Mixed Feelings on Yuri

I was really excited to start this season knowing that there was a new character and an ensuing overarching plotline with them, and it was really cool to read the theories about how Nanno and Yuri each represented the different types of karma. After watching it, I still really liked the throughline, especially seeing more of Nanno's past and character development, but Yuri's character did not work well at all for me, even though I loved the episode about her backstory.

My main issue is that every single episode's arc seemed to come to a screeching halt every time Yuri stepped in. Nanno's actions actually almost always make sense, and the plot device of Yuri coming in to mess things up actually gets extremely tiring once its used for multiple episodes, one because Nanno's subplots don't seem to provide the same satisfaction, and two because Yuri honestly isn't charismatic enough for me to enjoy her random presence.

It's also so difficult to paint a clear picture of Yuri's personality and punishment method when she's only depicted as a fly in Nanno's orbit the entire time. I genuinely think we should've gotten an episode where we start seeing karma happen, then we find out the instigator is Yuri and not Nanno, and then we see the episode play out per her karmic methodology — this way we'd get a clearer idea of her worldview before she started officially clashing with Nanno, and her character would also be able to stand by herself more.

Overall, I still enjoyed this and I actually liked the topics it covered too — there's a lot less girl-on-girl hate in this one which was good to see. My favorite episodes are Pregnant, SOTUS, and maybe Yuri. When Season 3 drops, I will definitely still be tuning in, and I hope the newer characters are given more chances to shine without diminishing Nanno's impact.

Read More

Didn't connect much to it

It was overall a pretty comforting watch overall, especially with the cooking theme. I loved that the sisterhood as well and seeing how each of them had a different dynamic with their father, but wish we saw more of it.

I'm honestly not sure if we got too much or too little of the romance subplots — I didn't see enough about it to really care about them, but I would have also preferred more family scenes. In general, I didn't connect to this film as much as I wanted — I really appreciated the father-daughter themes but felt more neutral about each of the romance plots.

Read More

Outdated but the casting is still great

I'm gradually making my way through all the Hana Yori Dango adaptations to compare them, and had saved this one for two slightly contradictory reasons: One, I knew it was older and it might've been more problematic, and two, I knew how much of a craze this drama started and actually had pretty high expectations.

I'm not going to talk too much about the plot — we all know what the story is and it's true that most of this doesn't age well, and this being from 2001, it's a lot less sanitized than the newer versions like China's 2018 Meteor Garden and Thailand's F4: Thailand in 2021.

However, I do think the pacing was just...sort of off. I felt like it was really slow in between plots — 29 episodes is way too much for this type of story. At the same time, when one plot moved to the next it felt kind of abrupt. I also just felt like the level of drama didn't necessarily match up what was actually happening on screen, maybe because of screentime distribution, or because side characters often came in and out without enough exposition.

Ultimately, I think the strongest part of this drama was the casting. This is maybe the only version where you really feel F4's commanding presence. Dao Ming Si is actually a good balance of intimidating/imposing and brainless loser, and Lei manages to pull off aloof and gentle but also powerful. The other two are a little less memorable, though.

I also think the casting and acting for Shan Cai was great. Compared to the other versions, she's still spunky but feels much more down to earth. There's no overacting (which the Korean FL is the ultimate culprit of), and she all around seems much more grounded and logical, and less whiny than the others.

A final comment I have is — and this might be more of a fault of the source material than the drama itself (which I haven't read) — but I just think this version had too many boys fall for Shan Cai when they could've just kept it platonic.

I haven't watched season 2 of this one yet, but so far my favorite adaptation of HYD is still the Japanese one, which seemed to hit the perfect pace with many less episodes.

Read More

Good vibes, bad pacing of character development

I think this drama had a very good start and I didn't mind that there would be another guy to pressure our leads, even though we all knew he had no chance. Just overall, I really loved the vibe of the show as well; the music and soft cinematography were really comforting, not to mention how the chemistry between our leads was off the charts.

The ending felt a little rushed, however. I'd say that the show was decently paced until the last episode, where the main leads went through getting back together, breaking up, some individual character development, and then getting back together again.

I feel like the contents of the entire last episode should've been distributed more evenly throughout all the previous episodes and the amount of love-triangle scenes could've been lessened (and I'm saying that as a love triangle enjoyer).

Hyunseo's insecurity problem should've prevented them from getting back together in the first place, and the ensuing episodes could have been spent on communication and her trying to work on that, rather than having them get back together first and THEN bringing back the insecurity issue to break them up again. With so much being stuffed in the last episode, there also just wasn't enough time to have the leads communicate more, and it made their final reunion feel abrupt and unearned. If we'd seen more character development outside of the romance it would've helped as well — like seeing Hyunseo's journey with the piano and Suho's journey with trying to find happiness in the little things again after working so hard the past few years.

