The Master's Sun (2013)

I took up The Master’s Sun because it was highly recommended by my buddies on Instagram. I take all my buddies recommendations seriously and try to watch as many as they recommend. I had read great reviews for this drama so was super excited to watch it. But for some reason, I did not like the drama as much as a lot of other viewers. Though I did enjoy each episode, I would often find it difficult to keep going back to it. I had felt something similar for City Hunter where I would be impressed by each episode but would find it difficult to keep up with it. I am surprised at myself that despite liking the main leads, I still could not love the drama as much as I would want to.  
Let’s weigh this spooky but funny drama on our drama beam balance and see what weighs it down.


Good Weights
So Ji Sub: I have seen Ji Sub on a lot of drama posters but never watched any of his dramas. I don’t know why but he never appealed to me. I did watch his drama ‘I’m Sorry, I Love You’ but then I was writing (still writing) written updates for its Turkish adaptation, Bir Ask Hikayesi and though Ji Sub was good in the drama, I found the Turkish actor, Seckin Ozdemir far better in the same role. I think I had some bias against him which I suppose ended after I watched The Master’s Sun. So Ji Sub looks good and acts amazing. His unrelenting attitude and occasional man-childish behaviour in the drama makes him surprisingly cute. He gives out a very Mr. Darcy vibe, a cute Mr. Darcy.  

Gong Hyo Jin: My first KDrama heroine :) she features as a good weight in all her dramas that I have reviewed. She is an astoundingly talented actress who can bring any character to life with her easy performance. From a smart doctor to a struggling TV anchor to a psychic, she has played every role with such conviction that I can never find a flaw in any of her characters. She played the anxious and terrified Gong Shil with such conviction that I felt pity for her. She even impersonated a cat with perfection. I love simply love her. If you ever see her name in the cast list of a drama, do watch it as she is an amazing actress.


Bad Weights
Amnesia: The amnesia angle is very common in Korean dramas and I hate it. I hate it in almost every drama that has it. I feel the memory loss angle is added when the writer has to stretch the story for a few more episodes and has no other idea of how to do it. It frustrates me more than it frustrates the person who has lost his memory in the drama. In this drama, somewhere towards the end, Joong Won loses his memory and guess what, he remembers everything and everyone except Gong Shil. Very convenient, right? And then again the same old thing, she tries to push him away from her but he is drawn to her like a fly to a sweetmeat. Sorry, I do not always enjoy this selective memory loss angle and here too it was unwanted and forced.

Unresolved Issues: I am a very passionate drama viewer. When I am watching a drama, my brain is constantly working trying to figure out why the character is doing what it’s doing and what will it do next. In this drama, Gong Shil sees ghosts and is able to ward them off only when she touches Jong Won. From the very first episode, my head started working to determine what could be the reason behind this magical touch. I had a million theories in my head justifying the source of his special ability. But when the drama ended and I realised that they never explained the reason behind their ‘special’ connection I felt wronged. I hate it when writers add certain aspects to generate curiosity and never bother to address them. This is one major reason why I will not rate this drama high.  

Love Story: Though Ji Sub and Hyo Jin shared a sparkling on-screen chemistry, their love story was too slow burn for my liking. I am not against slow burn, but this was a little too much and I despised the couple for being so difficult. They looked so nice together but always ensured that something stood between them. His arrogance, her pride, his amnesia, her nobility or some random reason always kept them apart and it frustrated me. Had they been less of a typical drama couple and more of a normal couple, I would have enjoyed the drama more.

All in all, the drama is enjoyable. A lot of viewers consider this as the best KDrama but for me, it was a decent entertainer. I wasn’t wowed by anything but never felt bored either. The supporting cast and parallel storyline were enjoyable. I liked Kang Woo and Yi Rung’s love story. I don’t know why a popular actress would chase after a security guard who is not interested in her a bit, I still liked their chemistry. They were cute. The OST is also good. Nothing really is bad about this drama. It is good for a one-time watch.
 
I give The Master’s Sun 3 out of 5 rating. Funny, romantic, scary and entertaining. This drama is worth a watch.
 
