I'm curious about something. Did they choose the male cast according to their lips?! Seriously I was watching their lips not the drama!
Anyway cast is amazing. Even the ones don't have lines was great. Jongsuk's bad boy acts were amazing. He has a cute face but he really pull that off!
Woobin is usually plays a bad boy and the one that "gets no love in love triangles".
Daniel is good at showing the emotions with only his expressions. He does not need words or background music. I hope he'll play fun, happy character next time!
I'm usually picky when it comes to actresses. This one I like Hyoyoung and Jang Na Ra. I love Nam Kyungmin!
I saw other school dramas too but this one makes me cry the most.
This one has no significant music that I can talk about. They could've use amazing songs but they didn't!
So many teacher jung scenes makes this show a little boring. Why show every text scene with details? Just show she's texting who if you wanna show it so badly. That was unneccesary!
STILL I like it. It's worth to watch it but only once.
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Existence as theater doubling as a puzzle
There's so much good to say for this so unusual drama. It balances between various types of relationships, friendships, surrogate sibling love, parental and filial love, but the characters are often making it unexpected, and it could take rewatches to extract the complete flavor of 不良执念清除师 ( Bu Liang Zhi Nian Qing Chu Shi = Unhealthy obsessions clearers).There are strange happenings and tendrils of heart blood snaking around the wrist that wields the brush as a tool to give closure to ancient but lingering grief. Reminding sometimes of the Zhang Xiaogang "Bloodlines" paintings. But the grief is not grounded in recent History, but in stories that could be ordinary if they did not gain added significance through the excellent acting of the protagonists. The beauty is also that all these stories are connected, through the investigation of course, but also through the relevance they have to young Yiyong's own obsessions. He acts as a magnet drawing to him spirits that are yearning for help, and acquaintances that become friends or assistants. He quickly becomes the center of a trio, with a former classmate and a young woman police officer, who quickly finds that she could consider the young men as her own assistants in the investigation of unsolved cases. The three although almost opposed from circumstances of their past and present, become sort of friends, close enough to be a sort of brother-sisterhood that can share views (literally seeing what others can't! ), food, drinks, even a bedside to ward away fears of the unknown. They are friends after a while, although they can be stinging and wound the pride of each other with carelessly flung utterances (especially the policewoman).
They are like pieces of a puzzle, much like the scraps of charred paper that Yiyong collects after his "missions", which connect together to reveal a benevolent meaning. From the start, their names show how much they are fated together like the four "treasures" of the literary Chinese: 《笔、墨、纸、砚》, bǐ, mò, zhǐ, yàn. (brush, ink, paper and stone)
* Pu Yiyong 蒲一永(played by Tseng Jing-hua 曾敬驊 born 1997)
His family name 蒲 immediately reminds of literary connections with ghost story writer Pú Sōnglíng (蒲松齡 1640-1715),
"yi" is "one" as in "the first" and the most important
and "Yǒng" 永 is the well-known "eternity" calligraphic character;
of course Pu Yiyong is a calligrapher, as well as a budding manhua artist, wielding the 笔 bǐ brush (or pen, when used in drawing or ordinary modern writing).
* Chen Chuying 陈楮 楮(played by Vivian Sung Yunhua 宋芸樺 born 1992)
Her name Chén 陈 is shared with Chen Zhonglin also known as Xu Zhonglin ( 陈/许仲琳; 1567 -1620 ) a famous Ming novelist who wrote the fantasy novel Investiture of the Gods , as well as being the birth name Chén Yi 陳禕 of the famous monk Xuanzang玄奘 (so perhaps a roundabout hint to another super-famous trio of quasi supernatural literary characters: monkey king Sun Wukong 孙悟空 ; pig Zhu Bajie 猪八戒; and sand demon Sha Wujing 沙悟淨 who accompany Tang Sanzang 唐三藏/ex Xuanzang Dharma name in the epic Journey To The West)
"Chǔ"楮 is the paper mulberry variety that produces 宣纸 "xuānzhǐ "paper (rice, bamboo have also been used to produce it) used for traditional Chinese calligraphy
"ying" 英 means "heroic", "brave", "brilliant" combined with other Chinese characters: (英雄 yingxiong = hero), (英明 yingming = wise, brilliant)
* Cao GuangYan 曹光研 (played by Peng Cian You 彭千祐 born 1993)
His surname "Cáo" 曹, shared with the famous statesman and general CaoCao (曹操 155-220) can also be found in "yincao" 阴曹= the Netherworld, Hell, Hades;
"guāng"光 means "bright" showing his qualities of clearing up the esoteric murk through a sunny disposition and a rational outlook,
"yàn" 研 is the character in the "yàn tái" 研 台 ink stone on which the ink stick made of ashes is ground in water to make the 墨 mò ink. The character also appears in "Yánjiū yuán" 研究员 ="researcher", or "Yányou" 研 友 other word for classmate (making me chuckle about the memory of the name of the Zodiac snake in the xianxia drama "Ashes of love", but that's an unrelated one).
