Color Rush (2020)

Color Rush' took the meaning of soulmates to another level!

YeonWoo and YooHan have found completeness in each other, there was a part each of them was looking to be found and when they met that ‘missing’ part was fulfilled.

Hands down one of the best BL dramas. 👌
The cinematography is superb, the plot is intriguing, the acting is top notch and the OST is amazing. The story and the dialogues along with monologues, they did such a good job at portraying all the complexities of their relationship, their fascination with each other, that they simply couldn’t stay away from each other, against what the world around them were telling them. I stand by my opinion that being a MONO is an excellent analogue of being a QUEER person.

Here's me looking forward to the announcement of season 2, because there is still so much story still to be told.

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Potential to be amazing but isn't

I love the concept of the mono and probe (though probe is slightly unfortunate name....). The idea is so good in comparison to the execution I thought it had to be adapted from an anime or novel, which it is. For that reason alone I'm glad I saw this.

What wasn't great:
Mono seems like a decent actor but wrong for the part. Probe has angular features and I thought he looked good for the role but I didn't rate his acting. None of the other characters really featured enough for me to judge.
Probe’s colour history lessons and reeling off lists like he was reading a paint chart – describing colours by objects that, unless Mono had seen in colour would hold no meaning - fell flat as a pancake.
The handholding and frolicking in the art exhibit. Didn’t work.
The fact that the art gallery was deserted and they were left to their own devices at school (lol at the awol nurse who advised to only call for her if mono was about to die) I didn’t mind because it’s sci-fi – none of that lack of “realism” bothered me at all – what bothered me was not believing the relationship between the two.

It has the potential to be on a completely different level. I want a blade runner esque remake with better actors.

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Great potential... but falls short of what it could have been

Leave it to the Koreans for originality. The concept itself, a person who suffers from a type of color blindness but who has a chance to see colors if they meet this one person - their probe, is fascinating and opens up to a variety of plot avenues to explore. Although the idea of destiny is not new in Asian dramas for once this wasn’t about some childhood connection that one or both of them had blocked and which comes to be reveled towards the end of the drama. This alone by itself adds a positive value in my book.
The way the drama portrays the personality traits of Mono’s who for most, if not all, their lives live in a world of gray can meet a Probe and gradually change from being awed at seeing colors for the first time to fearing losing the ability to see colors again to being obsessed and in some cases turning violent, allows the viewers to sympathize with their emotions and at the same time be terrified at the very thought. While watching I kept thinking with a proper fleshed out thorough script this concept could make a very very good dark thriller.

I will tell you, this drama has made me research color blindness and have come to know more about cone and whatnot more than I care for. But the whole concept was fascinating .
The drama starts with Yeon Woo who happens to be a Mono, narrating about his fears that comes with a Mono meeting his Probe and wishing that he never meets one for the rest of his life. But fate laughs at us all, as on his first day at a new school Yeon Woo meets 3 friends one of whom turns out to be his Probe (Yoo Han).

As the drama progresses we see our Mono experience seeing color for the first time and going through the emotional turmoil that comes along with it. The actor did a good job expressing the characters emotions- his excitement and fear.

Unfortunately the strength of the drama just so happens to be its biggest flaw as well. A good plot like this needs to be properly fleshed out and explored. This barely scraped the surface of what it could have been and instead filled the already limited time with flashing light of color rush scenes. Additionally, it spent the 8 episode showing from the perspective of Yeon Woo and at the very end pretty much narrated Yoo Han’s side and closed out the chapter. Yoo Han’s reason for his interest in Yeon Woo is another fascinating concept on its own but the drama never gave us the opportunity to related to it. A character (one of the friends in the drama) is nicknamed “grandpa” and who speaks in a prophetic manner is another interesting underdeveloped character that viewers were not given any background on but expected to accept at face value. Not to mention that there are plot differences from what is in the synopsis and what was filmed. Like the investigative part, aside from mentioning that there is an investigation into Yeon Woo’s mother’s disappearance there is nothing that comes out of it, let alone having these two boys be involved with it. At the end- the feeling I was left with was unsatisfied? Disappointed? Maybe both and more.

Is this a good watch? Yes, but I still feel it fell short from what it could have been.

P.S. these color rush scenes btw should come with a warning for those sensitive with flashing light- nearly triggered my migraine the first time!

