Great ML but everything else quite forgettable

I started to watch this drama because I like period dramas and I thought baduk at the centre of it might do for something refreshing, then I was captivated by the King's character, he was an all rounder and made for an interesting plot.

The king as a character and Jo Jung Suk's performance is what carried this drama for me and the reason it has the rating I give it, without him this drama would be so much worse, and if I had to rate the drama based only on him as a character it would get a 10. He's a very complete character and very engaging. It's such a shame that with such an amazing character and performance the rest of it was quite disappointing, especially anything involving the FL.

I like Shin Sae Kyeong and she has been the FL in a couple of dramas I rate very highly and I very much enjoyed. But being realistic I do think that she doesn't have a big range of acting skills and the roles she performs the best are those in which, I feel, she's playing characters that fit with her personality as a person or that she feels comfortable playing. Probably that's kind of the same reason why they took her for this one as the FL in this drama does share certain similar traits with characters she has played in the past. But there are a few things of her acting here that bugged me a lot, like the over stiffness and the constant eye moving to express what the rest of her face is not expressing. While I've seen her do this in other roles here it was very amplified. I don't know whether that was all her or the director was going for that and asked her to overuse it but at some point it started getting old and quite annoying.

Romance is also impacted by all this. ML is there, and his words and actions are clear and well acted and you feel the angst and the longing and all the feels. FL's on the other hand is just not there. So I enjoyed the romance part of this show, like everything else, because of ML, but it could have been so much better if FL had been at the same level.

When it comes to the writing I don't understand how we have such a good character in the king and such a miss in her. Most of the drama is just her contradicting the premise of her personality. She's supposed to be very intelligent, strategic and clever but she keeps making mistakes and becoming the damsel in distress.
The whole revenge plot was just plain BAD WRITING. She kept reaching bad conclusions, she kept asking the wrong questions, or not asking them and kept screwing everything up. Now, I could believe this as plausible and that a character like that can exist if the character hadn't been introduced as the opposite of that, and on the other hand if it was her alone it would have been more plausible, not with other people blindly involved in the revenge like it was the best plan and course of action.

Myung Ha was also quite frustrating and his whole plotline was quite pointless. It's dragged out for the sake of it by just making him not actively seeking information and justice but doing in a slow, second-hand way. Most of the drama he's annoying and towards the end he's just ok because by mellowing his personality they made him look ok now and made you forget all the things he did and said in the past and reduce it all to him being concerned about the Crown Prince. Disappointing.
Equally annoying was Lady Dong, although in this case her character was well developed and the actress did a good job at being the annoying piece of work she is. However, it was disappointing they were trying to make me like her at the end somehow, like if her behaviour was justified because she loved the king.

The rest of characters are basically background, they're ok, nothing to throw fireworks about except the kid that played the Crown Prince, he was great.
The queen dowager was always there but her arch was pretty anti-climactic in the end, nothing happened to her not it escalated much in any manner that would be interesting or significant enough for the plot.
Oh, and I almost forgot, special mention to Ja Geun Nyun (FL character's servant), she was annoying as hell, especially in the first half of the drama.

The end was a bit confusing (between the "I go, I don't go") and generally disappointing, and the last episode feels dragged and like they didn't know how to end it, like a kid dragging his feet leaving the park because he doesn't want to go back home. I definitely expected a bit more and a different ending. After all we saw in the drama I thought we deserved a better one for sure.
I'm also getting very tired of the time jump/one of main leads leaving just before ending it. It's been such a long time I haven't seen a drama where it felt justified to include something like this, especially not in the last episode when it's going to be resolved quickly and in an anticlimactic way. There was absolutely no point in making her go to the Qing, her father doesn't appear again and it's only there so they can meet in that tree to play baduk, what was also such a gamble she left the path/stopped for a break exactly there. There were so many options to end the story in a better way but it feels they chose the quickest to film and the laziest plot wise. Definitely could have been better and leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

Overall I think this show is watchable mainly for the king as a character and Jo Jung Suk's performance but that's pretty much it, plot is generally average for a period drama apart from the king, and the revenge subplot is very bad writing.
I think this show had a lot of potential but I don't think it was exploited as good as it could have. The plots could have been a lot more epic or more engaging, more than a classic hide and seek between hero and villain. The romance could have been so much better as well if we had had a better performance of FL and more moments to explore it.
I think the king is a character worth watching, it's just a shame everything else in this drama needs to be watched as well just to get that, so I'm happy I watched this show for the enjoyment I got of that character but a shame it's attached to many other things I didn't enjoy and wouldn't want to rewatch.

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Some cute moments but annoying teenager, superficial and inconsistent characters and a plain story.

Had this show started when FL was already in university it would have a bit of a higher rating on my part, I found from that point onwards it was more entertaining, not great by any means, but better. From the beginning up to that point I almost quit several times solely on the fact that the FL was EXTREMELY annoying.
I'm not familiar with the actors in this show nor I generally care who is in what. There are actors I like, but I won't watch something only based on that. I say this because I don't know if the acting of Zhao Lu Si is her or it's the director and direction that pushed her to do that (and in that case not sure why they would be happy with that result). It was extremely annoying how she was acting as a 17 year old like she was 7. She was shown as more mature at age 14 in her way of speaking and mannerisms (although physically that actress was clearly younger so it was also very jarring).
I think at this point after two cdramas watched being set in high school I should avoid cdramas set in high school. It feels at times like I'm watching a video on morality and good manners directed at high schoolers, like the civil education videos I had to watch when I was around 12-14 years old. It's also so forced how they try at some point or another say some grandiose moral quote like they're talking to me directly instead of the character.
Also, for the love of all things dear, how was she so dumb and childish when technically she had good grades in school? It makes no sense at all.
They want to show later in university that she's more of a grown up but there are so many things in her way of doing and especially her voice that she still seems so childish. On the other hand ML changes completely of character once he's starting to be interested in her, he's all of a sudden super cocky and flirty, it was very out of character. From that point onwards it's like they're trying to keep reminding me that she's a girly girl and he's a boyish boy.... MEH.
I still don't understand fully how or when Jiaxu started having feelings for her, it's kind of sudden.
I didn't care they didn't show much of the drama involving his father because I had zero interest really, it seemed kind of typical and like it was not going to add much to the story other than some cliché trauma, but I didn't understand either why introducing that daughter of the family affected, she was very annoying and contributed nothing to the story either. I'm guessing she was only there so FL could show her more "mature" side but it's very weak.

There are some cute moments, but overall I was not so sure of why they liked each other, I'm not even sure why she liked him in the beginning to be honest, just because he was handsome and nice to her? not sure, I'm not shown at any point in the first or second half that they share anything when it comes to personality or likes or hobbies, they barely share even that many special moments. It's also very weird because he goes from calling her "sister" to 5 minutes later being interested in her, I couldn't shake that feeling of uneasiness, and it brings me to the fact that the sister thing was way overdone. It would have been so much better had he just been the brother's friend and kept that relationship of friend than making it so far as to his feeling of her as a sister, I felt that put a big barrier on there that I couldn't see a way of it being broken and so I was not surprised when it was just done suddenly and didn't work for me at all. It's also quite annoying when she's already in uni and she keeps saying he's old and they keep mentioning the 5 year gap, what is not a big one by any means.