Originally posted on www.alphagirl.in

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A wonderful, touching, emotional and funny drama. I will agree with everyone and say this is a must watch.

STORY
The description is pretty much on point. We have an everyday kinda weird girl who can see ghosts, a rich, shut-down, arrogant and self-centered man who for some reason, whenever she touches him, ghosts vanish... Exactly for this reason she tries to be near him, so she can touch him whenever the ghosts become too scary for her. I guess, you can all get where it goes from this point forward.

The show is pretty straightforward. Each episode has an individual ghost story. The 2 main characters get to solve them all, and grow closer to each other through them. The male protagonist has a ghost story of his own which gets explored later in the show. I, usually, get bored with individual stories, i prefer the drama to focus on the main characters instead of introducing new stories and characters in every other episode. Thankfully, all the individual stories were very interesting, most of them extremely touching, they made me burst into tears, so if you have a problem with individual stories, they won't bother you at all, they are great.

The main problem i had with the story was that, the show focused more on the individual ghost stories in every episode rather than the drama of the characters, and the development of their love story until episode 12. After that we focus on the backstory drama of the male lead character and everything gets extremely interesting, extremely fast. Thankfully, the individual stories were good, so each episode was fun to watch, i just felt the main character stories should have been developed more in the early episodes.

Another problem i had was the love triangle failure, and the fail of the writers to create better story lines for the 2nd male and female lead. The 2nd male lead was introduced to create a love triangle to the main couple. The main couple has such jizzling, amazing, and unrealistic chemistry that the 2nd male lead had no chance, so he gets ignored fast. The 2nd female lead brought nothing new to the show apart from some funny moments, if she wasn't there at all, the show would still have been the same.

ACTING
It was very good, apart from some cringy crying scenes from the female lead, everything was on point. I've seen better, but it didn't feel forced or anything. It was a solid performance from everyone.

REWATCH/RECOMMENDATION
This is a drama that everyone should watch at least once. It is funny, it is interesting, never boring, it has the right amount of drama for drama lovers, but not enough to drive off those who don't really like to cry or anything.
I would definately rewatch it since it is so easy to watch.

RANDOM THOUGHTS ABOUT THE SHOW
I can't say i was as impressed as everyone, but it was a very nice drama. I think if the plot was unfolded in a different way, it could have been even better. The back story of the male lead, is huge and extremely interesting and well written, the show should have not payed so much attention and spent so many episodes on individual stories and it could have given all this screen time to explain the back story better, earlier, maybe make it a mystery or something. We get very small pieces of the backstory in the early episodes, and then fast revealations during the episodes that focus on it. Still, this is not enough to say the plot was bad, it was very good the way it was, and it gets explained very nicely even in the 3 episodes it is given to get unfolded.

Also, another minor problem i had towards the end of the show, was the silly reasons they gave the main couple for not being together. They are just there, crazily in love, dying for each other, having no problems whatsoever, and they created them with no reason... I wanted to punch the screen and throw my laptop out of the window. However, the finale was everything i wanted so i am happy!

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Let me just start off by saying this: If you cannot stomach horror, watch the first episode with all the lights on or better yet outside in the nice beautiful weather with your 2 cats and 3 dogs. It's not really that it's particularly scary, but I can get sensitive to this kind of stuff (slowly training myself haha) and so I got scared reeeaally easily. I'm actually kind of sad they didn't use more of the scary graphics as the drama progressed.

At any rate, I enjoyed the plot of this drama, particularly the quite literal "she can't live without him" factor. I particularly liked the "Joo Joong Won, Joo Joong Two, Joo Joong Three" thing. Haha. Hilarious. The only complaint I have about the storyline is the last 2 episodes. Episode 16 was, what I assume to be, a filler episode. Not much really happened during that episode so the entire time I just found myself staring at the screen spacing out. If they were gonna make the second to last episode a snoozefest they should have just gone with the classic 16. No need to stretch it out to 17. Episode 17 on the other hand, was honestly so rushed. Common sense says to just stretch the ending between 16 and 17 instead of cramming everything into 17 and leaving 16 with 3 grains of rice. But no, instead they do a time skip and all the characters have automatically resolved their conflicts and everyone lives happily ever after. We see absolutely nothing about what changed over that 1 year. It's just "oh yeah fairy tale land yay! We'll just skip to the end and you can make up your mind on how everything got to this point."

