itwillneverbefar

I've realized Shin Min Ah brings a certain masculine energy to all her roles that requires a more masculine ML to match. She doesn't seem to ever have great chemistry with more feminine-energy leaning actors like Young Dae. (I'm using feminine and masculine here not as gender-specific terms, but in the psychoanalytic context, and it's not a dig or insult to either of them).

After seeing how terrible this drama was, I can see why he declined.

He can play positive and sweet very well, but you can also see how talented he is showing deeper emotions, so he is going to eat up a darker and more violent role. I cannot wait to see him in the historical.

I liked it because I felt Chan deserved it after everything. To finally have his story be told and to understand, and I liked seeing all the pieces come together. But yeah i'm sure it could have been tightened up a bit and still hit.

Yeah I rolled my eyes at the doctor's complete U turn. Her telling Chan he caused the death of someone isn't just an oopsie that's like a calculated and evil level of cruelty. I much preferred the more nuanced final story of everyone kinda making bad choices but no one being necessarily cruel on purpose, just human.

Tho you can't really say that Haran just stumbled across all the info--they had established that he'd written the full story for her, and her working to fix the tablet showed how intentional she was in righting her wrong and trying to understand the whole story. And it was actually quite fitting for her emotional arc as someone who ran from emotions and dealing with things. She was able to see how damaging that kind of attitude was when all she needed to do was literally give him 10 minutes of time to explain. Her also quickly realizing that all the details didn't matter and she couldn't hate him was a much more mature view than her old black and white view of the world, and felt fitting and realistic as a culmination of chan's genuine impact on her over their time together that was brought out suddenly when faced with losing him.

But yeah, I didn't like that they never really addressed her grief for her real boyfriend. She spent 7 years mourning someone that didn't exist, and that realization would affect her and need to be dealt with, and she didn't seem at all affected by learning her boyfriend had been cheating, or that she had clung onto this fantasy of grief for so long. And Chan's belief that he was on this world just to make others happy, or had to earn his place in someone's heart, wasn't really addressed either. So def some things they could have explored but didn't.

S

I was so thrilled we got justice for Chan, and I found this part of the story the most moving for the main couple, it was refreshing that Haran finally truly understood her mistakes and was able to apologize sincerely and make things right, and I could actually see the point of this type of trope-y plot element when handled well. Sometimes you need time away from someone, and need to really understand what you have to lose, before you appreciate what you have. Both her and Chan got stuck in a place of believing they didn't deserve to be happy or be loved, and thankfully had the other to pull them back out, which I found really lovely in parallel.

The second couple was suuuuch a let down though. His confession was actually quite beautiful in its simplicity, and matched his character, but the setting was so bland just sitting in a car, and the couple of scenes we got after that were also bland and so lazily written. Their scenes throughout had been some of the most romantically longing and full of chemistry, and I don't understand why the writer just gave up on them in the last two weeks. There was plenty of time to give them a more emotionally fulfilling ending, like we didn't even get a kiss! We were robbed.

I'm glad I watched this drama, though. It was worth watching even if it didn't meet all my expectations. I think the best part was Chae Jong Hyeop for me. By the end I felt he gave a really layered and human performance that made me care deeply and want to root for the main couple mostly for Chan, because he truly deserved to be happy.

HAHAHAH imagine saying this about gong yoo, I'd be so embarrassed

ok but that poster.

the ML actually worked out and gained muscle for this role, so you don't know what you're talking about. Some guys have slim builds naturally and you can see he is one of them, it may not be easy or healthy for him to kill himself to put on a ton of muscle. All my brothers have bodies like him and eat a ton of food and are active and athletic, they just genetically are tall and lean. Body shaming isn't okay just because you don't like naturally thinner men.

I always thought it was because it appeared her dead BF had been cheating on her, and if he was just gonna be a positive friend in her life for a few months there's no reason to drag that up, which I think is actually quite justified. As time went on it was cause he had gotten in too deep in addition to him not knowing exactly how it all went down from his lost memories, which was a reason but also an excuse for him to keep putting it off since he was afraid how she was gonna react.

I can't remember the last time I was this engaged in a historical asian drama this much from beginning to end, esp with a longer episode count. The only time I got bored was at the very last couple eps, the final climax between all the factions was super underwhelming and rushed, I feel they didn't wrap up well IMO but since I binged it, it didn't take too much away since we did get a conclusion to all the storylines.

On the technical side, the editing in this drama was really well done, something that is often overlooked that can make or break a drama. I loved how often they would linger on small, intimate details like a cup steaming on the table, a broken arrow on the ground, the movement of hands, etc, to deepen the immersion in a scene. And they always gave plenty of room for reaction shots and shots with no dialogue to give the conflict time to breathe and make us really live with the characters. I also really loved the amount of really tight close ups on the actor's faces. That shows a director trusts them to deliver.

I binged it in 3 days and I'm exhausted haha

I think this show had all the pieces in place, the backstory was there, and I was really intrigued by all the different factions and what really happened those 17 years ago, but the execution to bring everything together fell really short and felt rushed for the last 3rd and especially the last 3-4 episodes. Shame.

I was so disappointed in Xie Zheng's final duel with his uncle, like they couldn't have picked some interesting setting like having them fight in the throne room or on the roof or like SOMETHING rather than just an open courtyard?

I'm a fan of intricate political plots so I didn't mind it as much as some people seemed to have, I liked seeing all the peices move together, though I do agree it was rushed and sloppy at the very end, the last episode or two . One thing I like about K dramas is how they will show like 2-4 episodes at the beginning from when the leads are kids to give you a better understanding of them and to introduce all of the backstory, and I think this drama could really have benefited from that, because dumping all of the events from 17 years ago at the end was pretty inelegant.

And I def would have liked to see her rise to being a general feel more organic and more of her own choice, rather than something she kept being forced into, and also the result of more than like 2 battles tops. Like it would have been better IMO if she had actually joined the military in disguise to find her husband and trained and fought and worked her way up the chain. I did really love the scene where she took down that big dude swinging the two maces, one of the best fight scenes of the show.

I don't see why you think body shaming is okay when it's about men. Men are allowed to not be super muscular and still be strong and athletic. I have brothers in their early 20s who are all athletes and they just have fast metabolisms and tall /thin genes and look just like the ML does , even though they are very active and strong and eat soooo much food. Would you rather the ML take steroids and obsessively work out so he can have the aesthetic you deem "masculine" enough?

That's not what they were saying though, don't straw man this. They specifically called out masculinity being undermined by wearing make up, they said nothing about how the female generals were depicted in media (and this drama and many c dramas have female soldiers) . They could have just mentioned it not properly conveying the strength and grit of soldiers, but they didn't. If they're going to use gendered terms, you can't hand wave away it being tied to gender and smacking of sexism.

His physical acting was great, he was very convincing as a martial artist. Some people are naturally slimmer, your body shaming is gross.

Right? I wanted soooo bad for Chan to tell HER off and be like "Hey, I get that I kept this from you but you're thinking the absolute worst of me and not even giving me a chance and that's messed up and unfair." But she will never hear those words or have any sort of understanding of them

Haran is gonna feel really dumb when she realizes her BF was a cheating POS and she treated the actual guy who has been on her side from the start like absolute shit. I have no sympathy for her at all. She had a chance to hear the truth from Chan but decided to stick her head in the sand and yet again not deal with her life. She's becoming tedious to watch.