As it happens in the other cdrama I watched recently (When I Fly Towards You), everything is shown in perfect stages, high school is the time for little crushes but ultimately focusing solely in studies, university ok for relationships, and as soon as you finish uni then get a great job straight away and save to quickly buy a house and start a family. It's very unrealistic, and after this being the second one with the same idea I'm starting to think that they're trying to precisely sell me an idea here more than a story. It was equally unrealistic his career, how he's able to achieve all that at his age, no problems in anything, same with her really, nothing of much importance. It's also the fact they feel the need to include in the story the whole process instead of only one part of it, it gives it even more that feeling of someone showing "how it's done" to me so I take it as an example.
Characters are also generally always kept superficially and secondary ones are pretty non existant.
I found the brother quite annoying at times as well, why was he ten times more patriarchal than the father? I know maybe he just has the older brother complex but seems so weird when it doesn't seem they have that dynamic in the family. Her parents were all right but I didn't really understand why they let the son be that way with her or take more charge of her than them, it was weird some times.

The ending is... well... the cherry on top I suppose. It was quite shocking she would be proposed on the same day of her graduation, like chill man!! Another cdrama that pushes the marry young idea, but I mean, considering they got everything else at unrealistic young ages no wonder by 22-23 they're bored of their lives and they need to marry or something ? (I know he's older but still applies, it's not like he had to do it like he has an expiration date and as far as we know he was not being pushed to do it by anyone either).

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Too many pointless subplots, too many dead-end side characters and a misscast FL

First of all I'll just go ahead and tackle the big elephant in the room with this drama: FL is misscast.
I have nothing against the actress and she looks great in her age, she just doesn't look the age she's supposed to be in this drama and I find it insulting I'm to believe she's around her mid to late 30s. Episode 8 clearly mentions 2010 as the year the mother passed, at that point ML was in university and she was in the team. EVEN IF I assume FL to be 26 at the time, that would make her around 39 years old in present time (and that's a stretch because it's shown like if her career was cut very short and if she was 26 at the time she would have already been on the older side for a national athelete). Either way, Jeon Do Yeon doesn't look 39 nor early 40s and it completely broke the inmersion for me. The cherry on top is the way FL acts and dresses, they decided to make her an old fashioned mother and it's also ridiculous when in the first episodes it's mentioned how she looks too young to have a daughter that age (when many of the other actresses playing mothers are around the same age than Jeon Do Yeon). The actress that plays Dan Ji's mother, Hwang Bo Ra, is 39 in real life yet no one mentioned in the drama she looked too young to have a daughter that age... lol
This was easily solved if they A) had taken a different actress or B) had changed the script for the FL to be closer to the actress' age. I don't care about the age gap of the actors, they simply don't look the age they're supposed to be, especially and mainly her. I clearly remember 2010 and where I was, so it's very immersion breaking that I'm to believe FL is anywhere in her 30s.

This also brings me to the fact the best friend also dresses and acts like an older woman. Why? Are they trying to mock working classes or something? (and it feels even more so when she's not dressing like that in the end when the time jump, now she's studying to be something more than a side dish shop assistant she doesn't have to dress like that? *eye roll*). I don't understand the purpose of this other than the clash that can visually produce between ML and FL (but then why the best friend too?). But this also brings me to another point, while I do think the main leads had physical chemistry and there were cute moments between them, they didn't fit together at all. They didn't seem to have similar views nor similar likes or anything, and his love for her was quite sudden, in the sense that it was shown as a sudden crush. I did like the progression of the relationship since it was more mature, but I couldn't get pass the fact they don't show anything they share that you would think makes them belong together (or am I to believe it's only because he knew her mother?).

When I started watching this drama I did have some expectations that being set around korean education there was going to be a bit more criticism of the education system, but I should have known better. While there are illustrations of problematic situations surrounding the education system there is not really any conversation about how problematic it is except for a couple of sentences in the last episode, where ML, I might add, suggests a division approach to levels that not only has been done before many times, but that it has been proven as many times to not work well, and this is coming from a teacher, the ML, that is supposed to be the best of the best.... hmmmm... ok. Also, except for the school teacher timidly mentioning the education system is a problem, the blame is generally put on the students, "Kids nowadays do ridiculous things. They consume highly caffeinated energy drinks and take pills. We even sent out several announcements asking them to cut down. [...] The educational system and parents' mindsets are to blame. [...] I'm a mere school teacher as well." So this guy thinks that parents have more power to change things than a "mere school teacher"...hmmm ok, no wonder things are like they are and Korea has such a level of teen suicide. System and those enforcing it bring teens to the brink of death and look puzzled at "kids nowadays doing ridiculous things".
This drama doesn't address the issues, only shows some of them but there isn't a real in-depth commentary on the problems of such system.

There are too many out of the blue subplots to acts as fillers. The thriller part of this show was predictable from the start, didn't add much in the sense of nuance for the main characters (ML already had that nuance from the past with Ji Dong Hee's sister's death) and it was solved in the most anticlimactic way possible. Similarly, the subplot they decided to bring for the last two episodes was dragged as well but solved quickly and without mention of any of the parts. Nam Hae Yi acts like a total brat and once the bio mother goes it's brushed under the rug like nothing happened.

Generally I didn't like much the FL here, on top of being portrayed as a quite stereotypical ajumma it irked me so much how she treated her brother, she was always kind of angry and having a go at him and only worrying about him (and anyone else for that matter) when she couldn't handle her own selfish anxiety. She's that type of person that seems she worries about others but only worries about the fact she's worried or will be worried, and so she pressures others to do as she wants so she doesn't suffer the anxiety... kind of toxic right?
I thought it was bad taste the way the "romance" between the FL's brother and best friend is portrayed, it's very out of nowhere, it's not developed, it doesn't grow and was extremely forced.

I nearly dropped this drama on the first half solely because of the mother's club, it wasn't entertaining, it was very annoying to watch even if I know many parents are probably like that. This also brings me to the fact that generally I found all characters to be very unidimensional, either they were good or they were bad. Yes, they try to tell me towards the end that Soo Ah's mother was actually not that bad, but I'm not sure how it can be excused that she pushed her daughter to the edge of death with her selfishness and obsession, same goes with Seon Jae's mother.

There were some cute moments and I did like the dynamics of friendships in the school (minus Soo Ah, that also her problems are never fully tackled either, they're just forgotten), especially Geon Hoo and Seon Jae, and I wished there had been more story to Dan Ji, since she seemed cool. I liked Hae Yi in the beginning but in the end I was very fed up with her.