Overall, I still think this was a light watch; Steve Noh is fantastic and I would love to see him in more melodrama/romcoms because he was great at both emotional and comedic scenes. I've loved the softness of both this series and the prequel Soundtrack #1, and I hope they follow this up with another miniseries.

Read More

Captivating...but too much girl-on-girl hate

So I didn't realize, before going into this, that there was a supernatural element to it. It definitely added a lot to the show's intrigue and made Nanno a very (satisfyingly) overpowered character, though I found I had to suspend disbelief several times. The anthology aspect of the drama also added a lot to that, knowing that she would win and everything would start over in the next episode.

The downside of an anthology, however, is that there are always stronger and weaker episodes — and in this case I think the show front-loaded its stronger ones. My favorites were The Ugly Truth, and Social Love, with maybe Lost & Found as an honorable mention. The weaker ones were the three at the end before the finale: Trap, Thank You Teacher, and Rank.

I'm also a little mixed on the themes. While I enjoyed the variety in the stories and they do cover several different topics, from class/wealth disparities, to social media, to beauty standards, there's one running theme that's very frustrating to see, and that's girl-on-girl hate. 90% of the episodes have girls attempt murder to set up SA situations with either Nanno or other girls over a boy's affections, and it's a little frustrating that so many plots resorted to this instead of finding new character motivations and exploring other aspects of dark human nature — of which there is much to explore.

Read More

Strong start, but...

I think this drama started out super strong — the show wasn't afraid to be violent and gory, you could clearly differentiate between the classmates and what archetypes they represented, and there was so much intrigue around both who the mafias were and why the gamemaker decided to choose them.

As the drama went on I definitely think it lost a bit of steam — Mafia reveals were interesting but you can only do that a few times before the audience wants to dig deeper and actually find out how and why the game started. Instead, the disorganization of the students lasts for a little too long.

So I think the backstory reveal started a little too late, and it introduced a new character that I couldn't really bring myself to care about so late in the story. The backstory itself wasn't fleshed out very well, never going in depth with some of the things they had hinted earlier about how each student was involved. I still don't understand why students were chosen to be Mafias, Citizens, the Doctor, or the Police, and if it was random it really lessens the importance of every one of them.

Without these specifics, the gamemakers didn't feel much like "masterminds" with a thought out plan, but just some people with a thirst for revenge and instilling suffering in whatever form. I would've much preferred it if the game had been a more direct reflection of what happened in the past, and if it was repeated until each student learned a specific lesson (with Yoonseo being the first to learn that she should've been there for her friend), as opposed to the ultimate purpose simply being "I want them all to suffer as much as possible."

I'm also part of the camp that feels mixed about the ending. While I've seen open endings that are done well, the one here feels too "unsustainable," meaning that I know it definitely can't last forever — there has to be more than the story and whatever it is should have been shown.

Overall, I still had a lot of fun with this. I don't know if there will be another season but I hope there is — there's a perfect set up for one and it would give the show a chance to delve deeper into its backstory and each kid.

Read More

Good themes, okay ending

Suda Masaki's performance as Hiiragi Ibuki is by far the best part of this drama, and the mentor-mentee dynamic he had with every single one of his students was really great. I loved seeing how all the students went through a range of emotions as the drama progressed, from laughing at him at the start, to feeling betrayed, to finally starting to listen, trust, and look up to him.

The female lead is one of the students who definitely plays a larger role than her classmate counterparts, but still doesn't play a very active role throughout the show; with different episodes focusing on different students, sometimes she feels fully sidelined. Not a dealbreaker by any means, but it definitely feels like there's just one main character.

I think the individual themes in the show are really strong, especially when there is a main focus on a student for each lesson, but I'm personally not a huge fan of the final message, of the "killers" being internet bullies. While I understand the message of thinking before you type and not hiding behind a screen, I also feel like Mr. Hiiragi speaking to "the general public" not only doesn't have the same emotional impact, but also feels so broad that his perfect plan starts to feel a little leaky, especially when I think the same lesson of "think before you act" was already given earlier specifically to the class of students, and it worked better then.

Read More

Binge it if you can

I’ve never read the webtoon so this is based off this show as a standalone drama and not as an adaptation. I started watching this 4 episodes were out because I saw that hair-tying scene on my Twitter/X timeline and it completely convinced me. And the show proved me right — I binged all the released and couldn’t wait for next week. The main leads had amazing chemistry, the antagonists felt like actual threats, and I couldn’t wait to see how the revenge would play out.

