have them return said favor. She literally blackmailed one of Xiao Man’s roommates into spying on her in return for letting her keep a part-time job. She only ever helped out Xiao Man for the opportunity to boast her own history and compatibility with Zuo An, even after Xiao Man and Zuo An were already dating.  The lamest thing to me was that, after everything she’d already done and the many tantrums she’d already thrown, she still came up with the most pathetic stuff like putting her picture in Zuo An’s wallet and showing that to Xiao Man. She resorted to stuff that Zuo An could debunk in a heartbeat. Come on, girl. You’ve done enough.

As for Mr. Interference, Shen Chen Yang: I honestly didn’t think any second male lead character could piss me off as much as the one from Lucky’s First Love, but this guy actually went there. Apart from that, it’s been a while since the whole purpose of a character completely eluded me. From start to finish, I didn’t feel the need for Shen Chen Yang to be a part of this story. He literally appeared out of nowhere, hyperfixated on Xiao Man purely because she didn’t bow down to him, and then kept trying to insert himself in her life, claiming his undying love for her, even when she kept rejecting him time and time again.
This series really didn’t have a knack for character introductions. Xiao Man’s first introduction with Shen Chen Yang was complete BS. They start out beefing about the fact that she ‘hurt’ his pet pig when it roamed free during the orientation, which didn’t happen – she only stopped it from running away even further.  If anything, she actually HELPED Chen Yang get his pig back. But no, it had to be made out as a fight, and it became the first reason for him to start bothering her. Honestly, I still don’t get this: Xiao Man literally didn’t lay a hand on the pig, yet even she herself kept admitting that she had.
Anyways, I disliked Chen Yang from the moment he entered the story. He was just annoying. Giving him a chronic heart disease and sympathetic lore about why he’d been so bent on not graduating in the last couple of episodes just added to the tediousness of it all. I’m sorry to say it, but I didn’t feel a single shred of anything for him, that’s how fed up I was with everything. The only thing I liked about him was the pig. Jong Niu was adorable.
It’s not just that he was an annoyingly persistent love rival: he just never felt like a genuine person to me. Even when we learn about his illness and reason for staying back at college for so long, that was all just too late in the day. His proclaimed love for Xiao Man never felt real to me. In my opinion, it started as a simple “no girl has ever treated me like this before” infatuation and then he just gradually started making himself believe that he couldn’t live without her. Again, it felt like the writers took inspiration from a great show – that premise was very Domyouji-coded – and then completely missed the mark with it. It got increasingly tiring to see him pop up and just continuously try to insert himself into Xiao Man’s life. He jumped on every single misunderstanding between her and Zuo An. Whenever he saw Zuo An with An Ning, he immediately went: “Is this how you treat Xiao Man??”, even when Xiao Man knew Zuo An and An Ning were spending time together. He just stuck his nose into every single interaction they had with another person, it was exhausting. Xiao Man would ask him what he was doing and he’d go: “why, are you worried about me?😘” The moment he stepped out of the taxi after following her to her hometown during their break, I actually turned into that “NO GOD PLEASE NO” Michael Scott meme from The Office. Seriously, he got so delusional that he even made himself believe he and Xiao Man were in a relationship at some point. There was no stopping this guy, and it irked me to my core. Sorry if this is mean, but I really, REALLY didn’t see the point of his character. His absence would’ve saved literally everyone from a lot of unnecessary drama.
If it wasn’t bad enough that he kept stalking (I can’t even say ‘pursuing’) Xiao Man, he made an even worse turn when she and Zuo An got together. He literally started dating another girl, someone who already hated Xiao Man’s guts to a very dangerous level, just to make Xiao Man jealous – again, completely delusional to the fact that this wouldn’t work since Xiao Man didn’t have feelings for him. I just can’t believe that he was allegedly so many years older than the main leads, yet acted more immaturely than any of his juniors. He reminded me of that one rich guy from Koi ha Tsuzuku yo Dokomademo, who started blackmailing Nanase to take care of him while he was in the hospital. I really don’t like it when a show introduces a character that’s all high and mighty and nasty and then force you to feel bad for them when they suddenly turn out to have an illness. Of course it was sad that he was sick, but the way and timing in which they revealed it just didn’t weigh up to the annoyance I’d already built up towards him at that point. I really didn’t like him. Sorry to this man.