The acting in this drama was overall pretty good. Gong Hyo-jin is really an amazing actress and she deserves more credit honestly. People tend to think that if an actress' character is pretty and elegant, she's automatically a great actress. That is far from the truth. A great actress has to be able to portray any character and be able to convince the audience. The fact that Hyo-jin was able to portray Tae Gong-shil so accurately and so wholeheartedly is amazing. And of course, So Ji-sub and his "get lost" haha. The one thing that I am cringing about is L. Myungsoo, Myungsoo, Myungsoo. I don't know if it's because it's his first time portraying this kind of character, but oh lordy his acting killed me. I love him, but please no. He was superb in Shut Up Flower Boy Band, but this role just did not suit him at all.

The music was pretty good, Hyorin did a great job as usual, but nothing really stood out to me. It was the typical OST, with some sad songs, some happy songs, etc. etc. But nothing really stuck. I think the only thing that really stood out was Hyorin's "Crazy", but that was only because they played that song every dang time Gong-shil and Joong-won appeared on screen together.

I would probably only rewatch this drama for the comic relief, because the end just really drags out. It's something I would most likely watch if I had nothing else to watch, but definitely not something I would watch over and over and over again.

Overall, this drama was the perfect mixture of everything. There were bittersweet moments, romantic moments, funny moments, cringeworthy moments, and of course the jumpscares. If you want a drama that you can freely watch, maybe just an episode or 2 a day without having to obsess over it, this is the one for you.

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Can I just say that so far, I have loved everything the Hong sisters write? This show is no exception. I believe these two women really excel at character development through action and dialogue. The Master’s Sun is no exception. It is all about the characters or at least in the case of this show, its all about the main characters.

STORY:
The story is fairly simple, poor Tae Gong Shil (well done by Gong Hyo Jin) sees ghosts and that makes her life miserable. On a fateful rainy night, the driver of a car picks up Tae Gong Shil who is waving from the side of the road; even though the passenger tells him to drive on. Tae Gong Shil climbs into the back with Joo Joong Won, the CEO of Kingdom (delicious performance from So Ji Sub). From the moment she touches him she realizes the physical touch from Joo Joong Won blocks her ability to see ghosts and soon after that she just can’t get enough of physical time with CEO Joo……yeah……me either. He was a fun character……and very easy on the eyes.

Like all good shows, they start to form a strange relationship fraught with ghosts, jealous rivals, a childhood kidnapping, and a few not very nice people. Will they fall in love? Sounds inevitable to me.

CHARACTERS:
The best character by far is Tae Gong Shil, she has so many conflicting facets to her character that we can’t help but be captivated. At first I didn’t think the character of Joo Joong Won was keeping up but come episode 10…..wow, he practically burst on the screen all over again and became so much more fun and multi-dimensional. Both these characters kept me on my toes the entire show. The other supporting characters did a great job but, in the end, when one of these two were on the screen, that is all you see.

MUSIC:
The music wasn’t very memorable except the song Touch Love, I am considering downloading it as it was pretty cool. The rest didn’t detract from the story but didn’t add much as well.

REWATCH:
Please watch it again just to see if the characters are as interesting the second time around. I just can’t stop thinking about Tae Gong Shil and Joo Jong Won. There are many words to describe them, frustrating, lively, infuriating, good-looking, funny, but NOT boring.

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I don't know why they always make female characters so dumb, naive, annoying, insensitive, and such a crybaby. Honestly, I got to a point that I liked Little Sun more than Big Sun because she's such a loser at so many points of the story. Overall, it was still a good show but considering the stupid dialogue and her words are so thoughtless that I too would have slapped her. Sadly, I was too annoyed with her weak character that I felt it's a little overrated. Too exaggerated reactions, leaning towards more like Taiwan idol type dramas with the over-dramatic fantasies, screams and tears and whining

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Hmmm.

