SOMEONE GET THIS BOY A COMB PLEASE

Disclaimer...I struggle with most Chinese dramas. There's a cultural mindset gap that I really cannot seem to bridge well, especially when it comes to humor. That being said, I decided to watch this REALLY LONG drama anyhow, because it was about gamers and I like gamers.

The story itself was really fun and engaging and if it had been a 10 episode drama it would have been a much higher rating. This, however, was 40 episodes each like 45 minutes long. That's 30 hours. THIRTY HOURS. I've seen other Chinese dramas and I know that this is actually one of the shorter ones, so I try not to hold the runtime against it. However, 20% of that 30 hours was actually good engaging story and 80% was the lead character giving these weird little-buddah style lectures about life. He was basically like Chinese gamer jesus, telling stories and parables to recruit disciples. It was fun initially but rapidly turned into mindless droning on and on and on.

Even with all the excess boring bits, the theme was still really fun. The whole professional eSports thing was fun to watch and the classic David vs Goliath theme was as stereotypically entertaining as it always it. I'm glad I watched it and I enjoyed it, but it's a lot better in my truncated memory version and the actual act of watching it often felt like work.

Also....can someone please buy this boy a hair brush. I really do not understand at all what they did with his hair to make it look so damaged, frayed, and unappealing. Dude looked like a homeless man who got his hair done for free at the local barber school by a kid who absolutely cooked his hair with chemicals. The lead actor's hair could have stood up and spoken and I wouldn't have been shocked. It was like someone stuck a muppet on top of his head, laughed, and walked away.

Though I will always remember the story fondly, no part of me will ever ever watch this show again willingly. I don't like my entertainment to lecture me.

Read More

Meanest Lead Character Award Goes To....

This drama wasn't anything special. It was watchable....but mostly predictable and a little enraging. The lead character takes the whole Kdrama trope of rude male lead to an extreme that made me super uncomfortable at times. The things his character does to the female lead are astonishingly savage. I have flat out never seen a Kdrama lead with such bad initial behavior. I get that this dude is supposed to have a brain injury that makes him enraged and unreasonable, but dude is extremely mean. This drama falls into the category of "if only you had asked a single clarifying question in episode 1 there wouldn't have been any drama".

The female lead is supposed to be a Dr...but also simple mindedly stupid. She has very limited opportunities to act as any sort of intelligent female, she mostly runs around like a half-brained quack amongst geniuses. I hated the handling of her character and I wish they'd given her a little bit more depth or added a lot more comedy to complement her foolishness. There were so many points in this show where you have to just suspend disbelief and accept that in this particular Kdrama's world nothing makes any logical sense.

Like....ok dude has a brain injury and we're supposed to sort of loosely believe his high testosterone levels make him unreasonable. His personality changed with an accident in which his friend died and somehow he's now a mean dick because of his brain injury. But in the end it's more like dude was a dick just because he'd mad at the world because his friend died. The hormones that were such a huge initial part of the story just kind of fall away into the background and when dude decides to stop being angry and be a nice guy instead he just kind of does it with no medical explanation....which is fine, but it made all the medical explanations in the beginning seem unrelated and pointless.

The worst part about this drama was the REASON he's taking revenge on the female lead. He's mad cause his friend drove drunk due to a broken heart and died. Like every episode, every moment, across multiple characters, everyone seems to just accept that it's ok to blame the chick who rejected him for his death...and because of this it's ok to ruin her life. Wait what? Is that a real thing people think? I'd be pissed at my now dead friend for being an idiot over a random toxic bitch. It's not like she shot him, she just didn't want to be with him cause she was shallow and mean and he was poor.

The side characters we boring and underwritten, the ending made me feel like I missed an episode somewhere, the acting was as good as it probably could be for such an uninspired script. I wouldn't watch this again and if you're female you probably shouldn't watch this at all because it will piss you TF off with all the overt woman-hating themes.

Read More

Don't watch this if you have trouble with complex plots

I've read a lot of negative reviews about this drama, which I think is completely absurd because this drama was masterfully done. The plot is intensely complex, however, so it's possible some people just aren't following the entire thing well enough to understand why certain plot choices are made. This seems to happen frequently with transferring webtoons to tv dramas. There's a LOT of content, and it can be difficult to give the drama the same impact as you can with the much more freeform webtoon medium.

