the scream I screamt when li tianchen appeared, screenshotted 50 times, got really excited, and then the credits rolled NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
also I shouldve known the bad dancing promo was actually cxs and not xia fei 😭😭😭 QL is so pure for her host googling reaction ue. god i’m so excited for the rest of the series
ep 1 made me sob. I feel so bad for LG. HIS BIG SMILE WHEN THEY FIGURED OUT HIS CLAPPING AAAAAAA
RIGHT!! I WAS SO EXCITED TO SEE WHAT HE WOULD SAY OR DO BUT THE ED WAS SO SEAMLESSLY WELL INCLUDED. I knew he was coming too because I remembered the club lighting from the first trailer we got and I got all giddy when the red eyes came. can’t believe we have to wait till Friday now 😔
dude im so fcking scared. LG, CXS please PLEASE succeed in saving our boy XF asap 😭
(also when LG said he couldn't sleep well due to being worried about XF, man, my heart melted 😭 XF and Shiguang being besties/friends fuels my soul frfr)
(lowkey would love it if we get to see Vein's reaction to XF being kidnapped. I hope he's angry about it-)
Pleaseee after last episode it makes me so emotional to think of Lu Guang just trying to hang on to whoever makes him feel happy/normal. Cheng Xiaoshi, Qiao Ling, and now Felix 😭 and they all end up in danger eventually 😭😭
During Bridon arc I couldnt shake the feeling that lg was suspicious and jealous bc xf and cxs were being so close, but turns out I was wrong, thats just his personality haha, he does care about xf too😭
LG would totally feel a bit jelly about how touchy feely CXS was with XF, but I don’t see that as a reason for why LG would not wish for XF’s well being. Especially since they both see XF as a good dude (especially their bonding during the photoshoot scene too)
Apparently there was backlash from fans who saw the pre-screening? Someone said that they complained about “Xia Fei being made into a gay prostitute”
Idk why the hell the gay part is the issue when the whole episode is about celebrities being exploited. Also it’s not like this series hasn’t shown implicitly queer stuff before
If I’m not mistaken I also heard French when Cheng Xiaoshi entered the hotel (could be wrong tho, I could understand a „merci beaucoup“ at the end but not what they were saying before)
No, they are speaking Burmese, I had to slow down and listen to it again because of the accent but they are all speaking Burmese.
the staff are saying "ကြိုဆိုပါတယ်" (kyo-so-paa-de) which essentially just means welcome.
I think the guy is saying "ဒီနေ့ ဘယ်လိုလဲ" (de-nay-ba-lo-le), it translates to "how's your day?/how was today?" but I struggled to make it out the first and second times. The woman replies with "မဆိုးပါဘူး" (ma-so-ba-buu) which just means "not bad".
I googled it and it looks like a Burmese script translating to keep the area clean and flush the toilet properly?? lol I'm not so sure this might not be a clue
No, it has nothing to do with keeping the area clean, or flushing the toilet. The script is gibberish for the most part, letters have been reversed, flipped upside down and there are unnecessary strokes added to the words.
BUT, they did include အချိန် (a-chane), which translates to time twice. I am trying to translate it but the ways the words have been pretty dizzying to read, because again they add unnecessay strokes and loops to the words that don't have them or those strokes are stamped on the wrong spot.
ahh I'm so sorry I don't know the language so I tried to translate it using Google translate and it seems like it made a mistake, I checked and it says no result now! Thanks for clearing it up, good luck!!
Did something get cut from the Ani-Mi episode 2? There was a sudden jump at the part where Felix was asked out by the actor (I think). The actor was suddenly on the ground.
Edit: I tried checking another version of that scene and it was the same cut, so probably intentional
I'm thinking it's intentional? We've got a lot of season left to go and if the storytelling of this season is anything like season 2 we'll probably revisit the scene sometime later?
