Go Go Squid!

Portrayed by Yang Zi.

Tong Nian is a talented computer science major who is also a popular online singer.[1] She is described as optimistic, cheerful, soft, and cute. She is also very obedient, attentive, and sensible. She attends the youth class at university and has the same high IQ as the male lead Han Shangyan. After she falls in love with Han Shangyan at first sight, she chooses to take the initiative to pursue a relationship with him. Although Tong Nian loves Han Shangyan a lot, she also continues to pursue her interests and friendships while building a relationship with him. She also pursues her dream of developing an AI-based software, as well as facial recognition programs for the police and medical programs for hospitals.[11]

Portrayed by Li Xian.[12]

Han Shangyan is a computer genius and high-level e-sports idol.[13] He was originally the only investor and main member of the Solo team. Has won more than ten international championships, including multiple personal world rankings, the most dominant player with two MVP.[14] After exiting the team, he established the K & K club. His dream is to take the club's young players to attack the world champion of cybersecurity CTF competitions. Other than that, he has nothing else in his eyes. In the eyes of his teammates, he is "the boss who is not close to women".[15]

He is determined to fulfill his dreams and sticks to his beliefs, but he has some difficulties expressing himself to the outside world. Maintaining a sense of vigilance and distance, he has great pride in his family's native country. Han Shangyan grew up with his grandfather and stepmother, who loved him. His parents passed away when he was young and he missed out on a lot of family interaction. Parents' feelings are different. Father's words and lessons, and the company of his mother, can make a person's character grow fully, and Han was deprived of all of this. As a prince of ice, he is very good at many things. Maintaining indifference and vigilance, he developed a meticulous and serious attitude towards life. And this is exactly what his family left him with.[16] His “don’t care” about anything other than work attitude is in stark contrast to his fanatical pursuit of career ideals; privately, he secretly covers the players’ with quilts and cares about their lives. He has fascinated a lot of girls, but he has not been interested in dating.[17]

It is reported that the K & K club shed has an area of more than 2,000 square meters, and the construction time took 1.5 months. There are training facilities, meeting rooms and other venues inside. It is equipped with dozens of professional competition equipment and includes all kinds of basic living facilities, strive to restore the real club environment in every detail. The crew also shot the live moments of the characters and the team through more than 100 live shots of the location. To cultivate teammates' team tacit understanding and deepen the actor's understanding of the role, before the shooting, the crew specially conducted closed performance training and professional skills training, which made the team atmosphere shown in the play harmonious.[18]

Fang Ying, vice-president of Huace/Croton Media, whose Gcoo Entertainment arm produced Go Go Squid!, said the series was conceived in 2014 and took more than 20 weeks to shoot.[4] Li revealed that he was filming in Hengdian, when the staff recommended the novel and script of Go Go Squid! to him. Li accepted the offer because he thought that the character has a lot in common with him, right perseverance in work and dreams, just like his attitude towards his career as an actor.[15] When he first came on set for filming, he had hurt his back from Sword Dynasty production. He couldn't walk properly at the start of filming.[19] The series began filming in April 2018 and finished on July 28, 2018 at Sanya.[20]

On February 14, 2018, officials announced that Yang Zi and Li as male and female protagonists.[21] On March 19, 2018, Guan Xuanhu starred in one day, and Li Hongqi and Li Zefeng joined the play.[22] On April 11, 2018, the full-length animated concept film was released followed by a still photo of the male and female protagonists On April 14, 2018.[23] On May 20, 2018, the Honey Juice 520 Challenge was launched, and the actors in the show appeared separately. On June 11, 2018, the "dream as wings" version of the poster was exposed, and the image of the K & K team was presented to the audience for the first time[24] followed by the personal posters of the characters On June 14, 2018. On July 14, 2018, the interview video of the male and female protagonists was released. On July 31, 2018, the first film flower officially released.[25]

The K & K team uniforms are also designed and customized by designers. There are more than ten types of uniforms. Han Shangyan's clothing is kept mainly black,[26] simple, and elegant.

During the premiere broadcast of the series, the average ratings of the two stations were only 0.7%. Go Go Squid! topped television ratings in its timeslot.