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a quick finish

when i first read the synopsis of this before it came out, i was absolutely hyped because it seemed like a fresh concept. when i dived in and completed the drama as a whole, i'm left thirsty and empty. it's like i got pulled in so deep only to bounce back to the starting line. all i have is questions and there's literally no way to answer them unless a second season is possible which i highly doubt.

let's talk about the positives (and a tad bit of negatives):

-interesting concept
the world where monos and probes are introduced is very much intriguing. it was nice to see a whole different concept and not just another cutesy highschool (despite being set in highschool lol) cliché type of drama. i think the mono/probe idea was explained well enough and makes up for great tension and buildup for the story.
however, it would've been nice to see if there were other monos like yeon woo and perhaps, there'd be a different take to his perception. i'm not saying yeon woo's thoughts annoy me but i'm just looking for more depth to the universe presented.

-decent cast
yeon woo's actor did an amazing job showing the
emotions of panic and fear and overall, he definitely made the character show how loneliness, loss, longing and desperation look like. the crying scenes weren't cringy but devastating and believable.
yoo han's actor wasn't bad and he definitely made his character lovable and portrayed what it's like to love someone that you'd literally memorise a whole ass color palette. it's worth noting how soft his voice was which adds extra bonus point to him being a babie.

-beautiful ost
the ost is beautiful without a doubt. with the romantic scenes and the main leads being cute, the ost fits so well that i might have to add it to my spotify playlist later on.

what made this drama lost its momentum is the final episode. i understand the episodes are only 15 ish minutes each which would explain why it fell short but it just doesn't make sense. everything got resolved so fast despite the heavy things that hit the fan. the way the drama ended made it seem like the writers were not sure as well of the conclusion so they took the easy route of making things conveniently happy. while i'm happy no one got hit by the white truck of doom, it just leaves the drama as a solved case even though it's unsolved. what happened to yeon woo's mom? how was his aunt okay with him and yoo han? was yoo han's family okay with yeon woo?

overall, it's still a good watch and i don't regret giving it a go. now, i'm just going to sit in one corner and be delusional about a second season.

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The worst rated BL I've ever seen

This show was such a disappointment. It started off so strongly - the premise was fantastic, the visuals were stunning, the leads seemed so promising, and then... A train wreck.

No chemistry between the leads at all, with almost next to no relationship development. Yeon Woo spends the majority of the show wondering if he's going to kill Yoo Han or go nuts because he can't bear to lose colour, and Yoo Han spends most of it just listing off an obsessive amount of colours and shades, with no explanation other than "I memorised them because I like you". (Btw, half the shades he said were just the English words for the same shade a billion times.) It would've at least been understandable or believable if he was an artist, instead of an idol. In fact, I'd have LOVED if Yoo Han was an artist, so Yeon Woo and he could appreciate colours and their knowledge makes more sense.

But that was sadly this shows entire downfall. Nothing was explained. Nothing was revisited. It was like they had a concept and messed around with a camera for 80 minutes - Not to mention messing around with the cinematography. There's a part in episode 5 where it jarringly cuts to a scene of them hugging in the rain, but the volume mixing is terrible and it's startling. They'd never hugged before and I couldn't understand or piece together why Yoo Han was crying. Their voices could barely be heard over the rain, and it was drowning out the music, too. It was so staggering that I went to another site to watch the episode to see if it was just Viki's copy glitching on me. No, that's how it was supposed to be.

But I digress. Some scenes make no sense and there's no need for them. What happened to his mum? What was the point of that? What was the point of Grandfather? His mask? They didn't explain how it even worked. What about the decolouring in his memories and the fit? What about the fact Yoo Han's friends already told Yeon Woo 6 episodes ago that Yoo Han couldn't recognise faces and they acted like it was a big reveal? Why even BOTHER making Yoo Han an idol? Why did he have to have such a powerful family when Mono's are already discriminated against and they could've easily lied about it without throwing their names around? Why did they have a random flier/drawing of Yeon Woo's mother framed in this apparently randomly chosen to attend school? Why was Yoo Han wearing his mask at the end? I thought they were together so Yeon Woo could see colour? You're preventing him from seeing it at school where Yoo Han can feel normal because he can see Yeon Woo's face, but Yoo Han won't let Yeon Woo see colour? All because, I quote, "He wants to make it a fashion trend". WHY did Yoo Han just COMPLETELY gloss over the fact Yeon Woo tried to kill himself? Not only that, but then he decided the best idea would be to take him off his prescription medication and break him out of a psychiatric hospital? And when the bleep did those two have time to even fall in love? Was it even love? Or was it just them both depending on each other to feel "normal" to an obsessive degree? We'll never know, despite Yeon Woo posing this exact question not 2 seconds before kissing Yoo Han.

