We Watch Challenge 2024

10

11. Hi Mart

I recommend you from your ptw.

1. Romance Is a Bonus Book- noona romance

2. My Perfect Stranger- time travel

3. Nobody Knows

4. Queen of Tears- 16 ep but 1:30 hr/each ep

Bonus

5. Soul Mate: Chinese movie. (Recently I watched this. And was so impressed with it.)

6. My Dearest- my favourite 2023 historical romance kdrama. 

Recommend me best kdrama according to you. 

I accept jenn's recommendation for Knight Flower.

I was planning to watch racket boys before this recommendation. But just couldn't start it. However I will use this chance to watch knight Flower. And I know I will watch racket boys next. As it's stuck in my mind now. (I loved Racket boys)

Status: completed

Rating: 10/10

Loved it. I was smiling from ear to ear. 

This perfectly matched my mood. I was looking for something like my dearest. There's no similarity. But How lovers survive in historical political tension. And strong FL.

 Leads chemistry was on fire. I knew from comments that there's no kiss scene. But I really wished they had atleast kissed in last episode. 

1st Challenge  ||2nd Challenge|| 3rd Challenge || 4th Challenge || 5th Challenge✅ :D (Apologies for taking so long )

Recommendation For  jenn      - Not sure what to rec so here are 5 options

• dele (episodic + interesting varying cases )
• Kimi no Koto Dake Mite Itai (BL- sweet friends to lovers)
• Missing: The Other Side ( wholesome supernatural )
• Not Others( unique mother daughter dynamic+ comedic)
• Call It Love (melo romance)

>>Badge----Image

Recommendation From  SKYLINE    - I accept to watch Midnight Runners. This something i have been wanting to see actually.

Status- CW

Rating-

Thoughts- 

26th Challenge | 27th Challenge:

Hello  SKYLINE , 

it has been a hot minute since I recommended something to you. After searching your lists and looking at your rates these are the best recs I could come up with.  I tried my best to give tiny blurbs of what they are about but I also provided their links so you can do your research, if you'd like.

1. Be My Favorite - BL; Thai; time traveling. Kawi goes back in time to try to get the life he wants however through these travels he realizes that all his actions cause a different future. He ends up discovering what he really wants in his life. I think the dialogue here is quite amazing if you take the time to understand it.

2. The Warp Effect - Time travel, mystery, and romance. A comedic form of discussing, what I think are topics that are often overlooked, sexual education topics through the life of Alex. Alex finds himself time-traveling to his future however several things don't make sense so he has to uncover what happened throughout that time through his new and old friends' lives. This drama is another one I enjoyed cause of the "heavy" topics discussed in a very fun and interesting way.

3. Your Name Engraved Herein - BL Movie, Taiwan. It takes place after martial law was lifted in Taiwan in 1987 and the friendship of two boys, who discover more about themselves. It's my ultimate favorite movie due to the dialogue. I am currently working on a movie review for this (for fun).

4. Last Twilight - BL; Thai - This is another great drama IMO. Mohk is the "bad boy" who ends up being a caregiver for Day, who is partially blind and as their relationship as patient and caregiver commences so does their friendship and even more

*edit: omg , no these were not on your lists but what I meant is that there were some recs I thought of after seeing what you have seen on your PTW and not seen.

Open for business haha. However nothing dark, scary or that is psychological (<-- I don't tend to understand these at all). Also, for now not over 24hrs in total cause I gotta get back to work after my vacation,

Hi Skyline, after looking at all your recs I decided to watch , i want to see something funny this time around

Recommend Show: Good Manager 

Status: Completed
Started: 08.08.24
Finished: 08.10.24

Rate: 7.5 (UPDATE: after thinking it over I am giving it an 8 RATE bc I keep thinking about some scenes and cracking up. )

Comments: Hi Skyline,
I tried to like this series, there were funny parts to it but I kept trying to keep my eyes open. I loved the dynamics between the two main male characters and the banter between each other but I somehow felt that it was dragged out too much. I had moments where I was cracking up and then it just died down. I think this just not be my kind of show ?

3rd Challenge Completed! {?}

Hello, SKYLINE ! You said you were open for anything so I decided to explore you what you completed and the genre you are interested and I had some few I thought you would be interested so I would love to recommend you:

-Click on the title to reach the page (˵ •̀ ᴗ - ˵ ) ✧

Forgotten

• Forgotten:  Since you are interested in Psychological & Thriller element. ✓ 
• Voice of a Murderer: Since you are interested in Investigation & Thriller element.
• Following: Since you are interested in Thriller element.

I am open to all recommends.  

