I somehow managed to find a way to watch this SP so I might as well put down my thoughts on it. I seriously wished that there's an English translation version of the novel tho, so that I can read it. Somrhow the English novels skipped this one and release Silent Parade despite Forbidden Magic was set prior to the events in Silent Parade. Regardless, I'm kinda glad that this SP exist since there was that brief mention of Yukawa going to New York in Silent Parade.

While more Galileo live action adaptations are always welcomed, I do have some mixed feelings about it. It's quite obvious, of course since the reason was plain clear; I wished Utsumi was in this. I have nothing against Makimura to be honest, but the moment the character appear on screen I could tell that most of her characterism was based on Utsumi's template. Which was another reason why I wish it'd be possible to read the novel in English.

The case itself this time was still interesting. But unfortunately for Yukawa, this case also ended up having deep connection with him as one of his precious student was a possible suspect in a crime. Such thing had always been a sore wound to him ever since Ishigami, and obviously knowing his stance about how science should be use to enrich humanity he wouldn't like to see someone misuse it to harm others. And of course conflict will happen between him and Kusanagi due to their different opinions.

It was nice to be able to see Kuribayashi-san again, it was pretty amusing to see the old lab assistant fumble around to help Yukawa since we don't get to see him in Silent Parade. Overall, the SP was kinda neat. But I still wished that Utsumi was in this instead of Makimura (though I may understand why Shibasaki-san can't reprise her role as Utsumi in this SP)

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Yanno, I was kinda glad that I decided to watch this movie after I finished the Grand Invasion event in the Touran game. Because knowing the little bits of background info on some of the main events as well as some of the sortie expeditions from the game just adds to the experience in enjoying the movie. And I like the fact that this movie add the involvement of the Saniwa to the reason the Grand Invasion happen since that event was still some of my most favourite part of the game. Not to mention the fact that this movie feature two of the most well-known story set in the Sengoku era. I lost count of how many different animes and games made their own interpretations of what happened to Oda Nobunaga during the battle of Honnouji as well as Azuchi Castle.

The cast were perfect as well. And I really have to appreciate the fact that most of the Touken Danshi casts (aside from Iwanaga Hiroaki) turned out to consist of the Tousute and Toumyu casts who may have reprised their own characters or took new roles in this movie. I also love the fact that most of the main formation swords consisted of the swords I already have in game (except Nihongou). Because of that I'm mostly familiar of many of the Toudan's characters and personalities. And it's pretty nice that the movie feature Mikazuki as the main Toudan who leads the expedition and whose POV we're following. Since in Hanamaru it had been Yamatonokami Yasusada (and Kashuu Kiyomitsu) being the main, while in Katsugeki, Izuminokami Kanesada and Tsurumaru had been the main Toudan. (In both anime, Mikazuki was mostly a support character.)

That said, I appreciate the fact that the Toudan involved in this movie consisted mostly of swords that belonged to the Nobunaga, Akechi and Hideyoshi's factions. Because then we could see as well how the respective Toudan react to the things they witnessed as they fought to protect history from the History Retrograde Army. It certainly adds to the emotional impact as we see the Toudan struggled with completing their missions while also witnessing the deaths of their previous wielders/owners.

I knew Suzuki Hiroki and Shiina Taizou mostly from the Saiyuki Kagekiden. And I'm really glad to see their performance, this time as Touken Danshi. The two, as well as the rest of the cast had performed really well in this movie. I look forward to seeing the second movie next year.

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Yanno when I first heard that thr drama was based on an American movie I totally forgot that I actually seen the movie with Zac Efron much earlier before. It was only after several rewatch that I started to wonder why some parts are mighty familiar.

Honestly there was plenty to love about the drama and plenty of things to chesish. And I love how the drama expanded a lot of the many plot since the original really moved the plot quite fast that you may not be able to appreciate many of the details.

I really live the choice of casting for both of Hong Daeyoung. Lee Dohyun and Yoon Sanghyun really do resemble each other and even have similar sounding voices, to which whenever the two transitioned to each other you'd barely be able to pick up the differences. And I love how both of them were really great at bringing up the many emotions and how great the two of them in carrying out their characters to the best of their abilities. I really love the focus on the relationship as Daeyoung works to mend his relationship with his wife and kids as well as reconnecting back to his father, whom he missed so much.

