Falling Into Your Smile

This is the definitive Esports drama. It has everything from tactics, gameplay, up to the prejudices faced by the players. In this series we follow Smiling the very first female esports player as she evolves from a ladder player who would happily sacrifice her support to generate a few more kills for herself to a true team player. Of course being a rom-com she finds love along the way as well as a whole raft of other suitors. The only other series that would even come close to this one is Gank Your Heart but esports as a concept is better shown here. The series and gameplay are so good that it even convinced me to download Mobile Legends.

I would really like to rate this a 5/5. If you are an esports fan or even remotely interested in that topic you would give this a 5/5 as well as you would not mind watching it over and over again. The problem is that if you have no interest in esports then this series has very little to offer you. It may even be justified to rate it as 2/5 and I only give that rating to shows that were so dragging that you ended up fast forwarding or just abandoning it all together.

Favorite Scene

Hands down the most memorable scene in the series for me is Smiling hiding in her little cubby after being bullied by Kun. Its just so adorable how she actually fits inside and you can literally see the aura of sadness around her as she got killed over and over again. Kun visiting her and asking for her number at half time just adds salt to the injury.

That said I did not like how the male esports players are portrayed as rabid hormonal dogs with team captain after team captain falling for Smiling. I think Fatty said it best "Cheng, You better be sure about this. If they didn't need to do it to win half the Junglers in the league wouldn't even attack Smiling. If you break up they will be coming for you. Nevermind you Ill be in the lane with you"

Honest Portrayal

I loved how honest the drama is about Esports. The older generation do not even view it as a proper job. Tong Yao's mother even thought that being a trainee at a bank would be better. While the for the younger generation the gamers are the new idols and their teams market them as such, including placing restrictions on who they can love. We can even see this today as the older generation cannot fully appreciate the relevance of streamers and how much income those on the top end make. Someone like Herman may even be a bigger deal than Liang Chen.

The series is even honest enough to portray the disparity between South Korean and Chinese Esports although they do make it a point to say that Chinese Esports are improving as well which is fair.

King also does a brilliant job here with Smiling showing the stress and emotions involved for teams moving to a higher league and slamming into the brick wall of increased competition. You can see his heartbreak and how close he was to giving up on everything.

Game

The game itself is essentially just mobile legends. I think the drama did a good enough job explaining the various roles of the team members, so much so that if you were a person who just picked up the genre watching the show would actually make you a better player. Tactics were shown beforehand and even psychological pressures like having that one player you just couldn't beat. Even strategic banning was explained.

All in all if your an Esports fan I recommend that this be the next on your watch list. You will not regret it.