The idea as a theme of the story is good, unique and different. But it's actually a spider web to trap me to go inside and watch it. I personally dislike the relationship between male and female lead after episode 3. It's damn annoying to see this girl. I have 0 patience with this kind of girl. Matrealistic, selfish and demanding. All of characteristics that I don't like. The bromance is sweet and funny so it has saved the story in general. Some scenes are still questionable, even the male lead character changed so abruptly from a great war general to a silly childish guy after meeting a teenage girl for a few days.
The beginning of the plot is so slow with so many flashbacks and unnecessary scenes. Second lead female is redundant (which is a pity) from eps 1-10, like she got so little scenes in the drama besides those flashbacks and sitting in the empty shop. I would say this drama will be very good if its only about 6 - 8 episodes. There are too many fillers in the drama (which is understandable) probably to get more money from advertisements to cover big budget.
Music ????
Music is good. I admit it. I like all the songs in this drama. It's very catchy and refreshing.
Cinematography
It is good. Editing team is expert in this. It has cinematography like movie. The color is solid, the background, houses, shooting venue, fashion style, everything is nice. I can tell that it has a big production budget.
Acting is okay. I can relate. It's not making me feel weird. Just some characters written by the writer that makes me feel strange.
Overall, i know this is a good drama, i mean most of the aspects are good. But sadly, i appreciate movie and drama based on the story and character development. Since the story is not good enough for me, the drama has big flaw in my eyes. Sorry, i had higher expectation after i watched 1st episode that i became so disappointed with the rest of the episodes. Especially the middle ones.
But i would recommend this drama for u to watch if u don't mind of the strange romance that feels forceful for me, this is a drama for u.
ohh i need to mention it again, i hate the female lead character, ok.
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I personally love dramas about supernatural creatures in our time. I love seeing how different creatures live and how they use their powers (if they have any)in our everyday life etc. but to me, this drama doesn't live up to its hype.
I think the acting, the senaries, the music and the overall plot is great, but i feel like this drama is very dragged. There's a lot of repetitive scenes and other unnecessary scenes where i find myself being so bored that i almost fall asleep, at one point i actually fell asleep watching this drama. I usually like dramas that are more on the shorter side and although this drama is 16 (or technically 16,5) episodes long, each episode is around 1 hour and 20 minutes and i'm sorry for saying this, but that is toooo long. The thing is, the episodes are just very unnecessarily long. They could've easily told the same story in 16 episodes where each episode were 1 hour long, without all the unnecessary scenes. If they had done that, i think this drama would've been right up my alley, but unfortunately they didn't.
I'll probably finish this drama at some point soon (i'm currently on episode 13, it's taking me a long time to watch this) but i can already tell that it's not a drama i'll rewatch.
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Why I liked it:
1. The cinematography is LOVE LOVE LOVE. I want to go visit Canada now.
2. The bromance.
3. Grim Reaper's deadpan sense of humor. So my thing.
4. Gong Yoo has never looked hotter. (Okay, that's not quite true. He's ALWAYS hot.)
5. Goblin's pettiness.
6. Sunny's character. I like her lots.
What I disliked about it:
1. TOO. DAMN. LONG. Too many scenes linger on unnecessary beats and they stretch scenes that aren't at all integral to the plot. The premise had so much promise but it wasn't used to its full potential.
2. Kim Go-eun's cutesy act. I like her as an actress and she's fab in the dramatic scenes but she tends to overdo the aegyo. It doesn't help that her character is...confusing. She's supposed to be intelligent and quite mature, and the next she does absolutely imbecilic things. SMH.
3. I didn't quite buy the romance between the millenia-old dokkaebi and his high schooler bride.
4. That ending. I'm ambivalent about it.
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This review may contain spoilers
Please learn to write female characters
I have to admit by the end I was emotionally invested to the point of crying over the secondary couple. But just because I enjoyed it at some points or I cried doesn't mean I can't be critical of it.First things first, the female lead was such a generic female character in a romantic film/show. We've seen her a hundred times over, please get rid of this overused rom com dynamic. Her selfishness and her absolute self importance made me continuously pissed off during the entire show.
Second. Let us never overlook the age gap. From the second the 2 leads met I automatically assumed we would watch her grow up and have the romance at a more reasonable age. But that didn't happen. We got a very creepy romance between a man in his 40's (900's) and a 19 year old girl. Her absolute infatuation with him was impossible to get past. How she begged to marry him and demanded love from such an older man made my guts twist.
Truly the show would have been better with the secondary couple as the main. Sunny and Grim Reaper were a more believable pair and ultimately a more tragic story. Sunny was a much better female character. More interesting and overall kept me watching to see it to the end.