This leads me to my other complaint. There is zero chemistry, or any semblance of love between them, besides when they're messing around with colour in the art gallery and being way closer than friends with literally no hint of "oooh, this isn't what classmates do". Yeon Woo was a wet blanket and the only thing he did well was cry (btw, how on *earth* did this pushover get in a fight with somebody at his old school for bullying him for being a mono?) and look psychopathic whilst contemplating kidnapping Yoo Han (which reminds me. Why on EARTH did he buy a security camera? They clearly weren't subverting expectations to fool you into thinking he was kidnapping him, and the whole point of kidnapping him was so that he didn't lose colour again. Why would you need a camera if you were so desperate to keep colour around you, when presumably you HAVE to be around that person - not via a camera. Otherwise, that defeats the whole emotional turmoil of this drama because they could've just face-timed 24/7. )

Yoo Han was the only redeeming feature of this entire thing beyond the lore of the world (which was pretty terrible and throw away anyway) and he spent most of it acting like Rain Man listing colours and doing very little else. We didn't even see him pretend to care about being an Idol.

Not a single plotline was explained, and the kiss was honestly pretty terrible, especially the cinematography angle - so I suspect the leads were both straight and uncomfortable doing much kissing, so they just put their faces near each other for the majority of the scene and filmed in an angle so you couldn't see.

This is absolutely my biggest disappointment of 2021. Thank god I didn't waste much time on this.

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An ambitious story with potential that failed due to too little time

The show had a promising start: The premise was super fun and interesting, and the first episodes were somewhat addicting even. Overall however the show lacked in execution and acting so that having watched the ending, I'm left with a very mixed impression. The time was simply to short for this kind of story. There were so many elements that were rushed, or introduced in the beginning just to be shoved aside for the relationship later on.

One big issue I had is the acting of the two leads. The main lead was super wooden and failed to bring his character to life, and the other guy's acting I personally liked better but he overdid it with his overly monotonous voice. I don't know if he tried to sound mysterious or seductive or what but it came out as tryhard, flat and simply unnatural. I tried to blend it out but it kept bothering me.

I wasn't too happy with the dialogues either. There were some lines and moments that could have been emotional and impactful but since everything was so rushed and the acting lackluster they mostly came over as cringe and out of place.

The biggest problem certainly was the plot development. Many plot elements were actually introduced with quite much attention and care at the beginning, just to disappear towards the end as if they hadn't been that important after all. They rushed to bring the relationship to a closure, without much regard to all other aspects of the story. To be fair, if they had concentrated more on the plot, there would have been no way to bring the relationship to a satisfying ending in this short amount of time. They had to make a decision and chose the least worse option but with so little time there was no way to execute this story properly. I would have preferred it if they had planned for two seasons from the start and left us in the middle of the story or on a cliffhanger, rather than having this complete but half baked story.

Despite the fun start my conclusion is that due to the poor execution the relation development felt forced and the acting skills were not good enough to save anything. The first episodes were quite addicting thanks to the fun premise, but the last two episodes especially left me disappointed. The plot completely disappeared so that it felt like all the build-up from the first episodes was for nothing, and I found myself not very invested in the characters anymore.

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Different.

Color Rush was unique! Here are my pros and cons:

PROS:

INTERESTING TOPIC. We really got a look at what it could be like to live in a world of grays, without color. I began to believe that a "probe" exists! Upon research, I see that it is a fantasy. But it's a great "soulmate" kind of fantasy. I also liked the plot twist at the end (Yoo Han's prosopagnosia).

YOO JUN'S ACTING. As Yeon Woo, Yoo Jun's acting was very effective.

OST. I really liked the theme song.

CONS:

ACTING. Aside from Yoo Jun as Yeon Woo, I was disappointed in the acting. Heo Hyun Jun, as the probe Yoo Han, was pretty stiff and colorless (no pun intended!). The actress who played Yi Rang (the aunt) was constantly mopey and seemed depressed, but what could have been a sympathetic character just came off as cold, boring, and bitchy.

UNCONVINCING. For me, while I liked the show, I wasn't jumping with excitement to see what would happen next. The whole series had an element of unhappiness to it (which can be really effective in a drama) but this seemed rather weird and not compelling enough to draw me in. Despite a "dead fish" kiss, it was nice to get a happy ending, but even that came off as too rushed and almost misplaced.

It's a 7/10 from me.

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This is, hands down, my favorite Korean BL drama. The OST is great, the cinematography excellent (it’s really art in motion), the plot so intriguing... and even though the story of Yeonwoo and Yoohan doesn’t really delve deep into the world building of this “universe”, you get the sense of how different it is with the Monos and the Probes living side by side with the rest of the normal population and experiencing things that simple humans cannot beginning to grasp.

