Reviews

Undervalued For Me

I've had this drama on my watchlist for a couple years and haven't started it due to the adopted siblings romance and the many bad reviews, but this drama not as bad as it's made to be IMO as the adopted siblings romance between FL and ML works for me because they don't feel like siblings 1: ML never saw the FL as his sister at all from the age of five, 2: the Su Parents always told him to protect her so ML sees her in a romantic view from the start and not as a sister. people also complain about FL leaving her adopted family when she realizes the truth and I also was upset about it but then I put myself in her shoes, she was a young sheltered girl who just learned her family is a lie and her family isn't her family at all (although us viewers know Su Parents love her)

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Incomplete story

I had read part of this webtoon but never finished as it dragged on a bit. This series did the opposite. There are so many unresolved issues as a whole in the story that I think 2 more episodes would have given more time to fill in the gaps.

This series had three major issues that were not resolved to any satisfaction. First is the bullying. Second is he suicide of Taeyi’s brother. Thirs is the domineering father.

For the first matter of the bullying. How can Juba who was beaten that bad but no teacher of students seem to care. Is bullying this bad seen as a normal thing. I don’t know how Korean school systems are but every series with bullying and how celebrities get canceled because of it seem like bull isn’t tolerated. Then how is it gloss over. I don’t care if a bully gets bullied but this isn’t making sense for me.

Taejoon being a depressed person who is gay to be shun by the very person who kissed him first isn’t addressed properly. How can they bring Sejin in but make him so ambiguous to how he has internalized homophobia? It was so glossed over to what a piece of trash he is not only to Taejoon but whole situation with his brother Seheon.

Sejin is such a self serving cretin. He seem to not care about how his father is applying pressure to his younger brother because his father is praising him and have a loving good relationship with him. It can be hat he’s more talented and he likes being an award winning pianist. But he can’t be that oblivious to how his brother is struggling under his abusive father.

The side couple is so underdeveloped. The pace and arc of Juha and Doyoon seem so rushed that it came out as an afterthought to fit in a filler. Either leave the out or flesh them out with a more satisfying ending for them.

Two major ambiguous points was the umbrella scene. It can be view as a kissing scene at first. But after the replay it just seemed like a lean in which Mae more sense after Seheon kissed Taeyi and Taeyi had such a strong negative reaction to the kiss. Again it’s internalized homophobia.

The acting wasn’t bad. The story as a whole seem to have all the right elements. The problem was the direction and the editing. It left a lot to be desired with lots of gaps that needed to be filled. The way to fix it would have been to add more episodes or reduce some of the story points. We don’t need that many scenes with the music quartet performances or the competition. I can skip the whole girl crushing on Taeyi part. The time could have been used on side couple or flesh out the main couple’s issues.

I would score it lower if it wasn’t for the acting being good. The cameo helped too.

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Queen of tears

Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!!


Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!!

Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!! Amazing!!!

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very confusing and strange but great chemistry

Kind of unsure what to rate this one. Overall I enjoyed watching and it did manage to keep my attention for the most part. But the plot was kind of strange. Nothing really made a lot of sense and the whole series kind of built on the unwritten rule that no one can just decide to leave that school, cause honestly most problems would be solved and for most of them it would be the more sane choice.

In the end most of what happened was predictable and what wasn’t just didn’t make a whole lot of sense…

The whole thing was saved by the great actors with great on screen chemistry. Who made the weird characters and stories a lot more convincing and emotional.

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Little bit dull

I've watched numerous dramas about high school students, so I wasn't initially very interested in this one. The reason I decided to watch it was because of a scene I saw on YouTube that I really liked. However, that scene appeared only at the end.

The drama follows the characters from their teenage years through adulthood, from grade 9 to marriage and having children. It beautifully portrays how the course of life changes and how relationships grow stronger over time. I found the last episodes to be the most compelling.

Another scene I particularly liked was when the younger brother shared his feelings with his older brother's girlfriend. He expressed his worry about his brother and questioned why was he so affected by others' opinions, which had created a barrier between them. He reminisced about the times when his brother cared deeply for him.

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eclipse of the heart

Where to start, it wasn't bad, but it wasn't a gem of a drama, There are much better ones than this one, It is a story about a boy and a girl who know each other, but His parents or rather her uncle I think, who hates her and well that's why he wants to take over everything, that's the story, I put it 8 because it wasn't bad, the actors are not bad, and they are known, I honestly wouldn't see her again.
Pareena's life had always been wonderfully perfect until the death of her father, who was like the sunshine of her life. After her father's death, Pareena discovered a mystery surrounding his untimely death and thus began a journey to uncover the mystery and restore her father's honor.

