luckz

You haven't watched My Secret Romance, it, uhm, addresses some of the things you mention here :3

My Secret Romance is 92% identical to this. I can't quite decide if this original is better or not.

Sung Hoon expresses about 700% more passion in MSR.

The last four or even five episodes of Noble, My Love are really bad and the subplots in them are totally unnecessary. Not as absurd as the writing at the end of MSR though.

I think the 13 eps version is the same except that the cliffhangers are in different spots – however, maybe more importantly Viki has the 'epilogue' sequences after the episodes, and those are rather painfully missing on Netflix.

Highlight: the manhwa slides before each episode starts, and a way-above-average amount of kissing (though more by SH than SJE).
Downsides: dumb character actions, poor production, and the overall plot goes into places that are neither convincing nor entertaining (and is resolved in an offensively illogical fashion).

The 14 episode Netflix version is missing the very much important post-episode 'epilogues'. Besides that the one after Ep5 is really bad, they add tons (!) of extra minutes of content. Viki has them though!

The cliffhanger cuts of the episodes are weird in the 14-episodes version, and often you have to skip to minute 4-5 to get past previous repeats. This only changes with the last episodes, when the repeat sequence actually includes new content.

I don't know if Netflix removed anything else (some logos are blurred out, but the songs and karaoke seem intact).


Did they pay any royalties to https://mydramalist.com/15171-noble-my-love as the original? From actors and their characters to plot arcs and scenes, so much of MSR is lifted from NML...

- Swimming scoreboard shots are re-used all the time. It's like they have two shots for four races or something?
- The Counter-Strike game the males play in the cyber cafe is not convincing. Perhaps the most glaring issue is that two of them are on opposite teams but encourage each other as if they were on the same one.
- When they're in the cinema, the movie playing has a MOUSE CURSOR in it?!
- The CGI for the snow scene is unnecessarily bad.
- Bite wound (WB) disappears moments later.
- Football pitch injury to the torso leads to a nose bleed.
- In ep21, WB is in his car, and in one cut he stops and in the next he's still driving, and then is stopped again.

I'm curious if anyone else thought this feels like a Chinese clone of Reply, with the focus on the characters' extended families removed, and only about half the nostalgia? Seems to steal some of the style and some scenes or character constellations. Often episodes have not much happen in terms of overall plot development, in the same way. Someone else further down wrote it reminded them of filler episode filled anime series like One Piece (or Dragon Ball).

I was surprised to see so many production mistakes. Will put some that were really obvious in a spoiler comment.

The whole thing is a mix of exactly copied scenes and changes that aren't really for the better. Important scenes are often rushed or cut together, whereas random fluff survives barely changed. A lot of scenes probably make little sense without the added context from having watched the CN ALSB. The ML stops being cold and distant just a few minutes in, and it feels they didn't understand the character. Some actors are visibly way too old (the FL is the most glaring violator). Jung Jin Hwan's character is missing a lot of crucial pieces for his arc, and of course time skips don't help.

The singing scenes are better / more and it's all in all not ultra drawn out like the Chinese original.

I'm curious if you enjoy any of the Reply shows (or Prison Playbook).
To me this one felt like a lot of stuff was 'taken without permission' from Reply.

It's also just copied from China, but the original has way more new footage for it.

At least they didn't keep re-using the same swimming competition scores for different events like the C show does. That was so bad.
(The C one has enough production mistakes to write a proper article about.)

The Chinese drama is very tsundere, while this one gives up after an episode or two and starts beaming at her all the time.

In the C-drama, both get very jealous/hurt when the other interacts with their respective rival. For the FL, it's maybe more expressed through sadness and crying (the C one has a ton of baby wailing). Whereas the ML gets very angry.
The K-drama is the cut down cliff notes version, so many plot points don't go into that much detail.

Does anyone know if the "director's cut" bluray is worth it? Are the episodes longer, etc?

In addition we have:
– Hee Sun, who wants the man she blames for the death of her pregnant sister to be intimate with her, and when she can't get that she tells the rich sister that her new brother is a conman out of pure spite. She's a florist-gangster with a degree in forging identity documents. She has plenty of hobbies: When she doesn't organize safe cracking equipment or hope that the man she holds a grudge against falls in love with her, she beats up her female friends until they agree to become law-abiding citizens.

– Moo Chul, who wants to kill the man blamed for the death of Hee Sun's sister (who he loved), but then they're also bros. Besides that he also runs an illegal entertainment establishment, but instead of managing that he's actually out playing basketball with some kid all the time. [spoiler:] He's also entirely bipolar about wanting or not wanting to harm Oh Soo & Jin Sung.

– The secretary turned mistress turned adoptive mother, who conspires to blind her adopted child so she can care for her all alone (and generally make herself indispensable). But she plays ruthless power games with her for 10-20 years, so it's all forgiven.

– The fiancé, who does nothing but lie & scheme the entire show, and yet is 'the perfect man to lead the corporation'. This guy's so absurd, I thought he must be the secretary's biological son that she put into power.

The ending is ambiguous so you can interpret it as like the movie, or more like the J-drama, or like something entirely different. Bring your own ending.

I just can't understand how that's the same writer & director.

Well, the stabbing scene is from the KR movie version. So in that sense it's not out of nowhere.

Maybe it's so you can Choose Your Own Adventure if both are dead in the end, both are alive in the end, or one is dead and the other is alive. Or whatever else you'd like to fanfic.

It's up there with the part where the psychopath girl wants the guy who impregnated and 'killed' her sister to also impregnate her, and bursts out into fiery rage when she doesn't get that.

Apparently so she could control Oh Young and so that Oh Young would depend on her (making Wang irreplacable). It doesn't make a lot of sense to me though.