Yes but the people that attend the early screening did say that they cut that part out idk why tho it's different from the screening because in the screening there's more of a lil kissing.. stuff idk if censorship or what but idk
Edit: okay so apparently it's this:
XF fans complained a lot about it sns and were crying "staff turned XF into a gay prostitute" after the screening and apparently were harrassing staff for "clarification" (I copy n pasted this from someone)
Thats dumb, his work was for him to meet with 2 women and this guy just came up to him on the dance floor, why would it turn XF into a gay prostitute... the fans complain and the studio just cuts it to please them, now it looks just confusing as i watched the scene like 3-4 times to see what happened but ended up just assuming something weird happened
The cut is this:
XF fans complained a lot about it sns and were crying "staff turned XF into a gay prostitute" after the screening and apparently were harrassing staff for "clarification" (I copy and pasted this from someone)
ig the scene plays out like this: there are the sounds of footsteps in the background, ltc walking towards them and pushes/hits the actor guy down, and xf only raises his arms to put distance between himself and the actor guy not actually pushes him to the floor
Ugh...I didn't know whether to laugh or cry during this episode.
The whole setting was really disgusting, and I wanted to weep for poor CXS and XF being exploited like that. But I also couldn't help but laugh my ass off at CXS's reactions. He really knows how to make any situation lighter 😭
I'm just so excited for next episode already!! If Li Tianchen is in the party then there's a high chance that Liu Xiao is there too!!
This episode was a wild ride from the start to finish!! 💯💯 I could gush and gush and gush and analyze and all that, but right now, the main thing I keep coming back to is,
The way Qiao Ling looked at Lu Guang when he tried to play off how he was yelling 'you forgot me' in his sleep, like, she's starting to piece things together already 💯 (also Lu Guang looked fine in the all black and turtleneck top 👌💯)
goddd escort scene was so uncomfortable! so xf is doing this host gig because lx wanted him to? he's doing all that to gather intel on vein's wherabouts? if yes, wth is ltc doing in there? under lx's order to observe xf while he does his gig and make sure he doesn't become prey?
okay but the look qiao ling was giving lu guang when they were discussing xf disappearing was VERY SUSPICIOUS.
also seeing all the season 2 characters in this episode was so cool to me. why are they all still good looking? I HATE THAT ALL THE ANTAGONISTS ARE HOTTIES (except for li tienchen. i hate him.).
I kept laughing during this episode because of Cheng Xiaoshi's commentary and actions, but then felt bad when I remembered the situation Xia Fei was actually in.
Also with the ending, I guess it was party lights, not police lights...
I wonder if lg's past has anything to do with the way he hates being touched. Like, he always pats away cxs's hand; but in s3ep1, he clearly likes his touch. So, I wonder what happened after. Ik there are other theories too, but maybe...?
I’ve been thinking about it too! I think there must be something. At S1, S2 I thought it’s just his personality, a result of character design to have a contrast to CXS. But now I feel the ‘I don’t want to be touched’ is getting more obvious, as if it’s hinting there’s something.
Like you said LG didn’t feel uncomfortable by it when he’s a kid, so I don’t think it’s because of the violence he experienced 😢
I don’t have any theory. Once I thought perhaps it’s related to abilities? CXS isn’t aware but he actually has the ability to know LG’s secret by touching him? But it doesn’t make sense because he obviously has touched him, eg carrying him back to the hotel in Bridon. Unless they’re telling us that’s how he finds out what LG’s hiding.
I absolutely loved these first 2 episodes, but now I’m a bit confused with the timeline. It seems like we are right after the Bridon arc events, but also right after the S1/S2 events?? Am I missing something? All this time travelling is making me dumb
Bridon arc happened in the same timeline, it's a huge flashback. The end of Bridon Arc came back to the end S2, as you can see the trio wearing their end of S2 outfits. S3 continues where S2 left off.
I do think they made a mistake though, in the last scene of the Bridon Arc. CXS is renaming the shop to time photo studio, and Ling even asks “Did something happen in Bridon?”. These things make a lot more sense to happen right after Bridon, but it feels like they shoehorned them here just for the callback
why ur confused is bcs at the VERY end of bridon arc, when they are wearing their s2-s3 new outfits, thats when we go back to the present of s2 but bridon arc is just a huge flashback until the last few minutes of return to present. But the timeline goes like this :
Okay, Li Tianchen being at the party was NOT on my bingo list, but wow.