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If John Wick start a gory grindhouse (not for Dog but Gold) with Mononoke-hime

So we got a war veteran turned gold prospector with a vengeful tribe-hime partner. This literally calls for violence, gore, and comedy as a side dish - of course I'll dive in.


Story:

First for some important context, the manga this is based off of have some non-fiction aspect to it. Basically, ML is based on 2 real-life figures:
(1) The first is a man also named Saichi Sugimoto, the great-grandfather of the manga creator, Satoru Noda. He was a great soldier and was celebrated as a war hero.
(2)The other was soldier Hiroshi Funasaka, who had also received the title of "Immortal" after having survived many life threathening injuries.

Now Kento literally slays in any kind of suicidal but still dangerous character lol. ML is a one-man death squad who will swim through any kind of danger just to get what he want (while magically not dying in the process. A plot hole or not I honestly don't know).

'Immortal' Sugimoto is made more deadly with the company of no ordinary MC, Asirpa (Ainu). She is similar to Mononoke-Hime(Emishi tribe) in many ways. Both are fiesty girl bosses who can skin their enemies without even blinking, and is protected by an intelligent creature. Also 'cause Emishi is somewhat related to the Ainu population.

With their combined crazy, you know I aint lying when I said our MCs would start a gory grindhouse. Just know there is some xpoop cooking and head cracking on the side. ^•^


Acting:

I agree with Opickles' review about Kento. He indeed bagged a lot of ML roles in a span of 5 yrs. But IMHO, he did well in all of them. Maybe others could have done this role but he was amazing in this one. Playing a young war veteran just wishing for some solice after experiencing hell is no easy feat. That one scene where he was contemplating about leaving for the sake of others made me emotional. Atleast Kento deserve praises for that scene alone. I bet he was shooting AIB 3 while in this. I don't know about Japan but I hope they give him proper recognition for all his roles.

Next, the other actors was not bad in their overall acting, whether during comedic or action scenes. I honestly think the actress for Asiripa was great here. She was so cool with her bow and arrow. I also had a big smile when I saw her hilarious xpoop eating credit scene. Shiraishi was also a very funny character to me, especially when he's with Sugimoto hilarious scenes just comes naturally on screen. Although I cant help but compare some of them all to other actors who could have also slayed the roles, I had fun watching as an action aficionado.

I also agree how the comedic scenes can be off-putting. I do see how the director struggled in them. Still some of them were very fun to me actually. Now the deliriously gory ones like the rampage seen through the point of view of a man in a bear hideout? Definitely not RK-level action but these bloody action scenes still deserves a thumbs up.

P. S. I didn't read the manga to know if this was loyal as an adaptation. I'm also not some action expert so this review are purely out of subjective opinion. Still, I can't wait for the sequel!

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A High Quality Drama But The Emotional Weight Is Not As Consistently Strong As You Would Hope.

I’ll start by saying I put off watching this one. I purposely did not watch it while it was airing. There are certain dramas that I know I won’t get the most out of them if I don’t watch them at a time I am most receptive to them.

Disclaimer * I don’t think this was the most receptive time either, even though I enjoyed watching it. I plan to watch it again in the future to see if I can get more out of it.

That said, for now I think it is a 9/10 drama and not a 9.5 or a 10/10 drama. The positives for me are what makes it a 9/10 and not the usual 8.5/10 that I give to solid k-dramas is that it is a heartfelt story, the plot is pretty solid and the acting is pretty good. The reason I won’t elaborate on the positives is because I’ll be honest; apart from recognising it as a solid production, this story did not get me as deep as it ought to have. I’ll go into why I think this was.

Starting from episode 2, although I was aware that time travelling was involved, the abrupt introduction of the time traveling element at the end of ep 2 felt like a sharp turn transition wise. It was not smooth at all. It was like being in a race car and suddenly making an extreme turn with little to no preparation, except this was done with the theme. Usually in dramas that include fantasy, they sprinkle a little bit of the fantasy elements in the lead up to the full blown reveal of the fantastical part of the drama. With this one, it was almost two full hours of a slice of life family drama that seemed rudely interrupted by the fantasy element suddenly being dropped in. And this was my reaction as someone who WAS waiting and expecting the fantasy element.

