Reviews

Skeptical at start, obsessed by end

Beginning looked a bit tacky and I almost dropped it bc of that, but there was something compelling in the story that made me stay to check. And oh boy am I happy I did. It took like 5 seconds to completely win me over.
Main leads were amazing, separately and together. Their love story is grand and mature, full of well planned trials.
Their individual stories are also amazing and heartbreaking. The way they stood by each other was only right after what fate dealt to them.
But my favorite part was sister and her journey. Not bc I liked her but bc it was the most crazy story. Maybe only her ending wasn't right, little brother should've stayed in power, while she died from her wound or lived the rest of her life in seclusion instead. That would have been more fitting. But besides that her story was the most crazy, and out there, and I just couldn't get enough. Her and the emperor and bastard prince were the most toxic and entertaining love triangle I've seen so far.
All arcs in this drama were emotionally deep and heartbreaking, actors gave great performances, giving justice to the script.
It's hard to complete 38 episodes without a single mistake, so there are few small flaws here and there, like visuals being overly edited, giving this fake feeling, or knife stabs being fatal for enemies but never hitting vital organs for good guys. Plot armor was ridiculously strong here 😅
But I couldn't care less since I got to have this experience, I'm eternally grateful to everyone who worked on it.
I'd love to watch 10 more episodes, filled with even more drama, betrayal, maybe some battlefield, and the one last love trial of our fated hearts. The only thing missing was some proper diabolical plan of bastard prince to get FL back, and some dramatic confrontation that would sated for my need for confrontation between this trio.
What a shame that great things have to end somewhere 💔🫶

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Sweet, Clumsy and cozy

I would say this drama is better viewed as a slice of life, business themed drama WITH romance as the story doesn't solely revolve around the romance but that doesn't diminish its performance in the slightest.
The lead's chemistry is nice and sweet, though the whole aspect that their disorders were nulled with each other 'just because' felt more fantasy than logical, I could very much brush it aside to enjoy their practicing scenes 🤭

In conclusion, if you have a phobia of looking people in the eye it makes complete sense that Oguri Shun's face is the cure.

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Oh mama, Why do I?

If only it had a little more character development or if it went a depth to man-su's character, it would have been great.

I really like the showcase of the masculine aspect as I thought it was real. the action was phenomenon too. I still don't like the fact that a daughter is still waiting for her father who would never return to her...i at least thought that Man-su will leave him as both of them have daughters...but sadly that's not the case. (i do wish i could snape my fingers and see the aftermath of what happens even if it's the obvious.)

son ye-jin definitely gets wife of the year as her action was PEAK! - knowing what your man did, knowing HOW far he is actually going for her and the children and still supporting him takes REAL BALLS! (I do wonder how a story would go if the wife was the killer and the husband found out...?)

The First Act was the best part of the movie, and I will probably remember it in years to come. Overall, a Good 8/10 Movie.

(Glad I didn't have any expectation coming to this film.)

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Even A Champion Can Fight Dirty!

Wow what a ride that was!

I thought I was going to take my time with this show and watch it over a week since it was 7 episodes but I ended up binging it last night and oh my god was it worth it!!

I actually didn't enjoy s1 that much outside of the camaraderie with the leads. The plot felt really sloppy and the pacing felt wrong, and I hated the time skip out of nowhere etc etc

But s2 was so clean and smooth from start to finish. It seemed exactly like they planned for a 7 ep drama coz every episode felt adequate and well paced. The bromance was still solid, Woo Do Hwan and Lee Sangyi deliver on all the fronts from physique to chemistry and performance. They nail every scene whether it's a fight or an emotional moment. The fact that Gunwoo's fists are a murder machine but his heart is as soft as a baby's is an adorable contrast that doesn't feel superficial but deeply entrenched into who he is and the influence he then has on everyone around him who chooses to root for him.

Likewise Woojin being his charming and swoonworthy brother figure who also has a sense of humor when it matters but an equal heart of gold makes for a compelling partner in crime as usual.

Jason Kim the director does duo action comedies so well with Midnight Runners being another favorite of mine and Bloodhounds s2 seems to have a lot of his usual charm in the filmmaking aspect as well.

There were so many cameos I almost lost count after a while, each with their own quirks, characters returning, all while keeping the core character arcs of both the leads consistent.