Music was forgettable and annoying at times for me.

Overall I'm not sure to whom I would recommend this drama, since it's a mix of too many half-baked ideas and even the main one, the romance, is not very good. It's watchable if you have nothing else but otherwise no.
I generally don't tend to rewatch dramas but I certainly wouldn't this one.

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Funny, entertaining and cool characters but writing went downhill with the crime

Up to the latest episodes this would have been a 9 for me, I was loving it, it was funny and light and had an interesting plot and characters. There were a couple of things of why it wouldn't have made it a 10 for me but overall I was impressed and very pleased with how funny it was and how it was developing, that is until they started unravelling the crime storyline.

The mystery and crime in this show was interesting at the beginning and they did an ok job playing with the audience making you doubt if who you thought was the killer was correct. Personally as the episodes went I had it more and more clear so I was not surprised by the reveal and, although it was expected, not going to lie I was a bit disappointed at the same time because how his character was tackled.
The problem for me in the last few episodes is that they created multiple plotholes in the story and basically the writing went downhill, as well as how they decided to tackle the obstacles at hand. For most part of the show the premise has been that if a person had eyes closed FL couldn't see anything, but only in the last episodes it's revealed that actually she can hear in those blackout points, then it makes you wonder how she didn't hear anything the previous time she touched the killer, it made no sense. Sunglasses were an ok touch, but depending on where he was wearing them in the night you could have still seen flashes of lights in the distance or anything that would have made anyone suspicious and would have given away what they were using a lot earlier on. And this brings me then to, when they're chasing him in the last episode and knowing he was going to take the boat the next day, apply the same formula? Look for him in the night, desguise yourself and wear sunglasses?
The last episode is also made worse by:
- If she could hear there was absolutely no point in taking the killer out of the police station.
- She didn't even try to find Ok Hee with the information she had, it was not that difficult and she had a starting point, sweep the area with the police force and I'm sure they would have found her.
- Ok Hee Squad and Yong Myeong arrive to the area and keeps saying there is nothing around, but you could even see in the background there were some buildings so maybe stop asking and look around?
- Completely unbelievable the killer was able to take Ok Hee all the way there with his eyes closed. They spent half a show saying how it was impossible and there must have been a way, then he does it with his eyes closed like no problem for the final?
- ML and FL somehow manage to beat that group of people (super unrealistic to be able to beat all guys coming at you at once, but luckly they were doing like in videogames and only coming in one to three at a time...) and then after somehow they wait for a very long scene doing nothing other than touching their painful bodies in the background. No one tries to scape, not even the boss and ML/FL don't call the police...
- Earlier in the series I did think that this group of thugs would appear again at some point earlier in the story but they only brought them back for that? It was weak.
- The scene at the end with the prison was unnecesary and really added nothing, it felt dragged.
- What happened to the killer? Apparently he can even open doors and get other information to do anything he wants, how is he going to be contained in prison? Doubt the prison would believe he has powers and they need to do special arrangements for him. It's never tackled or explained, as are not the consequences of the actions of FL and ML in the last episode when essentially they go against the policemen in charge of the case, same when all of Ok Hee squad appears with the motorbikes and stop the policemen from moving.
- At times they were interacting with the killer in a manner that it felt they didn't even hold grudges against him.
A lot of plotholes were also caused by characters just playing dumb for the sake of the script, especially FL and SML. And I'm still wondering what happened to the cow, she had the most powers so maybe she's floating in space at this point... haha

This brings me to the characters. Generally I liked everyone except for FL, she was annoying many times, the classic dumb damsel in distress that puts everyone in danger and then blames others. At some points I was frustrated not going to lie.
Contrary to what I think is the general opinion I was not a fan of SML, his personality was pretty much made to keep you guessing and to be honest it's no wonder everyone thought it could be him, he was not clear and didn't give explanations, he was kept mysterious in that sense just for the sake of it. Who runs behind someone with a knife in hand and without even shouting or saying something? Who in their right mind knows who is the killer and still lives with him and doesn't go straight to the police? Why trying to tell her instead? The killer said he was smart, I think maybe he was intelligent but not smart., except for the message in arabic, that was smart but what are also the chances that FL would have touched the killer's butt then and not two months later? The plot said it would happen I guess, it was such a gamble.
The killer is ok for the most part, but I didn't personally like that the justification for his actions is pretty much that he's a psychopath doing things for fun. It's not the first kdrama I've watch that uses the same justification and I find it lazy, it's like creating the ultimate villain that is that way because yes. There is no real explanation to any of the murders and it did make me feel a bit dumb because throughout the series I kept trying to make connections between them and I think there were options to make the connection among them in one way or another. Instead it's just because they were there and maybe a couple because they rubbed him the wrong way a bit. I was wondering why he was obsessed with using that specific knife too, but there is no explanation. It's ok-ish I guess but not satisfactory to me.

I loved the comedy here, so many moments of laugh and fun, the references to 25/21 had me rolling. I also liked ML despite his flaws and I thought Ok Hee was so much fun with her squad and Kim Yong Myeong calling her eonni in that hilarious way. I did miss him in later episodes, he just disappeared once they put the comedy a lot more to the side.

I'm debating really if they should have chosen a different path for this series, in the sense that they could have kept the mystery and even crime (maybe not a serial killing but smaller cases?) and kept the comedy and lightheartedness all throughout the series. Even at the end when they bring it back for closure it felt a bit weird after all the crime and drama, I was not feeling it so much as the earlier episodes.

Overall I would recommend the series, it's entertaining and funny for the majority of the episodes. If you're looking for a romcom or romance focused series this is not it. It's not that there isn't romance, it's just not the main or secondary plot points of this show. FL likes SML but it's kept light, ML likes FL but it's kept light (although I have to say I enjoyed very much the way he would look her at times and the hints here and there, it was cute). Secondary characters like other secondary characters and their relationships are mostly in a comedy way, what it's fun romance that I enjoyed.

Not sure I would rewatch it, I would rewatch maybe until around episode 12 for the comedy, but I wouldn't rewatch after that.

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Cute moments but cliché, plot all over the place and an annoying FL

I really wanted to give this series a higher rating because it has such cute moments and the premise was interesting at first but especially in the way the writing went it's just not possible.

I'll start with the positives of this show that I liked and that make all the points it has for me. First of all I do think the best acting here was Chae Jong Hyeop and his character although cliché in many aspects was also a softie and I enjoyed his more quirky aspects. The premise of the story was interesting at first and it had enough material to keep going and make a good plot out of it, sadly this was not utilised, so I liked the premise in itself only. I also liked it was a story between a Japanese and Korean and the nuance it added, although in my opinion it could have been used more. I also liked the different environments and also the inclusion of a mention to the ainu, not something you see very often.

