A deeply touching love story wrapped in revenge, reget and the law.

If you're looking for the sort of "fun while it lasts but forgettable when it ends" Kdrama romcom format that's all the rage these days you won't find it here: I Hear Your Voice is anything but forgettable. Its message that everyone deserves to be heard and treated with compassion to avert deeper tragedies - on the personal or societal level - is both melancholy and cheesily heartfelt in the best way and the romance has the same mix of emotional complexity and lightheartedness.

First, let's lay some groundwork:

1. The age gap. If you stan Hidden Love it's doubtful you'll have a problem with it considering the leads are the same age when they get together: ML is 19 and FL is in her mid-twenties.

2. The amount of complaints about any and every noona romance having "no chemistry" smacks of toxicity considering oppa romances are never criticized the same way or treated as a separate genre. So if can't get over the visuals of an older FL with a younger ML: don't watch it. Maybe examine your life and your choices.

3. It doesn't surprise me the negative reviews of this drama are all from people who hate the FL or people who hate the romance because this has the most non-traditional gender roles I've seen in Kdramas. FL plays the ML role: she's a self-absorbed tsundere who brings home the bacon and can't trust or rely on others. ML plays the FL role: he's a supportive, snarky sweetheart who does all the housework and struggles with self worth. Somehow this makes both leads awful people to a certain subset because ML behavior from a FL (and vice versa) is unforgivable. See again: toxicity. Your life, your choices, yada yada.

But enough about the patriarchy. On to the plot.

The format is a mix of episodic and main story with the episodic cases introducing you to how public defenders work in South Korea sprinkled with social commentary. Judges and prosecutors have all the power and a 99% conviction rate; the public defender's job is to make nice and plea for leniency. Not that that stops FL once she gets going because even at her apathetic worst she has a better sense of justice than prosecutor frenemy SFL who's one step away from "I am the law" authoritarian. It's their rivalry that drives the legal story, aided by FL's pragmatic boss, idealistic co-worker SML and ML who forces FL to see the best in herself and is always ready to lend a hand when she can't.

The revenge is a slow burn that develops with the romance as it guides all the connected characters back together to deal with the fallout from a series of events in the past. Not exactly unique for Kdramas, but the difference here is how intensely personal everything is. There's no psycho villain, genius mastermind or corrupt chaebol pulling strings behind the scenes: just flawed people who make difficult choices they have to take responsibility for and struggle and grow as they do.

And no one starts more flawed or grows more than ML or FL. Their romance is them patching up the damaged parts of each other (sometimes literally) through their give and take relationship. It's not a perfect green flag with all the trauma but if you wanna watch two uniquely endearing leads work out their issues while cutely cohabiting and desperately trying to save each other this really doesn't have a match. FL's journey from someone unwilling to risk herself for others even a tiny bit to standing up for ML, her clients and what's right even when there's almost no chance of success is amazing to watch and easy to cheer for. Same with ML starting as someone who completely denies himself in heartbreaking ways because of his loneliness and fear of abandonment to someone who values himself enough to express and assert himself in heart fluttering territory. I've never rooted so hard for two leads to get together or felt so fulfilled when they finally did.

Honestly, the worst thing I can say about I Hear Your Voice it is it has some gratuitous wrist grabbiness near the beginning, some messy SFL family drama near the end and it looks like it was made in 2013. Because it was! If you can get past the older tropes and the uncanny valley of the soap opera effect, it's smooth sailing to a memorable story and the best noona romance I've seen yet.

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The don't make them like this anymore... and I'm glad they don't.

After Romance is a Bonus Book I was looking forward to LJS in another drama, but Pinocchio is kind of a hot mess:

1. Red flag romance where FL is alternately ML's emotional punching bag or cheerleader while ML can't decide between punishing her or himself for their relationship. Plus the fauxest gives it weird step-sibling vibes.
2. A plot that's a series of coincidences explained by the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon which is... a choice.
3. Relationship drama to rival a soap opera and about as believably written.
4. Guessing game of "who's the real villain" where the real villain turns out to be the most cliche option possible.

6/10 for an important underlying message about journalistic integrity, some touching side stories and a good ensemble cast. Otherwise, this was hit or miss for me and mostly miss. It picks up some pace after a slow start but then drags to the point where by Ep12 I'd lost interest, by Ep16 I was DONE and at Ep18 I was FFing without mercy. There's some banger story lines that get cut off and a total change of focus in the second part that replaces the previous themes and characters with a big revelation that's nothing more than another generic corruption plot. Yawn.

The romance was more rage inducing than yawn inducing. I'm wary of older dramas exactly because of dynamics like this one. ML is an emotionally immature jerk who every once in a while makes a grand gesture which magically redeems all his other awful behavior. Yes, he has tough circumstances, but taking out your trauma on someone else is a HUGE red flag. And FL just rolls with the punches; she even apologizes to him (more than once!) for not being more understanding. There's a few scenes where she asserts herself but she's mostly a sponge for ML's man pain.