Gunwoo goes from considering boxing played by the rules the only way a champion can defeat even evil to utilizing whatever strengths and loopholes he can to get back at the villains, while Woo Jin stays his mentor and brother, going from being irresponsible and reckless in s1 to dependable and loyal. A moment that particularly stands out is when they gave us a glimpse of the old Woojin in that moment where they're dealing with a disrespectful drug peddling bratty woman who is testing their patience and Woojin is holding their marine friend back from hitting her but then Woojin finally almost snaps and gives her the same bone chilling look...but he still holds back! I think that's incredible character growth coz we know the old Woojin wouldn't have held back. But like he's continued to tell Gunwoo this season, Gunwoo's influence on him is immense and the only reason he is living well and that has made him the mature, level headed and patient man he is in s2. I do miss his earlier ferocity but it makes sense for his arc.

Having said all that, this is still a show that is best approached with a "switch off your mind and enjoy the fights" mindset. There are small plot holes and character decisions that feel really stupid like when elite officers barge into a hotel room knowing one of the bad guys there is specialized in making explosives, but on the other hand, making the good guys not invincible in this manner is also the heart of this show.

The fact that Gunwoo and Woojin continue to take so many hits but still win in the end is ultimately what builds all that adrenaline and makes the viewers root for them. Tho I have to say I felt like this season had both of them, especially Woo Jin be a lot more "weak". I thought they might be building up to their peak strength by the end, but it felt like the show flipped the switch and made the villain the ultimate invincible opponent. It's not entirely a bad thing, because again, they make it work in that final fight scene when Woo Jin sets the stage for Gunwoo to take over and finish the job like perfect teamwork.

The fight scenes are the highlight and the whole point of the show. Every single one is so well choreographed and I can't imagine the work that went into making them happen. This season is a lot more violent and gorey with the villains. And it also felt like a lot of screentime went to the supporting cast too.

I did want to see more of Gunwoo and Woojin fighting the bad guys together making their own decisions. It felt like their larger brotherhood carried a lot of the momentum of plan building forward while the leads just fought and executed those plans. While this helps the worldbuilding of Bloodhounds and it's heartening to know just how many people are willing to show up for these kind hearted men, I wish they balance this better and give us more of Gunwoo and Woojin fighting together as a formidable duo if there is a s3.

Which brings me to the psa: don't skip the end credits in ep 7!

They're clearly setting up the stage for s3 from the looks of it. If it ever happens, I do hope the wait won't be as long as it was for s2. Park seo joon and Dex and even Rain look like they all will be having bigger roles there, and we might even be getting some Thai villains and hopefully some muay thai fight scenes hahaha

I hope s2 becomes a solid hit so they can continue this story to a s3. I for one am really looking forward to seeing them expand this world even more.

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not Yin Tao's finest work

—ROMANCE—
Don't watch Unveil: Jadewind for the romance. The romantic chemistry is barely there, and many comments below express they would have preferred the show without that. I'd say the second couple was better than the first, and even that pairing was totally optional (their scenes together felt like they were filmed to be flexibly deleteable on a whim).

—PROD + OST—
The production-wise it's ok but not particularly good (some uneven audio, some weird cuts, fight scenes between decent and boring). The OSTs are fairly meh too, just the opening song is one of the best I've heard in years. Sadly the show doesn't have a clue what to do with it during actual scenes.

—ACTING—
This show has a huge lot of actors that I know are good actors, but something is off with them here, like they are miscast (given unfitting roles) or are misdirected. It's fair to say that Bai Lu carries the show and even the ML is more like a supporting character for her, yet the role of being a trained warrior never seems to fit her like a glove and her action scenes frequently have awkward elements. If you've seen Wang Xing Yue in The Double you know what he can do, but here he doesn't get to do nearly as much. Zhao Yi Qin and Min Xing Han feel like they more or less had their wings clipped.
None the less it was pleasant to keep recognizing faces even in very minor roles. Maybe I'm a bit biased because I also recently watched all of Blood of Youth / Dashing Youth / Blood River, but to me this show is in the top 10% of cast depth. An unfortunate side effect of this is that you can predict an actor that stands out to be the next murderer or victim.



—STORY—
The writing is not only not good, but also already gets repetitive within the first few episodes. There's certain formulaic elements that keep being used. One loop is that a character commits a crime to attract the attention of the FL's Palace FBI to point at a bigger crime. They initially are an antagonist, maybe attack the leads, only to become a misunderstood new best friend for the FL. Repeat for the next case.
»» Extra spoiler: The "misunderstood new best friend for the FL" characters frequently kill themselves once the case that spawned them out of thin air ends. Maybe this is to prevent the FL from having a dozen different sidekicks to summon, but it feels overblown.