In things I didn't like the main ones are for sure the way the plot developed as well as the FL. The acting of FL was very stiff and amiss at times, it was a bit hard to watch but especially the way they decided to make the FL's character was.... UGH, where to even start. It's not only the fact she's immature in her reactions and way of doing things, it's the fact she's supposed to be in a position of responsibility as well. She spent the whole drama letting others do everything for her. Tae Oh is the one that has to push her to tell him she likes him, Hanaoka and Mahiro have to push her to do things during the series as well at different points. In the whole series she has basically done nothing, because even at the end when she finally decides to do something she took so long that someone else has already done it for her. She was a total flowerpot, sorry. Their "more intimate" moments were awkward, at some points I thought might as well Tae Oh be kissing a wall or something. She only put a bit of effort in the last kiss. Sure, I know many shows in Japan don't really kiss more than touching lip area so to speak, but I've seen it done with a lot more grace than hers.
I get it, the girl was rejected once in her teens because of her power, and she has a complex. Universe forbid she had worked it out herself in the more than 10 years since then. Her teen self and 30 year old self are the same I guess. It was just too unrealistic for my taste, but this was not even the worst of it. The worst was Tae Oh still interested in her even though she keeps the on-off game continuously. At some point towards the second half of the show I just wanted to slap her very hard, she was very irritating. This was aggravated by the fact their chemistry was just about and that they didn't match at all. I wished at points the FL had been the girl in the office that spoke some korean, she matched better with Tae Oh's vibe in my opinion.
Obviously at no point FL makes an effort to find out anything about her power or anything, I mean, I can't say much better of the author of the book. Everyone then meddles into the relationship because of a kids book a woman wrote without doing any research whatsoever, she didn't even know what her boyfriend died off? WHAT? haha Absolutely RIDICULOUS! Even when she's telling Hanaoka I kept thinking, ok, but what did the boyfriend die of? Where is the story that links it to her power? It obviously never came since it was all a joke. I had hopes there for a second when they introduced the myth in the ainu's folklore that it would actually have some decent plot for the part of her power, but not at all and it was very disappointing the way everything is solved. The cherry on top is showing Mahiro and the others doing the research so quickly so they can be together and then they don't do it in the end because all of a sudden it didn't matter anymore. Congratulations to the writer for getting paid for writing such a nonsense, it's an achievement.

Hanaoka was the most interesting of the secondary characters but he's underdeveloped as is everyone else. Onoda was interesting as a character but it's also kept very superficial. I didn't like much the acting or character of Mahiro, and it was so stupid when she's told of FL's power and she's scared. Anyone would have thought she had just been told that FL's was a mass murderer or something. Hanaoka learnt of it as an afterthought in the show and didn't think about it two seconds.
Iiyama acting and character is very bad in this show, probably the worst of them all. It's extremely exaggerated and I get it wants to be a bit comical but it's just plain bad and cringy. The main problem I have with him though, it's that early on he's already being introduced as the one that knows something, a bit mysterious under the good and comical façade, but turns out that it was only because he knew of the accident but the actual information about the power of hers is only discovered when FL does and just by reading the same damn children's book. Says a lot about his research skills? Who in their right mind, and even more a researcher, would read a children's book and meddle in someone's relationship because of it? Ridiculous...
The pace in this show was ok the first half but it drags the second half and it's time that could have been used to develop the plot so it wouldn't have been the mess it is.

If you want some cute moments and watch Chae Jong Hyeop being cute and the extremely dedicated boyfriend type then I would say go ahead, it's a good dose of sugar and sometimes you need those. Otherwise if you're interested in the plot I would say this is a miss and to avoid, and that's without even taking into consideration the amount of plotholes and questions it leaves you with. If you don't like annoying main character I would suggest to avoid this too, she was very frustrating to watch most of the time.

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Intriguing at first but becomes average

The best thing about this drama is the acting, it's very good in general and Nam Joo Hyuk does a very good job as main character. I did also enjoy some of the music, it was certainly more up my alley. That's all for me.

Contrary to other people I didn't think this drama was fast paced, in fact I thought it was slow, going in circles sometimes, and I got bored at times and found myself doing other things while watching. The plot is quite cliché in my opinion and except for maybe around three characters the rest were very one-dimensional, especially the bad guys. We don't learn much about anyone anyway, so it's quite superficial and it didn't make me connect with any of them, not even the ML. I also liked Choi Mi Ryeo and Cho Kang Ok as characters but I so wish we had gotten so much more insight into them, I didn't learn much at all about them. The dynamics of ML with his classmates could have also been deeper, but because it wasn't what happened in the end of the drama made me feel nothing. It felt even the writers/director knew this though, because it's treated as very secondary, something that happened in the background.

I'm ok with anti-hero stories, I do generally prefer them over hero ones, but it's not new nor fresh, and cases of corruption at all levels have been done many times as well. I don't think this drama brings that much new to the table that wasn't there, so I was not awed by it and I thought it was average. It's still watchable, especially if you like action thrillers, but it's not a masterpiece by any means.
Echoing what another user said, the fighting choreography was not bad but the way it was filmed adds no tension and didn't do any favours to the overall fighting dynamics, at times I felt I was missing the good bits, camera in and out... quite chaotic in my opinion.
I don't think they achieve enough in terms of discourse, there isn't any depth in the corruption itself either, nor in its politics, or the police involvement. Obviously there is no real debate about the police as an institution, despite the ML being both in and out of it. I haven't read the original material and it makes me wonder if there was a lot more of that that was cut out of the story.

Recommended to those that like action thrillers, it's entertaining enough but keep your expectations low to mid level.

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I got lost in what message this wanted to tell me

There is something about this series that bugged me a lot, and it's the fact that in trying to have a social commentary about "beauty standards" it ended up framing the "ugly" characters as the worst of society. By the end of the show I was wondering if the message was that if you're "ugly" you'll end up being a murderer or a rapist or something in those lines, or you'll be a perv with dolls in your house. "Beautiful" people don't have any weird likes and spend their lives doing the most normal things, apparently. *sarcasm*
I get the metaphors in this show, don't get me wrong, at the end of the day for example Joo Oh Nam was going to try and rape her without her looks coming into consideration and Chun Ae would have also suffered the same consequences she got if she didn't operate, or how Choi Bu Yeong got his life because of his looks despite being a bad person. But I couldn't get that feeling out of me, and so as the show went on I started to sigh more deeply.
The message that might be there is not clear and doesn't speak loud enough, it's weak and gets put to the side for the shock value and the grittiness (also when she learnt she was pregnant I thought we were going to get a debate about that but apparently it was immediately accepted without any issues).

I liked the start and the premise of the story in relation to her real persona versus the internet one, but as other users have pointed out, this idea gets quickly overshadowed by the murder drama and the constant trauma from that point on. I also found very annoying that at no point it's shown (and so I understand she didn't mention to the police or in trial) what happened during the incident and why she killed him. Either way, from that point on it's just trauma and a relentless psycho mother.
The plot then just becomes boring and predictable and I found myself wondering if 7 episodes were even needed, especially towards the end. I think honestly this could have been a movie.
About the mother Kyung Ja as a character, for better or for worse I've met in the past mothers that would completely ignore the evidence of their children doing wrong and would go completely ballistic at anyone that would dare say something wrong about them, so she worked well in my opinion as the ultimate "evil" in here, even though I do not personally find it interesting enough to be something I would like to dwell on or watch many episodes of like in this case, but as a concept it works for me.

