Go Go 2

Secondary characters that seemed more interesting that the leads are the reason I decided to watch Go Go Squid 2/Dt, Appledog's Time, as the leads are both among the reasons I kept watching the first series.

It's a bit confusing at first, as the creators decided to throw out most of the backstory from the original series and reinvent nearly the entire storyline. There's also a big cast shakeup with only a couple of the original actors. I guess they figured out the boring CTF gaming angle needed fixing; this time it's all about attack robots that battle in huge arenas. Which is also a bit silly, but not as much as the first series.

High points: The series is more romantic than the first installment, and there are intermittant scenes of introspection that take place in a dark room lit by many hanging edison type light bulbs that are pretty dreamy. Both leads did a great job in convincing me they were in love. The gaming with the robots is also far superior to the CTF gaming in the previous series, and was quite fun to watch.

Low points: Both leads get drunk in the series (she does twice) and it doesn't serve the story (the cuteness angle of drunken behavior is never going to work for me, either.) This is another sloooooooow burn love story that seems to take forever to get to the first kiss. The ending, while probably wildly romantic to most schoolgirls, was silly and unnecessary. Every time the leads began to act like mature adults they were dragged back down to high school level by the script. The grandfather from the first series comes back and is even more annoying. The conflicts really aren't resolved but just sort of fade away. Someone needs to teach Chinese script writers how acronyms work in English.

I liked the friendships on the club teams and the way the cast handled them, the evolution of the gaming and the secret romance. I thought all the actors did a really nice job with their roles. Do I want to see a third series? Uh, no, I think I'm done now. But this one was okay. Available on Viki.com.