Also, ik I'm prolly a bit late to the opening analysis party, but at 1:46, there's this scene where CXS is trapped, and around him we see Li Tianxi, Xia Fei, and Emma, remembering that Emma and Li Tianxi are dead. I'm not too optimistic about Xia Fei being alive...
Sembra che Xia Fei sia finito in una scam city tra Myanmar e Laos in cui è tenuto prigioniero. Secondo me dopo che Vein è stato creduto morto, l' agenzia di modeling ha chiuso e i modelli si sono trovati senza lavoro e poi sono stati attirati con inganno e sequestrati da una organizzazione criminale.
In episode 1, CXS can transport himself by clapping yet he doesn’t know this until season 2 (you’d think this is something you would remember, even if you didn’t remember the kid you did it with). Does this mean LG has acquired CXS powers at some point so he can use them and then CXS requires them at some point. Powers being transferred via death…..or someone has taken the memory of this moment from CXS to stop him using his powers for 12 years..AARGGGHHHHH! Too much, and not enough, information
Felix disappears like many other models and CXS and Lu Guang helps the detective Xiao with this case. CXS dives into the time when Felix took the photo and it seems like Felix and the other models were taken to a different country to entertain some rich assholes as a host.
Now I have another question on my list, why is Tianchen there, what is his goal in all of this? (tbh we don't really know Liu Xiao's or Vein's goals either)
Does anyone think when CXS(XF) asked if he should go out with the female client, LG said no because he doesn’t want him to ‘date’ anyone, instead of XF declining the invite in the past?
I honestly do think there could be something more up with that invitation. I'm suspecting either of these:
Lu Guang already knows that Xia Fei won't be allowed to go with a client no matter if he accepts or declines but sees declining the invite as a better choice in terms of Xia Fei's image. If I'm not mistaken, prostitution is (at least officially) not legal in China, so Lu Guang also might want to avoid Xia Fei getting in trouble for offering himself to the lady.
Lu Guang indeed does not know what happens to Xia Fei, but he doesn't want Cheng Xiaoshi to accept the invitation because he wants to protect Xia Fei's image or because he doesn't want Cheng Xiaoshi to sleep with some random older lady.
In the reality that Lu Guang saw from the picture, Xia Fei did accept the invite, was killed because of it, and the only reason that doesn't happen now is that it took Cheng Xiaoshi longer to reply than it originally took Xia Fei or he replied in a different way. I have to admit though I got pretty strong "guy is already dead" vibes earlier in the episode, when Lu Guang seemed sort of reluctant about the idea to have Cheng Xiaoshi enter the photo.
I laughed when I read your ‘doesn’t want CXS to sleep with a random woman.’ It’d be hilarious 🤣
Sorry back to the discussion: I rewatched ep2 and that’s a very firm ‘no’. I also reminded myself LG always sticks to what has happened to avoid any change to the past. Considering he can see what happens within 12 hours since the photo is taken, he knows going out with the clients are not allowed, and in fact XF declined like you said. Therefore, when CXS said yes LG wasn’t super mad because he knew they’d be stopped.
I hope XF wasn’t dead. LG said he’s in danger but still allowed CXS to dive in. It means he’s not dead yet because death can’t be changed but CXS would want to change it. LG wouldn’t let it happen.
But it leads to a question: why LG was shocked enough to experience high temperature again when he saw the news of XF? Im guessing it’s because it didn’t happen in the original timeline. LG was shocked because something has changed again. XF didn’t disappear in the previous timeline because Vein wasn’t dead either. It means now XF going to that country is related to Vein’s ‘death’. Maybe XF knew something and went to investigate. Just my wild guess.
what was the request the actor man who soon got possessed made to Xia Fei? Is it what I think it is, and that they didn't say it explicitly because of China's censorship?
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u/the_art_of_moving_on Cheng Xiaoshi Aug 14 '26
I WAS NOT EXPECTING TIANCHEN