Speaking of FL, I expected her to play a much larger role in this drama considering it's literally about her family and she's the one with the Pinocchio syndrome but somehow ML is always the center of attention. FL struggles for years to get a job in journalism; genius ML does it in three months. FL builds a relationship with her mom; she torches it in favor of ML's revenge. FL's family is torn apart when ML's identity comes out; she's more worried about him than them. She isn't given any agency or identity outside of her romance with ML which is another HUGE red flag.

Even SML and SFL basically exist to provide comic relief or act as plot devices to further ML's story. The rest of the ensemble cast is great, but to waste two leads like that is incredibly lazy writing. I was also disappointed at the lack of any close female friendships. There are a lot of opportunities for them to develop but they get passed over in favor of bromances or treated as more comic relief. Not a great look.

The best thing I can say about Pinocchio is it has a great message and tries to portray good people in tough situations attempting to do the right thing. But that gets drowned in the noise of the other needless drama.

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Amazing cinematic start that downgrades to fun then forgettable.

This is such a generically beige KDrama that's it's no surprise to me that it's so popular: there's absolutely nothing that stands out in the story or relationships for anyone to feel strongly about, so it's universally appealing as an easy watch. Add to that some very pretty faces with glossy blockbuster production to rival JJ "Lens Flare" Abrams (and some equally annoying quirks) and you've got yourself a milquetoast mass market hit.

Basically: Quirky journalist FL has a power she doesn't understand and can't control (despite dealing with it most of her life). Hapless prosecutor ML crashes in on the scene, gets powers of his own and then teaches FL how to use hers for good! They both go from zeros to heroes practically overnight without any meaningful stumbling blocks or character development! Together - with bland do-gooder police sidekick SML - they solve legal cases that all blend into each other because they're equally generic crime mysteries! The dreams (the most interesting part of the drama) end up ruining the thrill factor because there's a clear cheat sheet for the characters to follow to get the best solution. And that's what they do over and over again.

FL, ML and SML should have used their powers to find and save the main plot first because it's suspiciously missing for 3/4s of the drama. Which might have been okay if it were at least chugging along somewhere in the background, but nope. Maybe it finally picks up in the end, but after 12 episodes of formulaic nothingness I've completely lost interest. Main baddie TML is a corrupt defense lawyer who scuttles the heroes hard work on numerous occasions for... personal grudge? Ego? Boredom? Profit? Who knows, because he has no backstory! He's bad, he's there and he tries to ruin things for the heroes over and over because he clearly has nothing better to do, just like the villains of the week.

Rarely do I find a romance as dull as this one. The leads were cute, I guess? Which is all they had going for them because just like the motiveless villains there was no reason for them to get together or stay together. They do it because they're the leads in a romance drama and they need to earn that paycheck. Sure, there's a fated childhood connection or whatever but I need more than that to find a relationship believable and the story gave me nothing to work with beyond some cheesy romantic asides and cringe comedy.

There's nothing I really hate about this drama but there's nothing I love either. Decent entertainment but I can't imagine ever watching this again or even thinking about it beyond writing this review. Strong characters and inspiring stories are why I started watching Kdramas to begin with, but I didn't find either of those here.

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Lazy writing, 2D characters and a lame long love triangle = a waste of time

I'm 99% certain the people who praise the romance and chemistry in this one are blinded by their love for PSJ. FL over or under acts without hitting the authenticity sweet spot and the relationship circumstances are way less believable than the standard meet cute romcom. I'm a fan of noona dramas but this romance felt flimsy from the start - more love bomb than romcom - and it never got better.

Then as soon as the highly unlikely love triangle rears its ugly head the leads did a total 180 - FL goes from boss to wishy-washy insecure while ML goes from supportive to immature man child. If a story says one thing then expects me to believe something totally different with no basis just to inject some drama it's frankly not a good story. Don't even get me started on SML who's a romance road block instead of an actual 3D character.

The plot isn't anything special either - just lies, misunderstandings and miscommunications with some background office drama - so once the romance stalls there's no point sticking around. In retrospect I should have listened to all the comments telling people to skip episodes 8-12 but again if you have to skip 1/3 of a drama to enjoy a drama it's not a good drama.

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A Kdrama superhero tale lacking in budget, acting and originality.

I was hesitant to watch Healer because I always check the currently watching and dropped ratings for older dramas to get a feel for how well they've aged and it has some polarizing numbers: 7.85/10 for current and 5.25/10 for dropped. But I figured I'd give a shot because of its popularity.

It wasn't a total bust I wasn't wowed either. There's a good story in here somewhere but it feels too much like a tropey Kdrama knockoff of a Marvel franchise: OP parkour secret super hero ML and quirky cutesy sidekick FL team up to take down a cabal of corrupt old rich dudes involved in a far fetched conspiracy. I grew up with that comic book format and this brought nothing new to the table for me except the historical context, which I was more interested in than the romance.

Eventually I dropped it because even positive reviews agree the ending is haphazard and unsatisfying and 20 episodes is way too much time to spend for that kind of pay off.

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