Reviews

Just anything in name of ABO?

I don't understand the random plot it's like they started and then forget and then started fresh. Acting seems off for almost all characters (except in few scenes) that little girl popped out of nowhere to ask personal questions while they don't even know each other?
She was there in the previous ep and they didn't even acknowledge each other that means they don't know each other or just this encounter was enough 😆😅idk ig if someone wants to watch it without using their brain then fine otherwise 😮‍💨

when I watched the trailer I had a little bit high hopes but now I just hope they can pull the story together in coming episodes or else it's won't be worth watching.

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The East Palace is built on an irresistibly wicked, sinister premise and the actual experience of watching it fully delivers on that promise.. The teaser made it feel like a series perfectly tailored to my tastes and it turned out to be exactly that.. It's rare for anticipation to survive reality, it's even rarer for reality to surpass it..

This drama seems to have taken some obvious inspiration from Stranger Things.. It has its own version of the Upside Down, The Realm of Gwi.. And honestly, I don't think that's a bad thing.. It's basically their version of the Upside Down, just set in the Joseon era with hanboks instead of 80s aesthetics... The core idea is similar, a parallel dark dimension bleeding into the real world.. Thankfully they didn't just copy paste the aesthetic.. Instead they made it feel like it genuinely belongs to Korean folklore..

Storywise it's pretty much classic, nothing wildly original.. The whole idea that he has to die to enter the other realm?? That was intense.. The transitions between both the worlds are executed perfectly every time without losing its impact.. The story sort of gives us an idea on who the villains are early on itself but it never reveals all its cards.. As it progresses, it keeps peeling back one layer after another and with each reveal there is another story hiding underneath.. There were quite a few surprises, and a couple of them I genuinely didn't see coming..
Spoilers ahead.. I never expected the King's mother to be the one behind the deaths of the previous King's children and also the FL's mother.. She never felt like someone capable of something that horrific.. And then the Crown Prince being the actual spirit behind all the chaos?? He wasn't even on my suspect list because the story presents his death as a suicide.. I really liked how every reveal led to another instead of wrapping everything up at once..

Honestly, the visuals of this drama are utterly gorgeous.. The cinematography is just crazy good.. The atmosphere almost feels like a character of its own.. The aesthetics are absolutely stunning with some marvelous color grading.. And thanks to that the action and fight scenes in the other realm were absolutely brilliant to watch.. And I believe that to make a story like this come to life it needs a strong soundtrack and they absolutely nailed it here..

Now, the characters.. Nam Joo Hyuk was so good as Gu Cheon.. It's honestly sad that it took him three years to return to the screen but he definitely didn't disappoint.. Roh Yoon Seo also did a really good job as Saeng Gang.. There were a few scenes where she was just outstanding.. I was probably the most curious about Cho Seung Woo's character before I started the drama.. I kept wondering what made him choose this role.. But yeah, the man did what he does best and gave us a fantastic portrayal of King Ju Sang.. Was he the bad guy?? Or was he just a man who was pushed too far and ended up doing cruel things to protect what he believed mattered most??

Before this review turns into a novel of its own, I will just say this.. The East Palace is a captivating watch till the end.. It has some of the best visuals I have seen in a KDrama in a while.. I loved the chemistry between the two leads and their performances.. I just wished that they had pushed it a little further and made it a 10–12 episode season.. There's still more to explore and I would love to see more of this couple.. So, are the chances of another season high?? I honestly hope so..

P.S. Ggeomeoksali was a cute little scene stealer..

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my unpopular opinion.. ૮(◞ ‸ ◟ )ა

okay, hi! this is my first post and i did not realise i was a harsh critic until i was looking at the other reviews lol (¬﹏¬")

for starters, i actually really enjoyed this drama in the beginning! the dark and slightly uncomfortable atmosphere had me practically binge-watching the episodes (˶>⩊<˶) the enigmatic, off-putting nature of yoo jung rendered him a unique and compelling character to unpack. i have consistently gravitated toward psychological dramas, so the juxtaposition between the lighthearted marketing and its surprisingly nuanced portrayal of his anti-social tendencies is precisely what galvanised my curiosity and held my attention. however, my issue stems from my inability to resonate with baek in-ho's character (｡>﹏<)

there is genuinely no specific incident that warrants my feelings towards him. i have felt this way ever since he was introduced. i am generally tolerant of a love triangle trope, but with full transparency, his presence, in a way, eradicated the very reason this show was so compelling to me - the eerie, unnerving ambiance. maybe that was the point; to make a clear distinction between "good" and "bad"? i have not read the webtoon or even finished the series.. so i'm unable to make an accurate and clear assertion about its intentions. unfortunately, baek in-ho is the reason that i haven't completed all the episodes (“•_•)
but i will eventually! although all the mentions of the ending have me troubled (⇀‸↼‶) !!

