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My Dear Gangster Oppa thai drama review
Completed
My Dear Gangster Oppa
2 people found this review helpful
by wlwuxian
Dec 14, 2023
8 of 8 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 4.5
Story 3.5
Acting/Cast 5.0
Music 6.0
Rewatch Value 1.0
This review may contain spoilers

Pretty Dissappointing

Man this really didn't do much for me. After the first two episodes this show became a bit of a let down and I really struggled to enjoy it at all. I was hoping it'd improve as I kept going, but unfortunately I was left disappointed. I'm all for slightly silly premises and fun romance tropes, but the execution left me pretty bored.

I'll start with what I liked because I don't love being super negative, but it's a short list.
I enjoyed the initial progression of Tew and Guy's relationship, they seemed like they were actually becoming friends, and it was nice to see characters develop a friendship first. I also liked the moments when Guy stood up for himself and began to try to have a life outside of Wahl, it was a nice message and well-handled.
The overall concept of online friendships developing into full relationships was nice too, and I liked that the gaming group continued to return to the story.
Unfortunately, that's pretty much all I liked.

Honestly, my two biggest issues were the plot and the production quality. While the general idea of the story is not bad, and had some interesting elements, the execution was at best, lack-luster, and at worst actively grating. The ending especially felt like a really cheap way to generate more drama the villain's motivations were pretty weak and the way everything played out was somewhat nonsensical. It was really just boring to watch, which is sometimes worse than being actively terrible.

I simply couldn't make myself care about any of the characters, including the main couple. Their romantic development left a lot to be desired for me and the acting didn't move me at all. Tew never explained himself and faced very little consequences for his actions, while Guy just had 0 personality. He was a loner who played games and was in love with either his friend or his boyfriend, that's it. I did like how he navigated his feelings towards Wahl, and how he wanted to become a person outside of him, but that was the only time I was really interested in him as a character. Tew's backstory was... a lot, but I could've overlooked it if the rest of the show had been stronger. There were also like 0 repercussions for him lying about really serious stuff or the breakup, it was just all magically fixed, Guy is better than me I guess because that would've given me major trust issues. At least the initial lying about his background plot had some teeth but that was pretty much it. Their chemistry was okay, better in some moments then others, but it often didn't really feel like they were that into each other.
As for the side characters... none of them were particularly interesting and I didn't care about them much at all. Wahl kind of sucked and while he did improve by the end I just couldn't make myself like him much, which is too bad because I'm usually a huge side character guy. Guy's gaming crew was alright and had potential, but their lack of depth made them pretty uninteresting. The less we talk about Kenji the better.

As for the production quality, there are ways to shoot a show cheaply and still have it look clean and polished, this show misses the mark entirely. Lighting is not consistent from scene to scene, or even within scenes. Sometimes two shots side-by-side will have completely different lighting and colouring. It's incredibly jarring and makes the show feel messy and low-quality. The special effects were... nothing to write home about, and the makeup and hair were rough sometimes as well. Although I will say the leads usually looked good (aside from Tew's scars, I literally don't want to talk about those). The audio was pretty rough as well, very inconsistent, often muffled or way too quiet. There were some scenes that could've been easily dubbed over to fix this as well and they just, weren't. I'm sure the production team wanted to make a competent show here, but it felt like it was either rushed or lazy and with all the above issues it was just unpleasant to watch.

Overall, even if you're just looking for something easy and a little fun to watch, this isn't it. At best, you'll be mildly bored for about 8 hours.
Bad shows are one thing, sometimes it's fun to watch super trashy shows and yell at the characters, I'll watch shows even if they make me mad because they're entertaining enough to get me through. I'll take trashy romance and a nonsensical plot over boredom any day.
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