By the way, can I just say that Xiao Man’s dad (played by Ning Wen Tong) had the WORST radar for people? Don’t get me wrong, I really liked the guy, but it didn’t make any sense to me how he instantly allowed Chen Yang, a complete stranger that turned up at their house unannounced and who Xiao Man kept asking him to send away, to come inside and sleep in the same house as his daughter. While it also bothered me that Xiao Man couldn’t just clearly say: “He’s a senior from college, he’s always pursuing me against my will and he makes me very uncomfortable”, it was so weird for her dad to just instantly accept him as a potential son-in-law, when he didn’t even let her male childhood friends in close proximity of her for a long time. Make it make sense, writers.

Just to be clear, me disapproving of certain characters and failing to see their purpose in the story is in no way related to the actors. I honestly think the acting wasn’t half bad, everyone clearly put a lot of effort and sincerity in it. I’m talking purely from the perspective of the plot, and how I think the characters added to that.

Going back to Xiao Man’s circle for a bit, I’d like to talk about Zhan Yue. Before Chen Yang came into the picture, Zhan Yue was the one getting on my nerves, but not in the least as much as Mr. Interference did. Also, what redeemed Zhan Yue for me was that it was very clear where he was coming from. Besides the fact that he also harbored a secret crush for Xiao Man, he really just couldn’t let go of their friendship as it used to be. He didn’t like seeing her change, get better at studying and fawn over Zuo An because those were all signs that she was moving on from a place that he was desperately trying to hold on to. He kept trying to drag her down with him because he didn’t want to lose what they had, and for me that pretty much explained his actions. He was incredibly childish at first, but I can write that off as typical high school behavior. He actually made a change for the better throughout the show, which can’t be said for most of the other characters. I also liked his gradually growing affection towards Yao La. In the end, as much of a poser as Zhan Yue was, he always had Xiao Man’s back. He may have acted all high and mighty, but his softer and more mature sides did come through in the end, and I appreciated that.
I actually liked that he took the Little Thing-road in the sense that he initially went to medical school to accompany Xiao Man, but ended up pursuing his dream of becoming a performer. At least he followed his own path, even if that meant having to let go what he’d been holding onto for a very long time.

I honestly think Chi Yao La (played by Sun Yan Qing) was the only character I genuinely liked throughout this series. Despite her bad temper and tsundere tendencies, she ended up being the most supportive friend Xiao Man could ask for. I loved how she immediately clocked An Ning for being shady, the second she met her. I loved how she literally just smooched Zhan Yue on the mouth and confessed to him – that was such a refreshing change from the main leads who kept dancing around each other. When those dance judges started making fun of her name during her audition, I genuinely got mad at them, and I loved Zhan Yue for standing up for her, even after he’d already been admitted. I really liked the time she and Zhan Yue spent together at that karaoke room, that was a nice moment between them where they finally started warming up to each other. Of course, they were still a very typical bickering couple that kept needing to reaffirm their feelings for each other, but I actually liked that they got together. It was nice to see how Yao La subtly inspired Zhan Yue to pursue music and how she never gave up on dancing, even though she wasn’t perfect at it. It was cool to see at least these two paving their own path away from the main leads.