let me be very clear, yoo jung is a character archetype not often portrayed in this light, and i fully understand he puts on a facade of nobility and if we are talking pure realism, baek in-ho is a much better fit for seol (which i am aware is the popular opinion) - however, i was not rooting for yoo jung to "win", i simply wanted to see more of the moral ambiguity his character provided; it challenges conventional standards of likability and forces discomfort.. that is why i enjoyed watching yoo jung. that is what initially caused my frustration with baek in-ho, as his character shifted the tone in a way that diluted the very thing i was there for.

anywayyy !! ˙𐃷˙ this is just my opinion. overall, cheese in the trap is still really good! ( ⸝⸝´꒳`⸝⸝)

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no começo eu nao entendi nada e no fim, nada ainda fazia sentido

realmente nao entendo.
como o relacionamento desses dois se desenvolveu? em um Belo dia nos encontramos em um bar, depois nos esbarramos na rua e, do nada, voce nao me conhece, mas aceita ir na minha casa trocar de roupa e rola um clima. A partir daí seu pai adotivo é um criminoso aparentemente, mas eu ja estou totalmente apaixonado por voce, mesmo que a gente tenha se falado 3 vezes no máximo.

o pai é mafioso? entendi nada, ele tem um bar, uma livraria, um negócio de tráfico de órgãos e uma empresa de limpeza de cena de crime, tipo que???? o que no fundo tu é moço?

e os outros dois homens? blz eles tem um relacionamento meio chefe-funcionario, ai corta para o cara se trancando em uma câmera fria!!!! porque???? ta tem um negócio meio to punindo meu funcionário, mas eu nao entendi nada. e ainda tem o fato do funcionário ter matado o velho lá e nao tem contado pro chefe!! eu entendo que voce matou ele porque ele era um merda e matou sua mãe e tava tramando contra seu amado, mas porque manter segredo???

e ai eu simplesmente acho que perdi uns episódios no meio, porque como que chegamos no último episódio com o aparecimento do nada de um prefeito corrupto?
e o Zhou Chen simplesmente aparecendo para ajudar o sequestrado (como ele sabia onde ele estava?) e do nada virando moeda de troca por ser de família influente. em que momento foi estabelecido que ele era isso tudo e era importante?
e pra piorar o discurso do bai chen para o cheng fan do tipo "ele nao ama voce", vei como voce sabia que ele e o chefe dele tinham esse tipo de relação, quem te contou? voce só viu o cara UMA UNICA VEZ!!!

e como diabos a moça da livraria vira uma atiradora profissional e atira em todo mundo menos no bai chen??? porque atirar o zhao chen, eu nem sei porque ele ta metido nessa confusão!

a minha maior certeza é que essa serie tinha uns 12 episodios e eu simplesmente só assisti 8 porque que rolo confuso e soluções que aparecem do além. e eu terminei ainda sem saber como o zhao chen se meteu nesse role de trafico de orgaos.

entendo que parece que querem fazer uma segunda temporada, mas nao há roteiro que salve essa confusão e roteiro desmembrado todo.

ou no fim voce ignora toda a minha reclamação e só me chame de burra e ignorante por ter achado essa historia sem pé nem cabeça e nao ter entendido nada dos plot.

nao vale nenhum tipo de esforço essa serie mesmo que a vibe meio suspense seja interessante e a música tambem, é só um nada misturado com nada

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started strong and lost its spark

I actually had a lot of fun with this one at the beginning. The whole mystery game concept was entertaining, unique, and had some genuinely funny moments.It hooked me pretty quickly, and the cast did a great job bringing the characters to life.

With that being said, somewhere around the second half, it started to lose the spark it had in the beginning. I found myself becoming less and less invested, and the story just wasn't as immersive anymore. It wasn't bad by any means I just think it lost some of the momentum that made the first half so enjoyable.

Overall, I still think it's worth checking out, but I personally enjoyed the beginning much more than the later episodes

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Highly recommend it

I love JC-T, and he didn't disappoint with this one. He can do both funny and serious roles brilliantly. First time watching Wang Chu Ran as the lead and I liked her too.