As a whodunnit type investigation, it's not a suitable watch. The audience doesn't get hints to solve some sort of riddle themselves. Instead, a supporting character waltzes into a scene to declare that they now have the next hint, and this happens almost all the time.

One thing I'm not sure I should praise or criticize is the very high amount of deaths and especially suicides shown. Early on this has a pattern like "our next hint is this person - let's go to them - either they refuse to talk and then they're dead, or they're already dead to begin with".

I read comments here on MDL that said "all the cases are actually connected!!!" and such, but I heavily disagree. They're mostly free-floating with no lasting relevance, and the middle has some straight up filler content that changes nothing.


Writing-wise there's zero-logic elements that were either never supposed to make sense or any explanation was cut. For example, early on, there's a human excrement transporter who has top tier martial arts skills on the level of the FL as well as Batman-level combat tools, even an army of combat bats hidden in his coat. Yet his back story is... that he spent his life working in the palace shoveling poop.

There's the usual stuff that writers forget about, like in the first episode the FL has a highly trained special owl sidekick. Never appears again. (Maybe the CGI department couldn't get the owl vs bats fight scenes to look good. Sorry.)
After a breakup the ML got super deadly sick, coughs blood, is only barely alive due to absurdly expensive treatments snuck to him by the FL's underlings... and then the writers forgot about it. His illness? Never mentioned again. If FL knew about him coughing blood or not? Who cares. A few scenes later he's fit as a fiddle and back to being ultra smart.
The (very bad) last episode in general boils down a lot of plot resolution to some ultra compressed cliff notes format as if an hour or two of runtime had to be cut and it's almost time to turn the lights off.


The overall morality and deeper plot conclusions are also somewhere between chaotically random and contradictory.
Problematic morality elements you get from the very beginning, where the FL's actual official best friend is another princess who kills between somewhat innocent and entirely innocent other girls just because she can, and yet we are supposed to commiserate with her. This turns into a repeating pattern of the FL and her sidekicks being partial to some more pitiable offenders and repeatedly overlooking their crimes.

A few episodes from the end, when the FL can stab the (quite weak and insufficiently explored) primary villain to a justified death, the ML stops her with a grandiose speech about how killing the villain herself results in her 15+ years of nightmares getting replaced with new nightmares. Some episodes later, witnessing something makes her realize the ML was right. In the last episode, she kills said villain just like she could have done in that first-mentioned ep, or maybe more brutally, and then we are told her nightmares have now ended. Seriously?

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Cute Dog, Lovable Brother, and Inane Emperor

Si Jin contained many tropes, but it was highly watchable. The cast, including the dog, elevated it from an average drama.

The Good:
• The swift pace kept the story interesting. There were many ongoing crises to be navigated and overcome.
• The romance between two intelligent, decent people was rewarding.
• Huang Yi's depiction of a villainess was chilling, but it was masterful in allowing her vulnerabilities to be shown.
• Xu Hao portrayed pure narcissism: she was evil with a cute face. Still, the viewer understood how her upbringing, or lack thereof, had brought her to that point. Even that bit of understanding and sympathy didn't lessen my desire to see her suffer a quick and unequivocal demise. It needed to be thorough, like the execution of a vampire: a stake through the heart, decapitation, burning the body, and then nuke it from orbit to be sure. No halfway measures. Two out of four was barely acceptable.
• The most endearing character was played by Zhang Chi. His interactions with his sister, brother-in-law, and love interest brought levity, charm, and warmth to the drama.
• Er Niu, the dog.

The Bad:
• I've never understood why, in most transmigration/reincarnation events, the protagonist didn't take full advantage of previous knowledge to orchestrate outcomes better. Jiang Si re-entered her body ten years in the past with all the knowledge of what had transpired in that time and had many opportunities to take people into her confidence, to warn of possibilities, and to purposefully manipulate situations. For the most part, she was passive and handled each crisis as it happened.
• Was it ever explained how Jiang Si returned or became the Saintess? It was mentioned that Yu died for her, but there was no further explanation of which I'm aware. The flashbacks were unnecessarily vague and confusing.
• Most dilemmas were settled satisfactorily, but did I fall asleep and miss how the timid sister escaped marriage to the sickly son of a magistrate? Or was that never addressed again?
• I'd expected more from the emperor, but I guess we all have blind spots for our loved ones.
• Lazy writing. Let's have the maid slip our private letter halfway through the gate on a busy street so our enemies or anyone else can retrieve it. Let's talk about big secrets in our normal voices without having anyone outside to watch for spies. It's not like we have servants to do that job.
• Do all romantic couples need to leave one another for a distant land for a long period of time after finally getting together? I tire of this trope. At least, this couple communicated by carrier pigeon, unlike modern dramas that pretend cell phones and the internet don't exist in other cities and countries.