The bromance was funny at times and as separate moments they were good but in the context of the scenes they seemed really random and misplaced.
Overall very melodramatic and inconsistent. Inconsistent writing, characters and pacing. It definitely wasn't terrible and certain moments had me go back to rewatch because there were really good individual moments but in the end it seems to be a very cheesy and overhyped due to the handsome actors.
But that's just my opinion
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Great premise - disappointing execution
For the sake of reaching (and saving) as many people as possible - this review will be spoiler-free, and shouldn't contain anything that isn't already in the above summary of this drama.I was told this drama was very good. I was under the impression it could easily be a "staple" drama that you need to watch if you wanna be "in the know" about all the good K-dramas out there. Sadly, this is far from the truth.
Starting with the good (because the amount of 'bad' is far greater) - the PREMISE of the story is very, very good. The set-up had a lot of potential, and you can see pieces of a good storyline scattered throughout the badly-executed series. I found myself wanting to know more about how life and death worked in this universe, about the mysteries of the world and the mysteries of the characters' pasts. The framework is there, very solidly - it's just a shame they didn't put it to good use.
I will also say, the character dynamics (save for the negatives which I will mention in a moment) can be very heartwarming and funny, and the casting certainly wasn't bad.
But now we move to the bad.
To begin - I know most people mention the age gap, but if I am to be honest, the ages themselves would've been somewhat forgivable if it weren't for the writing making that gap seem even larger. She addresses him as "mister" (or "ahjussi") throughout the series, she never stands up to him no matter how he treats her (feeling similar to a daughter respecting her father), and while she's giggling and wrinkling her nose and running around like an innocent child, he's either standing by like an obligatory parental guardian who's watching over an excited kid - or he's admiring her innocence, which on its own isn't bad, but when compounded with everything else becomes creepy. Their relationship feels much more father-daughter than romantic.
And something I'm not hearing many people talk about - for a good while, their relationship begins as something very unhealthy. He's selfish, he treats her with disrespect, and she lets him do so. At first it felt like something that would go away - but instead, they just eventually get cuter out of the blue. It's like the writer wanted to write some kind of "slowly developing relationship" thing - but it didn't work out, and instead it's just hard to watch and a little confusing. I wasn't able to root for them for a majority of the series.
On the other hand, the supporting roles have a MUCH better, deeper relationship, and they themselves are deeper characters. In fact, the side characters themselves are more interesting in general. They undergo more character development throughout the series and have a lot more depth than the main characters do - and one character who should have played a more important role, certainly never did.
The list of "negatives" does keep going: The pacing becomes extremely slow after the first five-or-so episodes, there are many inconsistencies (some very blatant especially toward the end), important plot points end up feeling unimportant, there are unanswered questions that probably should've been answered, there's a point where a character makes such an obviously bad choice that it's practically unbelievable, and in spite of being 900, the Goblin tends to feel more dense than a 20-year-old. (Seriously, at the age of 900 can't he at LEAST be given the intelligence of an 80-year-old?)... and I can go on. In detail.
I wanted this to be good. It has SUCH an interesting setup, but it just isn't. Even if half of these flaws didn't exist - with slow pacing and a semi-repetitive nature, it still gets very bland. When you root for the side characters and stop caring about the main characters, I'd say that's when a drama has ultimately failed.
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The story was full of plot holes, and in a conversation I had, no one could explain the plot holes, and said I should just enjoy it for what it is. But how am I suppose to enjoy a drama that could have explain everything in 3 episodes but dragged out?
This is a drama that stirs up my intellect more than anything else.
The music for this drama was kind of blah, with all the hype, I thought they would have more than 1 piece I like. For majority dramas I watch, the music would be so good that I would replay the parts with the music I like, but for this drama I only like 1 song they had, and it wasn't good enough for a replay
The main couple were awkward and boring, maybe for people who likes extremely slow dramas. The chemistry between them is a little and awkward, like a woman falling in love with a stalker because she has psychological problems which hasn't been solved, and will love anyone who gives them any kind of attention. Or like a man who needs a needy woman to feel better about himself. Within a few episodes in, I could already predict the majority of the story line for the main couple.
Overall, their relationship can be summarize by a daughter-father relationship with romance.
The only redeeming thing about this drama is the supporting characters, they had a lot more chemistry, and their story line is more interesting with unpredictable outcome.
I would never re-watch this drama for the main couple, maybe for the side couple but probably not.
I wouldn't recommend anyone to watch this, but if someone really wants to, than skip the parts with the main couple, their relationship is really repetitive and can be explain by a girl having a daddy problem, while the man having relationship problems with women.