To speak of one more Interference, Lin Na Na (played by Ding Xiang Zi – decyphered with the help of this website since again, not everyone was credited on MDL). In my opinion, Lin Na Na was created as the bitch character, just for the sake of having one. Just like with Chen Yang, her relationship with Xiao Man is based on a complete misconception. During their first encounter, Xiao Man is actually looking out for Na Na as she sees that Chen Yang is following her and is afraid that he is stalking her. Not only does Na Na take this the wrong way without even listening to Xiao Man’s explanation, she just goes on to relentlessly bully Xiao Man and pick fights with her for no reason at all. I really dislike it when a character is just written to be mean and unreasonable. It was really frustrating that she kept getting on Xiao Man’s case. They were in freaking college, this kind of behavior should’ve been out of anyone’s system by now. She even went as far as to proactively trigger Xiao Man’s trauma and blood phobia, just for the sake of making her look bad in front of the teacher. Heck, she even locked her inside a morgue storage, and for what? Seriously, what did she mean to achieve by that? Because that’s not just ‘scaring someone’. You don’t do that without knowing what you want to achieve with it, without knowing someone could get hypothermia or even DIE of it if they’re not found quickly enough. The fact that she even had the audacity to come to Xiao Man’s HOSPITAL ROOM to ask her to put in a good word for her with Chen Yang, followed by the most insincere apology ever was WILD to me. And then in the final episode we just see her laugh and hug with Xiao Man during their graduation party as if nothing every happened between them. I honestly feel sorry for the actress who had to play her, because she really didn’t have much to work with.
The scenes in which she ‘pranked’ Xiao Man weren’t even well-written. When triggering her blood phobia, she just randomly walked up to Xiao Man – out of everyone – with an arm full of obviously fake blood (there wasn’t even a chance to get hurt during this class) and yelled: “XIAO MAN, LOOK AT MY ARM!!”. Why did literally no one say anything about her allegedly having a big ass bloody wound on her arm? Same with the storage ‘prank’, she made it so freaking obvious that she was lying to Xiao Man. They encountered several people who were all like: “huh, but the storage was already empty” and her eyes went EVERYWHERE trying to convince Xiao Man that she needed her and her alone to come with her. I can’t even defend Xiao Man in this, because it was straight up DUMB of her to follow her, after everything she’d already done. The cherry on the cake was Na Na straight-up telling her: “I just came here to lock you up” and Xiao Man going: “Oh, well let’s go in then.” GIRL?! You’re telling me that Gu Xiao Man, who used to beat up every bully she came across, literally didn’t suspect a single. flipping. thing there?! Come on, man.
The only time I felt sorry for Na Na was when Chen Yang started dating her purely to make Xiao Man jealous. No one deserves to be used like that, and in this case I just knew (and so should’ve Chen Yang) that this was going to make her retaliate against Xiao Man even more, so it really wasn’t cool.

The last characters I’ll discuss are Xiao Man’s roommates Zhou Li Na (played by Wang Shuo (again, thanks to this website)) and Liu Dan (played by An Ya). If there’s anything I like about typical Chinese college shows, it’s the scenes in the dorm rooms where the female lead bonds with her new college friends. In this case, I liked it a little less. Of course, in the end, Li Na and Dan were good friends to her, but I still can’t forgive the things they did to Xiao Man behind her back.
First of all, Liu Dan. I get it, she needed money. Her mother was in the hospital and they were struggling financially to get her the surgery she needed. She was desperate and juggled different part time jobs, whilst also attending medical school. I get that her situation was dire and that she was very grateful to An Ning for getting her that library job. Still, was that a reason to start spying on Xiao Man, just to appease An Ning into letting her keep that job? Was that job really more important to her than lying to her friend? You tell me. What irked me the most was that it took her so long to confess to Xiao Man. I really wanted her to grow a backbone, all the more because it definitely seemed to gnaw at her.
On the other hand, while I definitely judged Li Na for letting herself be bribed by Chen Yang with a phone to tell him about Xiao Man’s whereabouts, she immediately threw the phone back in his face once this plan backfired. She immediately went back to him to say: “I’m not doing this shit and I don’t need your damn phone.” Liu Dan could’ve definitely learned from that. While she did go back to An Ning after the first ‘prank’, it wasn’t to say: “I’m not doing this”, it was to ask her very timidly: “Do I really have to do this?” before letting An Ning walk all over her because of a part time job she sucked at anyway. I’m not a hundred percent okay with how they just brushed over these acts of betrayal, although I definitely hold it against Liu Dan more than against Li Na.

Actually, there is one more character that I liked and that I want to give a shoutout to: doctor Xu Fei (Ye Chao). It’s later revealed that he was engaged to Chen Yang’s sister and that’s how they were connected, but he was a nice guy. I appreciated that he also had qualms with Chen Yang’s unreasonable requests, despite being his friend.