I should preface this by saying (none of you many mega fans kill me please) I don't appreciate Lee Jong Suk as an actor very much. I don't think he has a lot of depth or variety and I haven't been a fan of many of his performances. W is an exception, however. He was really solid in W, thanks largely to the female lead who is very intelligent in her performances. The two leads have a good amount of chemistry in W, but the passion and drive comes largely from Han Hoy Joo's performance. She doesn't overact and she knows masterfully when and how to apply emotion and energy to a scene. The supporting cast also had some really solid character development and charismatic interactions.

W itself is one of those alternate dimension sort of shows, with a lot of dimension swapping going on at various points. The handling of interactions between the dimensions and their affects on each other was really well developed. It was interesting to watch the story develop and become more intense as you got closer and closer to the central piece linking both worlds. The romance plays really well into the overarching story without becoming too overbearing. The ending was well conceived and well delivered and fit the story perfectly without being too predictable or trite.

Overall this is a really really solid drama with a lot to offer. It's absolutely one of my favorite Kdramas...but then I tend to like dramas with complex storylines and intelligently interwoven themes.

Edit: some nice person caught me...I actually have literally no idea what a Webtoon even is and was 100% wrong that the script for this show comes from a webtoon. IVE BEEN OUTTED AS A POP-CULTURE NESCIENT.

Read More

Boring endless loop of the same inane plot device

Dude, you know that annoying thing some dramas do where they make up some obscure random reason why two people can’t be together, but they overcome it in the end and hook up anyhow? This drama does that like 8 times. It’s so obnoxious. “You love me but I’m not good enough for you so I’ll run away”, “Omg you love me even though I’m trash, it’s fate!”, “except now I love you but you don’t love me cause it’s your turn to be not good enough”. For flying F sake.

Apart from that constant rehash of the same inane plot hook, the drama was ok. The acting was good, the side characters were engaging, the architectural theme was interesting.

What mostly drove me crazy is that this drama suffered from bad writing. I get it, you need to fill 16 episodes but your story only has 8 episodes of content, but dang bro at least toss in some flipping variety here and there rather than repeat the same one theme over and over and over and over. Also how flipping lazy was the ending. I really want to rage about the ending but ima hold back cause it’s too dick for me to spoiler it. Let’s just say, it’s cliche beyond words and really poorly executed.

Overall, this drama was a huge disappointment to me. I got so pissed off halfway through the last episode that I turned on a phone game out of spite and only halfway paid attention. If it had been a book I would have thrown it across the room in disgust. The actors deserved better.

Read More

Weird trauma story with decent romance.

I really liked this drama and I generally am super meh about medical dramas. It wasn't exceptional, but it was interesting and kept me entertained and excited for the next episode. The lead actor brings a lot of intelligence to every role he does, and this role was no exception. He plays a man with limited emotional range and empathy ostensibly because of a failed brain operation as a child. The actor does a decent job depicting an emotionally stunted character.

Unfortunately, toward the end things got pretty sloppy and I really didn't get the plot twist with his dad or why it was necessary. From the beginning I felt like his dad was a bad guy, the actor they picked just LOOKS like an evil guy. Adding a weird redemption arc and confusing trauma sub-plot really didn't advance the plot in any satisfying way, it just basically confused things. Maybe that was because the twist was introduced/handled so casually that you felt like you needed to rewind to see if you'd missed something somewhere.

I did like the interaction between the two leads and the male lead did a really great job never dropping the plot thread of his disability. I liked that they didn't heal him with love at the end like every other mental illness Kdrama. I liked that he retained his core defect and embraced it and worked with it instead of against it by the end. But mostly...I just like Jang Hyuk as an actor XD.

Overall, I wouldn't rewatch this show because there isn't anything compelling enough to interest me. Everything was decent and satisfying, but it's a one-and-done sort of story.

Read More

A primer on how to be hot but boring.

