Lee Jeong Woo – the apathetic loner, seems to have, with little to no effort, gathered the best wolves and become the leader of the pack. Together, these guys are unstoppable; whether outclassed or outnumbered, they are a force to be reckoned with. You mess with one, you must mess with them all.
Great drama, but much too short, in my opinion. There are only 12 episodes that are run about 15 minutes each, but I guarantee you will be totally absorbed the entire 15 minutes. Realistic fight scenes, no special effects, which makes it just that much more hardcore and exciting. Great character development and plenty of laughs and attitude. This drama is symbolic ‘High School Cliques’.
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This review may contain spoilers
Now THIS is what I call a Korean action drama!!! As others stated this is a 12 series mini short. Some episodes are just 13 minutes while some were a little over 7-9 minutes. Too short for my taste but I enjoyed every episode.
The one kid who became known to be the best fighter on the streets barely fought. I don't know if his martial arts skills aren't as strong as the others but the one time he did fight he laid out the leader which was hilarious and bad to the bone altogether.
The one time he did get hit was by his middle school's best friend. That guy was a total douche. His pride was so in the way that he literally got beat in every scene he fought. He did have some mad fighting skills but it went for nought a lot. Even his posse could fight better and none of them got beat after they were beat by the main two male characters.
Some of the 'bad guys' looked a little too old to be in high school too.
As one commenter mentioned females showing up and doing a stare down, I just knew they were going to have some fight scenes but no. It cut away to something else,
I whooped and clapped when I saw Ma Dong Seok doing his infamous slapping in one of the episodes. He's grown on me since Bad Guys.
I was upset about the ending. Korea loves to toy with martial arts fans by making episodes seem like they're going to continue only to not have any more shows.
Forgive the low rating for rewatch values. I haven't rewatched any Korean action dramas that I've already watched. Even though this is too short and wasn't continued there's no need to rewatch especially since I know how it ends.
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The last remnants of the school genre
This drama doesn't compare, but it carries some faint hints from Blue Spring (2001). There's a desperate need for more raw and scuffed school themed dramas rather than the over-saturated soft boys trying to act tough kind of ones, even the highest rated school themed ones fall under the latter. The school genre in Korean drama is practically dead and had been so for the longest time, with the excessive use of bullying, hierarchy play, school pressure and fluffy kids' romance. Extracurricular (2020) is probably the only exception from the recent 10 years, along with this drama. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem they're planning a sequel for this one after a decade already passed.Was this review helpful to you?
I guess I will never be satisfied. Some shows are too long and the ones I enjoy seem to be too short.
Characters:
I wish there was more of a development for the characters. Jeong Woo...I remembered him from Oh My Ghostess. His friend Du Hyeon was very moody. He obviously liked Yoon Joo but instead of saying something he just sulks and gives Jeong Woo sad looks. It was so obvious. I liked all of the cast members. I almost split my side open with laughter when Ma Dong Seok showed up and slapped the heck out of his brother at the precinct.
Some of this kids had no business being in school. They looked like they should be married with children. Why is it that they have a full fledge fight club and teachers seem to be unware of this. I understand that Jeong Woo was the best fighter out of all of them but why was he the only one out of the entire cast good or bad that did no one was actually able to hit. The only time he was hit was when Du Hyeon pushed and kicked him and that was because he allowed it. Where did he learn how to fight? He must have been bullied to have to develop those types of skills.
I thought Yoon Joo was a fighter as well. I thought they would have shown a fight between the opposing girls but all they did was face off. Next scene and no one had a mark on them. Not even a flashback to show what happened. I was disappointed.
I love action films and this did not disappoint. Those hits looked really painful. I would have passed out from just the thought of a punch and those kids taking it like it was nothing.
I wish it was longer. I hope there is a second part because I want to see what happens when they all go to Seoul.
Re-watch....I don't think it's necessary...just want a continuation.
Music...I hardly ever pay attention to music no matter how repetitive so I can't really say anything about that.
