Scarlet Chen

I'm honestly confused by why the rating is so high. There is no real conflict or plot or character development in this show. It's fundamentally the same as those 'hero movies' where a random little guy or girl somehow has super power and just keeps beating up bigger and bigger monsters. This is one of the oldest genres in Japanese manga. Several years ago China also had a wave of this kind of 爽剧 ('shows that make you feel good') such as 延禧攻略 (story of Yanxi Palace). People like watching it because real life is hard (lol) and a cheap way to feel good is to watch a super hero movie and cast yourself onto it. But at least at that time the media in China realizes what's going on - several mainstream articles pointed it out and commented on the fact that people's taste is getting worse. But till now I haven't really seen a mainstream article criticizing QG or commenting on this social phenomenon, which is what disappoints me. What I'm more surprised by is that this show is liked by a lot of chess players. Well, I guess it makes sense - chess is losing relevance nowadays especially among young people (similar to tennis), and seeing chess being at the center of a show makes chess players feel good. But if you think carefully about it, this show actually is very disrespectful to real world Grandmasters - in real life, no one gets so good by staring at the ceiling. You get good by playing lots and lots and lots of games, spending lots and lots and lots of time on it. People love to believe in 'talents' because they like the feeling of 'oh somehow I'm just born better than everyone else', but people who are actually good know that however good your talents are, you get to the top by spending lots and lots and lots of time and experiencing lots and lots and lots of pain and suffering. On to the acting - the main character literally has like 1 expression and 1 way of talking and does 1 thing. People say it's 'good acting' mostly said it because 'it's a girl and she is scary'. This is actually very disrespectful to females - as long as a female is not feminine it's good lol. Saying that this is good acting is also condescending to female actors who are *actually* good at acting.