I've seen quite a number of dramas with Kim Haneul, and quite a lot of them involved her playing middle-aged women who happened to be caught in a marriage crisis. Of all those dramas, I have to say that I enjoyed 18 Again more than I ever expected. While that may partially be related to the fact she's acting alongside Yoon Sanghyun and Lee Dohyun, I have to say that that the writing play a lot of importance in making Jung Dajung a very likeable character. And I guess because of that, like Hong Daeyoung, we also inevitably couldn't help ourselves from falling in love with Dajung and her family.

I really love the expansion of of Deokjin's story. To which, aside from showing that Deokjin had quite a geeky collection he also dabbled in the world of cosplay. And I really love the focus on Ms Ok and Deokjin as an older geeky couple, not to mention how the relationship was portrayed in a very normalised way.

Loved all the comedic elements and how it always looked natural whenever Deokjin and Daeyoung argued heatedly to the point of exchanging slurs to each other that they didn't even care if other people would see their weird dynamics. I really loved all the tiny additions to the plot that made the drama even more relatable compared to the original movie. This drama was really well-made.

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Not quite the sequel you'd expect

Having watched the first film this one was based on, I was expecting a new adventure featuring our favourite pirates and bandits team in action again, despite the change of casts. But it turned out that this film was somewhat of a reimagination of the original Pirates 2014 movie.

Like the first movie, this one features a group of pirates led by a female captain as well as a group of bandits who were former Goryeo soldiers. But unlike the first film, this one didn't really spare some time to build up the main character's origins. Unlike Yeowol, Haerang was already a captain of her own ship without revealing much of how she ended up in that position. And as much as Haerang did have a scene where she and Muchi had been saved by a whale, Haerang's connection with the whales wasn't as deep as Yeowol's in the first film. And as much as Haerang kept referring to her crew as her family, I can't quite relate to her the way I did with Yeowol as we're never really shown much of Haerang's past to make us see as to why family was important to her.

Likewise, Wu Muchi also seemed to have some similarities with Jang Sajung, but unlike Sajung... Muchi wasn't really quite as charming and charismatic as Sajung. And similar to Haerang, Muchi's past wasn't as developed as Sajung was. The film didn't really gave impression that Muchi actually spent much time being a bandit prior to being rescued by Haerang. Unlike Sajung, Muchi felt more like a pretentious, homeless man calling himself a bandit. Even as his past as a former Goryeo soldier was revealed, his character still felt unconvincing.

That said, there are few other similar points that was similar with the first film. One, this film also had a mention of Lee Seonggye and other notable characters of the time but unlike the first film, the connection was pretty vague. There were also some parallels between Mo Honggap and Boo Heungsoo who were the sworn enemies of Sajung and Muchi respectively, but like everything else in this film it was depicted very shallow. Kwangsoo's character in the film seemed to take the role of Yoo Haejin's character in the first one, but it felt like this movie relied too much on Kwangsoo's betrayer trope from Running Man to deliver the comic relief, which doesn't really work all the time.

On its own, this film was quite enjoyable with some bit of fighting and adventures on the high seas. But if you've already seen the 2014 film, watching this one would feel a bit underwhelming. The comedic element in this film was more slapstick compared to the first one and personally, I didn't feel that the jokes to be as funny as they were in the 2014 film. The same could be said about the romance element in this movie.

Unlike the first film, this second one was quite weak in terms of story. As much as some of the visuals were quite stunning, I couldn't quite immerse myself into the story as much as I did the first. I feel like this film would've been better without the whole pirate king sequence as well as the wholw Haerang can't cook joke because it took away the opportunity to properly develop the relationship between Haerang and Muchi. Other than Muchi pestering her about liking him or scenes of Haerang cooking badly and force feeding Muchi food, we don't really see how the two ended up really liking each other. Not like how Sajung and Yeowol did because they were forced to stay together for a while due to them being chained together. In that sense, Haerang-Muchi's relationship felt shallow compared to Yeowol-Sajung's relationship.

One can say that this second film was a much sillier take of the 2014 film. And as much as the visuals and CGI was much better in this film, it end up being lacking in terms of writing.