The story started out quite the typical way with a lot of "chance" enounters that certainly were too unrealistic. I didn't expect much from the start. But when they started living together after breaking up their individual relationships, things became interesting. The flow of of the story and how they gradually grew on each other and helped each other was well written. I didn't expect there'd be villains among the characters around them though. There was no buildup of backstories on them. Didn't really understand why they did the things they did. Let's just say they were only put there to complicate the main leads' lives a little. Usually, the other side characters' stories are just fillers for a drama but this one didn't feel like it. I liked the second and third couples. Jun's story showed that being a mama's boy was not necessarily a bad thing. His mom was so cool and funny! She definitely stole the show for this segment. One more thing I love in this drama is the OST. The lyrics "你,你,你" definitely got stuck in my head and I'm sure it'll get stuck on yours too😁

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A masterpiece

I never seen a kdrama like this I believe. Ppl are so weak .. omg is it scary? what are we 10?

Directing- The directing of this film was beyond anything I have ever seen. I loved how the director captured everything.

Cinematography- Captured the art of the film perfectly, I loved the different colors throught the film/drama the yellows, oranges, reds, whites, greens, blues... It was crisp. it was like a breath of fresh air if you will.. The colors captured the moments of the scenes, scenery and actors.

Visual effects/effects: Wow, There was so many amazy moments that i can't name them all but in episode 3.. there is a fight scene and his sword is like morrored obviously but its like close up then the sword comes to us becoming the scene as he pulls that scene if that makes any sense, the CGI and or again special effects on the actors aka creatures and ore monsters and or ppl who are spirits amazing. amazing and amazing. it remind me of the movie the ring, but it also reminded me of gyeongseong creature like the creatures/monsters. The animation as well withe the cgi and or visual effects was beyond anything i have ever scene. and i would say this cost a lot of money to make espcially all this visual effects its not cheap to do.

Music: I love/loved the music .. the music went with the flow of the action thriller drama we have presented to us. I dont know whats wrong with the young children saying its too noisy. .then go watch your anime if you cant handle professional music that is orchestrated for this drama. The sounds and the sound mixing was peak lvl amazing

The Actors. ML: Nam Joo-hyuk Im glad he is back after a couple of years and to pull this off? i dont think you ppl undertsand how hard that is .. and of course you know hes in harnesses and doing all those spins, kicks and flips and acting, and swrod frights is very hard to do. His character brilliant, I loved his outfit i loved the hair. It suited well for what he was performing in this drma.. mezmerizing.

FL: now i never seen this actress. But i liked her character. ppl need to understand shes acting.. the director could be like okay i need you to act this way. but of course the actress needs to also take into perspective on how to bring the character to life. I thought she was superfi fierce in episodes 3 and 4 and so on.... like she let that grandma.. lol have it. good. i was very happy it.

but wow.. just amazing.. like this is a masterpiece this will break records. it will be number 1 on netflixs platforms. so yeah. thats my thoughts and opinions.

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I don't think Song was ready and in the right headspace for a relationship quite yet due to the trauma of her sister's suicide and how that affected her. Her actions at some points were actually disgusting like kissing her friend to try throw Piang off, throwing the cupcakes in the trash and other actions. However, I did adore her relationship with her grandmother as they are close and generally love each other.

Piang. I do believe that she was abused by her grandmother. Her grandmother is extremely controlling of how she can represent and who she can be in a relationship with even talking to Song to not associate with Piang at all. I feel like she is more sensitive than she looks as conflicts really destroyed her but I never liked her.

I actually like the second couple but am still confused on why they broke up in EP7.

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Don't watch this when you're already hungry.

I recently watched He She It and normally I don't have the motivation to watch shorter series, which sound weird, but I want a series with good chemistry and not just fast crap. This story is extremely slow burn and fluffy, which you have to like. I do like it but sometimes it's just a bit... meh. After watching this I do not regret it at all.

So the first few episodes I was pretty critical on everything, with, what I think, good reasons. A lot of extreme overexposure and the colorgrading is horrible. But it was lowkey improving towards the ending. I was also really confused if they were dating already or not and it was kinda giving and they were roommates. But after like the 4th episode I figured they weren't dating yet and it started making more sense. I'm still a bit confused about the technical stuff, like it improves a lot during the episodes but then at the last one it goes down again. It's a bit sad I can't find anything about the directing on MDL or Letterboxd. I find it often important to know this especially if I might've seen the directors or any other crew before.

