MAME ugh

Thanks to MAME, I'm now defaulting to looking for red flags in all Thai BL. She's managed to make me so paranoid that I can only call what I am right now traumatized. Congrats MAME, for ruining me for life. Not in a good way.

Fair warning - if you liked this show, then stop reading this review right now and click away. If you haven't watched this show, and have issues with dub/non-con, then watch at your own risk.

(If you have watched it and feel the way I do, thank god because I'm feeling very lonely with what seems to be my very unpopular opinion.)

tl;dr: MAME = Trigger Warning.

It's probably established by now that MAME has a thing for romanticizing toxicity. Enough that people are willing to overlook the messed-up-ness of her main couples that almost always start off on the wrong foot, and yet somehow has (most?) people watching it calling it cute/sexy and eating it up like it's so romantic. But if you look at her track record, you probably wouldn't find a single non-toxic pairing. Not even AePete despite how wholesome it started off as. And don't get me started about the clusterfuvk that's KengklaTechno or TharnType or LeoFiat, ugh. (She just freaking loooooves manipulative/controlling/possessive semes, istg)

I thought LITA would be different because it's rated much higher, but obviously, I should start seeing MAME as a TW before picking a series up. Seriously, how TF is it romantic to use multiple phones to stalk someone when they block you? If someone did that to me irl I would want to get a restraining order. And the whole spanking thing - it made me so freaking uncomfortable when it happened - it's definitely non-consensual and not sexy in any way. They know each other for like a few days and Rain is clearly uncomfortable with it. And from beginning to end, Phayu is so creepily manipulative and controlling, and I don't understand why I'm in the minority in finding their relationship extremely uncomfortable. It's like they're in a D/S relationship, except Rain isn't even aware of it, so there's no question of consent at all.

But the worst thing is everything is shown in such a rose-tinted way that it seems either comedic or romantic. I don't mind watching a fucked up relationship, as long as it's written well enough that you know it's fucked up. (VegasPete obviously did that very well. You know while watching that it's wrong and at no point do you watch it with hearts in your eyes. Morbid fascination, definitely - Lima/Stockholm done well.)

Also, her obsession with giving her uke characters abusive (sexual/physical/mental) pasts. Please MAME, that's not the only way to create angst. I mean, it's not completely a wrong way, as long as you, again, do it well - and deal with it well, instead of just using it as a reason to develop the relationship as opposed to a way of giving a character depth by healing past trauma and moving forward in life. Which is never done. Not with Type, not with Fiat, and definitely not with Sky. Love doesn't magically heal trauma for god's sake. Somehow MAME just manages to send all the wrong messages with her stories, and for those people who would say that it's all okay because it's "only fiction", well, it means her message managed to get across for you, congratulations.

If I could go back in time and make sure I never watched a MAME series again, I would do it in a heartbeat. I just keep making the mistake of not checking who the writer is before starting, so I suppose it's all my fault. I wish all of her works came with trigger warnings in the blurb so that I could have avoided them - but it's far too late now, so at least from now on I'm going to make sure to check who the writer is so that I never have to watch something written by MAME ever again.

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Great start but anticlimactic end

Started off well - really well. I'm very hugely into "isekai" and this drama predates the explosion of Korean isekai webtoons that made the genre itself extremely cliche and repetitive, so I'm surprised I put off watching this for this long. Premise aside, it started off meeting all my expectations and managed to stand out even in the vast sameness of the genre, but somewhere along the way, maybe around ep 10, it started getting repetitive and draggy. And that feeling of satisfaction that you get in a good ending was completely missing - when it finally ended it left me questioning the point of the last few episodes.

Despite the very disappointing and anticlimactic ending, rating it up because I liked the leads and I liked the show enough to binge it through the night (at least upto ep 10) and I wanted to know how it ended badly enough that I finished it.

Ironically, the person I could most relate to post-end was her boss, Prof Park. His expression pretty much mirrored mine when I finished the show.

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Unexpectedly good

So this is a drama that's been hyped up for so long that I went in thinking I was bound to be disappointed. So I'm glad that I wasn't. I've been doing an immortal-beings-falling-in-love binge, and this is where I arrived at after a sequence of DAYS, Del Luna, A Korean Odyssey, and Destined With You. Unfortunately, I'm not the kind of person who can watch something that's almost purely romance, so the first 9 episodes were bit of a drag for me. The peak of the show for me was 12-13-14 where most of the important things happen, and I enjoyed those episodes enough for me to look past the sweet albeit boring beginning, so I suppose I ended up being more forgiving with ratings. And while I was satisfied with the ending, I wasn't quite happy with it. It was good, but had had potential to be great. Also, I'm fundamentally not made for age-difference, and I could never fully enjoy the fluff either because that thought was constantly on my mind. Maybe why my favorite part of their romance was 14-15-16 (minus the ending).