So, tied together with all these heavily laden symbolic names, the puzzling trio can't help "writing reports" and being instrumental in Pu Yiyong's writing of the magic eulogies that will help seekers find solace and closure for their yearning.
The three young Taiwanese actors, as well as their supporting cast, are excellent in their roles, which are non romantic. One key character in the end of the drama is Chanon Santinatornkul, nicknamed Nonkul or Non, born 1996 in Thailand, who has attained fame in China since 2017.
The CGI is well used and the smokey ghost (seemingly bound by destiny to the Pu family) seen shimmering at the bedside of the granddad, is rather striking, as well as the disintegration and flaking off of some ghostly characters.
The urban landscape is quite typically Taiwanese, and the low furniture, as well as the pronunciation in mandarin (with accent, absence of rolling "erhua" -r finals that are typical of northern and Beijing speech, and shift from zh/ch/sh to z/c/s sounds, influence of the 7 tones Taiwanese, where northern mandarin has only 4 tones ) show the differences with mainland styles.
The drama gives at times the feeling of a stage theater play, with the insistence of the protagonists, the staged appearance of the Doll, the Chinese opera quality of the Tatoo... Is it a tragedy? Is it a comedy? Is it a mystery? All of that, of course: living and dying is putting on a show permanently! First : delineate (make a drawing) of the new characters, next, assemble the clues to recreate the puzzle that they represent...
Music: The opening theme music creates a mysterious and obsessive atmosphere. The end credit song : Painful Hug (痛苦擁抱) by Ozone can be found with subtitles here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A-z5VWLWsM
The insert song: Extraordinary (不凡) by Chang Ruo Fan (張若凡) can be listened to here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Su_gTQL093o
Will I re-watch ? Most probably, to better appreciate some dialogues and jokes, since there is also a lot of humor in these "distressing" cases of abandonment, harassment and even murder! I am already appreciating the circular movement of time with the first images and the last event.
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Delightfully surprised of how addicting this drama became
I began this drama and thought it was good but in the last 20 episodes, it catapulted to an engrossing and excellent drama. The story from the middle on was so captivating and addicting. I couldn't wait to see what will happen in the next episode. There is, of course, some predictability in the story but it was still great to watch. I'll leave the review of the story to other reviews here but it was the great acting team beginning with Ba Jing Ting and Song Yi to the excellent acting of other leads and support cast that really stood out and was so excellent.What a beautiful and talented cast. For example, Lie Xiu Yi, one of my top favorite actors, is soooo talented. He can play a morally corrupted villain with multiple layers of past pain, a complex character. with ease... And he can play a sweetheart in romcoms. It really doesn't matter what role they give him, he always performs at peak level. I love to love him and I love to hate him. The rest of the cast did really well, like Zhang Hao Wei who is one of my favorite actors as well. He looks like a young John Cusack (Am I crazy? lol). Anyway, he did great in his role. I especially wanted to mention Zhao Huan Ran playing his role to perfection as well. One minute I felt sorry for him, the next minute, I grrrr at him and wanted to strangle him lol. He did an amazing job with his facial expressions from mental instability to a lost lamb type wanting his father's approval... Etc. I can go on and on about the acting. I was very impressed. ^^
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Sometimes incoherent, huge plot holes esp towards the end, but for the most part pretty enjoyable.
For me at least. Episodes 10 & 11 really brought down this story for me. I feel like Never Let Me Go started out so strong but somewhere along the way it lost its way. It's like the writers lost interest and were just trying to finish it the soonest possible. It was pretty obvious because things started to make no sense. Character motivations sometimes felt out of nowhere and left people scratching their heads with their actions. Some characters were just a waste of space eg Ben and Chopper. Seriously, what was their point in this series? The villain was also laughable. The writers intent was to make him this scary, unstoppable force but in the end he just came out as a clown.Also, something happened with Phuwin and Ponds acting after episode 9. It was very flat and like neither of the two cared how bad their performance was. They just wanted to be done with it and that's that. That's one of the things that took me out of the series and made me lower the rating to 8.5 paired with the plot holes. Aside from that I feel like before they hit episode 10, they were really giving it their all and I was enjoying watching them portray more mature roles compared to their time in Fish Upon the Sky. The story and acting may have been up and down but something that wasn't was their chemistry. That's really what kept me coming back episode to episode. Luckily episode 12 felt like the beginning of the series again both in the acting department and the writing. I was satisfied with the way it ended.