If there was any morality to be learnt from this show I got none, maybe that you should operate your face as soon as you can so you can have a normal or privileged life before things get out of control? *sarcasm*

I give points for the acting, it was good as it was the general atmosphere and photography, as well as a good idea for the story that sadly becomes average thriller. Special mention to Ahn Jae Hong in both his performance and characterisation. Also special mention to Lee Han Byeol, I liked her as main character and I was sad when she didn't appear anymore, I think she's very pretty, and saying this (and having read some questions and comments the actress received), you know, the show could have actually dwelled on how beauty is completely subjective and "beauty standards" are a lie and shouldn't exist, that would have been a lot more interesting.

Rewatch value for me this has none and I would only recommend to those that like thrillers and are not triggered by rape, murder, trauma and overall grittiness, otherwise avoid completely as some scenes are not pleasant to watch.

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Characters are annoying.

I was not sure how to rate this drama to be honest. I did entertain me at times and I was annoyed and bored at others.
Would I recommend? I think there are better things out there and generally I wouldn't recommend.

Firstly, I do think this drama is too long, and there are times when nothing happens and the slice of life being shown is not entertaining enough (and I generally like slice of life dramas). That being said, I found the middle part the worst one, because it became way too melodramatic but I was not feeling it at all, I only felt annoyed at the main character for the way she was handling things.
I give points for it being the most convincing gender bending drama I've seen so far. Sure, there were moments when it was clear she was a woman because of her figure but compared with other dramas I've seen it gets all my points for that.
There are certain concepts in this drama that I feel are now obsolete with the times, especially when it comes to the aspect of the woman having to take care of the household once married and the view on homosexuality.

When it comes to the characters, something I found bothersome is that there are not many women in this drama but they're all terrible, what a way to go... Even the grandmother that seemed just fine in the beginning turns into a classic controlling over protective grandma for a while (but hey, at least she does change).
Eun Chan was entertaining in the first few episodes (even if childish for her age) and then increasingly annoying, selfish and her tantrums ended up making me angry. I found quite insulting how she was not thinking how Han Gyul would be feeling in terms of questioning his whole life and sexuality for her simply because he thought she was a man (the implications of so in a society very against it). She was so oblivious and self-centered, and she continued to be that way the whole show, she was ok for him to give up his life dream but she couldn't make an effort to compromise with him about the marriage and finding a middle ground they could both be happy about. I understood her thoughts in regards to her father, but I still thought that she lacked maturity for thinking that every single situation and people you encounter will be the same.

Han Gyul was more tolerable to me although I despised a lot how he handled his crush for Eun Chan by sistematically insulting her and dragging her to do whatever he wanted during work. Totally not ok.

Yoo Joo is the kind of woman I've met before in real life, keeps her options open and uses men around her (knowing they like her) whenever convenient. She's a prime example of hypocrisy and the fact she hardly acknowledged this was giving me narcissistic vibes. She was love bombing and provoking Han Sung constantly and I would have prefered their story to be one of moving on and healing. Han Sung on the other hand is the classic "nice guy", and they try somehow to convince you that despite his mistakes he's still such a "nice guy". Funny enough, for me it was not the kissing or the crush he had on Eun Chan what did it, it was the way he was expecting certain traditional family dynamics once he married Yoo Joo, in a very "oh we're married now so I can finally control you".

All the princes at the café were also a hot mess. Sun Gi was a stalker, and then he only is nice to a girl in the end because she spoke japanese? Rude!! Also, while it can happen that people swears in their mother tongue naturally sometimes, he (if I didn't hear wrong) was half korean, so although not explained, chances are he was raised bilingual and the chances of that happening are very low. It was done for the funs, but personally I've always disliked when they do that. Ha Rim was background character, he started being a playboy and ended up being a playboy. Min Yeop was the classic dumb-fun character, and it would have been nice if he had grown up a bit, or they had shown to say no to toxic relationships but he didn't progress at all. Eun Chan's sister was the extrovert narcissist type, and so she manipulated, gaslighted and selfishly cared for no one but herself.
Eun Chan's mother was also a piece of work, and I don't even know why her story with the shop owner is shown, it goes nowhere, it was a filler. Han Gyul's parents were the nicest people in this show, they were a lot more grounded, but then again, I guess they must suck at parenting because they raised Han Gyul to be as he is when the show starts so... That being said, I do still think that Han Gyul is the character that changes the most throughout the show.

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What nonsense is this?

I seriously thought that they would actually focus on his journey and it would be more introspective but this, I just don't know what the point of it was.

I'm getting real tired of shows using Europe as a country, like if the differences between one country and another were at the level of between states in the US. It was very clearly not Brussels and it was annoying they were trying to sell me it was. I don't know, the ML could have actually gone to Budapest and the story could have been set there, but I guess it would sell less? Maybe many people don't know where Budapest is?
This movie was way more melodramatic than it needed to be, or at least the melodramatic bits needed to be in other moments not the ones chosen. At points it keeps dwelling on it but I just couldn't care, meanwhile things like the fact his mother's corpse was sold is mentioned a few times for shock value but doesn't have the emotional depth that other less interesting moments have, for example.
I started to roll my eyes when he kept finding locals and would get beaten up for the stupidest things, it was so unrealistic and even the lighting changes between those rough moments and the end of the movie. Now he made it I'm sure he won't bump into anyone that will beat him to nearly death... *logic not found*. Once ok, but he was beaten up so many times or pushed around like a pathetic box of potatoes too many times in a short time span to be realistic in my opinion.

As other reviewers have mentioned as well, that's not how the process for refugees works, not only in Belgium but also in other European countries. If they wanted more realistic melodrama they could have tackled for example that there has been cases of abuse and terrible conditions in refugee centres.

Then he finally has the court meeting and he just runs out because of the girl and somehow he still gets the refugee status? Excuse me? I guess he didn't even need to go in the first place then, "this court case could have been an email".

The female lead was a very unlikeable character and I still don't understand what her deal was. She was a spoiled brat. She clearly comes from a family with money and she rebels against the father because her mother passed and I guess she's against assisted death but it was not her decision anyway but the mother's? So she has a tantrum that gets her into trouble and that kind of life. I still don't understand why the gangsters would care so much about her in the end, and if they did to that extend they would have found her in whatever country she went to. Equally unrealistic is that she used drugs but didn't suffer the consequences of any of it.