Another thing was, I couldn’t help but feel like this drama was an amalgamation of several movies, music and popular culture storylines and references, all pieced together. It made a huge chunk of the drama feel like a knock-off, ensuring that I could never really get into it as all I could think was, “they’re copying so and so”. I don’t mind things serving as an inspiration for others but you really have to make it your own and create something new with it, but with this drama, a lot of the concepts and scenes seemed borrowed. Whenever I was drawn into the drama, I’d notice that a scene or concept resembled something else and it would immediately take me out of it.

I have a minor point to make about the way the scenes were cut together. It didn’t affect the majority of the drama much, as it fit that youth-indie style type of film but when it came to the emotional scenes, it felt somewhat choppy aka not-so-smooth transitions. It meant that the emotions didn’t hit hard enough because the viewers weren’t able to sit with those scenes and absorb the depths of emotions before it suddenly changed to another scene. Typically for emotional scenes to work best, there needs to be a build up of emotional tension that is finally released and the cameras should not cut away in the middle of that emotion being expressed. For example, the cameras should not cut away in the middle of someone’s heartbreaking crying scene as it’s like cutting off the climax of emotions right at the top, which results in an immediate plateauing of the emotional weight when shifted to a new scene. Instead it should be like a hill with a slow rise to the climatic bump and a smooth decent to the other side of that intense emotion. This must be done in order to properly build the emotional weight of what the characters are experiencing and their plight, to help forge the bond between the viewer and the character and to allow the viewer to really connect to what the character is feeling.

This fourth reason was the most jarring for me. I have to preface this by saying I’m not trying to assume what’s best for the hearing impaired community, I’m coming at this solely from the perspective of someone who knows what storytelling mechanisms resonate with an audience. That being said, the thing about this drama that made it the hardest for me to get into it was the fact that they dubbed the deaf characters. I can understand from a practical pov why this was done but surely someone in the creative chair should have known how much of the connection and the power of the performances of the actors playing the deaf characters would have been lost by doing this. If you don’t understand what I mean, go watch CODA and tell me that by having the focus of communication solely on the deaf characters’ facial expressions, their sign language and only the silence to convey their lines; you didn’t feel everything they signed just a little bit more deeply. That you didn’t feel the hard hitting angry signing or the soft signing in tender moments that much more. That you couldn’t feel the frustration of the characters through their hands more than with a dubbed voice overlayed on top to explain what they are saying. It’s my opinion that some of the power of the actors’ performances were lost through the dubbing. I’m sure it was useful for Korean viewers not having to read subtitles but I’d argue they lost something potentially powerful through this.

If at the end of this you are wondering why I rated it so highly if I found so much wrong with it. It’s because of three things. One, this drama had excellent characterisation. Like truly excellent. Two, I did enjoy watching it. It won’t make it on my favourites list but I really did enjoy it. And three, I like to give dramas and movies their dues. Even if I don’t fall in love with a drama, I still rate them objectively by what they have to offer and what they do well. This drama was a solid, above average and at times, truly above average, drama.

If you ask me what could have made it a 10/10, I’d say, not rushing past the emotional scenes too quickly, not dubbing the deaf characters and finally, trusting the foundation of the story more, which was a story about a boy’s love for his father and vice versa while grappling with the difficulties of being a CODA. If they did this without trying to emulate other films, dramas, music or American popular culture; it could have been a 10/10 drama that stayed with me forever.

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Failed Potential

Let me start by saying that I am sucker for ghost stories, even though I am really scared of the paranormal entity. I went into this movie hoping for a good dose of fear and ghosts, but was left severely disappointed by the storytelling and pacing.

First and foremost, the movie is divided into three parts that take place at one university, but they have nothing in common.
The pacing for all stories was very slow, and overall it didn’t have any horror feels, but instead, for some reason, the movie had melancholic feels. They tried to play the feeling card so many times that I got bored in the middle of it. The ghosts were... well, there, but there was no further information about them.

The acting was very good, and I feel that it wasted potential for the actors, as the script failed them very badly.

Overall, it was pure chaos, and I do not recommend it. The below-average subtitles also didn’t do any good for the quality, so if you can, please avoid this movie, as it doesn’t bring anything new to the table or anything exciting.

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