You need a brain, your heart, and the guts to watch this

Dark and psychological, save for the glaring "thriller" tag. I should start by saying----this drama is for a mature audience.

You are not just watching, but analyzing every subtle action, the twitch of a gaze, the cut of multiple scenes, a lieu of emotions that are never spoken but present in each character's eyes. There is so much hidden tension, betrayal, romance, and trauma waiting to spill out, but it never does and it leaves us, the audience, taking it all in instead. I felt very emotionally exhausted by the end, because Blood Free is a whole cinematic, intimate experience. This is very hard to achieve in a 10-episode series with a lot of sociopolitical world-building, by the way.

BF is more than just a company that discovered how to culture meat. It's a group of emotionally intelligent, successful individuals w bigger goals and intentions----the "meat" part of it was actually just to hook you in. It's highly political and delves into the power-hungry antagonists, but even I wasn't sure which side to be rooting for at first. They even had me questioning if curing world hunger through cultured meat was worth eliminating whole industries already in charge of it. Again, the meat plot is just to distract us because there's a hellhole to dive into in this mastermind of a company. Without a doubt though, CEO Yun Jayu is THE most badass woman in this universe.

No one in the team really says anything about themselves, but you can tell so much about what kind of character CEO Yun is (calm and calculative but a huge risk-taker), her bodyguard who is stoic yet has the cutest cat in the world, and her team, who had some of the best written (and developed) characters I've seen in a while. You can't really get too attached though.

I want to keep this review short and sweet----but basically, the first 2-3 episodes will tell you if this drama is for you. It's slow, and wants to make you feel every second of intensity and suspense, then suddenly moves on fast while you're still drenched and dwelling in it. It's mature, and requires you to take out your brain and critically think.

Like the cells that merge in cultured meat, you will be consumed by this drama. That's why I loved it so much, and hope people will be willing to unwrap the many layers of this sci-fi universe that mayyy not be so far from our reality after all.

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