The romance here could have been a side story and I thought it would, but as a main plot it's just not there. Their love doesn't grow in a realistic way nor it was realistic that he would risk so much for her. Two minutes prior he was telling her about the razor and how he and his mother were ready to end their lives than be deported, the next he's leaving the court to run after her even though, from his knowledge and perspective, he doesn't know what or if anything has happened to her. Also, call the police or something? I don't get it. He's the masochist type I guess, he didn't have enough hardships that he decided to put her baggage onto his shoulders too. Sorry but I don't think many people would do that for a fling. Sure, they say they love each other but I felt nothing other than "boy, you have a problem".

The "airport" at the end was the cherry on top, and the FL in that ending was quite puzzling until you remember that she has daddy's money I guess.

Acting is good but it can't save the mess it's the writing and the overall execution. I don't know how different the book might be but I'm zero interested after watching this movie I'm afraid.

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Full of clichés and the looks of a rich style magazine

This show is for some reason very overhyped.
This drama was a chore to finish for me, but I'm the completitionist type and so I endured. Otherwise I would have dropped it around episode 4 or 5.

The plot in this show is laughable. It had potential as a premise if they had gone on a different direction but as it is, it's just pointless and it doesn't even bother in explaining how things work in the fantasy of this world. One of the main things that annoyed me so much is how they decided to include once again the super cliché of main leads knowing one another from previous life (hers that is) while completely ignoring the core christian believe that the whole series wants to portray. Nothing is really that explained anyway, even his powers as a demon are mentioned superficially. Actually, the fact he's a demon is just overall brushed over and it's a background prop to be used in some scenes. It could have been cool and more explored but it wasn't.

Both main characters did have a bit of personality at the start, something that made them more individual, but this is dropped very early on as soon as they start being together, they become baseline neutral with nothing unique. Their quirks are completely dropped . Rich girl meets rich boy and they fall in love, how refreshing. She also becomes damsel in distress and he's your average "bad boy" that is actually not bad but that it gives him the edge to be appealing to viewers. Whether he was bad or not it's not really explored, because except for a couple of grey area situations the show always wants to portray him as good.
In other clichés we also have here, we include two forgettable side characters that are interested in the main two (and mid show they were almost unbearable, especially Jin Ga Young).

All scenes and environments are very fabricated as if taken from a photo-shoot of the actors for a fashion magazine, and so it happens in outdoors scenes too, the little magical details are very on the face put there purposely, some little fireflies, some bubbles, some water droplets...etc.
This also brings me to the fashion. The whole show is basically a catwalk for upper fashion trends and their hair and makeup is always ˖⁺‧₊˚✦perfect˖⁺‧₊˚✦ Not even when they are in bed there is a hair out of place nor they stain the bed sheets despite having a cake of makeup on.

Continuing with the clichés we also have the funny side character couple that while it made me chuckle a couple of occasions and overall I think they were better than the main couple, some others it crossed the line too much into second-hand-embarrassment territory.
Side characters are just very superficial and add nothing to the story nor we learn much from them either despite sometimes having longer scenes than they should for that amount of pointless dialogue. This is the case of all office workers for example as well as some of the family members of FL.
The villains here are very cliché and their motives are just plain bad, and they all had itchy rashes because... they're sooo *evil*. There is a bit of a motive for their actions but then towards the end it crosses the line of absurdity. The cherry on top was main villain falling from that tower and surviving, eyes rolling I saw stars✧˖°

Some of the moments with more tension, like for example that moment between the end of episode 15 and beginning of 16 are solved in such an anticlimatic and fast way that you wonder why they even bothered. Clearly the whole idea of this drama was creating those ˖⁺‧₊˚✦perfect˖⁺‧₊˚✦ moments where they hug, kiss or look at each other and they filled the rest of the episodes with things in-between so it looked like something. But it seems they didn't even manage enough fillers to do this since after the beginning of episode 16 when they already solved the main issue they still had so many minutes to fill the episode with little bits of secondary characters that no one cares about because the plot didn't care for them before anyway. Also, Jin Ga Young spent half the series saying she was going but didn't lol and then when actually something interesting happens to her in the last episode that could have been explored as a small side plot and it's just left there. What the actual hell is this writing lol

There is not really a discussion on anything obviously, like morality for example. At one point FL is taken aback by the reality of the ML's work as a demon, but then it's brushed off because the script said so and because they have the lame excuse he saved her mother when she was pregnant with FL. It was as weak of a plot point as expected.
The most interesting character in this show is God, but obviously is a background character just so she could save him in the end. I liked the detail of her hat.

Overall I think that while there are shows that can be entertaining and use some clichés, this one almost was playing a bingo to see how many of them they could include in this show. For me personally what makes this one worse than some other shows that also use clichés is that overuse of very crafted scenes, fashion and hair/makeup that make everything look so much more fake rather than fantastical. Even their more intimate moments are just so on the face "we're doing this now" that it was taking me out of it and I didn't find it cute. This is paired with the fact I didn't think the main actors had that much chemistry and specifically ML actor was so stiff at times.

Something else that I found extremely annoying in this show are the recap scenes. Sometimes you would have a recap of scenes two minutes after some of the scenes in that recap had happened. This was so overused that I started skipping them. As I said, they simply didn't have enough material for this show and they reused as many scenes as they could as recaps of cute moments between characters or to reminisce about some character.
Product placement is also quite on the face many times.

Music is also very annoying, they reuse the same couple of songs continuously to no end. Also the song that one of the bad guys in the beginning was using and that becomes a trigger for FL, who in their right mind would say to their partner "now it's our song". Like, excuse me sir? just because you say now it's our song it doesn't mean the trauma is going to disappear. But here it does because script said so. I didn't suffer what FL had and yet every time that song appeared again it was irksome to me as a viewer so imagine someone that has nearly died and associates that song with a psycho. I would knock my boyfriend's head with a saucepan if he told me that song is "our" song now. No thanks!!


If you want to watch because of the ML, or you don't mind extremely thin plot and very fabricated everything then you might enjoy this. If you care about plot AVOID this, it's not worth the time I assure you. If you care about certain level of realisticness even in fantastical settings then avoid this too, there are no explanations for almost anything and the main focus is put in the main leads intimate moments and them walking from one place to another in ˖⁺‧₊˚✦perfect˖⁺‧₊˚✦ fashion.

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Melodrama only, can't catch a break, no romance here

I feel like I was totally lied by the description of this drama. First of all it shouldn't be labelled as romance because there is bare minimum of it, but more than that, the way the plot is described it's very misleading. If you're expecting some sort of introspection, self-discovery and warmness this it not for you. This is most of all a MELODRAMA, and not much else (Netflix labels this as intimate and romantic, WHAT? NO). I wasted too much time watching this and being disappointed because even as a melodrama the execution and plot were very annoying and a big miss. It wants to be way too many things at the same time and manages to do none right, romance? nope, crime? nope, mystery? nope.
To answer "What will happen when these two lost souls meet – and will a spell of “doing nothing” in this small town really cure their ills?" Nothing will happen when they meet, and their ills will just magically disappear by the end just because the drama ran out of time.