I guinely forgot about Corona... I WAS SO CONFUSED ABOUT THE WASHING HANDS UNTIL I REALISED. Yeah this was pretty stupid of me, I just like never thought about Corona recently. Honestly, I find it a bit hard to Imagen my life back when Corona was out there. It is funny to see the sense of fashion (and not the stereotypical alt style) there like the shirts etc. Also find it hilarious how they are wearing masks but like when guests come in they take them off? Pretty sure having guests over wasn't really good during Corona...

I think it's funny that Jeff's character is a musician while Gameplay played chef, exactly like their irl jobs. And I found out all recipes are also created by Gameplay which shocks me insanely. Like everything looked so good and I just can't believe it. For extra context Gameplay specifically makes deserts. Bro I lowkey wanna try making one of those it just looks so fucking good. Also, Jeff Satur's voice is one of the most uniquest voices I've ever heard, and I mean it. I was honestly shocked when those ppl of the auditions said his voice doesn't stand out?? HELLO? His voice is one of the most outstanding voices ever bro I got so rage baited.

Enough about stupid other shit let me continue with the relationship. Like I mentioned it is extreme slow burn, but with 21 episodes which are all around 8-10 minutes it's not that bad. There were clear feelings involved the first episode and you could just see it in both of their eyes. It was outstanding acting. Everything felt really natural and I'm not sure why but the romance had a lot of chemistry. The small cute moments might've added my love for Win and Tops but whatever. I also like how communication in this series is the key because even jealousy was seen and later on admitted to.

Anyhow, don't watch this when you're hungry. Because it's 2am here and my stomach is going crazy. I think this is a hidden jam under all the smaller/shorter series and I do really recommend it!!

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Faith versus Love and Duty

Though I am not Catholic, I am a Christian and consider myself a strong person of faith. I went into this drama a little skeptical about how it would represent having strong faith - specifically religion. It seems like so much media now puts down people and having faith in a God as being naive or bigoted. I have to say that they for the most part treated people that are religious and believe in God in a respectful manner. The acting was excellent, especially for this genre. Maybe it was because they took longer in producing and creating this drama. Maybe they had longer workshops to be able to really feel their characters. But when you compare it to some of the more recent dramas on right now (I’m looking at you “Knot”) it really impressed me how this could have been a movie that would’ve been an Oscar contender. I very much got lost in the characters and believed them as real people outside of a BL pairing.

The production and cinematography was also beautiful. And the intro song to the show was not only different than the usual generic Thai pop song, but very melodiously sung.

I would say the only part of the storyline that I questioned a little bit is the fact that they focused on Tan’s struggle over being a Priest or not without really mentioning the bigger issue in the Catholic faith, which would be his (and Barth) being a homosexual. I’m pretty sure that that would have gotten them both kicked out of the school for that alone. But they made it sound like the bigger problem was whether or not Tan wanted to be ordained as a priest. As if his struggle was just deciding that alone, and not the reasons WHY he would not want to be a priest…which is that he was gay.

At first I thought six episodes wouldn’t be long enough, but I think that they did a really good job of telling the story in that amount of time without running out of quality episodes. I would highly recommend this to anyone who sometimes has questioned love over duty over God. It’s a very interesting take that they made here. I believe that you can have love and have God and serve him in many different ways. But it is a balancing act, and in the end, if you are a person of faith, you have to be honest and admit that God would, or should, be your number one priority. But as humans, sometimes we need to be reminded .

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more of an occult-psychological thriller than a supernatural whodunnit.

Because of the frequently noisy soundtrack, minimal dialogue and darkly organic visuals this is more of an occult thriller than a supernatural whodunnit. So, not my taste. 8 hours left me feeling rattled.

This is a decent watch if you like thrillers, the actors do a great job and the visuals are sometimes pretty and sometimes nightmarish, which I think was the point.

Because it is Kwak Dong Yeon, Roh Yoon Seo and Nam Joo Hyuk, the plot works emotionally but I think it couldnt have been done without them. I cant help feeling that this is a waste of that trio's talents, but given that I cant visualize what the masterpiece would be that would showcase them better, we just have to wait until somebody invents it.

Jang Young Nam is always great in supporting roles but this one was a really astonishing performance -- she plays an elderly woman who has some kind of a stroke while in the coils of a metaphorical snake, and then she plays the next few scenes with facial semi-paralysis that is startlingly convincing. All of her physical movement and expressions are spot-on. A minor delight.

ps. a random thought, but I adore the high tragedy of cdrama, the poison in every tea cup, the bodies piling up. This is not that, itskdrama, so it is much more claustrophobic, much more about dreams that almost dip into nightmares. On the cinematic level of psychological depiction this is quite a finely balanced piece.

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