Don't worry just recommend me, I am sure that one of your recommend is in my PTW so absolutely don't go there („• ֊ •„)੭

Gurl!!!! I really want to watch all of them so bad, can the option be "all of the above". Since I watched Jung So min's movie few days ago so I feel like watching her drama that's why

I accept Mart's recommendation of Because This Is My First Life 

Status: Completed

Rating: 9/10

Thoughts: First of all thank you Mart for this wonderful recommendation! I really don't know when would I watched this drama if not recommended by you. It was a meaningful roller coaster. Loved the quotes used here. Although there were some moment I wished that were not there but leaving that every thing was refreshing. Showed some pleasant and unpleasant view of life in a great way.

19th challenge completed!

Hi, Mart! It is my turn to recommend something to you this time!

it is only 8:35am, so I am going to be a bit scatterbrained in my sales pitch here! Not too long and a happy ending, here we go!

Three recommendations:

I saw that you’ve been watching dramas 13 years and rated many titles highly from that era, not likely solely because of nostalgia since they are solid! :) I want to take you back half a decade before that if you can brave what video compression of the 480p era looks like depending on where you find it (Jdrama, fansubbed, from 2006)… because I need someone else to watch it and experience all the feelings I did!

1. Home Drama might scare you from the few tags alone (maybe I should expand em), but it is a HEALING drama… the premise: people who lose their “home” in the form of the ones they love the most dying in the same tour bus accident come together with the only other people in the world they feel can really understand them, let them just exist and talk or not talk, just to breathe without feeling the suffocation of a million pitying eyes on them etc… they move into the same house, one designed&built by the ML who lost his only family in the accident. It is not totally free of teary-eyed moments, but it is remarkably warm, tender, and for me was far more uplifting and hopeful than sad at the end of the drama (I missed it as soon as it ended bc I ended up loving em all) even though it starts with something quite sad indeed… but that “death, tearjerker” tag detail was clearly just added from the synopsis since that is brief, all in the first ep, and is the setup, NOT the main story which is about the ones left behind and how they forge their futures with that important person absent. 

Alternatives:

2. Hospital Playlist is ultimately a friendship story. Yes, they are doctors and work in the same hospital, so just enough exists to make it believable, but it ultimately is all about friendship across many years, multi-generational as we see maybe the best of all besties from elementary school til death in the form of Kim Hae Sook and Kim Kap Soo, a third buddy also endearing when they are playing games and just being quirky lovable people. The main cast play in a band together, so it gives us the joy of some music by them! :) It has plenty of tender moments of real life and a tinge of sadness, sure, but it is really joyful if you want something upbeat, funny, and with characters that are weird and wonderful. Some slight romance from a lonnnnnng crush and likewise from a new one. Oh, and a second season that was also delightfully charming. 

3. Be Melodramatic is a mix of genres done quite well. The funny parts are laugh out loud and sometimes stomach pain level funny (I love a weird grown ass lady who shows a bit of a misogynist supervisor what torment awaits when asking his marketing pro to be a bit more like the flitty cutesy intern lol… and you get something like 9 or maybe 12 versions of a ridiculous “shampoo song” that had me in stitches)… but it also has one of the leads grieving and in a deep state of psychological unease from trauma, so her story arc is a bit more somber though balanced, especially since most of the leads live together in a share house! It is also, at the end of the day, very friendship-oriented but has a romance storyline, too.

 4. If those just don’t have enough going on for you (they are more slice of life and almost wholly character-driven rather than event/plot-driven), one last option that was a lot of fun: Flex X Cop has someone super rich, quite smart, and popular/cool with a bit of a superhero drive and love of adrenaline rush activities (and visuals to scoff at Clark Kent sans glasses) use his $$ and abundance of “rich and nothing to do work wise, why not” licenses (lawyer, pilot, sailing, lost count… and his own helicopter, of course, and yacht) to put away OTHER rich people doing bad things with their money, people previously untouchable because places like private clubs don’t ever share CCTV data so warrants are impossible etc. Enter rich boy ahead of all of em in the pecking order but who hates their junkie, drunk driving, corporate corruption, and other crime. The bromance and partnership that get forged somewhat reluctantly (aside from a cute puppy of a maknae fanboy of the ML lol) are endearing, and the backstory of the ML tugs at you. Action packed, high energy, slick production, parts will definitely hit you in the feels and perhaps make you flutter toward the end. :)

I guess early morning me must be in teddy bear/fluffy cat friend mode. All of these are heavy on friendship, non-traditional generation gap ignoring ones, long-established uni ones in their mid-30s, and I think 29 year olds about to hit 30 and showing life through that POV for Be Melo then workplace camaraderie and a bit of cute fandom. I avoided thriller sorts because even with resolved endings, happy isn't the word I would call many/most endings of those storylines! I hope you like whatever you pick of them-all four are among the best of their specific genres/do precisely what they set out to do.