Girl goes to the countryside to try and heal from her life in Seoul and somehow manages to move to the most toxic town she could find and ends up living in an unlivable place that also has history. What are the chances...
I really got lost in the cost of things in this drama. I get she didn't have many savings but, she was most likely paying a small fortune for her apartment in Seoul and you're telling me she couldn't find a decently priced apartment or even room in a small town? I know it was because of the plot, but it had my eyes rolling.
I'm still mad at how many situations were solved in the worst way possible and how mostly none of the characters had much growth at all. The main character is considered weak and manipulated and used in various ways and there is not much indication she has changed anything in that regard towards the end. Dae Beom did change some maybe, but all I could think was how it feels like Yim Si Wan is now typecasted as the shy guy that runs or something... (and I say this as someone that loved Run On).
It's very unrealistic how by the end she stays and somehow they try to tell me she moved to a good place and will have a pleasant life, the girl didn't catch a break since she put foot on that place, I'm sure there are amazing towns all around Korea, I wouldn't have stayed in that one...

If the drama had focused on her moving to that town, the connections with other residents and more of introspection it would have been so much nicer for me. Had I known it was classified as a melodrama I wouldn't have bothered. There are some nice moments here and there between the characters but for me it was not enough to justify the watch. The toxicity of many of the side characters and the situations that arised continuously made this hard to watch.
"Making time for the important in life", what I guess means dealing with violence, abuse, toxicity and having your place destroyed... hmmmm... ok.

Special mention to Dae Beom's friend Jo Ji Young, what a piece of manipulative work. Somehow they're trying to tell me she's lovesick and "oh poor her". She was selfish, manipulative and plain awful as a friend and as a person.
Also, what was the point of Jae Hoon going back to the US for two minutes and coming back? What was that waste of screen time for?

I'm quite puzzled by the high ratings of this drama. Unless you like melodrama I can't recommend, there are many other dramas a lot nicer than this one so I wouldn't waste the time.

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Curious concept and cute fantasy costumes are the only good thing here

To be honest most of my rating went down because of the ending, had they dealt with that differently this would have been a passable 5 surprisingly. It would have been one of those bad movies that are still surprisingly entertaining with its many flaws.

I went with very low expectations and only started watching it to kill some time, only by the preview I already thought it was going to be cringy and bad, and I was generally not wrong, but surprisingly I did find it more entertaining than expected because of the plot.
The whole vibe this was giving me was school play, flashy costumes, everything clean and staged, exaggerated acting or amateur acting and so on, even the premise is kind of weird since it's mostly Cinderella but Red Riding Hood is there just because. It's fine, I could get at some points not even themselves were taking it too seriously, especially towards the beginning. They didn't seem to have high expectations and nor did I have them, so I just chilled and watched.

Plot became interesting with the crime and the changes to the different characters compared with the most known story version of Cinderella but then they just went with a classic detective Conan move of revealing everything at the end instead of taking us with them for the ride. I enjoyed Conan when I was a kid but it would get repetitive and boring after a while because he would only solve everything in the last two minutes bringing evidence that no one, not even the spectator, knew about. This was very similar in that respect and I could still have given it a general pass if it wasn't for that victim blaming right there.
Sure, Cinderella shouldn't have done what she did (especially with her sister), BUT the guy was assaulting her plus everyone else knew that guy had been doing it for a while to other women as well... sure, he was powerful but considering he was not in good terms with the prince either you would think that power would be deminished by that single fact and she would get a sentence based on the nuance of the situation. Either way, I'm going here on details when the movie didn't care much for them at all, what makes that ending as bad as it is. Moral of the story is don't defend yourself when a guy is physically assaulting you I guess.
Although moral of the story is don't judge people by their physical appearance according to them, but they all had thick makeup on (maybe just me but especially the prince, wow, it was not subtle at all), hair with a tone of hairspray and pristine clothing, including Red Riding Hood eventhough she wasn't even a local. I guess at the end we got the message that we shouldn't discriminate against people with face scars and freckles, what is already an achievement considering many people in Japan think freckles are ugly.

I'm only giving it a two because the concept wasn't that bad even with the whole cringe fest of everything, but that ending and its morality deserves a zero.

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Slow, childish, plotholes, poor execution of a story that could have been great.

I had seen so many people mentioning how good this drama was that I decided to give it a go having nothing else to watch. I was disappointed and I didn't even have high hopes as I find hyped shows are usually not my cup of tea.

The first third of this drama was hard to watch and I had to push myself to continue, mostly I found the portrayal of a 19 year old girl very unrealistic, she was very childish. Maybe it's just me, but I've never met (nor was I that way) anyone that age to act like that. Then I kind of got used to it by the middle, but also she seemed to slowly get out of it when she turned 20, what was also unrealistic. To top it over, Goblin was doing the opposite and as the drama goes he becomes more childish. Not going to lie it was funny at times, but overall it was mostly cringy.
The age gap of the characters was problematic (without taking into account the 900 years) and to me it made it worse the fact they blatantly tried to make this look better by making him more childish, also because it felt it tainted his character as this important and powerful Goryeo warrior. I feel there was a problem with trying to keep this balance of wanting to be serious and sad and tragic with the romcom aspect, I couldn't take things as seriously.
I think the story would have been a lot better had they started it when she was 29, it could have been way more mature. I did like the relationship of the 3 as housemates though and I found it the best part of the show.

There are too many plotholes and I could give it a pass if it wasn't because they had plenty of running time to address them. For example, the images of their Goryeo lives were repeated over and over way too much but in the end I didn't feel they fully showed well enough how things happened. Despite those images, I'm being told what happened more than shown, what is a shame. A lot of times the show seemed to go in circles not wanting to commit to a path for the story, at least not until the later episodes as usual (I seriously dislike this common thing of not doing anything until two episodes of the end, make a film instead!!), but by the end I was already kind of tired of the story to the point that I couldn't care enough for the consequences that were about to happen to the characters. Talking about characters, so many side characters with lost potential and so many plotholes in all characters.

The ending is... I don't want to say bad because it could have been worse, but... it's bad. Could have been poetic, could have been satisfactory but it's none and it's solved in the most weird, anticlimatic and pointless way in my opinion. So much potential for epic-ness wasted in there.

I have watched worse dramas than this one, but I still don't think I would be able to recommend this one if simply for the fact it's too long and not much happens to justify its run time. If it's because any or all of the actors, then go ahead, but if you don't care about the actors and are there for the story then I would say look somewhere else because this is not it.

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Directionless plot, slow, use of tropes and the classic ignorance of how a teen behaves

Before starting this drama I was already skeptical about the deserted island setting. I feel it's something that can't really work much as a plot device if the story is set in modern times, and this show didn't prove me wrong.
Mostly we have to take this whole story as pure fantasy, but even in the constraints of plausibility in a fantastical world, here there are things that simply don't work and that are just left as plotholes and the rest is just a collection of unrealistic situations that will make you facepalm very hard or that you'll have to brush off to move on with the story.