The most disappointing drama i watch in 2017, way over hyped. I think people who enjoy this probably just enjoy watching a dramatic fantasy romance and not like me, who tend to overthink and find plot holes.
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But then at some point, I'll probably watch or read it nevertheless. That's how it was with Goblin. And I honestly looked forward to it because it was supposed to be such a great drama. Boy, was I wrong. Here's why.
Story:
The story is basically a great idea! A Goblin who needs his bride to be redeemed. His bride being a High School girl, that he once saved, who sees ghosts. Wait, what?! An ancient guy and a High School girl? Oooooookay....I thought, well, maybe they just meet once while she's in High School and then they meet years later to fall in love. Well, no. That's not what happens. The story is reaaaaaaallllllyyyyyy slow paced and with that at some point it was just dragging on and on and on and on and I thought "MOVE! FORWARD!" But that did not happen until the last two or so episodes. Meeh -.-
The only thing that made this slow story better is the story line between the Grim Reaper and Sunny. I would have loved to have THEM as the main couple and tell THEIR story rather than the Goblin's story.
Acting/Cast:
I haven't watched any drama with Gong Yoo or Lee Dong Wook before, wo I was open to anything that might come along the way. They both acted fantastically but I was just SO IRRITATED with Gong Yoo's role. He was constantly going on my nerves acting like a spoiled little child. Some scenes, especially in the beginning were really funny and I got some weird glances from my husband because I burst out in laughter several times. But after some time the Goblin became really annoying.
The Grim Reaper on the other hand had a lot of depth and he was a fascinating character through and through.
Now on to the girls, I watched Kim Go Eun in "Cheese in the Trap" and Yoo In Na in "My love from another star" and I liked both of them. Here they also did a pretty alright job. But due to this slow paced story I couldn't enjoy there acting much.
A huge praise goes to Yook Sung Jae, he was hilarious and so damn cute!
Also, I would have loved to see more scenes with Kim So Hyun and Kim Min Jae - THEY LOOK SO FREAKING GOOD TOGETHER! Can they please get a drama where they are the OTP!?!?
Music:
Now that's the amazing part of the drama - the music. Alsways spot on and so so beautiful! Together with the scenery - WOW!
Rewatch Value:
I would give a 0 if I could. Will never rewatch this.
Overall:
It could have been amazing! Unfortunately it wasn't. Not at all.
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(Truthfully speaking, lately folks on MDL just throw around the 10s, it is totally misleading.)
The best about this drama, is by a long shot, the ACTING. Superb. The male lead and the second female lead were the outstanding stars for me - you could feel their sorrow and mood and they did not overact. And the male lead had a tough part to act, because...
...the freakin' age gap! It made me cringe sometimes. I just couldn't overlook it, no matter how hard I tried. Sure, 19 and around 39 (or: 939) is not a total disaster, but it does come close to being inappropriate, especially since the female lead is written to be extremely teenagery, showing lots of little-girl-aspects.
Although the kissing scenes were really great and believable in themselves, the issue with the age just made it awkward to watch.
Anyways. The plot, not to forget, was okay, sometimes even really nice. The ending is really emotional and I liked it, because I did not expect it. (It squeezed even two tears out of me, and I am one of those viewers that never cry). The issue here is, that there were sometimes weird jumps between very, very serious topics and total slapstick. It was rather unusual and it made it sometimes difficult to follow the mood. The other thing was that in each episode there were several times that I was outright bored.
If you look at it from afar, there was not much plot going on besides the two lead couples circling around each other.
Is it a good drama? Yes. Is it a great drama? No.