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Great Fight Scenes
I read the manga after watching this show. The fight scenes were very realistic and so were the FX (bruises and knuckle damage, blood, etc.). The acting was awesome and believable. I've rewatched the fight scenes a few times! Good story, great production, appropriate music, well done all around.There was a touch of female interaction, which could've been left out or should've had a little more. I hated the ending, because it felt like they were going to give us more seasons and yet we got nothing. For these two reasons it only gets an 8/10.
If you like fight scenes it's worth the rewatch!
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Tong: Memories is a 12 episode series of 15 min. about a group of friends involved in street fighting. The series is outstanding when it comes to their fighting scenes as they are very realistic and pretty much little to no special effects in it. The acting of the actors was up to standard and the music scenes fitted, unfortunately it lacks a bit of a story in it as to me it is very basic.
So if you have spare time or just want to watch it during a short ride in a bus/train or whatever, I would recommend you to watch it.
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This review may contain spoilers
It's mid and could've been shorter
A few years ago I read tong the webtoon. I'm gonna admit that I totally forgot what it even was about. To many people their surprise I actually really enjoy these type of series. Although I normally watch BL or Romance in general, it's rare for me to even start these type of series. But today, I wanted to watch something with fighting and more in it. Tong wasn't bad, but there is definitely room for improvement. The plot lacks but the fight scene's are good. When I was around episode 7-8 it got more and more boring.The thing I really like about this series are how well done the fight scene's are. It was enjoyable, although I did catch a few editing mistakes. I like how dopamine fed it is. But, the plot is just pure and only fighting. I wished we had more deeper moments and sometimes it became a bit overwhelming. It took me 3 episodes to really understand what was even going on, I had to read the description to understand it. I even rewatched the first episode... I was kinda confused on how to start with this series because I knew it was a sequel to the manhwa. It might confuse Manhwa readers but watching Tong:Memories before Dokgo rewind doesn't matter. It would be so nice if more parts of the manhwa series got a live action but if I'm honest, I don't think that'll ever happen.
For the acting, it's quite nice. This series acting reminded me a lot of Weak Hero. I actually wasn't familiar with the actors before so this is my first time seeing both Heo Ji Won and Lee Hak Woo as leads. One of the second things that made the series alright. When I first saw Myeong Hwa I was like "DAMNN". His hair is amazing, I love it. The girls in this series were badass as well. Like genuinely. Talking about women... this show lowkey had a few misogynistic moments, let's not lie. I understand it's all about men and I'm saying this as a male but... some moments just felt weird and direspectful. Maybe just different culture but I did not like it.
My main problem was how boring this show got the more I got into it. Everything until episode 7 was alright but after episode 7 it just felt like unnecessarily added episodes. What also made me more and more confused was the amount of random added characters. Like after watching a few episodes we do not need to keep getting more and more new characters. It would've been way nicer if they cut time by shortening the series. 7 or 8 is enough. Sorry but the last episodes were just bland and my whole motivation to finish this was BAD. The fights made up almost half of each episode too like...the fighting is what makes it good, sure.
I really enjoy the animations in this series. Like when the characters are introduced and the intro. Really well done. But we never got proper introductions of many characters. Also, the motivations are so unclear because the episodes are short and shit. I get the whole Tong thing but I just don't understand half of the time why they're fighting. There's more fights than actual talking it just pisses me off like where did that plot go?
I watched this on YouTube and had to find out if the music in ep 6 was the actual song originally used in the editing? Either way the very happy music while they seemed excited for the fight was crazy to me. How can they be soo excited to fight. episode 6 might be my fav ep so far. Even if I do have a bit of criticism, especially on the lack of plot and production, I do actually like it. I mean.. everyone has their own taste. My rating is still low and it'll probably stay this way. Mainly with the reason that it got extremely boring to me towards the ending. I somehow managed to finish it but if I'm honest, I did press that skip button during the fights a lot. Not recommended, but maybe you'll like it. This is purely based on my opinion.
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