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When I found out that the Japanese Signal was going to have a movie alongside a special, I was really happy. Since it probably gonna be long wait before we would ever get any news of a sequel on the original. And then I got curious on what kind of plot we'll get, since aside from the one used in the SP, I think there wasn't any other cases from the original that haven't been covered in the series. And it turned out that it'll be an original case.

Since the SP already implied that the corrupt politician who had been the bane for our pair of detective and profiler finally had their crimes revealed, it makes you wonder what else for our heroes to do. But it turned out that we still have the the underlings of the corrupt politicians and a whole new kind of villain. So I guess that's enough to set the stage for Oyama and Saegusa to work together again, as the SP left us with yet another cliffhanger.

So this time it was murders via poisonous gas and terrorism. A whole new story unconnected to the original kdrama plot. I guess they decided to base the movie plot to something that's familiar to the Japanese audience, cos the moment I see the mention of a poison gas and terrorism, I immediately thought about a Sarin gas attack that I once read in the news. And Jdramas really do love to reuse the plotwist about Public Safety being full of dark secrets.

Overall, it's a fine movie. It kinda took me a while to get used to seeing a much more excitable Oyama in the special and movie compared to the drama, but I guess with Oyama already getting fond of the adult Saegusa and his younger self I can't really blame Oyama to be super happy about being able to work together again with him.

There are some parts that I likes and some I didn't like, but the movie was quite decent. It's cool that BTS still contribute a song for the movie's ending cos I thought they just gonna reuse Don't Leave Me or something. We still got yet another cliffhanger--our faves can't seem to be able to meet properly--but that set a possibility of another sequel. Wishful thoughts, haha. Like I think I used to hear that there's a possibility for the kdrama to get a sequel after so long, so I guess they wanted to keep the open end to allow for such possibilities.

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Yanno when I first watched the Japanese adaptation of Signal, I really can't help noticing that there was at least one case that were in the original that weren't included in the Japanese version. I usually assume that it's because Jdrama tend to have shorter runs so when adapting from Kdramas that had twice the usual length, some parts from the original would have to be omitted.

To be fair, I never expected the series to revisit the case--heck, I didn't think that the Japanese adaptation would even have a sequel, so when the movie and sp was announced I was very delighted.

So the case that haven't appeared in the jdrama made appearance in this sp, which was the case of a woman who was supposed to be dead end up actually still alive. It's interesting to see how the case was rewritten in the sp to be set much later than in the original. So instead of this case being the origin as to how the secret evidence of corruption came to light, it end up becoming a way to reveal the truth of the death of one of the corrupt officers.

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If you can go back into the past and do things differently, would you do it? That's basically the premise of the story as we're introduced to a couple who married at a young age and later on faced with an unbelievable situation due to a bad misunderstanding. So when a freak incident sent them back into the past, such thing would have been a great miracle.

This drama is really great at telling a story on how a couple who once had great love for each other was able to reconcile again after revisiting the past and recalling what was it about each other that they loved so much. Only in kdrama would you see a situation where one would receive a divine intervention to reset your life and set things right. And through an unexpected way even!

As usual, Jang Nara is the queen of romcom dramas. It's really great to see her as Ma Jinjoo as we see her life unfolds in the drama. She really looks good with Son Hojun, it wouldn't have crossed your mind that there was a big age gap between them. Nara do tend to have great chemistry with her costars regardless of how old or young they were compared to her.

That said, this is probably the first drama that I don't really mind seeing Jang Kiyong in it. Seriously his character in Born Again really affected my first impression of him to discourage me from even wanting to check out any of his other dramas. But Jang's character in this drama was pretty decent so I guess it's fine.

Really love how the many different couple relationships had been written and how it doesn't feel out of place to see these people grow close together. This drama was really pleasant to watch. But that said, there was still quite a lot of tearjerking scenes, you can't help yourself but relate to them. Love the fact how they did end up changing the future slightly after their return back into the past.

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I usually don't watch school dramas unless there's a secondary plot that can convince me to watch them as they tend to be slice of life dramas centering around students and teachers. I actually had glimpses of the drama few years ago on KBS World but it didn't grab me back then. So when KBS World decide to reair the drama after about 6+ years, I might as well take my time to finally watch this properly.

