Reviews

i dont agree with the last episode

the show itself was pretty good to watch, it was fascinating and entertaining. However, the last episode was unsatisfactory personally. Is the message of the show to not kill yourself and just endure living even if you're feeling depressed? Is it saying that it was a grave sin to want an out for himself? I don't agree that he was entirely at fault for making his mom sad. Though i enjoyed watching it. I dont know what else to say, honestly, the show is great it's just my preference.iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

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Really the one thing I'm glad about is being introduced to win as this was his debut as I love as an actor. But hey this is a review on the drama.
The story was boring with nothing happening or too many cliches. It only picked up when wat's friend came to take him so had him at odds with tine but also Mann being involved as well
I hated tine brother to another degree, he doesn't do anything morally wrong but how he went about things with others especially his brother. If you knew they were dating why hide it from them considering you're the third wheel.
This drama has shown me no contact when dating isn't for me as well as showing little to no love questioning whether it is a bl or not

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Homerun

Now the ending upset me as I felt like his position should've been the same yet in life it doesn't always work out that way.
Now Baek was a difficult individual to socialise with due to his rather blunt and cold personality especially whenever he went against his superiors. I felt like he was positively affected by everyone he had to interact with rubbing off him as you could see the subtle changes. His backstory to how he got where he is a massive factor impacting him in that made me cry.
Se young I didn't enjoy her parts much as at times seemed needy of approval from Jae Hee
The baseballer Kang Ki and Jin Won looked too alike sometimes confusing me on the individual story.
This drama adequately illuminated the power dynamic in a company and how power is used on different levels especially if you have inferiors and superiors. It reminded me of a food chain where one disappears making it collapse.

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As a stand alone drama: okay-ish. As a loosely based story on the previous drama: trash

Edit: dropped in the 19th episode. All edits are marked.

My notes app was the most used app while I watched Battle through the Heaven (BTTH) and simultaneously rewatched Fight Breaks Sphere (FSB, we know it as BTTH as well but for the matter of this review, I'll use FBS to differentiate) because I didn't remember many of the things referenced in BTTH... I didn't want to compare these two too much but you can't have one apart from the other since BTTH is based on FBS.

But first, let's judge BTTH as a stand alone drama. It is pretty much your standard drama centered around the martial arts world. It is not exceptional, but it is also not too underwhelming. I liked that we were getting into things and stuff right away and we did not wait for the plot to unfold develop for ages. One of the main evil characters is eliminated in the first half of the drama, I have been missing such element in many other dramas. One thing I couldn't buy is Xun'er portrayed by Ding Xiao Ying, edit: I think a different actress (switching her with Xiao Yixian actress for example) would be a better pairing with He Luo Luo (end edit). If you don't know anything about FBS, you'll be able to enjoy BTTH. And if you did watch FBS like me and enjoyed it, you could still enjoy BTTH if you watch it with an open mind. Don't compare and think about the differences too much and it'll be fine. But, I am the person who was not fine and I did have to compare FBS to BTTH. Edit: I had to drop it in the 19th episode, because the cherry picking of FBS was.... Ugh (end edit.)

When I saw that there will be another BTTH, I was really excited and I thought this was going to be a new season, where they would pick up on the cliffhanger from FBS iykyk. I was WRONG. BTTH is loosely based on FBS. The writers cherry picked characters and events and just went with it. Which is not a terrible thing to do if you pick the right stuff, discard some things, adjust it and go, I was just a little disappointed (who out of us who watched and loved FBS wasn't, am I right). What I liked about this cherry picking was: Xiao Yan (XY) and Yao Chen's relationship, I enjoyed the chemistry between them far more here than in FBS. The playfulness, the jokes, the genuine kindness. I have to say that I loved Yao Chen in BTTH far more than in FBS (he was my fav in FBS). We got rid of the Soul Clan pact XY accidentally picked up in the medicine making competition in FBS and it gave us load of space to work it.

