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LilMeggs

San Jose, CA

LilMeggs

San Jose, CA
The Bride of Habaek korean drama review
Completed
The Bride of Habaek
5 people found this review helpful
by LilMeggs
Jan 24, 2020
16 of 16 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 7.5
Story 7.5
Acting/Cast 7.0
Music 9.0
Rewatch Value 7.0
This review may contain spoilers
I've always known about this drama because of my love for Nam Joo Hyuk, but I finally decided to finally give it a go because Netflix decided it wanted to add it and recommend it to me. I've always been curious to see him in another drama and I don't think my heart could take watching him in "The Light in Your Eyes" yet.

What did I think? That's hard to answer. I knew what I was getting myself into when little clips popped up on my instagram of Habaek saving Yoon So Ah from being pushed off a building. I knew that the CGI would be very rough, but sometimes you just need to accept this is what you are going to get if you want to watch a drama about nature Gods using their powers. I also read the comments and other reviews before writing this, and saw many negative reviews. But honestly, it was very meh to me. I didn't hate it, but I also wasn't in love with it.

One thing I loved about it was the costumes whenever we got to see "flashbacks" of Habaek's world. It did seem a little "low budget" but taking it for what it was, I loved the make up. Plus Habaek had some hair goals with this perfect blue ash ombre that I only wish my hairdresser could give me that wouldn't last only the first couple of days of getting it done. I loved the relationships that Yoon So Ah built with other people such as her relationship with CEO Shin Hoo Ye. Even though there was this weird plot with them, I felt like they had the most emotional relationship out of anyone in this drama. Given, I wasn't a fan of Yoon So Ah and it made it hard for me to root for her in any kind of way, she was always there for Hoo Ye and never believed in other people's prejudices of him . That being said, I think Hoo Ye was my favorite character in this drama. I liked how his fate was that he had good and evil in him and how based on his actions, he could choose which direction he wanted to go. He had to go through a lot of hardships because of who he was and was never accepted anywhere. He was always trying to make himself the perfect person, thinking that people would love him based on his actions and not what he wasn't able to control from his past. From the moment we met him, I knew that he would be the "antagonist" because we were told that all Gods were good and their enemies were our enemies, but I liked how the more Hahaek was with So Ah, the more he stopped acting on impulse like the other Gods, and actually took a step back to think about what he truly thought. I liked how he only really didn't like Hoo Ye because he was trying to win So Ah's love, and not because of the prejudices that other people had labeled him as.

Now going off all of that, I mainly did not like his drama because of the characters. Yes, we get the whole drama troupe with the main characters being these unlikable characters, but when they meet and start to realize how their actions effect other people, they start to change. But in this case, I feel like not a lot of characters went through that change. We have So Ah who's job it is the help people with their struggles, but we find out that because of So Ah's past that she hides her compassion for other people with anger because she basically has daddy issues. She believes in hard work will pay the bills, but she also thinks her misfortune isn't her fault. She is a good psychiatrist, which we see in her scenes with Hoo Ye, but for some reason she decides on performing just ok with her patients because she doesn't want to come off compassionate. It's weird. I don't understand it. She was a VERY wish washy person and had no idea why everyone was so in love with her. Yes, she was sassy which made her funny, but homegirl could not make up her mind to save her life. Or when she finally was able to make up her mind, she would do the opposite and then we would go through another, "what should I do?" moment. It was very repetitive and got boring real quick.
Habaek was alright - he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and didn't know anything outside his world and powers so it was a given he would be entitled and sassy and bossy. And he was a little irritating in the beginning, but he always wore his heart on his sleeve, even though he always had a bored look on his face, just staring into your soul. I felt bad for him, and he is probs my second favorite character in this whole drama. I didn't agree with most of his actions and his jealousy was NOT NEEDED because he took it to another level, but he was always honest and always fought for what he wanted. Plus, I liked how he didn't have prejudices against anyone and based his feelings toward someone based on their actions.
I think the REAL antagonists in this drama were the God of Sky and the Goddess of Water; Ahn Bin and Mura. Given that Ahn Bin was the god of mischief, we knew he was going to create some chaos, but it was still weird seeing how these two and Habaek grew up together, yet, they all turned out to be completely different people how they handled situations. Ahn Bin loved to create chaos and had zero limit to what he would do to get revenge. Mura is the same way, but she is very by the book and would take her revenge by finding loopholes. Both would act solely on emotions and created unneeded chaos for other people. Given, when we find out why Ahn Bin is terrorizing Hoo Ye, it starts to make sense, but he refuses to tell no one why he was doing what he was doing, and it honestly made himself look like the villain. I liked Ahn Bin in the beginning because he was fun and playful and added a element of excitement in the boring lifes of So Ah and Habaek, but he honestly was kind of this terrible person (both him and Mura) who got away with everything and I cared zero about their love story. He would have been the sole reason why Hoo Ye would have chosen the path of evil. Then there were a lot of oddly unnecessary side characters such as Shin Ja Ya who should have just gotten a few scenes in the beginning of the drama to introduce the audience to So Ah's past and insecurities, and then should have been cut.

This drama seemed to never really be building up to the huge climax - there were many mini climaxes in which we thought were going to be the big turning points, but weren't. For example, Hoo Yee's fate of becoming good or evil and coming off as the drama's antagonist, seemed like it was going to be this huge thing, with possibly this huge final battle where So Ahn would swoop in and tell him to take the path of good and not evil and then it would be the end of the drama and everyone lives happily ever after. That was not the case. That whole thing got resolved somewhere in the middle. The big climax, that wasn't really big at all, seemed to happen all at once in the final episode, which I will give props for being extremely emotional. Way more emotional that the rest of the drama. The ending was good though, very generic happily ever after that made me happy for So Ahn and Habaek, but also a little sad for Habaek as well. I just don't understand why they couldn't just give everyone immortality, but I guess it is a lot to ask for.

Final thoughts, I think this drama is worth the watch if you have some time to kill and want to watch something different and you love Nam Joo Hyuk. If you can get past the CGI, the drama is totally fine. The ONE thing I will say though is the writing or maybe it was the Netflix translation, was so odd. Whenever the main characters had heart to heart arguments, which was often, I never really understood what they were talking about or trying to say. They would jump to 50 different points and talk about 50 reasons why something wasn't possible with situations that never applied...but you just assume they were breaking up because she had daddy issues? There were so many times I had to backtrack and rewatch scenes to figure out if I am just a slow reader and missed something, or if the translation just didn't make sense.

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