School dramas tend to be also be a coming of age dramas where you see stories of kids learning about life and grow into fine adults. Master of Study was like this too, in fact at first glance the drama had some similar vibe with the likes of GTO and Gokusen dramas. Like Baekhyeon was a rebellious troublemaker whose only living family was his grandmother, Chandu was from a well-off family but he had zero interest in study, Pulip's mother runs a bar, Bonggu was often bullied by his classmates due to his appearance and Yunjeong's parents both divorced and remarried leaving her to fend for herself on her own. This and the fact that all five kids belong in the lowest class and the worst school just screams at you as a typical setting of a lot of school dramas featuring delinquent kids. But that's as far as comparison goes.

Something I like about Master of Study was the fact that aside from being a drama about a former delinquent trying to get five students from his former school to start studying hard to enrol into a very good college, the drama also include tips to help students to pick up some study skills to improve themselves. And it had a great message about how even the most problematic kid can bring about great achievement if you're patient enough to listen to them and guide them on the right paths.

Seungho as Hwang Baekhyeon was really a right call. He really played the role of a proud highschool delinquent who's rough in appearance but a softie to his grandmother to perfection. I really love his character so much, he's such a charmer. Whenever I see Baekhyeon cry or trying his hardest not to cry after being scolded harshly by his teachers, my heart really goes to him. Even more when his grandmother got really sick and Baekhyeon really broke down in tears. It was a pity that Seungho didn't get Top Excellence award for his performance as Baekhyeon back then because personally, I felt that he really performed well. I mean as much as the story focused on the Seokho trying to get the five problematic students to Cheonha, the main character that really carried the whole story was Baekhyeon. If not because of the conflict between Kang Seokho and Baekhyeon, a lot of things in the drama wouldn't have happened the way it has. As much as Seokho's intervention affected the attitudes of the teachers and students of Byungmoon High, Baekhyeon's growth and hardship do influence the other kids and special class teachers to also do their best in achieving their goals. And having both Kim Sooro and Yoo Seungho play the respective characters were really a good choice. Sooro and Seungho really made a pretty good combo together.

And I also love the character of Ms Han Sujeong played by Bae Doona. She's really a very good teacher to the five students from the special class. Ms Han's growth from being an English teacher who hasn't quite gain any respect her student into a very passionate teacher who'd go all out to support her students was really great. I really love the relationship Ms Han had with her students especially with Baekhyeon. Not to mention that the parallel between Seokho's relationship with his teacher and Sujeong's relationship with Baekhyeon and how that reflect on the way Seokho act around them, made the characters very relatable. As in, Kang Seokho seeing himself in Baekhyeon and that gave him the strong motivation to want to be a good mentor to Baehyeon and it was endearing to see how the two started to became close despite how much the two tend to clash with each other.

I love the fact that this drama showed how one could try making learning such an enjoyable experience and show that it's not impossible to achieve good grades as long as you have the determination to study hard to achieve it. Somehow now I felt like watching or read the original Dragon Zakura series. Because the story setting was that endearing.

While some may argue that some of the study method shown in the drama was pretty extreme and illogical, pay in mind that the story was about someone trying to get five students who needed to catch up on 5+ years worth of school learning in one year in order to score well on their entrance exams. That goal alone was almost impossible at first glance so if there's any way to even achieve such feats would be by using really extreme study methods.

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I took quite a bit of time to finish watching this drama but I'm glad that I finally did. This is a sweet and beautiful drama, thanks to Shin Sekyung and Cha Eunwoo and lighthearted enough to be enjoyed while also having some serious bits of plot here and there and at the end. But mind you, as much as the drama was about historians doing their jobs, the setting itself was quite fictional; as in there weren't any such king that have been dethroned in the way depicted in this drama and no female historian were ever established. And while some of the key scenes like the arrival of Christianity to Joseon, the beginning of the vaccination practices of treating small poxes as well as groups taking interest in science were based on real life events, the events didn't actually happen as it's portrayed in the drama. So as long as you're aware of that, you should be able to enjoy this drama as it is.

So far to date, there weren’t any other dramas that actually focused on historians in the time period and the kind of work they do. I mean, you do see them in some other stories but they rarely became the central role. Because of that, it was interesting to see how such profession could have functioned during the Joseon period. And I have to say that it was interesting to see how the early methods to vaccination to treat a disease first started or how the process of compiling daily records of the palace were compiled into annals.

