Forever Young At Heart 青春本我 TVB Review

Hi Everyone,

We hope you have all been staying healthy and taking care of yourselves. Lately, we have been catching TVB's drama Forever Young At Heart (青春本我) every Sunday. We thought this was a refreshing and inspiring youth drama and wanted to share our thoughts about it.

Drama Overview

This 10 episode musical youth drama aired from December 5th, 2021 to February 13th, 2022. Directed by Erica Li, the drama is full of new faces onscreen, most of which are acting for the first time. If you watched the TVB reality show, Stars Academy, you will be familiar most of the student cast combined with a few Dance for Life competitors. The series revolves around high school students and their struggles in school, mental health, and relationships as they discover more about themselves. The drama boasts 10 original songs written for the cast along with several reenacted songs.

Cast

The main students were played by Gigi Yim, Chantel Yiu, Yumi Chung, Windy Zhan, Aeren Man, Steven Suen, Sherman Poon, Kaitlyn Lam, Venus Lam, Lolita Tsoi, Aska Cheung, Archie Sin, Rock Ho, Felix Lam, Hugo Wong, Eden Lau, and Marktwo Lee. Those who have read our previous posts might know that that we have high opinions of Stars Academy students in terms of their ability to sing and dance. However, this was their very first time acting, and we were pleasantly surprised. The students in the drama kept the same names they are addressed with in real life, and most students had a personality very similar to themselves. 

 

Joey Wong (JW) was the school psychologist who helped many students with their issues, and other teachers were played by James Ng (Kwan Gor), Brian Chu, Andy Lin, Mak Chau Shing, Tania Chan.

There were also many special appearances for the school staff like Patrick Dunn as principal, Wong Cho Lam as chancellor, Johnny Yim as the elementary principal, Jinny Ng as a math teacher. Other roles included Philip Keung and Alice Chan as Gigi's parents, Angela Tong and Chin Ka Lok as Aeren's parents, and C Kwan as a tutor.

The chemistry between students came naturally, probably because students have actually bonded with each other for a very long time since they prepared for the competition. Of the new cast, we thought Felix was very natural and comedic as he played the spoiled rich boy who was friends with Steven, who was poor. We enjoyed watching his banter with Kaitlyn. It's great to see that him and Steven have already been casted to a new drama. Aska has a male lead aura to him, and we can envision him getting promoted to one of TVB's siu sangs in the future. Venus played a convincing bully, and we were surprised to find out she is actually the daughter of Dion Lam, who is a well known HK action choreographer.

There were several combinations in the show including a girls group with Windy, Aeren, Sherman, Kaitlyn. Aska and Windy played siblings, while Gigi, Chantel, Yumi became close friends in the show. 

The boys group consisted of Archie, Aska, Rock, Eden, and Marktwo—the latter two coming from the dance competition, and they were great additions with their admirable dance skills. 

To make it easier to recognize certain students, their character designs had a special prop. For example, Gigi has headphones, Chantel has manga, Steven has a Rubik's cube, and Kaitlyn has a crystal ball. 

We found it interesting that no one was really the main character of the show since they would focus on different students each episode. 

We liked watching the teachers interact as most of if was quite funny, especially JW's romantic line with Kwan Gor. The stuffed animal, 青春常豬, that was designed for the show is also really adorable and is a great souvenir to commemorate the first drama they filmed!

Story

The story felt very realistic to us and presented snapshots of school life that resonated with us. Even though the plot was a bit scattered with no apparent main focus, we thought this was fair so the students could all share the screen time. This was more of a true portrayal of the school experience because it is not always very eventful in school, and the small moments shared with friends and classmates are what turn into memories for the future. We enjoyed the focus on problems that youth encounter and each episode brought out a different topic. ADHD, depression, suicide, tiger parents, broken families, bullying, the gap between rich and poor were some of the themes explored with each different students' stories. Initially, there were some comparisons made between this series and High School Musical, but we appreciated how this drama focused on the struggles of school work and tests that many TV shows about school do not really touch on. Most actors/actresses also looked like actual high school students, and some of the younger girls here are actually that age (eg. Yumi, Windy, Chantel are currently 15). In the span of 10 episodes, we witnessed a Head Boy/Head Girl election, a "Feel Trip" for geology class, exam season, and a school dance/dress up party.  These experiences made us feel more connected to the characters, and we could empathize with the sadness when Aska and Windy had to part ways with their friends or when Ms. Wong finished her term of teaching at the school.

We are certain that fans of Stars Academy would really enjoy the drama because they are able to see their favourite students in a different capacity other than singing. We also think that other people would enjoy it because brings out very positive messages for the young audience in particular.

Soundtrack 

For this musical drama, we cannot forget to talk about the music, which was one of the highlights of the show. Johnny Yim was the main producer of the soundtrack, but he cooperated with many other music people including director Erica, who is also a lyricist. We were delighted to see that many of the Stars Academy students actually participated in writing the songs and lyrics to a lot of the original songs. Kaitlyn, Aeren, Aska, Rock and Archie all helped in writing different songs and some even wrote whole melodies and lyrics. Johnny Yim released some videos on his YouTube channel to describe their songwriting process and he praised that these young writers were very diligent and handed in their work very efficiently. When recording the songs, it was a smooth process because the students were well prepared before entering the studio.