Man...I had such high hopes for this drama because these two were so good together in Goblin. There's a major theme in Kdramas though where the lead actress has to be pretty but not tooooo pretty. This female lead plays a lot of supporting roles because she easily rules the "too pretty" category of Kdrama actresses. Most of the dramas I've seen her in she plays the ditzy not-to-bright but super pretty side characters. This drama took that exact same type-cast side character and made a drama around her. The problem is that it's basically still a side-character's story. It's like you're watching two supporting cast members in every scene and you never get to meet the actual main cast. I wasn't a fan.

The actors do very well playing their respective parts, but the story and the script are so bland what's even the point. There needed to be SOMETHING, some additional plot device, to make this more interesting than a side-story. It's disappointing because, let's be honest, it's fun to watch hot people do hot people things on your tv screen. But without any substance you might as well just turn the volume/subtitles off and watch the pretty moving pictures. I mean...come on...spoiled bratty actress and aloof dickish lawyer. It's like every trope got tossed into one drama and you've got a trope salad without dressing for your troubles.

I still liked it well enough to watch the whole thing...but mostly because Lee Dong Wook is hot....kind of like in a weird frozen faced too much botox way, but he's still super hot. I just wish they'd given him something to actually act instead of having to exclusively and constantly play off the counterpart bimbo character. I wish they'd given her some depth so she wouldn't have to just be a total bimbo with no personality the entire drama.

Definitely would not rewatch, once was difficult enough thanks.

Read More

Why Shouldn't Priests Be Sexy?

This drama was so well written. The storyline is absolutely engaging and keeps you on the edge of your seat waiting to see what happens next. I really enjoyed everything about this show, including the ending, it was all very satisfying.

I initially went into this thinking I wouldn't like it much because (this is how shallow I am) the cover art on Netflix makes it look so uninteresting. The story started off a little slow. Initially everything with the priest character seemed to move at half speed and I wasn't super invested. That all changed really rapidly as the episodes progressed. The chemistry between the three leads is really outstanding and builds progressively through the series. The visuals are also really well done. The lead actors played off each other really well and the supporting actors were cast well and written with a lot more depth than you'd expect for characters showing up in only an episode or two. This made the entire story arc and all sub-plots all seem cohesive without becoming repetitive.

The antagonist role moves around a lot throughout the series, which also keeps the suspense and mystery of the plot very well secured. The protagonists are realistically flawed and the world in general seems more realistic and relevant than a lot of Kdramas. This is the sort of meat and potatoes drama that delivers on everything even while being just another possession/exorcism show.

Read More

Boring and LONG

Gosh, I really wanted to like this drama because the lead actor I like in just about everything. Unfortunately, the main and supporting actors were not well paired in this drama and so the interactions completely lacked chemistry and the whole thing felt very bland. Even the color pallets of the costumes and sets were bland.

The story started off really solidly, I was excited for them all to start a law firm together and excited to see how things would play out. This happens very early in the series, so the majority of the series they are in their new shared office/living space. Unfortunately, the writers did not write anything interesting at all into the law firm arc. The cases were boring. The character interactions were contrived and didn't play well off each other at all. The supporting characters weren't well developed and relied heavily on boring overplayed tropes. The romance was boring as well. The courtroom scenes were all so uninspired and often non-sensical.

Basically it was like a good Kdrama with a good plot and ending...but that ending happened in like episode 3 and the rest of the drama was just watching people live out their ordinary lives. I mean they threw in some token plot twists, but it was all relatively banal and uninteresting.

The chemistry between the male and female leads was terrible. I've seen that male actor in many other shows and his chemistry is so incredible he often looks drunk with emotion. In this drama he looked like he was emotionally blunted on Prozac. The romance ended up being so listless that it was barely believable and only then when I really stretched logic. I don't know where the combination of actors went sour, but something was definitely off and it made most of the scenes awkward and void of emotion.

I would not watch this again. It was a SLOG to get through.

Read More

Lots of pretty adults with the emotional maturity of toddlers

Before I start I should say, my rating of this drama as a 5 is probably not entirely fair, but I’m so pissed off at the story that it was a struggle to even go as high as a 5. The entire plot and every character centers around petty asinine lies. Everyone lies in this drama, and certainly every single character lies to the FL. I guess when you live in a world where everyone lies, staying in a relationship filled with lies from minute one must seem normal. But it pissed me off a lot.