Now that I’ve covered all the characters I wanted to discuss, I would like to go over a couple of general issues that jumped out to me.
First of all, speaking from personal experience, when I entered college I was so relieved because I knew that I’d finally arrived at a place where there was no bullying, and people had rid themselves of their childish high school mentality. When looking at the people in this series, I honestly would not have believed they were in college. This type of bullying, caused by petty jealousy about a love rival, does not belong in a college drama. I could forgive the stuff that happened in high school because that belonged there, but the way people acted in college, as medical students, was abhorrent and frankly unrealistic. As a college student, when there’s a classmate desperately trying to work through their fear of blood, you don’t sprinkle fake blood on your arm and shove it under their nose, just to laugh at them as they faint. Even for a petty prank, this was just crazy. You don’t steal someone’s diary and tear out all the pages to post them on the bulletin board for everyone to see. The level of immaturity that was used in this series just didn’t fit a college environment. I’ll say it again: this show really just threw in every possible trope to create drama for the sake of drama. And I didn’t like that.

Secondly, what is it with Chinese dramas and never using realtime audio of people singing or playing music? When you write characters that have singing/performing ambitions, let them sing/perform! I swear to goodness, even in karaoke party settings it was like: “I’m going to sing a song!” > insert soundtrack that’s completely different from what they’re lipsynching to. Zhan Yue was supposed to be surprisingly talented at singing and playing the guitar, so much that it even mesmerized Yao La, and yet we never heard him sing or play a single note because they just silenced it by adding a random soundtrack.

While I can say in hindsight that the entire story was dragged out from beginning to end, with no significant development in any of the main characters, there were a couple of things I noted down during the high school arc that were also kind of dragged out in my opinion. As I said, I let these slide because they fit into the high school mentality – little did I know that it would get way worse than this in college.
First of all, the situation where Zuo An defended Xiao Man during the basketball game. In short: Xiao Man filled in for someone in the team and the other team purposely pushed her, causing her to fall and get hurt. An stepped in for her with some sort of physics theory that proved that the rival player had been standing at the right angle to push her, or something. He even suggested to call in the principal, and this made the player admit that he had in fact pushed Xiao Man. Problem solved, right? But no, they went on to create an entire scandal about how the theory Zuo An had used wasn’t actually correct, and the principal even scolded him for ‘almost calling him in’. Seriously? This really wasn’t worth the aggravation. All that mattered here was that Zuo An stood up for Xiao Man, but they blew it way out of proportion.
The same went for when Xiao Man was suspected of writing a love letter to Zuo An. I don’t know what the deal about this was anyway, but it became such a big thing for no reason. The fact that the teacher immediately suspected Xiao Man as well, like wow. All in all, I thought these teachers were really something. As soon as Xiao Man started doing better in school, instead of complimenting her, they just immediately started accusing her of cheating. Great teaching, teachers. Anyways, in this case Xiao Man managed to explain the situation to the teacher outside of school, and it was solved. Or so we thought, because even after the matter was ‘solved’, Xiao Man’s classmates still kept coming at her. Again, not worth the aggravation.

This may have just been a peeve of mine, but it actually started bothering me how often they mentioned the name of the person they were talking to. Imagine talking to a friend and saying their name at the start of almost every single sentence. Their FULL name, to boot. I don’t remember being bothered by this as much in other C-Dramas, so I guess they really did an excessive job of it in this one.
What also jumped out to me was that the characters recycled the same clothes over and over again. This could be a budget issue – I remember Road to Rebirth, where it looked downright unprofessional since it was about celebrities. I think this show gets away with it because it’s college kids who brought clothes from home and probably don’t have a new outfit for every single day, but it did jump out to me.

