Yes to more dramas like this. Yes to realistic and relatable characters, yes to engaging and well thought out plots, and yes to tackling real-life issues. Taking on male breast cancer was massive, and I appreciate the drama writers willingness to go there. Pyo Na Ri was this fascinating combination of confident, vulnerable, honest, bold, and self-aware. Hwa Shin and Jung Won were two fascinating love interests with a heartwarming, sometimes heartbreaking, friendship. The make-up of this drama is almost flawless.

I only have 3 complaints.

1) The three-way cohabitation nonsense that comes a little past the halfway mark (three-way not to be confused with the sexual term).

2) The kiss at the hospital between Na Ri and Hwa Shin when Na Ri and Jung Won are tentatively dating.

3) That silly song/dance at the wedding in the finale.

The first two are important. The last one isn't a big deal. (I just thought the scene was hilariously stupid.)

The cohabitation is never really justified by the writers and lasts waaaay longer than necessary, but the kiss is addressed as being a very poor and inappropriate decision that has consequences. Unfortunately, the character's responses to the kiss is to create said, weird, three-way cohabitation arrangement that is just awkward and uncomfortable and annoying to watch. (I recommend finding a unique way to watch those episodes to ensure you don't go nuts.)

Even in these frustrating moments when you don't really understand what exactly the writers think they are doing though, they found a way to make these characters feel real and believable, like people you want to root for.

I recommend this drama, and I might even rewatch it some day.

Read More

I'm surprised I haven't written a review for this by now considering I was so entranced by this drama from start to finish. It's very unusual to find dramas about real people and real stories told through such unartificial means. Most of the time, we're given a set of stock characters and stock situations that may or may not deliver on their promises. Age of Youth aspired to do something different. I won't say that it exceeded in every respect. There are too many loose ends once the story wraps, and sometimes the pacing is weird. One plot line comes completely out of left field and still frustrates me even though I will concede that they found a way to make it work. But what Age of Youth brought to the drama table is something we don't see in other dramas.



They brought real people.



And I love this drama for that.

Read More

It's been Ages since I watched this, all the way back to when I first started watching dramas. I've tried, to no avail, to find the whole thing with subs somewhere, but my search has always been fruitless. Or I would find it but no way to download it. It's one of those drama's where either you like it, or you don't. It requires some buy-ins that not everyone is going to be on board with. The idea that someone could have a sense of smell as strong as a dog's. The idea that someone who wears a frilly, Japanese street fashion would become a police officer. The idea that they would wear said fashion while on the clock. The idea that all of this happens at the same time. If you can't buy into all of that, then this drama is very much not for you.

Luckily for me, I have no problem buying into all of that, so this drama is very much for me, lol.

I fully admit that it's goofy and over the top and unbelievable in every aspect. And I that's why I bloody love it. I love that she has a sense of smell as strong as a dog's. I love that she wears Lolita, and to crime scenes, no less. I love the potential (but never actually fulfilled) romance. I am an unabashed fan of this drama, and I will be forever.

I JusT nEed to GEt thE WhOle thINg dOwnLoAdeD tO My LapToP So i CaN wAtch It oN rePEAT foR tHe REST Of MY LIFE!!!

I'm a little intense about this drama, lol.

Read More

I did not expect to come out of this drama liking it so much. You never really know how 'overweight people' stories are going to play out, whether the message will be one worth ingesting or not, but your expectations are never very high. I usually just hope for a story that's at least fun if not realistic or fair.

I had no reason to be concerned here. This drama had so much of worth to say, and it said it so beautifully, with the most heartfelt, difficult truths coming in the second half. I cried multiple times.

Now I'll never be a fan of Japan's often preferred style of overacting, turning everything into a melodrama circus, but 3 or 4 eps in and I had completely tuned it out. The story was just so compelling.

This is definitely worth watching.

