[C-Drama]: First Impressions about drama "My Mowgli Boy"

Sep 8, 2019

Yang Zi deviates from her cheerful student role in Go Go Squid! as she gives life to Ling Xi, a CEO who's apparently more invested in her online followers than her real-life staff causing her to go deep in the forest, go home, and find herself stuck with a dirty, inarticulate man. She later calls him Mowgli as he was raised in the jungle with little to no human interaction. Mowgli is played by River Flows To You star Ma Tian Yu. Like Yang Zi, he's miles away from his previous role of the well-loved Qi Ming or the perfect prince in Ice Fantasy. In fact, in this drama, almost everyone around him is repulsed by his weird demeanor.

I find the drama quite appealing, sure, the storyline isn't unique as it's inspired by the Jungle Book and has quite a number of similarities to Tarzan, but it is indeed a fresh change from the usual cringy Cinderella-type of stories. The narrative is pretty good and I Iove the pacing of the story. I'm just on the 3rd episode (you guys might be ahead of me so no spoiling! Lol) but so much has happened already as more characters are introduced. I just hope that it stays like this throughout and won't start dragging.

Yang Zi has definitely shown that she's well-suited for romantic-comedy roles and can easily adapt to any character. I'm pretty sure fans of her recently-concluded drama will be surprised with how different her characters then is compared to now, down to personality traits. In My Mowgli Boy, Yang Zi is no doubt able to portray Ling Xi so effectively that her irritating side got on my nerves (since it is, after all, part of the bossy persona)! Yang Zi's definitely a good actress considering her acting repertoire, however, she felt lacking in the drama department this time, like her emotional outburst wasn't so well, emotional.

Ma Tianyu on the other hand, captures the childlike innocence that Mowgli is expected to have. He nails the jungle boy vibe with his unruly hair and inability to communicate well. I guess the show made him easily adaptable to his environment including being able to imitate what he hears to make his communication with the other characters understandable. It's also so that it wouldn't seem as if his character transformed overnight and started talking articulately.

One more thing I love are the side couples! They are extremely interesting. Ming Ren Yankai plays Zheng Li. He doesn't reciprocate Ling Xi's feelings but I think he is going to fall for his currently-going-through-a-divorce assistant, Bai Yiling, played by Wang Zhener. Honestly, this girl nailed her scene with her character's ex-husband. Another side couple that caught my attention are Ling Xi's best friend, Tang Chengcheng, played by Huang Cancan and Lu Ziyue, played by Fu Meng Po. If the former side couple were all about the serious stuff, this pair balances the mood by having a funny and entertaining romance. Of course, you can expect a hint of seriousness too, after all, they're both lawyers so this should be fun.

As expected with a hero that comes from a very unusual backgrounds, the story has a lot of fun scenes especially the ones I personally like to categorize as Mowgli vs technology. You gotta admit, no matter how obvious his reactions are, it is still amusing. All in all, I'm loving the drama and will watch it further. Just one negative comment is the CGI for the boar in the opening. It was bad. Seriously, what's up with that?