Another thing this show made me realize is how much I dislike it when people try to convince the main character to like a specific person, based purely on outward characteristics. It got really annoying how her roommates kept asking Xiao Man why she wouldn’t consider Chen Yang because ‘he cared so much about her’ and ‘his cooking was so good’. Literally Zuo An’s whole family wanted to push him towards An Ning, too. Why does it not occur to people that this isn’t how love works? You have no control over who you develop feelings for, and I can speak from experience how frustrating it is to not feel anything for someone who is actually a green flag and does everything right. I don’t know, maybe it was because of the many other things that already irked me about this show, but it became increasingly tiring to hear people talk about how the main leads should give the second leads a chance – you don’t know the story behind them, you’re only judging them based on their face and skills, and it’s also none of your business. Go focus on your own love life, jeez.

Something I did find interesting was that they chose to visualize Xiao Man’s fantasies in the fashion of a historical drama. I spotted the poster above her bed, but I don’t think it was ever actually clarified what these historical fantasies alluded to, or where they came from. I thought they were quite silly, but they didn’t really add anything to the story for me, per se.

Putting Chen Yang and An Ning on the poster together with the other four characters, who were actually friends since high school, doesn’t feel right. To me, Chen Yang and An Ning were never part of the group, and they barely had any interaction with Zhan Yue and Yao La, either. This reminds me of how I felt seeing Im Na Young’s character in Summer Guys included in the friend group sequences in the intro – I get that she was part of the main cast, but she never even became friendly with any of them and she also never got a redemption arc, so it was weird to see her as part of the friend group. The same goes for including Chen Yang and An Ning on the main poster, laughing carelessly with the others. Out of place.

I already mentioned that they kept throwing in every single trope in the book, even until the end, but I honestly didn’t expect them to even go so far as to create a plane crash that Zuo An died in. Honestly, I knew it wasn’t real because that would’ve officially debunked the entire purpose of the show, as a whole. With everything this series had already thrown at me, nothing surprised me anymore. I already expected An to turn up again and it would be this whole “I thought you were dead!” Descendants of the Sun ripoff-ending.
What I didn’t understand was how An Ning already told Xiao Man about An’s funeral when Chen Yang – who was present at this time – later suddenly said the list of victims hadn’t yet been published. That was a weird inconsistency. But seriously, the fact that they went so far as to actually suggest Zuo An had died in the very last episode… I didn’t think this show could’ve sunk any lower than it already had. But it did. Needless to say, the ending didn’t do anything for me. It was rushed and random, ending it on the ‘playful’ indication that they would start making babies. Great for them, I’d like to move on to my next show now.

In a nutshell, my main qualm lay with the writing of this show. Despite having a very simple plot, a relationship between two people who already liked each other, the story went absolutely nowhere and the characters had next to no development at all. The fact that they kept throwing in every existing trope in the book, up to the final episode, didn’t add anything to the plot. If the plot was already dragged, the interferences from Shen Chen Yang and Sun An Ning dragged it out even more. This, in combination with the main leads’ pathetic responses and the fact that they didn’t communicate or confront each other directly at all in the case of doubt, quite frankly ruined the show for me. It’s a shame because it had a lot of potential and there are so many shows with the same ingredients that did manage to get the point across, but this one just didn’t do it for me. I have to agree with the top comment on MDL: this was excruciating to watch, and I couldn’t wait to get it over with. For a show called “All I Want For Love is You”, it took a dang long time for them to actually get there. In hindsight, the title actually gets a whole other meaning if you apply it to the obsessive and delusional second lead characters.

Having said that, I don’t want to mark down the actors for the bad script, and therefore I will do a short cast comments section. As per usual, a lot of the actors were new to me, which was undeniably refreshing.

Apparently, this was Lu Zhao Hua’s drama debut. There’s one more show with her on my watch list, I see, so I wonder how much she’s grown since 2019. I think she did a fine job as Xiao Man here. As I said, I mostly liked her in the beginning, when she was still doing the martial arts. She captured Xiao Man’s fierce temper very well and it was nice to see such a tiny lady exude so much physical strength. Although I’ve already mentioned my less positive opinion regarding the change in her character throughout the story, I still think she poured a lot of emotion and sincerity into her performance. Her chemistry with her co-star was really cute, albeit quite on the innocent side. I think she did a good job and I’m curious to see more of her acting.