Read More

So I sat down earlier this week to start ep 15 and realized...I don't want to finish this drama, lol. I went into Anti-Fan with the mindset that I didn't really care if it was going to be tropey or poorly written. I was going to let the drama take me where it wanted to go and enjoy the journey.

And up until ep 14, that was enough.

Going into ep 15, however, I found myself dreading having to watch anymore. I had zero interest in the story or the characters at that point, and sitting through an hour of them no longer appealed to me. I think this was due to a few things. 1) I'd gotten all of the enjoyment out of the drama that I was going to, and I was ready to move on to something else. 2) Ep 14 and the problems it created for the story had finally set in and I was suddenly feeling a lot more aware of the dramas flaws. 3) My currently watching-list has gotten a lot longer than I really like it to be, so I think my brain was screaming 'PLEASE DROP SOMETHING FOR THE SAKE OF MY SANITY!', and this drama isn't exactly at the top of my list of favorites, so it's the one my brain decided had to go.

Looking at this drama critically, it's not something you would watch because of great storytelling or compelling characters or stunning visuals. This is the sort of drama you watch when you want to turn off the critical side of your brain. The thing is, in order to enjoy a 'bad' drama (or book or movie or western television show or anything really), it has to do a sufficient job of distracting you from it's flaws. And while this drama did a decent job of doing so through ep 13, ep 14 brought said flaws into stark relief. Once that happened, there was really no going back to the enjoyment and forward motion I had been experiencing before.

A couple of other users suggested in the comments that this drama should be viewed in two parts, ep 1-13 and ep 14-16, and I have to agree. Maybe if you do, you'll be able to watch the final two episodes.

Personally, I just couldn't be bothered.

Read More

Started this drama with so much hope and excitement and ended with no desire to finish it.

This was my first Siwon drama, and I was as hype as a person can be without spontaneously combusting. (The man is gorgeous.) I did not realize going in, however, that his style of acting is so....hammy.... I'm not typically a fan of hammy acting, even when it's intentional. As such, I didn't really enjoy his character as much as I had hoped I would. (Not that Siwon wasn't absolutely adorable at multiple points throughout the story. Siwon can't help but be too cute for his own good.)

Truthfully, almost all of the actors can, and have, done better things. They certainly put in the effort, but the characters were just so poorly written that it made no difference. (Although I must admit that Gong Myung's performance impressed me, even if his character frequently infuriated me.)

Unfortunately, the story was pretty lackluster as well and did nothing to counteract Siwon's corny acting style or the poorly written characters that surrounded him. The story set up some really interesting premises initially. Chaebol turned clumsy part-timer, Candy who Likes part-time work and has no interest in a 'real job,' Chaebol potentially renouncing his life of riches, and Candy guiding him along the way. (That's really it in terms of premises that were interesting.) These were characters I liked and wanted to know more about. But the drama never went anywhere with these ideas and just turned into a generic, bland amalgamation of nothingness instead.

I usually feel incredibly guilty about dropping dramas, even when they're terrible.

I dropped this 2 episodes from the end and never felt like going back. (And I didn't drop it sooner because I was on the Dramaclub at Dramafever for it and was only able to drop it when I did because things got kind of hectic in my life at that moment and provided me an out.)

When I drop a drama and feel no guilt...that is one heck of a bad drama.

Read More

I really wanted to finish this drama (for a number of reasons). I even attempted to watch it twice, getting a couple of episodes farther along the second time around before ultimately giving up again. And the reason I made it as far as I did (all the way to 2 eps before the end) is because there are a lot of good things about this drama. It has a solid start, a compelling and well paced story, the characters are all interesting and three-dimensional (even the secondary male and female leads), and the female lead is absolutely kickass. (I flippin’ love No Eun Seol. She’s the one thing about the drama I enjoyed during both my attempts to watch. She’s feisty. She’s tough. She’s hard-working. She’s genuine and honest. She’s persistent. She’s a little odd and different (for a Korean woman, anyway.) She’s got a no-nonsense attitude. And she can kick some literal ass.)