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This review may contain spoilers
STORY: This was probably the most inventive and creative dramas/story plot I've seen in the Korean entertainment industry yet! I adore fantasy because it strikes the imagination part of the brain in a fun way and I've seen some fantasy-genre Korean dramas but they don't involve a lot of fantasy elements. Most dramas I've seen that are labeled as "fantasy" or "supernatural" usually use these elements to support a story. They were more tools to carry the story along rather than being the main focus. 'Queen In Hyun's Man' was the closest I've seen to making fantasy as the main focus point, but still lacked emphasis on the genre. This drama really made the "fantasy" element THE main focus and you see the story support the genre rather than the other way around. I'm so proud and happy for Kim Eun Sook. She did a FANTASTIC job writing this drama! The world she created was so vivid and realistic in the sense that if there were such thing as goblins and grim reapers in this world, she made the idea fit into our 'real world' construct to make it believable that they might actually exist. I thought it was unique to have the idea that there were many grim reapers, instead of just one, and that they were organized in a governmental way. The reasons for their amnesia were pretty sound and the search for the goblin's bride was pretty inventive. Kim Eun Sook could've been lazy with the why of everything and make them the most conventional reasons possible, but she definitely took great stride into creating a story that weaved in and out with every action and every decision so that almost everything had a meaning and a real reason behind them. Kim Eun Sook did a sublime job fleshing out the characters too! They definitely aren't the cookie-cutter type of characters you usually see in almost all romance Korean dramas, and I super appreciate that! It gets soooooooo unbelievably boring when I see the same type of character over and over again in every typical romance drama. Especially the male characters. They always turn out to be super mean and only to the main female character, but has a hard time expressing their feelings from their golden hearts. -__- !!ACTING/CAST: This has been the best casting I've seen EVER! I'm not even joking! My favorite actress (for the current time) is Kim Go Eun and even though she's still young in the industry, she has AMAZING acting talents! She pulled off her character without a hitch. Same goes for Gong Yoo, who is a veteran in the entertainment industry and brings flourishes of experience from his time in the k-drama and k-movie business. Lee Dong Wook also did surprisingly well in this drama, although I still wish he was a bit more expressive. Maybe I'll get some upset comments about this, but he always seems to have this same indifferent look about him in every drama I've seen him in. But still, he did great in this drama, despite this fact. I considered Yoo In Na as a bit of a newbie in the entertainment business, but glad she got to be in this drama because I definitely see good potential to grow her acting talents and be a very talented actress. Also have to give props to Yook Sung Jae and Lee El for their great portrayals of our Gods. Lee El has really good potential to be a great actress as well and hope that after being exposed in this drama, she'll have the opportunity to be in many more dramas as well. Maybe in a lead? She's always been the side character, haha!
MUSIC: I don't really pick on the music unless it's extremely good or extremely ill-fitting. Goblin's soundtrack was ABSOLUTELY PERFECT! It fit the tone of the drama so perfectly and carried the emotional and lighthearted scenes so PERFECTLY! This is one of those rare moments where I want to download the whole track list to my phone so that I can listen to it whenever and where ever! What people don't often notice is that the music of a drama and the story is kind of like two halves of a whole. They really do have to fit well together or else the overall picture/concept of the drama becomes a little....off. But these two fit together absolutely perfectly!
OVERALL: I was going into this drama with big apprehension because the writer was Kim Eun Sook, who also wrote Descendants of the Sun, which I was absolutely bored to tears with. With the awesome cast in this drama but with Kim Eun Sook being the writer, I was worried that she would do the same thing as she did with DOTS. But I was thankfully relieved and pleasantly surprised! I know I sung praises up and down in this review for this drama, but please keep in mind that I rarely ever do this unless it demands that kind of praise. There's really only one other drama I gave a 9/10 or above and that was Liar Game (Korean version). This drama was well-directed, well-acted, and put together so well and so impressively that I really can't help say nothing but great things about it! The only reason why I gave this drama 9.5/10 instead of 10/10 is because of 'the contract' reasoning for our goblin (don't think that's a spoiler because you'd have to watch and know what the contract was) But other than that little lazy reasoning, Usually, I leave about a week to review a drama because I don't want the added hype of my own excitement to affect a review, but I'm very confidant that my thoughts and feelings for this drama will not waver for the reasons I wrote in this review, even as time passes. I would wholeheartedly watch this again and again! The cast, the story, and the music all blend and mesh together so well that it's painted the most beautiful picture I've seen yet!
NOTE: This is a somewhat slow-paced drama, so please understand that before watching. Some people don't like slow-paced because of our tendency to want instant gratification (especially with the younger folks, haha) But to be honest, this drama wouldn't have done so well if it were more fast-paced. I think being slow-paced as it is was the perfect speed for the story. If it were any faster, we'd be left with a less desirable ending and very rushed story.
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Most overrated boring drama ever.
I've watched 170+ k-dramas but believe me goblin was one of the worst kdrama i've ever seen. Storyline was very boring. And the female lead character was very clingy.I hate this type of nonsense character. The age gap between both leads are quite disturbing to watch.They're looking like father and daughter.I regretted after watching this series.But the bromance between Goblin and Grim reaper is quite enjoyable. If you have enough time than go for it.But if anyone wants any recommendations than I'll never suggest this drama anyone.Was this review helpful to you?
Some people have already pointed out it's flaws.
- Full of fillers
- Crazy flashbacks
- Weird Romance Story for lead characters
- Oh my Gosh, it's so hard to finish this drama, i keep skipping it
- I prefer second lead story line but there is not much time for them
- End up It's so cliche
- Very predictable story line
- Boring
- The end (with so much resentment towards this drama)
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