Despite my huge problems with Never Let Me Go towards the end. I still pretty much enjoyed it and thanks to episodes 1-9 & 12 it's one of my favorites of the year. Due to the suspense, acting, chemistry and action aspects of the series. The filming locations were gorgeous. If we ever get another series like this, I hope the writers sit down and watch some of the mistakes they made with NVLMG and improve on them. Overall I give this an 8.5 and would recommend. Despite it's flaws it's still worth a watch.
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One of the better movies out there
I really liked this movie. I would like to see a drama made from it so the story background could be explained more and the romance part made longer. Lol I am a romantic😉.Storyline - I liked it. Only thing is that I have found with Chinese movies is that they cut a lot and jump a lot to tell the story. The difference from American and Asian movies, as far as I can tell, is that American movies based off a novel is just that - based off a novel that is anywhere from a couple of hundred pages to a couple of thousand. And I may be wrong but I have noticed most Asian dramas are based off a manga that runs for weeks to months to maybe years to tell the story and so most Chinese, Korean, and Asian dramas are long and many episodes so they can cover all the details. So for me the movies always fall short because there is to much story to put into a couple of hours and it gets chopped. I did really like this one however. It covered the basic and you understood what was going on throughout the movie. I just wish it had more background story to really tell why this was happening and so on. But again that would make for a very long movie like Lord of the Rings. But it was a good show.
Acting/Cast - I really liked the FL. I have seen her in many CDramas and have really grown to like her. She did a really good job in this movie. As for the ML this is my first time seeing him and I was not disappointed. He did a great job.
Music - was good. I liked it a lot as I do all CDramas and KDrama music.
Rewatch - It is a definite YES! I did like it. I recommend it.
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I Loved it. Aside from having one of my favorite actresses in the lead role, the story line and the movement from episode to episode held my interest to the point that, when the final credits were rolling, and I realized there were no more plot twists to come, I got that sinking feeling, "What will I watch next that'll make me not miss this one so much?" With each plot element rolled out in regular succession, the tale got deeper and deeper into my own psyche. I felt at times like my own suspension of disbelief had been stretched to its outer limit. Still, at other times, (when not being so particular), I was held in rapt attention waiting for the next clue to drop. I suppose that's what we're in it for and this one had it in spades.
The push-pull of repulsion-attraction-repulsion-attraction between the main characters wasn't as contrived as most dramas make it and these characters seemed to be going through real emotional turmoil. And (it makes sense) that the cure to their necessarily constant proximity, had to be prolonged separation which only complicated matters toward the end. Life and death (and the paradoxes of a middle ground somewhere in between) were vividly explored and exhaustively teased out.
As the resolution to each episode's immediate conundrum was reached, the leads were more unstable in their own relationship. Questioning their own motives and each other's sincerity. Each metaphysical entanglement wrought further existential complications. I even started to think that whatever happens to shatter the binding spell between the two, couldn't be worse than the constant dithering between affirmation and denial; passion and antipathy.
Toss in supporting characters whose presence in the piece created a subversive dynamic tension that helped increase the perplexity and inhibited both lead's determination. Predictably, this brought unnecessary confusion and, at times, tended to get tawdry and overwrought. Everyone had difficulties that only our Girl could fix, and it took more and more out of her spirit in order to bring, for some, their long hoped for resolve. Yet, for others, they had been brought to a place where they were forced to face what they had long been determined to evade.
Finally, when there was no one left, whose problems were yet to be 'handled' on either side of death's misty veil, our main Man and his leading Lady had only to realize what they truly meant to each other after such an ordeal. Mysticism, fate, romanticism and luck are a potent mixed cocktail; from which cup, we drink to our own sorrow, joy, pain and amusement. The Master's Sun serves it all up for those willing to partake of it. Drink up, ye hearty souls, for tomorrow we die. But, while we are yet alive, enjoy as much as is set before you. Drama like this informs our imaginations to give us alternative modes of thinking about what it is we ought to believe; and with that in mind, this one's worth watching again...
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Splendid Writing with a Propaganda’s Background
Aside from all of the propagandas and all of the military slogans…This entire production was much better than I anticipated.