This could have been a great story about overcoming odds and striving to succeed despite every roadblock. Or idk, literally any other storyline that wasn’t about the lies someone told the FL every five minutes. This story probably should have gone with a strong FL approach and just abandoned the whole romance story arc. Instead it’s all like, yo these two dudes are mega liars but since they’re the only two dudes in the entire world, pick one. Mega gross.

I don’t even dislike lying and dishonesty as a concept, but what I can’t forgive is clumsy, trite, petty lies with legit zero cleverness. I btw also dislike dudes that sob like babies while staring at a scrunchy instead of respecting their chick enough to trust she didn’t….idk even know what….screw her mentor in the back seat? Like, can we please be reasonable you immature man child?

All that hate aside, there were some good comedy moments. That’s about all this drama has going for it. The actors did well, but that unfortunately is not near enough to redeem the garbage heap of a script.

Overall l, I wouldn’t watch it again and I wouldn’t recommend it. The dude on the scooter thing was hot though, so I guess there’s that.

Read More

Modern social concepts meet old fashioned values, making for some fun easy comedy

Man, this drama started out SO GOOD. It was fun and funny and engaging, I loved every interaction and every scene…It’s very break the 4th wall modern despite the setting. …and then they went back to the castle, and things dipped so far into boring that it was honestly difficult to slog through. The end picks up ok, but gosh that middle is almost like an entirely different drama.

A lot of kdrama comedies are like this though, they start off fun and then try to get too serious for themselves and turn the comedy from a 10 down to a 1. Normally something like this would get a much lower rating from me, but the good parts were too good to discount. If I were to try to put my finger on exactly what went wrong, I think the FL and ML were exceptional when they were playing off each other. In many episodes toward the middle they get comparatively small amounts of time together, which sucks because they had great chemistry together and that chemistry spread to the entire side character group and created something fun and magical.

The pop culture references were really well executed by both the director and the cast. The music was pretty good, and the sets were gorgeous. All of the actors were fully engaged and invested in their roles. I enjoyed having a strong female lead outsmart all of the overtly sexist men. The production team really cleverly and unobtrusively plays with current social issues without impacting your immersion in the story and without being too preachy. That part was exceptionally well conceived.

Overall it’s worth a watch, I might even watch it again some day.

Read More

"De-puff your cheeks or I'll pop them"

The whole premise for this show is bonkers. So many super wrong behaviors just get written off with light comedy. But whatever, it was ok for a quick light watch. It was not, however, clever or sensical. So many leaps were made with so little justification. The chemistry wasn't terrible, except the male lead. I don't know if he was trying to come off as aloof and misinterpreted that as being above emotion as well, but I just didn't get any sort of good feeling from him in this drama compared to the other dramas he's been in...his emotion for everything was listless, whether rage, love, or annoyance, same face for them all. He had a lot of good dry one-liners though, which provided a nice platform for the FL to rebound off of.

The female lead was cute and engaging with massive eyes...but they stole too much of her character from Strong Woman Do Bong Soon....except the entire show she's tossing dudes around like they're nothing but in the end she can't defend herself at all suddenly? Still, her character was good and the execution was pretty well done, she had a lot of great comedy moments.

All in all, I don't regret watching it, but it fell pretty flat for me.

Read More

The Main Character of This Story is...THAT HORRIBLE BEARD

I'm gonna be straight with you people...I almost didn't watch this show because of the beard. Like...it's not even a normal beard it's a weird flat clump of sparse bristles stuck to the underside of dude's chin. I dig a good beard, but the style of this one is pretty repulsive. So imagine my surprise and delight when the beard became the focus of so many episodes! I felt righteously justified when Yumi hated it too, and was super happy whenever it got axed.

It's sort of a weird dichotomy to be rooting for the removal of something that was clearly important to the dude, when in my own life I strive to almost never force my own preferences on another person (except long nose hairs, like IDC who you are if you're coming at me with spider legs sliding along the outside edge of your nostrils you gonna hear about it). Like normally I would be annoyed at the female character for wanting to force the dude to change himself to fit her preference...but that beard was so unflattering.