As the weeks came around, I still enjoyed the episodes, but I did feel like the show started losing steam.

First, the main leads’ screentime dwindled and we got more and more scenes of our antagonists (of which there were many). It added good tension to see things from their perspective, but it also added frustration. The leads had so much chemistry and tension and we only got to see a few minutes of that every week.

And as more episodes went on, we ran into a different issue: we did get screentime for our leads, but it didn’t necessarily feel like they were progressing. We’d get the same hugs and conversations where they talked about being there for each other and fighting together against the bad guys. These scenes were cute but it felt got sort of repetitive, especially now that we’d gotten all the tension-filled conversations out of the way earlier and it seemed like the next plot development wasn’t happening anytime soon. I still really enjoyed scenes where they cared for each other, but all the stakes felt a little lower by this point, and I started to feel like the revenge was almost too easy. Sides had been chosen, secrets were already revealed, and most importantly, the main antagonists had stayed quiet or had lost too many battles in a row.

Honestly, I was pretty lukewarm on the entire plot by then. Looking back, I don’t remember a singular satisfying moment where our main female lead got to face off against her mother in a moment where I felt like they were on equal footing, where the stakes were high and I truly didn’t know who was going to win. The revenge plot seemed to delve into smaller moments where they would address this one thing first and then that other thing, and I wasn’t sure there was a climax. Even the build-up to some other reveals and to the ML’s perspective felt overdue and a little underwhelming.

Episode 11 was a turning point. Things that needed to be revealed had been revealed, it felt like the revenge had been finished, and the antagonists had been out of the picture — most of which was off-screen, I might add, which made the story feel somewhat incomplete — long enough for The Time Jump to happen. Yes, the dreaded time jump. I’ve never been a fan of the time jump. It’s fine as an epilogue but I’ve never once enjoyed it done in the middle of the story and this was no different. It just felt kind of…weird. Like they didn’t know what to do after all the villains were put away, so they had to bring them back, but had to wait some time for them to be able to. Story-wise, it was a bit confusing to have it happen after everything was seemingly over, but ultimately I don’t think it was blown out of proportion, which was good.

I think part of the plot simmering down also had to do with the female lead, who was really proactive in the first half and then started being more aimless in the second half. Still, I liked the message the drama left us with — that the best revenge for her was having a happy marriage, a healthy family, and a good life. Despite the slowdown, I think this drama had a really good finale episode.

Overall, it was still a pretty good watch — this was my second favorite watch behind Castaway Diva during its runtime, but if I were to recommend it to someone I would suggest binging it rather than watching it slowly. You might be able to retain more momentum that way.

Read More

Best kdrama of 2023

This is probably my favorite 2023 kdrama. It really just had me by the first episode, where we saw the childhood backstory of our two leads. It was heart-breaking but also beautiful seeing how they went from simple classmates who judged each other to two people who stood with each other against the world.

I was a little nervous going into this, since the premise of “a girl gets stranded on and island and wants to become a pop star when she returns to civilization” seems sort of like a goofy premise…but the first episode completely dispelled all my worries. There are stakes in this, for sure. There’s the familial abuse plot, which was what I was most invested in, and I really loved how we got a “found family” aspect amidst all of it.

I also just loved the dynamic between our characters after the time jump. You had our leads, who had amazing chemistry despite one of their identities being hidden. It’s really a testament to great acting and directing that most people started shipping them so early on. And despite a bumpy road at the start, they grew into a communicative, trusting relationship where you could see how much they wanted to protect each other. It’s really refreshing that how real and human all the characters seemed: they tried to stay kind but sometimes wavered out of fear and made selfish decisions, or it could be something as simple as they tried to lie but weren’t very good at it.

The side characters were all well-rounded as well. The second male lead had his own backstory and emotional growth — although I do think his part in the love triangle was unnecessary, but it was good that it wasn't blown out of proportion — and the family members also played their part in the story, with their own heart-warming backstory. It was beautiful. Even Ranjoo had her journey of becoming a singer and her fall from fame, which tied together with Mokha.

I admit I cared a little less about this plot; don’t get me wrong, I LOVED all the songs — both actresses are so immensely talented and the songs are definitely new additions to my playlist — but the ickiness of the entertainment industry’s power struggles, rude fans, pushy reporters and press conferences…I think I would’ve been happier with less of it.