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Starts slow but gets pretty good

Before I get into the cons of this drama, I'll lead with the pros.

One - both lead and supporting actors did brilliant jobs. In that department at least there was nothing lacking, especially the three leads.

I went in blind without reading any reviews, so I don't know if this is a popular or unpopular opinion, but in mine, at least, SSR stole the show. Might be a bit biased - I've always had a thing for slightly unhinged, jaded anti-hero types who go just far enough that they're still toeing the moral line without outright crossing it, and he played the Jayden role to a T, making him my favourite character in the show. All the more so because of SSR's amazing acting. So forgive me for going into a bit of a character study here.

I'm not a very ends-justify-means person, but he was just righteous enough, although underhanded and manipulative, that it made him all the more appealing as a character, with the hidden truths and character development that made me love him all the more, right up to the very last scene with him in it. I was a bit dissatisfied by his (rightly deserved) ending simply because I found myself rooting for him despite my best instincts. But again, that bit of righteousness in his choices brought him his deserved ending so who am I to complain?

I also really loved Yoona as a character (though the acting felt a bit lacking). A competent, independent woman who refused to be defined by and lean on the powerful men in her life, who didn't allow her ambition to take shortcuts with her job or interfere with the ethics of her decisions as a medical researcher - I wish she'd gotten more screen time, and a happy ending withthe person she loved.

Two - the remarkable attention to detail. While I personally have neither medical knowledge nor knowledge regarding Korean law, it seemed to me that the research was well done with respect to both. Especially since they went so much in depth with all the on screen surgeries. If anyone here has medical knowledge to correct me, then feel free, I'm quite curious how accurate it actually was. But that isn't the extent of attention to detail - when you pay attention, you end up noticing a lot of small details regarding behaviours and situations that add a certain realistic depth to the plot that is easy to overlook, and easier not bother usually because people don't pay that much attention. I wouldn't be able to give examples without spoilerizing so I won't.

Three - revenge. I've not come across a satisfyingly done revenge plot that I didn't end up loving, though I have come across those that left me completely dissatisfied with their open (admittedly more realistic) endings where things aren't quite resolved and the revenge didn't quite manage to come through after "The End". In that aspect this one was as satisfying as could be, cathartic in a way only a truly good revenge plot can be, with all the moments of truth spectacularly dealt.

Now cons - holy shit, was this show was a slow starter. And by that I mean slow enough that it took me about five months - seriously - to get through the first two episodes. Considering the one-third-episode-long surgical scenes that wouldn't make much sense to me anyway since I have no medical knowledge to appreciate his (projected) genius, all of that should have been completely skippable, but I couldn't even skip them because of how important they were plot-wise. That and that time spent (probably another third of the episode) on character development for a character who, you know from the premise, is going to die within the next twenty minutes. Especially considering that one-third-episode-long surgery was on the very same character, who, minor spoiler, will be dead about five short minutes later real-time (and a day later inside the show?). Knowing that from the premise, it took me a lot of patience to get through the tragedy, so I kept getting distracted by other things whenever I tried to start watching this show - about five months, maybe a bit more.

The second issue (sort of a continuation of the first, really) - the number of on-screen surgeries going on throughout the entirety of the show, and the amount of time spent witnessing them. As I said earlier, without medical knowledge to understand the importance of what was happening, all it did was bore me and make me lose patience.

Third was the makjang-level of dramatics from some of the plot - so ridiculous that I found it a little hard to believe it could possibly happen in real life, starting from the premise itself. While it was interesting to watch regardless, and was good if I could shelve the logical side of my brain, I found it rather hard to believe that anyone would be able to get away with digging out a live person's heart and killing people left, right, and centre. Also, I understand that Koreans are obsessed with appearances, but is it so bad that a mother would make her five-year-old daughter undergo painful plastic surgery? I'm not Korean, so I don't know what the extent of possibility is for that, but as an outsider at least, it seems horribly outlandish to me.

All in all, I loved it despite all the things I found annoying, and I definitely do think it was worth watching.

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Forgettable

I watched this because of Kim Hee Seon, because she's one of my favourite Korean actors, and unfortunately, her acting was quite possibly the only thing I could like in this show. And even her acting wasn't enough for me to connect in any real way with her character, let alone any other character there. Everyone felt so flat and two-dimensional, which leaves me wondering why all of these extremely talented actors read the script and decided that it would be a role worth taking up. It's not even that the plot was bad - maybe it was the length, but neither the revenge nor the romance plot really made sense. They were both so horribly rushed that it felt forced, and I couldn't see any depth to either. I couldn't connect with either, just as I couldn't connect with the characters or their motives - in any other drama I would have had a horrible case of Second Lead Syndrome, but with this I couldn't even bring myself to care the least bit. Held my attention enough to binge it though, so I'm not rating it as low as I might have otherwise.