I'm adding an extra half star solely because of the emperor's line of being a good judge of people made my jaw drop.

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Romcoms aren't my thing

I should really stop watching romcom kdramas.
Everything was done well, I just think Haran got out of her deep winter too quickly. She had such a deep fear of people in her life dying and she does have experiences to back that up but Chan really quickly turns it around. Kdramas always do this, give the fmc some trauma that should stop them from getting into relationships at all but the moment mmc steps in they quickly get over all their fears and get together.
The first episode set the story up in a confusing way and ep 2 gave the answers to the questions. I was ready to drop this by 3 but at the end of ep 4 the revelation that his memories weren't completely back made me want to continue the show but alas that was only revealed at the last episode and it wasn't interesting by that point.
I really liked the sisters and their separate love stories. I wish they made the sisters interact more or have Chan include them in his plan to get Haran out of her winter.
Also I felt like the grandma's memory loss went on for too much time and took up so much of the plotline.
The AI art is the worst part. Why have all your characters be artists if u can't afford to hire artists? It was so jarring to see them all pretend the AI character Chan made looked exactly like Haran.
Maybe I would have liked it more if it was longer and we spent more time trying to make Haran open up.
I should learn my lesson and stop watching romcoms

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Quiet, sincere little show with loads of heart

This show is not spicy or action-packed or melodramatic, nor is it a typical slice-of-life. Instead, it deals with some quite heavy themes in a way that feels genuine and healing.

The element of the cats talking did not feel cringey to me like many other reviewers felt. Each cat, at least of the main cast, had their own personality and storyline that is developed just like that of any good side character.

But the real heart of the show is Lynx and his relationship with his mother. The show does an excellent job of making the mother a tangible presence throughout the story despite the fact that she is dead for all but a portion of the first episode. As Tiger and the cats and the rest of their little community slowly worm their way into Lynx’s heart, he begins to heal his relationship with his mother even in her absence. It was so well done both storytelling-wise and acting-wise. Khaotung and First are excellent in these roles. I didn’t enjoy Heartkillers (I haven’t seen their other shows yet). Personally, I felt like their roles in that show suited them poorly, although I know many will disagree. The softer, gentler roles of this show felt more natural to me on them, and they carried their characters with skill and nuance.

One trigger warning I would like to give this show is that - and this is a MAJOR SPOILER - a cat does die in the last episode. It is well handled, makes narrative sense, and is not gratuitous or graphic. If pet/animal death is a hard limit for you, I would recommend not watching this show as it’s essentially part of the culmination of Lynx’s emotional journey throughout the show and not a scene that can be skipped without losing a critical moment of storytelling.

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Ridiculous

Am I missing something? Have Korean dramas really become this bad? I can't think of a single one in the last couple of years that I could even finish. And this one, I could barely start.

I read the reviews but was feeling generous, so I started watching. Not 5 minutes in, I was already skipping through.

The FL is even more of a one dimensional character than usual. And I feel nothing for the character. If I see one more 30 year old with the emotional IQ of a toddler I'll swear off k dramas forever. Older characters can be so interesting if done right, but this production doesn't even try.

Back to C dramas. At least there's more variety.

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A beautifully heavy drama that shallow-minded people wouldnt appreciate.

I recently saw a comment that perfectly captures their story: "If Lin Yingtao hadn’t been brave enough to fight for their love, Jiang Xiaoqi would have missed out on the greatest love of his life."
This says it all. I never saw Yingtao as someone simply chasing a guy; their feelings were always mutual and balanced. The real struggle lay with Xiaoqi. Between his family burdens and a pride that kept him from showing his vulnerable side, he felt forced to take the long, lonely road of self-improvement. Thankfully, Yingtao was there to prove that she loved him regardless of his imperfections. She provided the balance he lacked, making them truly perfect for one another.

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