The series dominated media data performance on the Guduo TV series list, Cat's Eye data TV series list, Yien Broadcasting Index TV series list, Yunhe Data series popularity list, Weibo TV series list, etc.[27] During the launch of Go Go Squid!, Cateye Media Matrix released more than 200 related short videos on Douyin, and the cumulative playback reached more than 500 million. It generated a huge online buzz, with the show's official hashtag being viewed more than 12 billion times on Sina Weibo.[28] According to the statistics of micro-hotspot wrd.cn, the TV series that first broadcast on TV stations and online video platforms in July 2019. The network transmission popularity index of TV series, main actors, and main characters from July 1 to July 31, Go Go Squid! ranked first in all categories; the hottest premiere TV series with network communication popularity index of 64.54; the hottest actors and actress (Li Xian and Yang Zi) with communication popularity index 55.73 and 53.06 respectively; as well as the hottest male and female character (Han Shangyan and Tong Nian) with communication popularity index 53.31 and 49.57.[29] The series was also on the top of a poll conducted by The Beijing News on the most popular Chinese TV series of the summer, the results of which were published on July 31. According to iQiyi, the series is its second most popular show after last year's period drama and mega-hit, Story of Yanxi Palace.[30] In 2019, the series was the most-streamed series in the three major video platforms; iQIYI, Tencent Video and Youku.[6] According to the report data of the Cat's Eyes series, the series ranked first in the comprehensive search popularity list of the three major platforms of Baidu, Weibo and WeChat.[31] And according to statistics from Yien Broadcasting Index TV series list, Go Go Squid! is the best domestic drama in 2019.[7]

In Go Go Squid!, Han Shanyang is a male professional in the cybersecurity competition CTF (Internet Security Capture the Flag Station), which brought niche cybersecurity-related topics into public view.[32] Chen Xiaoyuan the captain team of CTF admitted it, and praised Han Shanyang's positive energy for his perseverance, and struggle for dreams. And he found that the opening theme of the TV series is exactly what they feel like a real CTF player.[33]

Following the popularity of the drama, major universities in China have started school one after another, and they have hung up the banners of Go Go Squid! to welcome the new students.[34]

Go Go Squid! received an average rating of 6.6/10 at Douban, and 7.8/10 at IMDb. For Li Xian's performance, the audience generally praised his acting skills online, but the lines were a little bit procrastinated, such as saying that the lines seemed to contain something, and the lines were too slow. In this regard, Li Xian admitted that the rhythm of his speech is a bit slow, and it was specially designed for the character after communicating with the filming team. Despite this, Li Xian still admitted that he did feel the shortcomings of his lines when watching the drama.[35][14] Liu Wei of The Beijing News praised the plot setting, which is different from the past youth romance dramas. The love of Go Go Squid! expresses delicate and true emotions, conveys the positive energy of sunshine and youth, and does not add some sad links in the plot setting. There are not too many "dog blood" plots in the other sidelines, and there are no male second silently waiting, female second spoiler and bad mother-in-law who break up the couple.[17] In addition, Jia Miao of Oriental Network also praised the positive energy of the series, the way it tells all aspects of young people's lives in a simple but peaceful way, and the small details which inadvertently touched the audience. She is even looking forward to more urban positive energy TV shows like Go Go Squid!.[36]

Lili Pang of Oriental Network also praised the actors for their vivid interpretation of the characters, especially Li's performance, writing "I feel that Li Xian is still a very promising boy. In this drama, due to the role setting, there is no big explosion and no famous scenes, but Li Xian's performance is still excellent. I feel that this person can handle more complicated and deep roles."[16] People's Daily praised the writer for the setting of the characters which is different from another youth theme drama, and also praised the plot's precise outline and meticulous description that showed the young people's living conditions and mental outlook, as well as actively contacts the frontier areas of concern for the current young audience.[37]

The series premiered from July 9, 2019 until July 31, 2019, and was broadcast simultaneously on Zhejiang TV, Dragon TV, iQiyi, and Tencent. Released on Netflix in February 2020,[55] Indonesia,[56] Thailand, India, Malaysia through We TV, other countries on Rakuten Viki, My Dramalist, as well as YouTube.