But the story was missing one of the number one things I need in a drama to like it. Actual romance.

While I never had a problem believing Cha Ji Heon truly liked No Eun Seol (sometimes I worried he liked her a little Too much, he was so annoying and persistent about it), I never believed she liked him back, and it felt weird watching the writers trying to convince me that she did. There was zero romantic chemistry on her side. Friendship chemistry, sure, but not romantic.

And while Cha Ji Heon was an adorable man-child in the beginning who just needed a steady, guiding hand (in the form of No Eun Seol), he eventually stopped being adorable and just became annoying. I just didn't understand why No Eun Seol would fall in love with him.

I eventually reached a point in the drama where I could no longer figure out No Eun Seol’s motivation for staying at her job. It was clearly no longer worth it. Contrary to what the writers wanted me to believe, there were zero signs that she was starting to like Cha Ji Heon (and he’d started to become persistent in a way that was slowly edging towards stalkerish and creepy), she'd had the job long enough to use it as a reference on her resume, and she definitely could have gotten another job that paid equally as well. If I had been her, I would have just quit and never looked back. Her motivation for staying was clearly meant to be that she had fallen in love with Cha Ji Heon, but I have to call bull on that.

Lack of genuine romance aside, the thing that probably drove me the most nuts was the ‘princess lessons.’ No Eun Seol didn’t want to learn how to arrange flowers and eat with fancy silverware. She didn’t want to learn how to be the ‘perfect wife’ of a CEO. (Which wouldn’t have worked anyway. Women like No Eun Seol just don’t do princess well.) And I didn't want her to have to do any of those things either, so watching her be affectively forced into them was unbearable to watch. If I had believed in the romance, I probably could have overlooked this. I would have been able to put up with the ‘princess lessons’ and the petty fighting between the parents, because I knew our leads truly loved each other and would stand by each other no matter what. But I Didn’t believe in the romance, and that made all the difference.

I do think this is a drama a lot of people would enjoy, so I'm certainly not saying don't watch it. But it left me disappointed and frustrated.

Read More

The first six episodes of Business Proposal were literally everything. Lots of supremely well-used tropes that were equally well-subverted. I was constantly laughing at the humor, and anxiously awaiting the eventual romance. But something felt off in eps 7 and 8, something I couldn't put my finger on, so I did something I tell myself never to do, and I looked up spoilers. And I'm honestly glad I did, because they put their finger on what it was that felt off to me.

Somewhere in ep 7/8, the writers forgot that their drama was trying to use classic Kdrama tropes differently, and they pivoted to taking classic tropes too seriously, thus creating unnecessary angst. What I got through with 7 and 8 certainly couldn't be compared to the level of angst in a classic early to mid 2000's Kdrama, but it was a very definite tonal shift, and not one I liked. What's worse though is that the eventual story choices I read about were not something that made sense in regard to the characters. They sounded like obvious attempts at adding drama in a story that had been rather delightfully drama-free most of its run. They also just sounded like a waste of our character's time. I mean, the writers had a perfect opportunity to subvert the classic 'family doesn't approve' trope, and they Didn't take it. How uproariously hilarious would it have been for grandpa to pretend he didn't approve of their romance as a little bit of payback for them hiding it from him?

Armed with the knowledge of things to come, I decided to drop Business Proposal. But it's all good, cause Legally Romance (Cdrama) is doing all of the things with my heart right now, and I'm totally okay with it, lol.

Read More

A Warmed Up Love had a promising start. We open episode one with our female lead, Kiki, sharing the difficult trajectory her life has taken, going from a popular J-pop idol to a nobody struggling with purpose and identity. It's very grounded and believable while still having touches of humor and lightheartedness (she's sharing her burdens with a customer service employee who doesn't know how to respond to a heartfelt confession seeing as her job is dealing with customer complaints, lol.) It's a really great opening on what sort of person Kiki is, the struggles she faces, and it immediately hooked me. Mori Nana is also fantastic at capturing what a young woman is really like, an ability she keeps going for at least the five episodes I watched.

