The Best Actor

The entertainment-industry genre is easy to write as flashy wish-fulfillment, and The Best Actor rarely puts its energy where it counts: on the people. The author Manman Qiduo gives Jiang Chi no protagonist halo that makes everything go his way; to get close to the Ye Lan he has crushed on for years, he would rather take a role for no pay and pay the penalty out of his own pocket, and this obsession is written without cheapness. Ye Lan is no flawless idol either: a poor drinker, guarded, sharp-tongued, yet he will earnestly confess after Jiang Chi grinds down his limits time and again. The two's sense of proportion is just right: the banter is not greasy, the sweetness never cloys, and the tentative heartbeats of the ambiguous stage land in concrete dialogue and detail. At about 300,000 characters and over 80 chapters, the book is light in size, readable in a night or two, and makes good sugar for a busy life. Its completed rating of 9.1 on Jinjiang and over 500,000 bookmarks confirm its reputation among works of the same type. A minor regret is that the ending is rushed and some early setups are not fully resolved, but as a short work that wins on sweetness and sincerity, it remains a worthwhile read in entertainment-industry BL.