Source: google
WITH YOU is another highly rated school/youth drama in China. With you is the best type of slice-of-life drama one that I can consider as my favorite. It's the kind of drama that makes you feel deeply for the characters and also nostalgic for the golden days of the past. Don't let the old-school track suit uniform fool you; this is a very well produced drama with all the nostalgia of the past but none of the granininess.
With you follows Geng Geng (played by Tang Song Yun). a girl who is entering her first year at the prestigious Zhen Hua High School, and who feels she's not quite smart to fit in with the other brilliant students. But she soon befriends her benchmate Yu Hai (Liu Hao Ran) and some other classmates and also gains the very persistent affection of the school's badboy Lu Xing He ( Wang Li Xin). The series follow Geng Geng and her classmates through their high school life, stresses of school, drama, friendship, romance, family issues and other universally relevant things.
It's inevitable that I compare WITH YOU to A LOVE SO BEAUTIFUL, since I watched that recently and that's another amazing drama which is very highly rated . The two are remarkably similar because they both focus on high school life and group of friends. They both don't have an overarching plot , instead focus on smaller arcs involving smaller individual characters. However , they are stylistically different.
Source: google
What stood out to me immediately about WITH YOU is how pretty it is. There are some very beautiful scenes and all of the high school scenes ( which is about 90% of the show) are softly lit with this white glow that really evokes a sense of nostalgia and better days.
WITH YOU also does a phenomenal job with character and relationship development. Like other similar dramas, we don't have villians or flat characters with opaque motives. Instead we have real people, real friendships. I specially loved watching Geng Geng's rapport with her two love interests, Yu Hai and LuXing He. Those two friendships were just too adorable. Lu Xing Je really stole my heart with his selfless and persistent antics. Some of the characters are occasionally annoying, but in the end we celebrate and cry with them through successes and failures at school, new crushes and tough heartbreaks. There is drama of course but it's not quite melodrama.
The only reason I wouldn't give WITH YOU a full 10 out of 10 is that the ending escalates a little too much in terms of drama , tears and misunderstanding. It doesn't quite reach the convoluted level of some other dramas.
Overall, WITH YOU is another very well done slice-of-youth drama and worth the watch. This show is available on Viki Rakuten app/site. It is 24 episode long with 45minutes episodes so it zips right by, and the feelings, characters and friendships will definitely linger with you long after the show is done!