Overall, I still really loved this one. In addition to great characters and story, you can tell a lot of thought went into the cinematography and set design (I looked into an art print in one of the shots and it totally had symbolic meaning) and it really just added that much more to the atmosphere. Definitely recommend this one.

Read More

About emotional turmoil

As someone who absolutely despises infidelity in shows, I went into this thinking that I was watching it simply for Puff/Jasper, who I had loved in Pleasantly Surprised. And yet, I turned out to be ~pleasantly surprised~ by this drama and the way it handled cheating and emotional turmoil.

For anyone who goes into this expecting a whirlwind romance and two people who can't help but be physically attracted to each other's touch, I give a few words of warning: this is not that sort of drama. Instead, this drama was really intelligent and emotionally thoughtful, which made me enjoy it much more.

This is a show about two people who are both trapped, in work, in life, and in their relationships. The physical attraction they feel towards each other is the first opening of that Pandora's box, sure, but what was always more important was the other things: what do you need out of a relationship? how do you deserve to be treated?

I know people found the female lead's restraint frustrating — and it truly does last throughout most of the show. But I actually really loved it because it was a lot more realistic. I think of people who have been in relationships for years and worry that it would all go to waste if they give up now, and worse, people who have been treated a certain way for so long that they start thinking that it's all they deserve. I found her internal conflict super relatable and was really impressed with how emotionally and morally intelligent this show was.

Overall, I loved how down-to-earth everything seemed. The show had its dramatic moments, but they made sense and it never felt like they were spitting out tropes to be dramatic. This is a show that really takes its time and lets its main character take as long as she needs to think, and dramas like that don't by very often anymore.

Read More

Give me more of the original cast

So I was sort of middle-of-the-fence about season 1, and I feel similarly about season 2.

To start with the good things — the vibe of the show is on point. The cinematography and set design give, and the effects do a nice job of tying it all together. I particularly love the look of Hyun-su's monster form.

The characters that had survived S1 were all my favorites — Ji-su, Eun-yu, Hyun-su, Yi-kyung — so I was really excited to see how they stories would continue and who they would meet along the way, but I tuned out to have a bit of mixed emotions on this.

I liked Hyun-su's story but I felt like we barely saw it. There were a few episodes where he was completely sidelined and just in general the subplot of him being experimented on ended really fast, which was disappointing because it would've been a much different plot than the "humans running from monsters in the wild" situation we'd seen before.

I was the most satisfied with Eun-yu's story and her screentime. It was amazing seeing her develop into such a badass, and she had really good chemistry with Chan-young, who is probably the only new character that really grew on me this season.

With that being said, I felt like there were one too many new characters that were introduced and I don't think I was that invested in a lot of them. There were a lot of soldiers and some new people who were also just living at the base, and overall I didn't think focusing on all of these characters were necessary. There were several antagonists, some of which I didn't care too much about, and overall with so many subplots I feel like they took screentime away from the original cast. To be honest, I also just found the soldiers difficult to tell apart.

My biggest gripe, however, is with Yi-kyung and how sidelined she felt when she was supposed to be a main character. I've never been a fan of the "special child" trope, and this really reminded me why — a new character comes in and suddenly all our original cast acts like they're the most important and their existing plotlines fizzle out. Yi-kyung was pretty much shown only in relation to her daughter this entire season, and even the other characters like Hyun-su got a bit of this treatment near the end.

It's one thing if we had gotten more time to gradually see the development, but the time jump + flashback method didn't help.

Other than this, this season still ends on a strong note, and I'll be tuning into S3, for Hyun-sun, for Eun-yu, and for Chan-young.

Read More

What is the message?

I came across a fan-made music video of the leads to Ellie Goulding's Still Falling For You and it convinced me to watch this drama for the longest time. I am sad to say that the FMV was far better than the actual drama.

The first thing I noticed was was the overall tone and style of acting. It was almost parody-like, and it felt like the acting was always dialed to 30% no matter how emotionally heavy the scene was supposed to be. I also had this issue with 2gether so I'm not sure if it's just a sign of the times, but the unconvincing acting made it so that none of the plot really felt emotional or high-stakes.

My biggest issue is probably with the social messaging, which turned out to be very self-contradictory.

So you have a main character who's only temporarily ugly because a procedure went wrong; this is actually a pretty good (and common) set-up for a previously shallow girl to realize there's more to life, but as the drama progressed the theme started getting muddled. There's a female character who's on the heavier side and the drama was filled with comments about her weight, but it was all played for laughs. Additionally, people would tell our FL that she just had to wait a year and then she would be pretty again, and as the drama went on, this did prove to be true and very quickly the drama changed from "women shouldn't let shallow judgements bring them down" to "women should appreciate men who like them when they're ugly, even when they become pretty again."

