General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Go Go Squid 2 Dt.Appledog's Time (我的时代，你的时代)

Go Go Squid 2 Dt.Appledog's Time (我的时代，你的时代), formerly titled Dear Beloved (亲爱的，挚爱的), is a 2021 mainland Chinese idol drama adapted from Mo Baofei Bao's (墨宝非宝) novel Mi Shi Kun You Yu (密室困游鱼). Directed by Yu Zhongzhong (于中中) and starring Hu Yitian (胡一天) and Li Yitong (李一桐), it is the sister series of the 2019 hit Go Go Squid! (亲爱的，热爱的) and follows that drama's supporting character Wu Bai as a competitive robot-fighting contestant.¹

Key fact	Detail
Source	Mo Baofei Bao's novel 密室困游鱼; sister work of Go Go Squid! (adapted from 蜜汁炖鱿鱼)¹^•²
Broadcast	Premiered 4 February 2021 on iQiyi as an exclusive web stream, with no satellite-TV broadcast; 38 episodes of 45 minutes³
Cast	Hu Yitian as Wu Bai, Li Yitong as Ai Qing; Yang Zi and Li Xian made guest appearances reprising their Go Go Squid! roles⁴
Ratings	Douban scores reported at 5.7, 5.6, and 6.2 by different outlets; iQiyi lists 7.5⁵^•⁶^•⁷^•⁸
Awards	At the 26th Asian TV Awards (11 December 2021), Yu Zhongzhong was nominated for Best Director and Hu Yitian for Best Actor¹

Spoilers

Premise and characters

The drama centers on Wu Bai (吴白), the genius younger cousin of Go Go Squid! protagonist Han Shangyan, played again by Hu Yitian, and Ai Qing (艾情), a star robot-fighting operator originally played by Wang Zhen'er in the predecessor and recast with Li Yitong here.⁹ Wu Bai has long admired Ai Qing; her success inspires him to enter professional robot fighting himself. In the opening episodes he enters a robot fighting league for the first time, reaches the national final, and narrowly beats Ai Qing for a spot at the Asian championship, after which she qualifies through a robot racing event; the two then find themselves teammates competing for China.¹⁰ The series title comes from a line of Wu Bai's dialogue in the novel, "my era is your era" (我的时代就是你的时代).¹¹

The characters' online handles give the English title: Wu Bai competes as "Dt" and Ai Qing as "Appledog", and the show's tagline plays on the idea that in Dt's eyes only Appledog matters.¹² The story ends with the two, now leading their K&K team, winning a world championship for China and achieving their dreams together.¹

From esports to robot fighting

The novel belongs to the same fictional world as Go Go Squid!, whose competition backdrop was cybersecurity (esports). The production company bought both sister-novel IPs together for series development and moved this installment's setting to competitive fighting robots, a field the producers described as more forward-looking and aligned with interest in intelligent technology; professional fighters and technicians advised the project, the cast trained before shooting, and the competition arena was reproduced at full scale.¹³ The K&K team name was written into the plot as Ai Qing's ambition to be a King, not a Queen, of robot fighting, with Wu Bai holding that two Kings can coexist.¹³

Reception and performance

Heat. The premiere broke an iQiyi in-platform heat value of 8000 within 22 hours, and the drama topped Maoyan's all-network heat chart for 35 consecutive days before concluding on 12 March 2021.¹^•⁴ During the Spring Festival window (8 to 14 February) it led web-drama market share for seven straight days, with a peak single-day share of 10.42%, though heat declined after the paid early-access finale was released.³

Compared with its predecessor. The series did not replicate the 2019 hit's reach. The Yangcheng Evening News contrasted Douban engagement of 23,000 "watched" for this drama against 343,000 for Go Go Squid!, and attributed the gap partly to the change from a dual-satellite-plus-multi-platform release to iQiyi-only streaming, and partly to the retitling away from the Dear brand, which weakened recognition of the connection.² Critics also faulted the softened characterization of Ai Qing, once a formidable team operator and now written as dependent on Wu Bai, and found the robot-battle staging simplistic, with the hero's robot relying on a single "catapult" skill and recurring arena hazards.² A Tmtpost analysis placed the drama among cases where the "big IP plus traffic stars" formula underdelivered, citing the esports-to-robot change that alienated some novel fans and an "industrial saccharine" romance style.¹⁴

Scores. Douban ratings reported in the sources disagree: a Weibo blogger's roundup of Mo Baofei Bao adaptations lists 5.7,⁵ a Sohu ranking lists 5.6,⁶ a Girlstyle feature lists 6.2,⁷ and one encyclopedia entry reports a 7.0 score at the finale.¹ iQiyi's own page shows 7.5.⁸ Viewer reactions were split between praise for the sweetness of the romance and criticism of the staging.¹⁵

Place in the series

The drama is the second screen installment of Mo Baofei Bao's linked novels. It keeps the predecessor's romance-plus-competition structure while shifting the professional field, and it brings back the earlier leads: Li Xian and Yang Zi guest-starred as Han Shangyan and Tong Nian, and the two couples' storylines were marketed together, with about 20 percent of the show's Weibo trending topics tied to the predecessor.⁴^•¹⁶ Among adaptations of the author's novels, it sits in the middle-to-lower range of Douban scores, below One and Only (周生如故, 7.3) and Love Is Sweet (很想很想你, 6.7) and near The Road Home (归路, 5.8).⁵

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026; Nov 11, 2026