That aside, the drama also had some romcom elements like the romance between Prince Dowon and the rookie historian Goo Haeryung, which also had some kinda triangle with a senior historian Min Uwon. There were also a few other pairs like the relationship between the Crown Prince with fellow rookie historian Song Sahui, amongst a few others. And it was fun to see how the characters juggle between doing their job and romance as well as deciding where should their loyalties stand as the historians fought in making sure that history was written and recorded accurately.

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Wasn't planning to watch this remake to be honest, but I guess things just happened. I mean I just happened to find this remake movie so I might as well watch it. I have to say that of the two remakes of Blind, this version followed the original much more closely compared to the Japanese one. Not just in the base plotline but also in the way certain scenes were filmed. But I guess it's inevitable to see how similar the movie was directed, considering this film was directed by the same person who directed the original Blind.

That said, even as this remake was very similar to the original and not as loosely adapted as it had been with the Japanese version, there were still some details that were written differently. As the screenwriter for this movie would've added or changed certain elements of the plot to appeal to the Chinese audience. And for people who have seen the original and the Japanese remake, noticing the different details have to be one of the things that will stood out to you.

For one, the dead brother in this movie was written to be an aspiring singer instead of a b-boy. The way the brother died was similar to the original except the part where instead of a handcuff, the brother was tied to the car with a chain. The motive for the killer also slightly changed and written to have a bit more connection to Xiaoxing. As with the latter Japanese remake, this movie also incorporated the use of social medias and dating apps. Which wasn't in the original. In a way, this Chinese remake was like a cross between the Korean original and the Japanese remake, even when the latter was made much later than this version.

Lin Zhong was written to be a young skater, and I guess that's what influenced the Japanese remake to have Haruma being a skateboarder. And rather than the orphanage being that place of memories for our main witness and her late brother, this movie changed it into an old villa.

It was interesting to see what kind of details were presented differently in this remake compared to the original. The obvious ones being Xiaoxing and Lin Zhong's initial report on what they noticed and saw during the hit-and-run case. Like a lot of the details that originally was revealed and found out much later ended up being laid out from the very start, which kind of removing a bit of the mystery from the original movie. Other than that would be the subway chase from the original being changed into a chase inside an empty mall in this remake. Unlike the original and the Japanese remake, this Chinese version didn't reveal whether or not Xiaoxing did decide to resume her police training nor have Lin Zhong aspire to follow her same footstep. And the casualties in both Korean and Japanese version met different fates in this movie, in which while in itself shouldn't be bad, it makes me wonder what's the point of the killer still being referred to as a serial killer when his part was changed so much that he didn't really kill most of his victims.

Overall, watching this remake was interesting. It was nice to pick up on the different details and similar visual cues and compare how the different remakes recreate the scenes from the original movie. On its own, the movie was fine as it is. But if you love and enjoyed the original Blind, then you may end up finding this movie a bit lacking. Compared to this remake, the original was portrayed to be much more mysterious. There were parts in the original that were written to be very vague while this remake revealed some details much more clearly.

Though, having said that... I'm not sure why this remake decide to change the killer's motivation... as well as the fact that he hadn't end up killing any of his victims but people who ended up caught in his action and trying to create more connection to the blind witness, which did not exist in the original. But that aside, the movie was fine on its own. There's quite an overuse of a certain song that I first heard from the movie Storm Riders but that's it.

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Was randomly looking up stuff to watch and thought that I might as well watch an old movie when Seungho was much younger. And since it's a murder mystery, that's another plus point.

I have to say that it's interesting to see Yoo Seungho, Kang Sora and few other familiar faces looking a lot younger than I usually see them. And it amused me to see Park Chulmin in this movie as well, acting as Junghoon's teacher.

Half of me wished that this movie could've been much longer, like there are some parts that I wished had been elaborated further but it served the purpose. The mystery of the true killer wasn't really too complicated yet still kept me guessing until the end. The movie really provide quite a suspense with the chases by a secondary suspect and later the actual killer as Dajung and Junghoon tried to escape with their lives.

Like I mentioned earlier, there was quite a few loose ends remained unresolved, in which it may feel like watching an incomplete story but overall still an entertaining thriller.

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Yet another drama that revolved around King Gwanghae and the people of his household. When it was announced that Jung Il-woo would be playing Bawoo a single father who worked as someone who bossam widows to allow them to remarry I immediately got taken to the plot. Having first known him from Haechi, I was interested to see some more of his works.