Open for recs! Only demand that cuts out a lot of titles is no dubbing, so no Chinese historical dramas (I can’t handle the mismatched mouths/voices). Up to 24 hours (=20 typical or 16-18 cable Kdramas, 32 45-min eps, etc) is about my limit for a single story. Ignore my mess of a PTW (like a whole closet of receipts from shows tapped once without accounting for it properly), and if it is already in my CW or on-hold but not yet started, it means I am either waiting for proper subs or to be in the right mood/mindset for it even if I started then paused with a plan to rewatch whatever made me say “not right now.“ I can handle dark, gritty, demented, dystopian, you name it, but if they romanticize violence (D/V especially) without the abuser punished severely, I will be screaming obscenities at the writer and blacklist em for forgiving such crimes. :)

Wow, SKYLINE,  that is quite a lot to get through, so it took a while to glance at them all (I’ve seen Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese, and one Filipino BL, though… Thailand just makes a lot of them with pretty different base stories and is where I had several recs from this challenge come from ?-only so many Where Your Eyes Linger/To My Star/We Best Love kinds of stories I can enjoy before bored of em, so the plots or settings/characters have to be original for me to stay hooked, even if some Thai ones are pretty out there in content! ;)

I will certainly be watching more than just this one title (though I am not sure, a bit like 1 Liter of Tears, I want to take my 1.5 hours of tears from More than Blue and multiply them by 5… will need a day I am staying home 24 hours or so afterward to bring my face back to normal and not look like two bees stung me, one on each eyelid! I keep tearjerkers for when I am dealing with a lot of stress I just have to endure and can not minimize, so I will pause on the sobfest since I already know how broken the terminally ill male lead will make me feel)! In one title resides a major weakness of mine, though, a weakness called Kimura Takuya, so regardless of my bit of unease with real world racing (and even some stunts) as someone who has known a couple of people who died and more who had disabling wrecks doing it professionally, I am choosing that relative oldie, partly for him, partly for the found family theme that also gets to me and that Japan does so very well (hence me wanting people to watch Home Drama despite it also being from that “golden era” of jdramas and the resulting heavy compression of the video since it was fansubbed and gigabyte versions of the episodes aren’t easily found for things approaching 20 years of age, esomething not so important for its story events/places/people). I also saw SO MANY other familiar cast members… only when you go back that far in time can you gather all these people for one show! 

All to say… Engine and Kimura Takuya, here I come!

Rating/thoughts: What a sweet mix of heartfelt and silly moments! I am glad they didn’t go overboard with the bit of a love triangle since it could’ve had zero romance and been no less fantastic… I was, though, really sick of Aerosmith “Angel” pretty quick, and they just kept throwing it in when it just didn’t fit the story that well for me and is an earworm I wanted to make splatter and stop wriggling, lol. Every time I go back to this era of jdrama, songs like that (Johnny Nash “I Can See Clearly Now” was a bit better as an end song partly for being light/easy to ignore and not being played over scenes and because most of the episodes ended with some resolution/healing for mostly kids but also Jiro)… I loved the acting across the board and was both happier with his race ending with him pushing to the finish line and persevering, better than winning and more fitting since they’d been pretty intensely using bus/train/late arrival kinds of metaphors … but also sad when .i heard his cute lil table mate who called out to him over and over running after him (Shunta) was adopted by anyone but the ML lol. I am just gonna keep my headcanon as “they marry (since the drama had them going in that direction) and become Shiro’s mom and dad with grandpa babysitting when they work or go out” cause my ending has Shunta and Jiro as the OTP. :) 

Thank you for all the recs! Even more to explore next time there is some down time ( almost a dozen things on my watchlist started within the last few weeks, so it might take a while to even catch up on airing ones)! This one was a great chance to go back in time to his young goofy era with his characteristic smirk/crooked grins and see such delightful giant “adult” kid-tiny kid interactions. This is a solid 9 for me! :)

26th Challenge | 27th Challenge | 28th Challenge: 

Hi leafless7 

Because you wanted something short to watch I recommend the following: (they are all BLs and  one that isn't)

1. Rinko-san wa Shite Mitai. I think you might enjoy it. I liked it because the FL has two sides to her which is a bit refreshing. It's a short cute drama. 

2. Like in the Movies - BL; Filipino. I feel like the dialogue between the characters is what makes this series special. Its cute but they talk/address their sexuality in different forms. By episode 2  I was a  sucker for this show.  I have provided the ANIMA Studios YouTube Playlist Link so you can watch the episodes there. P.S. The playlist with the episodes is mostly in order except for episode 8, which is in the playlist but just added toward the end so have to scroll a bit for the last episode.  

ANIMA Studios on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMPz9QG8YAxJXvznmCorwY7N5ausnteMN 

3.  Light on Me - BL; K drama; charming and fluffy show. It's about friendship as well. One of my favorites

 4. Bokura no Shokutaku - it is short and honestly I think it's so wholesome. BL.

Open for rec. Nothing longer than 16 hrs please and no horror or dark things

Recommended Show: First love hatsukoi by leafless7 

Status: Completed
Started: 09.05.24
Finished: 09.05.24

Rate: 9

Comments: this drama is fucking beautiful. I cried, yelled and screamed. I loved it so much. I wanted a little more.