Plot Summary: Jiang HaoYi, the most ordinary of ordinary students, is happily living a quiet and ordinary life; that is until the school belle appears in front of him to announce she is pregnant with his child!? WHAT!? And then as he is trying to figure out what is going on, girls appear one after another to announce or accuse him of something crazy! What the hell is going on!? Turns out, not long ago, he found a cupid-magic-infused cake and brought it to a clubroom that these girls all consumed. The magic manifested in creating false memories for each girl centered around their insecurities or wishes and involving the MC. Once he is able to resolve this for them, the false memories will disappear. Will HaoYi be able to help each girl and return to his ordinary life?
Plot
A very general overview of the plot is: a classic school setting harem anime; these types of shows were much more popular and prevalent in the 2010s when this story was written and adapted. The plot starts with a crazy event, acting as the hook, and moves on from there as the MC tries to solve the problems presented in the opening. While it can be considered a relatively generic start, it does go into each character presented in the harem and tries to grow each one. However, the progression of the plot can be a bit forced and disjointed. This problem, in my opinion, is an adaptation problem (I will explain more in the adaptation section) as the original manhua did not give this feeling when I read it. Overall though, it was interesting enough, but there are ALOT of cringe "comedic" harem event/encounters (as expected of harem comedy stories).
Characters
At first glance, the characters all seem like the standard characters from any harem show, and for the most part, they are. The MC is a quiet person who avoids conflict, or standing out for that matter despite is personal abilities. Most of the girls have very standout characteristics that fill some harem girl cliché, but they get their development (to some extent) throughout the show. The show does give each girl a backstory with a unique circumstance/struggle and time to develop rather than simply add them to an ever growing collection without reason; the development of each girl's character passable, but there are some problems due to the how the plot can be choppy and feel forced.
Animation
Classic harem anime aesthetic, this is how I would describe how the animation and designs are presented. Since this is a school harem type show, there are the usual: beautiful girls, bouncing "assets", etc that you would expect to see in a harem type show. The animation, even for this first season is surprisingly crisp and fluid though, something I definitely did not expect. If you disregard the overexaggerated harem animation tropes, this is actually animated quite well. The designs for the characters are directly lifted from the manhua, so no complaints there; and the designs of each important character are very unique and hard to confuse with each other. There are also some exaggerated (cringe) comedy animations which could have been done without. The ED shots of each character also look very nice and clean.
Final Thoughts
Surprisingly, I did not enjoy this as much as I thought I would, given its high praise and my enjoyment of the manhua (source). The plot and hook of this donghua was a bit fresh and unique, given they had a reasonable (albeit magical) explanation for the harem circumstance. But the storytelling was a choppy and disjointed. This made the plot feel a bit forced and disconnected. The characters themselves were alright and the animation and character designs are nice. If you enjoy school-setting harem-type stories, this is certainly a recommended watch, but if not, then you should probably skip this.
Score: 6/10
Adaptation Review (contains spoilers):
The first difference is observable difference between the manhua and the donghua adaptation is that age and setting that the story is taking place. In the manhua, the characters are in high school and 15 years of age while in the donghua it is set in college (presumably) and the characters are 19 years of age. While this change isn't that bad, it does create a bit of dissonance for some of the jokes, actions of characters, and some of the dialogue because these were intended for a high school setting. This change probably happened because of some of the topics that the setting touches on. Teen pregnancy, teenage parents, pre-marital relationships, PDA aren't exactly recommended behaviors, especially in China, where this was released and is set.
After that, there are many changes to the plot, mostly for dramatization purposes. This is first seen in how the opening was changed. The chasing, drama, and even the "jumping off the roof to commit suicide" scene was very different from the opening in the manhua. This is the first blatant change, there are many many many more that follow throughout the show. From an adaptation perspective, the core story and each girl's scenario is basically unchanged, but the progression of events is VERY different; the ending/result is the same, however. The donghua changed many of the events/encounters during the scenarios with each girl to make them ridiculously harem-tropey, so much of the encounters now overflow with the classic harem-comedy-cringe-misunderstanding aura. In essence, the manhua was much more realistic and grounded in its approach, making the story and plot much more believable.
The next change I'd like to point out is the oversexualization/suggestiveness of some relationships. Clearly, as a harem story donghua, this kind of portrayal is not unexpected, but they, in my opinion, went way overboard. The MC's relationship with that teacher is the premier example in this donghua (it happened to other girls too, but that was expected). The MC has a very complicated relationship with the teacher he visits late at night (the manhua does explains better, and gives more details later in the story); in the donghua, they really made this scene way too sexualized and suggestive, contrary to the more parent-child relationship the manhua suggested. It was clearly a harem-trope comedy situation and change.
Then, like stated in the general review section, the plot is very jumpy and disjointed. I don't remember the manhua feeling as disjointed as the it does in the donghua. I do believe this is an adaptation problem; part of this likely stems from the fact that some character thoughts are translated/adapted as flashbacks or character dialogue and enhanced by some of the exaggerated visuals/animations, and another part because of how they end episodes to create a cliffhanger instead of single panel teases that we get in the manhua.
The character designs are basically lifted directly from the manhua, there is basically no difference in artstyle between the two, though the designs/art in the donghua are a bit more refined since it is newer (the older chapter art is much more rough).
There is one change that got removed I would like to have seen. This was what I considered the punchline and what hooked me to the manhua in the first place. After solving ZiTong's wish (first, pink-hair girl), HaoYi finds out that the magic gets dispelled but the memories of him helping her remain, the punchline after was: "When the Cupid's Magic is dispelled... is when the TRUE STORY begins". I thought this was a great setup for the story; was disappointed this wasn't in the donghua.
The donghua "adapts" chapters 1-63 of the manhua with quite a few changes to the progression of events (not changes to the core story). After watching this, I still prefer the manhua and would recommend that over this adaptation.
Adaptation score(how faithful to source): 5/10