ANYHOW, beard aside, going into this I was also pretty skeptical of the cartoon and live action combination. There's something probably broken in my brain, I really don't enjoy cartoons. However, now that it's over I have to say they did a pretty good job. They really made the little cartoon cells part of the story in a way that amplified the messages they were trying to get across. It was nice to see the cells so accurately depict the inner struggles we all go through, and it was interesting how differently the two leads' cells were represented. Some of the maddening choices people make in these dramas (and often IRL too) are difficult for me to accept and understand, but the cells helped bridge that gap and made it so I could understand where each person was coming from and why they made the choices they made. I definitely think the inclusion of the cartoon cells benefitted this production immensely.

One other thing I should note...the OST and the sound team did an exceptional job in this show. The scene at the end with almost every sound muted but the fountain was so well done. Other scenes had similar effects, the audio choices really resonated with the emotions in the scene in a way I've rarely seen anyone pull off successfully. The DRAMA in a soundscape isn't an easy thing to pull off, but they put so much care and effort into making the background sounds a part of the story that it was noticeably masterful.

All of that said, I think this is an exceptionally well done show and definitely worth a watch. There was comedy, feels, and just enough mystery to keep the thing going episode after episode. It wasn't epic, but it was pretty darn good. To be fair, relationship struggle dramas rate generally pretty low for me, so 7.5 is actually a really good score!

Read More

A Cell Phone With Butterfly Wings That Can Reach Into the Past

This drama explores the butterfly wings effect and how changing past choices in one life influences present reality for all of Korea. I've read many of the reviews on this title after I finished watching the show, and I get how some people were disappointed when the theme of the drama switched from fast paced action to more of a political commentary. For me, the change was welcome. I got a little exhausted with the constant "save my dad" segments and was worried the drama wouldn't progress beyond that point. However, they did an excellent job transitioning at pretty much exactly the point where I was completely over them constantly trying to rewrite history to create the best possible outcome for themselves. I liked the moral conflicts of whether what they were doing was right or if they should stop trying and be satisfied with the present state of their world.

The story tackles multiple themes, including political corruption, but also the underlying current of how people change based on circumstance or new information. The suggestion seemed to be that everyone has the potential in them to either be great or corrupt and that no one is immune to the influence of power on their lives. It also really heavily tackles the topic of press freedom and why it's so important to have an independent press system, sheltered from the external influences of the powerful.

The interactions between the two main leads were really well done, made sense, and were filled with chemistry. I felt like they spent a good amount of time developing both characters and I liked that they characters had moments of uncertainty and confusion, where they seemed opposed rather than united. The side characters were pretty well developed as well, and it was interesting to see how different their lives were in each iteration of the timeline. However, toward the end there were for sure moments where I felt like different developing side stories were lost in the fray and not fully resolved.

The actors, in general, did a great job portraying sometimes vastly different versions of their characters in different timelines. The wardrobe and sets were also really well done to add an extra dimension to the timeline differences. The casting was really well done too, the characters you're meant to empathize with you find yourself becoming really attached to, and the villain characters are sufficiently horrible that you feel genuinely pleased whenever they get their just rewards in various timelines.

The ending was weird, I hope there's a second season so I can get some explanations. Initially the alternate timeline calls were linked to the specific phones used, but at the end a different phone comes into play and I want to know the situation that made that possible.

Overall, this drama was worth a watch and I rated it very highly. There were some slow points and a few plot holes that bugged me, so I didn't give it a higher rating. Basically, it was high quality, but not epic. I was satisfied with how the story progressed, in spite of these minor inconsistencies and sometimes dry and bland segments. I wouldn't watch it again because I do not feel like there are additional insights to unpack, but I would for sure watch a season 2, especially since the ending left the story open for one.

Read More

The Matrix, Reimagined As A Courtroom Drama.

This drama took me a lot longer to finish than I expected. Usually, I will wait till a drama is fully aired and then marathon watch it. This drama was different. I took my time and paused for a day or two after each episode because there was so much to unpack and I wanted to draw it out and really savor every scene and revelation. The story is so well written, the cast does an amazing job, the emotions were a lot more raw and realistic than I usually see in Kdramas.

