I've watched it 3 times now. Loved it! But I still haven't figured out the end. Why were they bringing flowers…
Either you see a fictional future / dream world / heaven / whatever, or they're both alive. Maybe they couldn't decide between the endings of the two previous versions (JP drama & KR movie).
I had so much hope for it in the beginning but then it kinda fell off. Don't get me wrong they did in fact have…
The gambling part could have been deleted entirely and it would have made for a better show. It was like any of those episode 1 openers that have nothing to do with what happens throughout the drama.
I'd wager 90% of the characters could be described as 'not consistent'.
I have just watched 2 episodes and not yet dropping this, but anyone else had an issue with Jo In Sung's acting?…
"The first episodes are terrible" and "the last episodes are terrible" are important mainstays of dramas. This one dips its feet on both ends of that pool.
I avoided this drama because I was under the mistaken impression that one of the leads died. Now reading through…
[spoilers for other work] In https://mydramalist.com/683-love-me-not , I suppose both die. In this one – who knows. It's "choose your own interpretation" stuff.
I can't believe Noh Hee Kyung wrote It's Okay, That's Love just one year later. That one has some of the most realistic characters seen in dramaland, while That Winter, The Wind Blows has the least realistic and least consistent ones. The only similarity (besides the ML actor) is the comma in the middle of the name...
The ending of TWTWB feels like a full-blown writer's guild strike.
The (allegedly 11 minutes longer) extended edition seems to only be available in Mandarin. A pity, as I thought it was a tad nicer watching the movie in Cantonese.
The very early scene with the toad and peacock that was even teased in Part One and is not usually part of Part Two in my opinion helps establish the logic of Zixia's character and also helps another scene further in make more sense.
I would also say that a repeat viewing greatly helped me keep track of who is who.
(Ending spoilers!!) so what happens with the main couple?, etc
Two things I'm confused by in this rather bad movie: The main leads make it through the fight at the wedding otherwise unscathed: Joker does not go on to become Wukong, and Zixia survives with him. What happens to them then? Are they yet ANOTHER incarnation of the two, or do they get memory-wiped and become the two coupled at the end of Part Two?
And who were they anyway? Were they the two from the end of Part Two? If so, how does that Zixia know about the future and how does she have pandora's box? Or was it the two from the start of Part Two, namely the 'real' Joker when he first meets Zixia, and if so, why were they a fresh couple? It's like they combined the end-of-P2 Joker with the start-of-P2 Zixia for P3?
In this one at least the demons aren't censored into being aliens. Otherwise slightly worse across the board.
There seem to be weird audio mixing issues: you regularly hear people breathe way too loudly in quiet scenes, while at other times fight scenes are too silent.
Most of the actors are very well chosen for their roles (f.ex. Lee Hong Ki as piggy). The nods to the source material…
[ full spoilers ahead ]
The characters unfortunately are super inconsistent. Sometimes Ma Wang is everybody's friend, sometimes extremely selfish and calculating. Sometimes the ML has some playful monkey trickster elements added, but it's rather rare.
Most or all deaths are completely avoidable and just added to be edgy and dramatic.
The FL "gaining power" not due to her work or her training but just as a side effect of the potential end of the world being near seems like poor writing, unless there's some source material resemblance.
How does the dragon possessing the evil historian/politician lead to fighter jets bombing a city and atomic bombs going off anyway? That looked like entirely random destruction, not like conquering the world.
The whole dragon battle and FL's "sacrifice" are nonsensical stuff stacked upon other nonsensical stuff. She does not make a choice to sacrifice anything, but rather sabotages the ML in order for her to pointlessly die. Then a few droplets of her blood fall into the river where the dragon's chilling. In the end, the ML, enhanced by the suddenly present combat abilities of his now-unnecessary bracelet, defeats the dragon. In-between, Mr Frosty does a little dance to waste time.
Most of the actors are very well chosen for their roles (f.ex. Lee Hong Ki as piggy). The nods to the source material and mythology were generally well done. Most of the comedy (primarily provided by Cha Seung Won) wasn't my thing, but your mileage may vary.
The FL never struck me as likeable (somewhere between neutral and very annoying), and all story arcs she got were about her being full of self pity or deciding "the grass is greener somewher else" for an episode or two.
2/3 of the time, the CGI was so terribly bad it was like they used leftovers from the 1980s or 1990s. This starts right off the bat with the fight sequences in the first episodes that just consist of identical ghostly things that are fake-punched in the air. I had to watch The Thousand Faces of Dunjia (2017) afterwards as eye bleach. Every YouTube channel with any sort of budget will have better effects than A Korean Odyssey.