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Brilliant from start to finish

I understand that a lot of people dropped/disliked and rated down this show due to [spoiler]. But I for one have to say that I'm very very glad I didn't stop watching then because every single minute of the show blew my mind.

Contrary to what the ratings might tell you, I actually felt that season 2 was superior to season 1 in terms of everything, cases, plot, new characters that were extremely fun and old characters that continued to be extremely fun. The leads did a fabulous job, and so did all the supporting characters. Admittedly the main antagonist was the typical psycho type that seems to be rather common in KDrama, but even their interactions with other characters was interesting to watch, and the final showdown was well done regardless so I couldn't even feel disappointed about it. But still, I'm someone who enjoys it more when the villain is well written, not just in IQ (which is true in this case) but also in EQ (which is unfortunately not true in this case), which is something impossible to do when it's a psychotic thrill seeker with no real motive for doing all the horrible things that they do, which is why I'm rating the plot slightly down. (The only show with a psychopath that I liked for the bad guy despite being a psycho is Hello Monster, which managed to pull off the psycho character quite well.)

(All that said and done though, I still teared up in the last episode's ending credit's last shot when they showed [spoiler]. So forgive me for ducking rewatch value as well.)

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Unexpectedly good

First things first - so... I hate Non. No surprise there. But what I hate more than the fact that I hated Non, is that Non was created for the sole purpose of being hated. That makes him 2D, and I like my characters, especially antagonists, to have three dimensions, thankyouverymuch. The only attempt at adding depth to him is making his father an asshole, and even that felt less like actual depth and more like a cheap excuse for his assery. It might be a personal hang-up, but I can't stand villains that were created for nothing other than villainy. Stories are that much more entertaining for me when the bad guy is not that easy to hate, so the fact that Non was such a 2D bad guy spoilt things for me a little bit.

I still liked the quite mature development in the PeteKao relationship enough to thoroughly enjoy everything else, but, again, no surprise that my favorite part of the show was SunMork. Holy crap, those two stole the show completely.

Also, ifl Sandee. Honestly, that entire group of friends is just adorable, but Sandee was so amazing in the way she dealt with their issues with maturity and behaved as the voice of reason. I love all the scenes with her just being totally badass in general, but the fact that she was an atypical non-bitchy female character in BL made her all the more lovable. Seriously, all the girls in this BL were just so amazing and supportive, so unlike the usual crappy ones, that it made me very happy. (I guess Non took the bitch role to a whole new level so that the girls could remain the awesome queens they are.)

I didn't watch Kiss or Kiss Me Again before this, so I didn't have much of an issue with the plot holes/continuity issues that I saw in other reviews, so this review and rating is purely for DBK as a standalone.

PS - the opening was just Chef's Kiss. I'm obsessed.

PPS - Rain is such a cutie.

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Underrated (because of the ending?)

I'd say this deserves a 10 purely for SYJ who could not possibly have done a better job.

I understand that a lot of people were disappointed with the ending, but it felt so very fitting to me. This drama shows us the consequences of actions that most tend to ignore, usually wrapping everything meatly in a bow and a happy ending that sometimes doesn't even make sense, throwing aside collateral damage as though it never happened - but contrary to what people would expect, revenge would in reality rarely end well. Regardless of intentions, revenge is a selfish motive and will always, always, result in unfortunate outcomes, though the scale of misfortune may vary depending on action taken - so this drama tries to tell, and at least for me it came across as intended.

As far as consequences go, the end to their relationship was all the more fitting - because from the very first scene, it was a foregone conclusion. No amount of love would be able to overcome the things they did to each other, both directly and indirectly by being a by stander while the other suffered, so when I found myself rooting for them despite knowing logically that it made no sense, I arrived at the conclusion the only way it could have ended is the way it did. That said, every moment felt like an "in another life" one, and seeing the very last shot reflecting my feelings was satisfying in an unexpected way - because in spite of everything they made me root for them.

Did the ending suck? Hell no. Would I ever re-watch it? HELL no. There's the dilemma that I can't quite resolve.

(As a side note, even though SYP was a boringly straight forward character compared to every one else, what with his horribly accurate moral compass, I still had a huuuge case of Second ML syndrome. I wish he got a not so open, more hopeful, happier ending, but since I don't want him to end up with Rael, I'm a bit lost. Another dilemma.)

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