I can not get over on how well this is written.
The storylines were infuriating, they were amusing, they were emotional…
This was a very insightful production.
And the entire cast, from A to Z, did a fantastic job.
The only thing that I did not like was the texture of the images… It looked more like some low-budget, c-rated productions. However, with the well-written quality of the storylines and the great acting skills from the entire cast; that was easily overlooked.
The Glory of Youth has to be one of the most underrated Chinese military drama, released in 2021.
Fyi:
I have not seen Li Yi Feng that relaxed and that natural since Sparrow.
Now, if we could get the English subtitles for Fearless Whispers for which I have only read raved reviews… That would be just perfect.
The next drama with Li Yi Feng, one of the most anticipated upcoming Xianxia this year, is Mirror: Twin Cities.
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Worst drama of the year!!!
Bear with me before firing up your defense because let me tell you one thing. This drama had the potential of becoming the next goblin but the writer decides to go and shit all over it.You have an amazing cast, but even a talented actor like Taecyon can't save this disaster. The story starts with amazing potential, great characters and it is introduced in a beautiful way. But eventually they make it into a sappy melodrama with love triangles that make no sense and a plot that raises your expectations but then crashes you.
The main leads are the only thing barely watchable but it's still not worth wasting a day of my life (I'm so glad i didn'tbinge watch this).
The story flow is extremely erratic and they somehow destroy the whole plot on the pretext of building the climax. (There is no climax)
Will i watch it again? Hell no.
Will i recommend it to anyone? I'm going to antirecommend (;aggressively advice you not to watch it)
I feel so bad for Ok Taecyon for ruining days of his life shooting this nonsense...
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Love this Drama!
What a great surprise for me. I started off watching this drama because frankly I could not find anything interesting to watch. I thought I would give it a try for lack of anything else that seemed interesting and because I absolutely love Lee Min-ki. He is one of the finest Korean actors and can play any character, drama and comedy and extremely well. I also find him very handsome. I also enjoy watching Han Ji-min. I find her very pretty and also an exceptional actress. Sometimes though, you can have excellent actors but the storyline is not good. Thankfully it proved to be so enjoyable and I waited anxiously for each episode to air with English subtitles. I cannot understand Korean, hopefully one day I will be able to.Also, I was hoping for a romance between ML and FL and it happened!!!
I recommend this drama to everyone that loves a good mystery and comedy.
A definite "10" in my book.
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This is just as mid as mid gets
I’m sorry, I love OnlyOneOf but this was just so disappointing in every aspect. I should have known that this was not going to meet any of my expectations but I still held high hopes because it was OnlyOneOf. The kiss was alright but it wasn’t anything serious, they didn’t even get a kiss at the end of the show. This was just super rushed and overall not worth the hype that I had for it. I felt like I watched something in 1.5 speed and now I’m just mad. I don’t recommend watching if you value yourself.Was this review helpful to you?
Just . . . Bad.
I wanted to like this. I really did. At first I told myself: It's not bad. But not good.But . . . It was just bad.
I could tell the actors were trying to work with what they were given, but it was like you could almost see it behind their eyes that they wished they could say some lines differently.
And it wasn't just the performances that were lacking, the camerawork could be downright ugly, the important plotpoints of the story felt like they were thrown in at random times, the pacing was off, and the dialogue made me feel like I was in a hamster wheel!
Side Note: Why did Dennis even exist as a character?
Me trying to see the positives:
The concept had promise, the ending wasn't too bad, and sometimes the MLs had legitimate chemistry.
This is a skip my friends. Go watch The New Employee instead. I know you've been thinking about it. Just go!
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Bulgasal Leap Card Displayed
Not the worst, changed my mind; it's just that it had bad writing all alongWon't say much (because most have been reviewed), just to summarise: I keep this to watch until the end thanks to the types' of ghosts backstories and antagonists' as well. But when it comes to protagonists' actual backstories, to begin with, I find it still lacking until the end of the story. The overall cast did an amazing job, but a decent plot; so does cinematography (I appreciate again so thank you very much). It's a messed up one that only we, as viewers, arrange/organize on which should be first and which should be last. Sometimes, when I ponder it back, almost gave the vibe of Curious Play (anime adaptation from manga, but clueless-reset). I'm alright with how the ending is, just in-between, from ep1 to finish.... again, it has potential, but as everyone stated: a mess. Can't believe some crews made The Guest, but unsure how to manage this narration instead. A huge miss, but leave good memories in my heart
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