He also mentioned that they wanted to intentionally write about topics that are not common in Cantopop which is usually about love and heartbreak. As a result, the original soundtrack consisted of songs that were fit for students such as about being bullied, friendship, school rush, and a few motivational songs. We appreciated this variety because these topics brought back memories of school. Another point Johnny emphasized was wanting the melodies and lyrics to sound relatively simple because songs for dramas need to capture the audience's attention in that moment they watch it onscreen. In contrast, many current songs that are too complex and a mouthful to sing would turn off viewers from wanting to hear more. 

We thought the songs were a huge success and displayed a medley of genres. The songs were tailored to the students, and they are great to listen to as songs on their own. Yumi, Chantel and Gigi all have their solo songs of different styles. We actually like Chantel's and Gigi's songs better than their own debut plugged solo songs. Chantel's fantasy about finding a soulmate which she sees in the teacher, Brian Chu, was filled with poetic imagery and is what we expected as her first song to continue the sentiment from her competition rendition of "戀愛預告". Gigi's Mandarin song about feeling torn between her parent's divorce wowed us with her clear vocals and use of different techniques to handle the lyrics. Yumi also showed us a very different side of her playing a girl being bullied with a sad, slow piano-heavy song. 

The girls' group song called "自我推介" was heavily J-pop influenced and had a youthful dancing taught by Mak Chau Sing in the MV. The style of the song was further confirmed by Johnny who said he wrote songs for Japanese groups in the past and wanted to use one of his old demos.  Another highlight of the soundtrack is the theme song, "青春本我" sucng by Archie and Rock, which we thought was very inspiring. We love to listen to this duo with Rock's mellow voice and Archie's high notes as they beautifully harmonize each other's voices. We would have liked if more students had the chance to sing. For example, the friendship song sung by Chantel, Gigi, Yumi could have been a song for Felix and Steven since the girls have their own song. However, we do understand this decision because they are more popular with the audience.

See below for the 9 tracks that were put together as the official soundtrack. We will talk more about the design of the album cover below under the "Beyond the Drama" section.

On top of these tracks, we would love if they released a deluxe album with the addition of these following songs that showed up in the drama which would be perfect!

This is JW's own song but was sung twice in the drama, the second time during the last episode when students had to say farewell to Ms. Wong at the end of the semester. This was a very bittersweet moment, and you could see tears in some of the students' eyes.

Sherman and Aska's song here did not show up in the drama but they played a couple who had to start a long distance relationship when Aska left to the states. Because there weren't many couples storylines in the drama, Sherman and Aska decided to write their own spin-off song about their characters which was released on Sherman's YouTube channel on Valentine's Day. The song's concept is derived from when Aska's mom asked him in the first episode if he prefers an American style breakfast or Chinese style breakfast, and he chose the American style, foreshadowing their family leaving HK. Hence, when Sherman is going to bed at night in HK, Aska might be having his breakfast which depicts their time difference. We thought the song they wrote together has a strong Taiwanese flavour, and the MV was very sweet with beautiful scenery, considering it was a small production.

"Had It All" is the demo version of the theme song written and sung by Andy Schaub in English. It was played in the background of the drama a couple times and has a different sound to the Chinese version.

 

The final song that is on our Wishlist for the extended soundtrack is "拼圖". This was an original song written by the Red Team in Stars Academy which was played in episode 9. The video on the left is a fanmade MV with this song and scenes from the series, while the video on the right is their official competition clip.

Setting

The filming took place using the Canadian International School of Hong Kong. We thought this was a suitable choice because it made the atmosphere vibrant and fun. The utilization of different school spaces was thoughtful and added to the realism that these were actual students attending school. Even the students' homes did not look like regular sets we see. It felt refreshing because it did not feel like the normal TVB drama to us.   

Beyond the Drama

Fans have been beyond excited about this drama with the sale of collectibles. A yearbook was released near the end of the show was still airing. The yearbook can be bought in various 7-11's in HK as well as bookstores. It contains written notes from each student and pictures from the drama compared to the students' real life school pictures. This was a good idea to promote the drama and earn some money, while fans can explore the unique content on the pages.

The album that was released for sale in Hong Kong has a very creative design. It comes with 8 postcards of pictures taken from the series, and one CD with the design of either Gigi, Chantel, or Yumi by luck of the draw. We heard some fans wanting to trade their CD's to get the one of their choice, while others wanted to collect all 3 of them. The cover of the CD is what they call "DIY", meaning that there are several different flaps with different images that you can fold over top of one another to make as the cover of the CD and insert it back into the plastic case. It was said that the purchase of a CD came with a poster, but those also ran out very quickly.

Finally, we wanted to mention that the Gigi and Chantel's individual songs for the drama showed promising results, both reaching over 1 million vies on YouTube in a short period of time. Chantel's song is currently at 1.2 M, while Gigi's is at 1.6 M (as of the day we are writing this). As a result of this popularity, TVB decided to send these songs to radio stations for playing, even though they did not plan to do so initially. This is affirmation that these young stars are really bringing in more attention and viewers for the station, and TVB would benefit in continuing to promote their works.

These were our thoughts for the show, and we were overall very impressed by the heart and effort put into making this original musical bringing fresh talents into the spotlight. We hope there will be a season 2 that could maybe explore the students' lives in university. If you heard the soundtrack, let us know which were your favourite songs in the comments!

- CeeJay

Images retrieved from:

https://tvbanywherena.com/cantonese/series/2171-ForeverYoungAtHeart

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7jJAA44yjg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCFDr9JdbP0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I_u8Sf1GkU

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