I absolutely love the different ways that Zhou Shu Yi and Gao Shi De’s childhood memories were shown to us.
ZSY’s memories are quick flashes of moments, nothing sustained, just failure after failure after failute in quick and dramatic and humorous flashes. Yes, they’re big memories to him but it’s obviously being played for laughs to the audience. He’s placed Such Huge Importance on all of these small moments, assigned such MALICE to GSD that it’s genuinely amusing.
GSD’s memory is slow. It’s soft. He walks up on his own childhood self with soft eyes. The camera moves only a little and the shots are all framed softly. His memory is serious, his memory is one of the most important moments in his life and you understand that, you see that.
It’s a fantastic use of editing and cinematography to evoke such different emotions with basically the same idea (flashback memories to childhood) but also shows the different characters. ZSY is quick and light and jumps to conclusions/ideas as rapidly as his memories jump from each moment to the next one. GSD’s memory is soft and slow because he’s been pining for most of his life, because he loves ZSY without expectations or hope of being loved back... but he still loves because he’s just that important to him.
... I love this show, okay?