Yeonwoo and Yoohan, their story and their dialogues, the way the actors portrayed them, I really felt their fascination with each other, that they simply couldn’t stay away from each other. And I was glad about the ending, that the drama did not take the MODC route but gave them a HEA, even though it felt like it was just the beginning of their journey, of the exploration of what they could be together, what a Mono and a Probe can be together if their yearning for one another is mutual, not one-sided and forced.

(Also, the whump was amazing!)

Basically, it was wonderful and I loved it and I need more!

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Unfinished Plots

One thing I hate about any show/series I'm watching is if there are plot holes or unfinished endings to ongoing scenarios, and oh boy did this show have them aplenty. While I'm in love with the concept of Color Rush and the world-building that went into it, it still felt undone and rushed by the end.

Let's Dive In.

The way this show starts off with world-building is EXCELLENT. I loved everything about the introduction of Monos and their Probes. They set up this amazing story on how Monos finding their probes makes them go crazy, and other interesting plots that caught my attention almost immediately. We figure out that Choi Yeon Woo's mother was a Mono who had to find her probe, but she mysteriously vanishes and it's his aunt's lifetime goal to find her. For some reason, this plot lasts all about three episodes (three SHORT episodes mind you) until the disappearance of his mother is pushed to the side and never talked about again. What the fuck? The best parts about the series was her disappearance and I wish we could've seen so much more.

I LOVED Go Yoo Han. I loved their introduction to one another, and I even more appreciated how he wanted to get closer to Choi. While I found him wearing that mask to be a ridiculous aspect of the story, I will say that it's pretty humorous in the fact that we all now have to wear masks. Go Yoo teaching him the colors and goes to a color exhibit that was beautiful. My heart was fluttering so much when Choi was seeing in color and we can see how happy Go Yoo was for him. That excitement alone left me wanting them to get together so badly.

I didn't care for Go Yoo's friends. While they served somewhat a purpose for the storyline for Go Yoo and Choi, they also felt like a nuisance with these weird abilities. Jung Joo had more so a disfunction per se, in which he couldn't see people's faces. It felt so odd to the plot, even with it already be pretty much unrealistic, just how can you not see people's faces? it would've been more believable if he couldn't physically touch people, or maybe even better if he could automatically tell who can see color and who can't. The same goes for Kim Min Jae who was barely in the series in the first place. He had the ability to (I'm guessing here) see dead people? Or communicate with the dead? I don't know, but it wasn't needed if it wasn't going to be addressed or explained. Same goes for Choi's mom who we never find or heard about again.

Overall, I'm being tougher on this series because I can feel the potential that it has. It has the potential to be one of the best Korean BLs or even one of the best BLs period. However, there are some areas that it falls too short in, or too weak on. If we are to get a season two, I want to see more of the mom's plot, and more seriousness going into the Monos and Probes situation. Still, I would recommend this series because what we do see is beautiful and sentimental.

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Great new drama and diving into the BL genre with great actors

Unique story line that keeps you hooked and want you to know more, great actors and good chemistry between them, the supporting cast too are interesting to watch. It's a must watch for lovers of BL and people who want to dive into BL genre.

Overall I enjoyed watching this drama, I gives this unique kind of vibes from the first episode to the current one now. The scenes are subtle as well as intense and this makes the drama more enjoyable.

Although the episodes are quite short leaving you longing for more but it conveys the information about the main story line correctly.

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Rush rush and rush

After the successful-BL's webdrama-you-guys-might-know-aka WYEL, South Korea produces more BL webdramas with the hope of same enthusiasm people give to WYEL. Color rush really has interesting storyline. If you are familiar for reading AU (Alternate Universe) fanfiction, Color Rush is definitely that type fanfiction you might like. The concept of mono who suffers color blindness and probe whom allows mono to see colors is so fresh and fascinating. Moreover, i wouldn't gonna lie i watched Color Rush after seeing its promotional poster (yes Hyun Jun's sharp eyes and visual caught me and i didn't know he is formerly known as Tbz's hwall).

But i found some points they really miss to tell and it annoys me for real. The scenes' transition are so odd (like how suddenly the raining scene comes, i am like huh?!?), the effect they use to describe how Yeon Woo could see colors cause of Yoo Han is somehow too much and distrubs me. Hyun Jun's skill acting is still so so compared to Yoo Jun even though both of them are rookies. The storyline is forced too which is probably due to low budget. i am confused about where yeon woo's mom is, eally curious how yeon woo's aunt searches for her sister, yoo han's rich-ass family background and on top of that the face blindness that Yoo Han suffers of is only explained in last episode. It would be better if we got to see Yoo Han's point of view along the episodes.

The OSTes are good ofc..tbh, i decided to finish Color Rush cause its unique storyline. You may continue watching this one or not...

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