Aside from the whole Bossam plot, I was also intrigued by the plot regarding King Gwanghae and Princess Hwa In. In a way, it made me think about Tale of Nokdu plot. But instead of the story of the king's abandoned son finding love and indirectly involved with the dethronement of King Gwanghae, this time, it was the daughter who had been abandoned. It's was kinda interesting to see a different retelling of what could've happened that led to the dethronement as well as a different portrayal of King Gwanghae in his latter years.

That said, Kwon Yuri did very well in portraying the young widowed Princess Hwa In. Despite this role being her first attempt at a sageuk drama, Yuri managed to bring out the grace and nobility of a royal princess who ended up being widowed even before her marriage.

Jung Il-woo as Bawoo was really wonderful. At first glance, you wouldn't have imagined that this ruffian who kidnaps widows for a living would have such a difficult past, but then the more you see how he lived the more you could understand why he acted that way. I really love the child actor who played his son, they really acted well together. And the story of how this pair of father and son ended up having their lives changed after meeting Princess Hwa In was really so sweet.

I first got to know Shin Hyeonsoo from Ruler and was really surprised that he's in this drama. It was nice to see him playing a different character compared to the one in Ruler. I have to say that the drama had some pretty good casting.

I've heard about the practice of kidnapping widows as brides in some cultures and media so it was interesting to learn there was a proper term for that practice. And as much as the political plot had been prominent throughout the drama, I like how the drama started and ended with someone being bossam-ed. That felt like a good way to wrap up the whole story.

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Kdramas really do need to not put on really ambiguous titles as their English official titles, because I wouldn't have started watching this fun show if I haven't bothered to read about what the story was about actually. I rarely watch much School-type unless I happened to have nothing to watch and it was on TV, which was how I managed to watch the ones I already did. This drama had a similar vibe with Who Are You: School 2015 so I ended up really enjoying this. Not many school kdramas had the revenge theme as the main plot after all, like sure there's always the many inner issues that will get involved but not like this.

Yanno, even after watching Ruler and Seungho's other more recent works it still felt surreal to see him playing older characters, haha. Since he still have that boyish look on him, but I guess it gave him the advantage of still being able to play teenage roles alongside the older version of his character convincingly enough without needing to have a younger actor playing the teenage counterparts. And I still love how the drama can't stop gushing about how handsome Boksu was and it didn't feel out of place. Seungho really brought out the many charms and great quality of Boksu despite his many flaws, and you can really get why people tend to love Boksu even when he's not quite so bright.

I used to watch Jo Bo-ah and especially Kwak Doyeon play older characters in other dramas to the point that I almost always forgot that Seungho and them don't really have very big age gaps between. Have to say that Boksu and Soojung look good together and their love story was pretty cute. And this was the only few times I don't really mind the whole teacher-student couple tropes.

I really love the many supporting characters, especially Teacher Park played by Cheon Hojin who cared a lot about Boksu to the point that he act like a father to Boksu who grew up without one. It's really cute to see Teacher Park being so bashful to Boksu's mom to the point of being adorable.

I really love the many comedic moments; like how Kyunghyun had this internal radar where he could sense his old homeroom teacher approaching him, the funny CSI parody as well as them training the kids to study as if they were trying to train kungfu under Master Wong Feihung's lead. And I love how each even-numbered episode would end in a dramatic tone as the plot progressed towards unexpected outcomes and made one eager to anticipate what happens in the next episode. It really felt like watching really long but engaging movie.

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Initially I put this drama as of no interest to me, since I'm usually not fond of cinderella/chaebol plotlines. I mean, aside from a few that I did like, the genre as a whole tend to annoy me somewhat. But then as time passed, I got to see Jung Ilwoo, Park Sodam and Ahn Jaehyun's other works and thought about giving the series a proper look.

And I guess it worked out in the end, as it didn't take long for me to like the characters and premise. For one, I enjoyed this drama much better than The Heirs as the plot here was much more fun to watch. For one thing, as much as Hyunmin was so much of a womanizer and assholey at first glance, he's much better than a certain Kim Tan in that it didn't feel like he's being pretentious for being a rich kid or act disbelievingly flamboyant. And later on Hyunmin's characterization expanded even more to reveal that he wasn't in fact, quite the superficial person that we initially thought of. In that sense, Hyunmin's character was better developed than Kim Tan and that other character the other actor had played prior. As in for one, Hyunmin's action for 'bullying' the person he truly liked was out of their own sense of guilt and felt undeserving of being loved.