I felt a similar issue with the way the male lead's plot went — after so much character exploration around why he had to work so much and be so frugal and how it impacted his previous relationship, it would've been extremely interesting to see how his relationship with the FL would be different, considering that once again there would be a wealth gap. Instead, the drama went the easy route and made it so that he was secretly rich and there would be no family disapproval or long-term insecurity.

As a result, it felt like the drama focused instead on how they it was important for everyone to be ugly/poor (or pretend to be) at some point in their lives to test who really cared about them. The drama didn't explore the lives of anyone who actually was unattractive or unwealthy, and would never be able to change it.

I also just have a huge issue with how they destroyed the ML's character in the last few episodes. I liked his playfulness at the start; it was fun, albeit a little over-the-top sometimes, but playful MLs are my favorite archetype and I liked the he was genuinely nice. Once the female lead rejected him, however, he turned into a very typical Nice Guy™, slut-shaming her by saying her clothes were too revealing and she just wanted men's attention like all other shallow women, calling her a gold-digger who didn't like him because he was poor, and being stupid for not appreciating him for liking her when she was at her lowest. It made me not root for him at all and it really is the reason for my dropping my rating so much.

Despite all that, I still really think there is potential here and I wish the writing had taken itself more seriously to really reach that.

Read More

Low stakes and oversaturation of characters

Before going into this, it was already pretty clear that Strong Woman DBS, which had one of the most iconic kdrama couples ever, was a difficult act to follow. I'm going to try and get all the comparisons out of the way first. While I wasn't a HUGE fan of the humor in SWDBS, it knew well enough to take serious moments seriously, and everything else was strong enough to make up for it; I loved the leads and the murder plot was thrilling and high-stakes. This drama has the same issue with its humor, but its other aspects are either weak or worse.

The humor just isn't my style at all. There's a lot of physical humor and over-acting; it might be fine if it was only used in select moments, but I felt like it permeated every second of drama, even big fight scenes and what should've been tense moments with antagonists. Overall it made the entire tone of the drama seem kind of off — as if nothing actually mattered because it was all for laughs.

The drug plot felt low-stakes not just because of the tone, but also just because of the way it was written. I don't think anyone going into this drama should expect any profound commentary on drugs or class issues in South Korea. The drama seems to try every once in a while with an offhanded comment, but it really doesn't go much deeper and it's even self-contradictory sometimes. There's parts where they touch upon it, but they also make its lead a "good billionaire" because she's kind with her money and because she pulled herself up by her bootstraps. It felt contradictory to any commentary, just so viewers could get some #girlboss moments.

In terms of characters — I'm not a fan of ensembles to begin with and this drama is a good example of why. It felt like there were so many characters and so many subplots that none of them got enough screentime to be complete, and less important subplots took over more engaging ones. The drama spent SO MUCH screentime on the grandmother's romance, which felt slapstick and unserious, while Namsoon and Heeshik's screentime began to dwindle. And as the drama went on it felt like more and more antagonists were getting introduced as random side characters, and because they served no purpose other than to trigger plot points and had no backstory or personality, they began to blur into each other.

The only antagonist that really had a good story was the villain Ryu Shi-O, but my bigger issue with him plays into my low-stakes criticism. He was just...a bad villain. He has physical abilities, sure, but his plans, goals, and motivations weren't that clear, and most of all I just can't believe that he couldn't piece together anything our protagonists were planning when they were being so obvious about it. I mean...Namsoon's acting...

With so many things going on, romantic lines didn't have enough screentime for good development. I'd already mentioned not caring about the grandmother's romance, and while Namsoon/Heeshik were the best in the show, it felt like they didn't really go deeper than both of them being cute.

Honestly, I think there's an audience for this somewhere out there — maybe someone who likes quirkiness and shenanigans — but it's not me. I'm giving this a 2 (and not a 1) just because it didn't utterly infuriate me as much as me just not really caring.

Read More

Moments of silence

To nobody's surprise, my favorite scene is absolutely the reunion scene; it's also an amazing example of effective silence, because the film absolutely took its time and you could feel the characters' disbelief and nostalgia with every passing second. That was when the wave of emotions finally hit.

This is a warm movie (ironically) with a relatively simple plot. I don't know if it has to be as long as it was, especially since a lot of the screentime was given to the daughter and her boyfriend, who were cute but didn't really feel relevant compared to the mother-daughter relationship.

Read More