Kate

I loved the show at first, but I feel like what at first seemed to me as a "slowly setting up characters and plots" turned into simply a result of the lack of direction.

The goal was clear from the start - save the webtoon team from being "kicked out" and stop the removal of the webtoon branch of the firm. And yet, only during last 2 episode I truly felt like they are making some moves to achieve that. Up till now it was just fixing issues Heo Kwan Young created... which does not move the plot forward. You can't have all the main character be simply reactive, and not do shit proactive.

Another thing is lack of clear cut on who is the main character, who is the most important in the story, who are just supporting characters. For example - obviously On Ma Eum and Goo Joon Young are THE main characters. But then Seok Ji Hyung is also named as main, but is he really? Realistically speaking Jang Man Chul gets more of the main character treatment.

Even with supporting characters, there should be more focus on some, less on others, but it feels like everyone is treated "equally" and that's not a good thing, because at the end none of the stories are explored to the full potential.

I am still enjoying the show a lot. Don't get me wrong. But it's more of a great moments, rather than great story type of a deal now,

By the end of the show I was sure the core for the characters was Yujin being obsessed over art/acting, and Takara being obsessed over the identity Yujin gave him. It was not about them both being obsessed over each other, but rather them being able to provide the outlet for their obsessions and insecurities.

For Yujin performance was everything - it did not matter who performed, he wanted to create the masterpiece, be part of it. Since he felt like he could not achieve it with his own acting, he used Yujin to get there.

Takara has no sense of self. Each and every decision was driven by what Yujin would want, what Yujin would approve of. At first it felt like he finally had some direction, he finally saw himself as a whole, he did not struggle with making decisions, since the identity Yujin created for him made it easier. As the drama progressed, he released tho, that a fake persona is not a solution to what he was struggling with. It was limiting his performance - the only thing that he himself genuinely loved. What he thought to be a salvation, turned out to be a mental cage he struggled to escape.

I like to think the ending hints that they were both able to take the first step of freeing themselves from whatever was limiting their abilities and holding them back.

I could not care less about romantic chemistry between any of the many love lines in this show, but it's undeniable truth that many actors had great on screen chemistry that was platonic.

I did not see a problem with it per se. Songrim is not a military academy, Most academies in fantasy settings have people train even tho there is no immediate danger or villain. Why? Because starting to train people when the villain shows up is dumb. You train and get prepared in case something bad happens. Same as countries having armies even if they are no currently at war.

Not to mention they showed quite a few times alchemy/magic can be used for other things than just fighting. Mu Deok literally made a tea with it 🤣 My point is, I did not think of it as a flaw.

Since there is no universal rules of rating on mdl, and everyone has their own system, and good majority of people would never rate a show anything below 6 (so half of the scale is useless), all the ratings on mdl will always be questionable hahaha

You could have replied without "you surely are biased negatively for sure..." if your goal was only to present a counter to my opinion. Coz that's not a counter to my opinion, that's an assumption about me.

They can, and it's one of the most boring and overused trope.
All the things you said... that's not many things for 27 hours of a drama, at least for me.
If I get really bored one day I might check how much screen time got the progression of the actual plot, and how much all the rest...

That depends on what is the reaction of the Korean audience. They honestly don't care how many people will be disappointed and complain about it in comment section on mdl 🤣

also, I'm not biased negatively. I'm not hating everything about the show there is. I'm criticising and showing concern about a really specific aspect and part of the show. There is a difference here.

People who watch the show are not just either massive fans or haters. There are people who are in the middle - see the good, see the bad.

20 episodes and what we got:
Jang Uk kept being lucky and learning new skills.
Mu Deok... supporting Jang Uk (that's it)
Villans barely doing anything
So I's plotline that took too much time with how little true value it had to the overall plot.

The rest plot lines were side plots, comedy, love lines and lore/backgrounds of the characters/past events - not part of the current plot happening, just what surrounds and set the plot up.

Realistically speaking... for almost 27 hours of content... that's not much current plot.

All I'm saying is that people have valid reasons to be worried. They just written off another extremely strong character as if it was not big deal, aka Jang Uk's father. I'm not saying they will 100% just not care and more on as if nothing happened, but there are quite a high chances of it, since they already done with it other characters...

I mean... it's not the first drama from Hong sisters that has similar flaws. All writers have some flaws, no scripts are perfect and it's not easy to fix these issues, especially since they are also a part of the writing style - Hong sisters tend to focus more on the characters, their relationships and episodic plots, so they struggle with long term plots and cohesiveness of it.

Well.. with how they tend to add filler scenes... they had 20 episodes of 1h 20 mins and we barely moved forward with the show... and it all mostly happened in last episode ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Like, we can literally see what's the pacing and plot progression in the show, we already seen 2/3rd of it.

My point is - they can either completely kill off Jin Bu Yeon's character and give her "cheap" narration explanation how it happened. Or shift her to a different body, and I strongly believe 10 episodes is barely enough to truly close all the plot lines we already have, not to mention adding new one 🙃

How will they show it, when they confirmed Jung So Min will not be part of the season 2? 🙂
at best they can tell it, that's why I said it's gonna be either narration or dialogue between the characters...
Unless her soul also shifts to a different body, but then it brings another issue of explaining what happens to the original owner... and how any normal body can even contain the power she possesses... and they only have 10 episodes to tell all the stories... I don't even want to think about it 🤣

Overrated, as everything, is a subjective view. For me - yeah, 9.0 is a ridiculously high rating. Out of curiosity I checked the completed lists of quite a number of people who wrote 10/10 reviews and huge majority of them never watched any Chinese fantasy dramas, so I'm not surprised they loved this one - it's a fresh new candy.
I mean, when I got into kdramas for the first time years ago, I rated Boys Over Flowers 10/10 🤣

I think there are quite a few people that have no problem with Go Yoon Jung now leading the show as Naksu, but rather frustrated how they knew they will switch lead actresses, and did nothing to give a proper ending to Mudeok/Jin Bu Yeon. And since it's been confirmed Jung So Min won't show up at all in pt2, it means we won't get anything more than a side note narration or an exposition dialogue between characters explaining what happened. Knowing they will open a new chapter for Naksu getting back her body, they should have closed the plotline of Mudeok in a proper way.
The idea that the most powerful priestess in the history was just chilling when all that bad things were happening to her body, when they previously showed how she is able to resist all kinds of magic is just poor writing and cheap way to get rid of a character that they themselves set up to be extremely powerful...

To be fair, from characters' perspective, Jang Uk also gave up his goals and hard work for Yul. The message was not really women giving up their dream for men, but rather people giving up one thing to save the people they love and care about.

It's true that this drama lacks EXTREMELY in terms of the portrayal of female characters, but I would argue the sacrifice itself was not one of the issues.

Hong sisters are a hit or miss for me. I liked a few of their dramas, but none of the newest productions. For me AoS has exactly the same issues as Hotel Del Luna - they mixed too many plots, too many genres etc. That the plot became mediocre at best. Great premise, bad execution. But one thing they truly ace is writing fun dynamics between the characters. I think it would be good if they tried co-writing their stories with someone more focused on polishing the plot itself...

Reviewing on first week is not the worst. People write reviews before the show starts airing.