There were a lot of filler plots, silly adverts, and dumb writing for the sake of it. That many characters have instant teleportation abilities creates plenty of nonsensical plot holes, and as common in K-dramas, various parts of the story only work because people don't want to be honest with each other or have some compulsions to scheme behind someone's back.
(Watched it on Netflix, so I'm unsure if I missed out on anything.)
Can't tell if it's originally Cantonese or Mandarin. At some point a bit dissonant with a sudden slapstick scene that did not fit the tone before and after.
Compared to other K shows mangled for Netflix, the blurring/replacement/censorship seems less jarring here. Initially I thought there is no content missing, but for example the music for a Lee Se-Young dance scene is replaced entirely. Amusingly in the TV version it is a song with English lyrics, while on Netflix it is a song with Korean lyrics (which is several steps up from how poorly Netflix music replacements are usually chosen).
Global Netflix removal on 2023-03-31 / 2023-04-01.
Does anyone know if the Netflix version has the usual issues like replaced music, removed singing scenes, extra cuts, blurred out commercial products, etc?
Maybe they couldn't decide between the endings of the two previous versions (JP drama & KR movie).
I'd wager 90% of the characters could be described as 'not consistent'.
In https://mydramalist.com/683-love-me-not , I suppose both die. In this one – who knows. It's "choose your own interpretation" stuff.
2. None are two-sided
3. The classic "can't live without each other", I suppose
4. Uhhh... perhaps not? Hard to say.
The ending of TWTWB feels like a full-blown writer's guild strike.
The very early scene with the toad and peacock that was even teased in Part One and is not usually part of Part Two in my opinion helps establish the logic of Zixia's character and also helps another scene further in make more sense.
I would also say that a repeat viewing greatly helped me keep track of who is who.
The main leads make it through the fight at the wedding otherwise unscathed: Joker does not go on to become Wukong, and Zixia survives with him. What happens to them then? Are they yet ANOTHER incarnation of the two, or do they get memory-wiped and become the two coupled at the end of Part Two?
And who were they anyway? Were they the two from the end of Part Two? If so, how does that Zixia know about the future and how does she have pandora's box? Or was it the two from the start of Part Two, namely the 'real' Joker when he first meets Zixia, and if so, why were they a fresh couple? It's like they combined the end-of-P2 Joker with the start-of-P2 Zixia for P3?
There seem to be weird audio mixing issues: you regularly hear people breathe way too loudly in quiet scenes, while at other times fight scenes are too silent.
The characters unfortunately are super inconsistent. Sometimes Ma Wang is everybody's friend, sometimes extremely selfish and calculating. Sometimes the ML has some playful monkey trickster elements added, but it's rather rare.
Most or all deaths are completely avoidable and just added to be edgy and dramatic.
The FL "gaining power" not due to her work or her training but just as a side effect of the potential end of the world being near seems like poor writing, unless there's some source material resemblance.
How does the dragon possessing the evil historian/politician lead to fighter jets bombing a city and atomic bombs going off anyway? That looked like entirely random destruction, not like conquering the world.
The whole dragon battle and FL's "sacrifice" are nonsensical stuff stacked upon other nonsensical stuff. She does not make a choice to sacrifice anything, but rather sabotages the ML in order for her to pointlessly die. Then a few droplets of her blood fall into the river where the dragon's chilling. In the end, the ML, enhanced by the suddenly present combat abilities of his now-unnecessary bracelet, defeats the dragon. In-between, Mr Frosty does a little dance to waste time.
The FL never struck me as likeable (somewhere between neutral and very annoying), and all story arcs she got were about her being full of self pity or deciding "the grass is greener somewher else" for an episode or two.
2/3 of the time, the CGI was so terribly bad it was like they used leftovers from the 1980s or 1990s. This starts right off the bat with the fight sequences in the first episodes that just consist of identical ghostly things that are fake-punched in the air. I had to watch The Thousand Faces of Dunjia (2017) afterwards as eye bleach. Every YouTube channel with any sort of budget will have better effects than A Korean Odyssey.
There were a lot of filler plots, silly adverts, and dumb writing for the sake of it. That many characters have instant teleportation abilities creates plenty of nonsensical plot holes, and as common in K-dramas, various parts of the story only work because people don't want to be honest with each other or have some compulsions to scheme behind someone's back.
(Watched it on Netflix, so I'm unsure if I missed out on anything.)
At some point a bit dissonant with a sudden slapstick scene that did not fit the tone before and after.
Does anyone know if the Netflix version has the usual issues like replaced music, removed singing scenes, extra cuts, blurred out commercial products, etc?