I find with this series there is a lack of a focus in the plot. Sure, we have a FL and the plot seems to follow her from the start mostly, only that it gets sidetracked multiple times along the way and ultimately feels like her story line didn't progress much nor it made much the impact it could have. The abusive father of ML is the only constant linear plot line in this show, even though if still with a dose of unrealistic-ness and quite dragged.

The start was good and overall it was so much more interesting and I was more invested in the story line in the beginning. I think this is mostly as well because I thought the young actors did such a better job at the characters than the older ones. I don't understand why it's a constant issue that if someone older plays like they're stuck in their teen years mentally they have to do some weird overacting that it's just immensely cringe. Don't they remember their teen years? This is becoming a new trope I absolutely despise.
What was the point of her being stuck in that island anyway? This is only used as a plot device in a couple of occasions as flashbacks and any other setting could have been used anyway. It's a small part of the plot and I don't think adds anything. She should be so much more mature precisely because of her life experiences in that island but as it's mentioned in the show itself, she's childish like that because she didn't continue her education.... excuse me what?

The love story in this show is quite anticlimactic and the "love triangle" if it can even be called that, it's unnecessary as always.
A lot of the plot points are just like that because the script said so, otherwise they make no sense, like Ki-ho hiding his identity to her knowing she's looking for him, like so much could have been avoided if he had told her straight away and told her the situation and to keep it secret. It's just so silly. Also he goes from that to then wanting her to be famous like all of a sudden he doesn't care anymore.

The biggest middle chunk of the show the attention is mostly on Ran Joo's character more than the FL, to the point the whole premise of her career as a singer is put to the side. At this point I lost most of the interest I still had for the story. Ran Joo's character is not bad but it's not great either and if I was supposed to feel sorry for her I didn't because her situation could be so much worse, especially when compared with the Kang family whose dynamics, by the way, were of the best of the show.

I think overall for a short drama it didn't have a clear idea of what it wanted to focus on, there were multiple subplots and the execution of them was not done in the best way, the story progressed in chunks of focusing on one thing or another what I get why they did it that way but it just added more to the unrealistc-ness of it all. Moreover, some of the characters would also keep changing from one side to the other what would do or undo the plot as it goes. The worst of all of this is that it makes you lose interest as it changes because most plot lines become very dragged as a result. Points for having so many story lines and characters at the same time and somehow still manage to make it boring.
There were a few conversations between characters that were engaging and I shared their sentiments but most of the others were very uninteresting and added nothing to the story or character development.
FL is cringe, ML is background character, couldn't care for Ran Joo, second ML (Woo Hak) has more screen time than the first and yet his personal story goes really nowhere (and he had more chemistry with FL too), and I have no idea why Lee Seo Joon is considered main character, he spent the series going in circles. Kang parents were great and I wish we got more of Mo Rae since she seemed somewhat interesting.

No more amnesia trope PLEASE. I'm so done with it, let's just leave it back in the past where it should remain. It was annoying at the time and it's even more annoying now.
This is also labelled as "comedy" here but I really don't know why, there are zero comedy moments unless people laughs at FL accent and "teen" attitude what it's actually insulting because it perpetuates this idea that certain accents/dialects mean the person is ignorant and dumb, she even somewhat drops it in the last episode, because now she's a *proper singer*... meh.

I debated giving this a 5 because I've seen worse and it had some nice moments, but writing this review and thinking about the series really stopped me. It is watchable if there is nothing else to watch and some of the songs were nice but I generally can't recommend. It doesn't know what it wants to be and manages to do everything half way in a dragged and boring way.

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Dragged, plotholes and a downgrade from previous season.

I really liked the first season of Arthdal Chronicles, found it entertaining, the lore was interesting and it kept a very decent pace considering the length of its episodes.
I had seen the change of actors and I was slightly skeptical just simply because I was not sure if the characters would be able to keep the consistency they had being different actors. This was partially true.
I like both Lee Joon Gi and Shin Sae Kyeong but after watching the season I'm still left like I'm not quite sure how I feel about them in the roles. For the most part I think Lee Joon Gi did a good job as Eunseom but I was not feeling it with Saya. This could be totally the fault of the writing though so I do not blame him for it entirely. Samely, I felt Shin Sae Kyeong did a good job for the most part but the character felt very unemotional and superficial compared to the characterization I remember from the first season, again, it might not be her fault, but it's how I felt it.

For the most part I think the worst downgrade in this season was the writing and plot in general. There were a few problems I found in the cinematography as well (like the weird blur at times) but I can give those a pass. The plot though, it was absolutely dragged to fill episodes to get to the minimum. Back and forth constantly to then a rushed ending that could have been gradually done in a couple or three episodes instead of condensed in one. There were very weird plotholes and bad execution. For example, there is that time when Tagon wounds Yangcha and Tanya has a mini conversation with him and I guess Tagon was waiting in the background looking at the watch and waiting for them to have their moment or something... That was not the only instance of something similar happening and it was very sloppy.
The plot was not as solid as the first season, I guess they couldn't keep Tagon in the grey area anymore because otherwise it wouldn't make of him the pure classic evil to be dethroned, but I thought it was cliché and overall generally boring. His relationship with Taealha was weird as well, one second they were going to kill each other and then they're ok the next, there was not enough insight into it to understand fully how they could be normal when two seconds prior she was going to stab him or something.
I think they had enough time to do a decent prologue instead of an open ended hint to a possible next season that who knows if it will happen. Also what happened with the prophecy that said about the three of them together? I was kind of confused really because the ending suggests something very different, and I was disappointed that they were taking Saya in that direction, repetitive? boring? cliché? I don't know, I liked the first season because it was a bit fresh but in this one they were falling into very repetitive stereotypes. Saya was a very interesting character but in this one I couldn't care less about him.
Then you have characters that appear suddenly at some point and it's like major reveal but you're like "what's the point of you being here now", like most of the momo tribe for example, ones save the day and die, the others appear only in the last episode.
I kind of wish also they had gone in a more mysticism way at some point, not so much what they did with the gods and Aramun and all that that got repetitive real quick, but I would have liked to see a lot more of the neanthals living in nature for example. I remember more of that and a lot more lore in the first season as well.
Apart from the couple of neanthals that I always liked to see, in this one I generally liked Yangcha and Nunbyeol as characters the most.
The acting was generally good, there were moments that were cool, characters that I liked, production was generally decent enough and I'm ultimately happy I could see this story to more or less an end.
I'll rewatch the first season at some point but I probably won't bother with this one.

It's watchable and if you have watched the first one and want to know how it continues then this is for you. If you haven't watched the first season I would avoid this one since it's a downgrade, writing is worse, it's slow and not much really happens when you strip it from their back and forth. Go watch the first one instead.

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