Liu Yu Han was also a new face to me, and a very sympathetic one at that. I think he suited the role of the calm and collected Zuo An very well. It was clear to see how young he and his co-star were (they were 24 and 23 when this aired, respectively) but I think that innocence was a good fit for this show. Although I personally always like a bit of spice, especially in Chinese dramas where this is rare, I honestly don’t think even that could’ve saved it for me, lol. Then again, as I said, his kabedon-kiss was very smooth and they had cute chemistry in their other interactions as well. I think he conveyed Zuo An’s feelings for Xiao Man very well through this expressions, as subtle as they were. He may have been a little stiff at times, but I appreciated that he wasn’t completely apathetic, and that he came into action when he needed to. He did a good job.

Liu Yin Jun was possibly the only actor I knew from this show. It was pretty funny seeing him as a student after his performance in Love Me Like I Do. While he has the tendency to go big on the goofy elements of his characters, I was really impressed by his facial expressions in this show. I’m actually interested to see him play a normally functioning adult, see how he pulls off the more serious roles. I feel like he’s the type that typically gets cast as comical or eccentric characters, but he seems to be a very intelligent actor, because I could definitely feel a hidden layer behind Zhan Yue’s behavior. It was cool to see him in such a different kind of role, this has made me even more curious to see more of him.

For Sun Yan Qing, this was only her second drama role. I do hope I can see her again sometime in another drama, because I’m very curious to see how much she’s grown. As I said, Yao La was probably the character I liked the most in the show, although I wouldn’t go so far as to call her a ‘favorite’ character. I thought she had a nice development, starting out as Zuo An’s fanclub leader and then gradually becoming better friends with Xiao Man. Her growing chemistry with Zhan Yue was also nice to see. Although there could’ve definitely been a bit more ‘mature’ chemistry between her and Liu Yin Jun, they had a lot of sweet moments together and I liked the way Yao La gradually started seeing Zhan Yue in a new light. I liked the energy she brought to Yao La. Hopefully I get to see her again in something!

Han Le Yao’s face and smile reminds me of Hyojung from Oh My Girl, anyone else? I’ve ranted about her character more than enough, so let’s just say that the actress did a really good job making her unbearable! I really wonder what it must’ve been like for her to play An Ning and what her thoughts are about her character’s behavior. As I said, I can’t deny that I’m sad with the decision to write An Ning as they did, they could’ve done a lot of cool things with her character and not make her so black and white. I feel like Han Le Yao would’ve easily pulled off a much more dimensional character than this with ease. As aggravating as An Ning was, it was clear to see that she poured a lot into her and portrayed her very sincerely, in all her craziness. I think she did admirably.

This was also a drama debut for Xie Zhi Xun, apparently! He made such a confident impression through Chen Yang that I wouldn’t have guessed this was his first rodeo. Almost makes me regret saying I thought his character wasn’t necessary for the plot.🥲 Anyways, I can’t deny that he put his all into Chen Yang to make him the persistent guy that he was, and he clearly had a fun time doing so. I can’t help but wonder how these actors must feel about their characters, but I can definitely imagine them having a good time with it. I’m actually curious to see what else he’s done since then, hopefully some less obnoxious roles. I’ve got to give it to him that he delivered this performance for this character as his first ever drama role!

I’ll keep it at the main cast for this one! Even though this wasn’t the most enjoyable watching experience for me, I’m glad I can scratch it off my list now and move on to my next watch. I’m still keeping an eye open for Chinese romcoms, as there are definitely some very fun and entertaining ones out there that’ll without a doubt surprise me in a good way.
I wouldn’t recommend this one purely because of the writing, I just feel like they wanted to do too much, even with 32 episodes to fill. I think it would’ve been better if they’d chosen to focus on the gradual development of their main plot and steered clear of too many dramatic tropes. I still feel like it had a lot of potential but just kind of lost its way and ended up being one hot mess of stereotypes whilst losing sight of the main story. Which was a pity. Still, every drama deserves coverage, even if it’s just to acknowledge the time, effort and budget that went into it, and I’m glad I was able to write this review.

I will be back with a new one, definitely sooner than my last one!
Bye-bee! x