This was both very good and intensely annoying. I loved the premise. I liked both leads, once they acquired depth beyond his snootiness, her whiny clinginess and their two different kinds of bad hair. I enjoyed the ghost stories, several of which had really touching moments. The second couple grew on me (especially the second male lead when he took down those guys in the alley! oof), the secretary and the uncle were great, the apartment kids were adorable, and the whole thing had me totally gripped for the first half.

But: as others have said, it lagged after that. The amnesia was irritating. The romance felt...constipated: those frozen unmoving kisses, and too many moments where they should have at least hugged passionately, and didn't. The kidnap resolution was a damp squib (and Evil Twin's face was supremely irritating); the stuck-on side-plot with the female lead suddenly meeting Other Ghost-Seeing Guy with his weird brochure did nothing for me, and the finale was okay, but felt disappointingly passionless. Still good overall, but I'm left wishing the writers had made different choices. Curious to see what their other dramas are like.

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i've never ever wrote a review but i couldnt pass this one without or i'll be f**king stupid
AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING.x100
the chemistry btw SJS n GHJ is just WOW
It has been so so long since I watched a kdrama that left me with this butterfly feeling in my stomach, holding my breath of excitement, n my heart padam padam
The story incredible, unique, n the hong sister overwhelmed me with their romance
Casting they make me fly!! SJS n GHJ r just perfect together, they both complete one another
Music makes u overwhelmed with so much feeling n complex emotions (sadness, happiness, ..etc) (( its been long since i've kept repeating a song millionss of timeesss))
Rewatch value ofcourse u should n u cannot ignore rewatching it --> thats whats happening with me noowww
Over All JUST GO N WATCH THIS SUPER DUPER AMAZINGLY AMAZING JUST PERFECT DRAMA OF THE 20TH CENTURY!!

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I liked this drama at the beggining. I loved the girl, her smile, her overall cheerfullness despite being afraid of ghosts and I loved the developing romance plus the chemistry between the leads which was pretty good. That was all untill episode 11-12 when everything started to fall apart. There was just too much unnecessary drama! I mean the CEO did everything for her, he died for her, he rememberd the unrememberable, he visited her as a ghost...What else is a guy supposed to do? I thought the two were just a perfect fit and do not get what was wrong with him being her safe shelter? Aren't in real life our partners people that we are most voulnerable to, aren't we each other's shelters and places of comfort? I just didn't like how episodes 12-16 developed, I seriously started not liking the female character, and her going off with a total stranger who just popped out of nowhere was too much. I felt irritated and sorry for the CEO and almost dropped the show. Luckly, episode 17 returns the girl to her true character and we get the happy ending after all.
Because of the mess the writers made from episodes 12-16 this show has no rewatch value. They annoyed us and almost made us hate the main character. I wouldn't go through that again.

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1st: This drama has amazing soundtracks. Gummy, Hyorin [SISTAR], Yoon Mi Rae! They collect every amazing voice in South Korea. Not just music and voices, lyrics are amazing too.

2nd: Promo photos, posters are awesome too. I don't know who is the photographer or who's idea is this concept but it fit perfectly for the show and for the actor/actress. The moment I see the teaser I wanna watch this drama. This drama's staff know how to market a tv show for sure.

3rd: Awesome cast! Gong Hyojin is really pretty even though those dark circles and messy hair. I regret that I didn't know her before. Her acting is amazing. I'm gonna watch every job she has done. So Ji Sub usually had "cool" roles. "Being quite" , "beating people", "living a miserable life" those are usually basic of his roles; till now. He's one sassy boss with a miysterious past. He's super happy according to his previous roles. This character, Joo Won is sassy but funny at the same time. The way he changes his expressions made laugh everytime.

4th: Can I join the cast just for dresses!? I'm a girl but I totally wear Ji Sub's clothes. Styling is well done. I don't know how to explain it so I'm gonna just say it like this. They didn't make him wear like usual a rich Korean man character. He looks like he's from Italia. This style fit character so well. I appreciated the details like scarfs, rings and trouser turnups (cuffs).

5th: YOU SHOULD WATCH IT!!! Story, acting, soundtracks; everything is awesome.

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