Park Sodam here played the main female character Eun Hawon, our titular Cinderella who didn't quite believe in the fairy tale magic. Have to say that I like Ha Won's version of the cinderella trope; in that despite how her life was a mess, she didn't let that get her down. And she can fend for herself too, so as much as her step family treating her badly she never let that bring her down. That said, Jiwoon's character already had his own charm in the kind of angsty boy type. Like he wasn't a family rebel for no reason and his bad relationship with his grandfather stemmed from something that happened in the past. It's not quite the Prince Charming one could've expected but when paired with our cinderella, the two do look good together!

Seriously can't help with the comparison with The Heirs since there was a lot of common elements between these two that kept reminding me. Not to mention Boys Over Flowers, though I'm more into the original JP adaptations and not bothering with the Korean one, especially with the whole 'making the girl miserable' trope. Even then, I have seen a lot of different version of the F4-type tropes in many dramas and some dramas tend to overplay that trope to the point of annoyance. But surprisingly, this drama kept amusing me. There were even moments that I can't help feeling my heart flutter as we see more of the apparent love square between Hyunmin-Ha Won-Jiwoon-Hyeji. Though you might blame that to the very good ost popping out at good timing.

Honestly I never thought I'd end up enjoying this drama a lot. The story elements were pretty balanced in a way that Ha Won's family was like the usual cinderella setting aka the stepmother and stepsister treating her badly and stripping her of any basic neccessities to the point that she needed to be self-reliant. Twist here would be that the dad was lead to think that Ha Won wasn't his child due to a misunderstanding thus overlooking the problems in the household. The issues within the Haneul household was also pretty decently set, like the reasons why the grandsons were in bad terms with the elders was understandable and it wasn't just typical poor people weren't a match with rich people trope (thus they would do their cruealest act to separate the couple). Heck, I like the grandfather and I'm glad that he wasn't written as just a rich old man with shallow personality who only thinks of profit. Also, the way the different people start to care and grow affections in the drama were also written well and the love didn't just happen suddenly and you can really see the chemistry happening between these relationship. Have to say that this was pretty rare in dramas of these tropes as usually the tropes can be exagerated too much, but it was executed very well here without making it feel too cliche'd.

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I finally managed to finish watching this drama and was happy that it turned out to be good. This drama was pretty enjoyable when you can just marathon watch it in one go, cos if you watching it as it air you may end up losing interest in the middle as the tension goes down.

This drama was yet another good show featuring a detective with a supernatural telepathic ability to read minds and to my delight, the drama made good use of the plot idea while also showing realistic reaction of how the public would respond knowing that such a person existed. If anyone had seen He is Psychometric, the story had a similar tone though Memorist had a much more darker and sinister cases and mystery.

I've watched quite a number of dramas by Yoo Seungho and grew to really like his character Dongbaek in this drama. As always Seungho was able to bring out the sincerity of the character and the anguish felt by Dongbaek, enough to make you care about him to keep watching the drama. You just can't help rooting for Dongbaek as he continues to push forward to save lives while also being cornered into unfavourable situations.

That said, at first I wasn't really taken in with Lee Seyoung as the profiler character, Han Sunmi. Though that probably also influenced by my initial impression of the actress from her character in Korean Odyssey, to which I had some mixed feelings about. But once I set that bias aside, I was able to like the character as Han Sunmi's pasts and motivations were unveiled.

The cases featured in Memorist were written quite well. And while there were some pretty hard cases that involved implications of rape as well as religious cult stuff that may be a bit unbearable, the rest of it was pretty fine. The mystery elements as well as supernatural were pretty balanced with the normal detective stuff so it was good enough to draw you more into the story without making it too unbelievable. And I love the fact that as much as there were a lot of corruption in the drama like the many abuse of powers by people of influence, the drama still had a lot of hope for things to become better. And the writing of the Eraser and Executioner character was done so well that it didn't feel out of place when those characters started to be redeemed. Only thing I regret was that I wished the drama could be longer because Dongbaek was really such a lovable character.

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