But while I loved Kiki and wanted to see her succeed, there's very little going on around her in the story that I found either compelling or believable.

For starters, I was completely uninterested in all the business drama. It boils down to people fighting for control of a company because of money and greed, but the drama paints it as some sort of emotionally resonate plotline about believing in the power of sweets and a fight to make quality products and doing what's best for the company. This was kind of hard to believe when no one on the board actually cares about any of these things, not even the male lead. Yes, part of his character trajectory was obviously going to be him 'overcoming' his sweets trauma and learning to care about creating delicious and comforting sweets, but this sort of storyline has already been done so often (and truthfully, better), that I didn't care.

Of course, it doesn't help that Takumi is essentially a cardboard cutout with no real personality. This is due to a combination of minimal acting on Nakamura Tomoya's part and a serious lack of characterization in the writing. Takumi is incredibly bland, his only real personality trait, aside from being stoic and determined in a boardroom, beings that he hates sweets, and for the majority of the five eps I watched, he either had little to no facial expression or a fake smile that screamed acting from a mile away.

I was also completely unmoved by the romance. With Takumi's lack of personality and how believably young and inexperienced Mori Nana's portrayal of Kiki is, I found the age-gap to be distracting and unnecessary. The writers also do little to no work creating compelling reasons for either of them to like each other. For Takumi, it's clearly the typical 'my love interest speaks her mind and is earnest' approach, and Kiki is certainly forthright and determined in her opinions and view of life. But while I don't inherently dislike this romance trope, it's also not interesting or fleshed out at all in this drama. As to what Kiki would find attractive about Takumi, I could never tell. To reiterate, he's as bland as a piece of toast.

Truthfully, her crush on him is a level of intense I found unbelievable. Near the beginning of the drama, Kiki discovers her boyfriend is cheating on her and then in the same moment, he dumps her, pinning the blame for his cheating on her. This would be devastating to most people, but Kiki's reaction is rather subdued. We don't know much about their relationship before that moment, so maybe there is a good reason for her to not be as devastated as you might expect, but then she immediately develops a crush on Takumi, and when she learns that he may still love his ex, she's distraught. She literally sobs in a stairwell. There is a serious discontent between these two responses. Her boyfriend cheating on her and then dumping her is no more thana small blip on her life timeline, but when her boss who's much older than her and whom she knows next to nothing about might love someone else, it's a tragedy?

My last real complaint for this drama is that while I get her interest in sweets and in reviewing them online, and I can totally see how that might transition into a legitimate job of taste-testing products to see which ones should be sold in a store, I could never get behind the idea of how reviewing sweets would give the female lead the requisite skills to actually make them herself. No one even bothers to find out if she knows how to cook. Now, I've been known to overlook details like this in other dramas, so this wasn't a make-or-break issue for me. But when all of the most important elements of a story don't work for you, even the smallest issues are a frustration.

It always leaves me frustrated when a drama starts out thoughtful and introspective before turning bland and uninspired, and that's exactly what happened with A Warmed Up Love. I can certainly see other viewers liking, or even loving, this drama, so I won't say no one should watch it. But man, if you're not going to carry that thoughtful heart all the way through a story's conclusion, then why even start?

Read More

This was a really funny movie, and I loved watching the two leads try to one up each other, but then the ending happened everything leading up to it felt wasted. Honestly, I'm still not even sure What happened in the ending. Did the leads end up together? Did they Not end up together? Did they decide to team up together? Personally, I really wanted them to get together in the end romantically, and that's where I thought the writers were taking us. (I mean, it is advertised as a Rom-com, after all.) Clearly though, the writers didn't Know where they wanted to take us, or their characters, and ultimately, the story suffered because of it.

Definitely don't recommend this movie.

Read More