I was fully immersed in their world and the overarching theme of judgement. It was not lost on me that the main characters are judges and every moment of every episode is about the judgements we form in every interaction with people. We perceive this world through the eyes of Kim Ga On, a young and impressionable judge. He is thrust into situations constantly where he is surrounded by his own impulse to judge others and influenced by other people's judgements in turn. Seeing things through his eyes allows the audience to naively fall into the same traps Ga On also falls into, casting judgement on things he doesn't fully understand and later regretting his actions.

The whole world is blindfolded, and the main protagonist is the unwelcome devil who removes the blindfolds so that we can look past the illusion that surrounds us and see the world, and ourselves, for what it really is. This drama was really cleverly done. As the show and episodes progress each pivotal clue scene gets replayed and shuffled to show how each situation, each action, each piece of information can be read differently based on the information you have. Like tarot cards being reorganized to support a different verdict from the same cards.

I've read a lot of the reviews here that talk about the drama being about social injustice, but I think that's a pretty superficial observation. The social injustice isn't there to highlight the unfairness of the world or to make a political/social point, it's there to help us understand how willing we are to be fooled, led into judgements that end up being the essence of the injustice we are trying so hard to overcome. Every single character gets misunderstood, every single character misunderstands others, every single character is guilty of acting on a judgement based on an incomplete assumption. The drama holds a mirror up to us and asks us to assess our own judgements of others, to examine them instead with the understanding that our experience and information is only a small piece of the puzzle and not the complete picture.

I've also read reviews talking about the character Kim Ga On being unrealistically naive and impressionable. But to me, having lived in this world a decent amount of time, it seemed very realistic. People, in general, seem to be happy to accept the blue pill, content in their ignorance. People, to me, seem to want to be fooled, not force fed a red pill by some shady hot dude in a black robe. Ga On being naive is a representation of the entire world's population, throughout every time and every culture, willing to believe the easy lie, fighting against incursion from the ugly reality. Ga On had to be naive for the story to make its point. He had to be force fed the reality he wanted to overcome, fighting his innate urge to accept assumptions and lies. He had to be naive because we are naive, because there isn't a human alive who is not guilty of falling for a pretty lie, because he needed to be a reflection of who we are as humans.

This show for me was easily a 10, the story was masterfully crafted, the directing was expertly done, the acting was across the board incredible, the music was perfectly timed and themed to the show. I would 100% watch this drama again, and that's rare for me.

Read More

In My Top 10... Worst Kdramas of All Time.

This drama was a total slog and frustrating to watch. Basically every petty obnoxious romance trope is packed into one laborious story that is fills the viewer with frustration at every twist and turn of the trite, unoriginal plotline. You can put this drama squarely into the "why didn't they just talk to each other" category. Not just the main characters either, even the side characters. No one talks to anyone about anything relevant and it leads to mass confusion that is so lamentably avoidable you have to completely suspend your sense of logic and reality to believe any of the scenarios.

What's even more difficult to swallow is how many times the different characters have the epiphany "maybe I should be honest and just talk it out" only to go back to hiding things two minutes later. Countless times they promise each other that they'll lean on each other and be transparent and supportive, but they never follow through. Because the drama repeats that miscommunication theme endlessly throughout every character and every moment of every episode, they spice things up at some point with a completely left field action kidnapping sequence. None of it made even an ounce of sense, they basically needed to implement a Deus Ex Machina scenario to get the leads to overcome their unwillingness to speak honestly.

In a normal Kdrama romance, you feel at least a little bit excited when the two leads finally get together. This drama didn't even give you the chance to be happy for them at any point because they are constantly messing things up for themselves the moment after they reconcile. By the end of the drama when (and this isn't a spoiler cause this is 99% of every romance kdrama ever) the leads finally get back together, it's brief and anti-climactic and you're annoyed with how idiotic the whole situation is.

It's pretty rare for me to end a drama, having gone through all the ups and downs, hating almost every single character...but this drama somehow managed to pull that off. The only characters I didn't hate at the end were the kids (because they're kids) the bar owner, and the mobster. Everyone else annoyed the crap out of me with their stupid choices and consistently illogical behavior.

This is one of the few dramas I regret wasting my time on. I would not rewatch it, I would not recommend it, it's very bad, watch literally anything else.

Read More