The CGI was pretty good in both, but BTTH wins this one. We had some new characters, but I'd have appreciated even more new characters or recurring characters from FBS. Chance to bring back at least Lin Xiuya since we traveled a lot in BTTH and elder Hai was missed. Especially elder Hai when we had Xiao Yixian back (little medicine doctor in BTTH). I wanted to say that I liked that BTTH did not clench into FBS but in case of XY and Xiao Yixian, copying this story wasn't executed well by the actors. What boggled my mind here was, the writers mentioned the beast flame in BTTH which XY acquired in FBS when he met Xiao Yixian and in BTTH XY does not even mention having the flame in eps prior to ep12. Cherry picking the FBS plot done badly here.

Now, onto more plot holes. TL;DR: I HAVE QUESTIONS. First of all, how and why did Yao Chen get into the spatial ring, and how did the spatial ring find XY? By getting rid of the heroes went far north to fight Soul Hall backstory completely, how was the spatial ring created? How did XY acquire the mystical ruler in BTTH when it was an item of Soul Hall and he acquired it after fighting a Soul Hall member? XY was a pharmacy shop apprentice and learned to refine medicine, even got accepted into the alchemists guild and used his skills in FBS. But in BTTH we are thrown into the middle of things and the only background of XY's skill is seemingly medicine elder. In my opinion, another thing which didn't make sense was using Bai Shan and Bai Cheng. Bai Shan was the more powerful one in FBS, has his pride and stuff and in BTTH they made him into this not so powerful power thirsty dummy blinded by his ambition. Then, when XY fell into the Blazing Qi Tower, why was the Snake Queen not able to control the python? Also, she made XY the temporary Snake King in FBS, so he should've been able to control the python too. Edit: As I later learned in BTTH, XY wasn't made into temporary Snake King, only later in the plot (end edit).

If I should describe FBS with one word, it would be grand. The filming locations, the amount of characters, the CGI, the plot, the music were simply grand. To surpass this grandness is certainly not an easy task and BTTH would not be able to do it, unless the writers would carry on the plot precisely and if the production cost would be the same if not even higher. In terms of loosely based stories and spin offs, BTTH is slightly above the average in my opinion. And lbr, the bar is quite low here. If definitely could've been better, but as I said, it is difficult to follow up on such a staple martial arts drama like FBS.

Last edit: at first, I wanted to say that I liked that BTTH writers didn't try to clench too hard on FBS. Episodes 15-19 made me change my mind definitely. Placing Yan Xiao identity into a completely wrong place and even the medicines making competition.... It honestly felt like they made BTTH into a plagiarized version of FBS. Just no. I was dedicated to watch it until the end and try to not have a bias, but I can't. Also, a big pet peeve of mine, XY in BTTH is a reckless dumbass who unintentionally made Xiao Yixian fall in love with him while not publicly acknowledging his relationship with Xun'er. Just why was he so oblivious to what his kind words and live saving actions would do to Xiao Yixian. Hence the score deduction from 7.5 to 6.5.

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Something-Something Inflation!

The drama had a good and gripping start with the trial and everything surrounding it but it was the only trial in the drama. The rest turned out to be something different. I wish we had more like that trial. Although the silliness and slacking around was fun at first but it got a little tiring later on and padding the drama with 3 full episodes of flashbacks with a serious tone wasn't enough. Despite its shorter runtime there were big inconsistencies rooming around, it's like they had 3 dramas with 3 different ideas shoved into one. However, the drama always felt like there was something missing to formula. I really liked the concept, it had much more to offer than we were shown. The characters and their dynamic had a lot of potential to be expanded upon. The cast also brought up a good performance to the screen. I found the murder case to be the weakest part of the drama and somewhat boring, it also took too much time before moving on to something else. Right just when we started to get real development the drama ended, that was really unfortunate. I don't think this will get season 2 based on what they've done with these 12 episodes.

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Spoonless Mindset!

The very first scene we were introduced to generic high schoolers that left a sour first impression. Right off the bat we were hammered with the deplorable trope of bullies and rich kids that both were done in the most tacky ways possible. I hated every second but I kept my patience waiting for the fantasy/supernatural tag to kick in and change the scenery. It certainly did for a little while during the first half despite being very slow, especially with the insane 80 minutes runtime per episode. However, the drama started to fall apart around episode 7 and it became an unwatchable piece of utter junk after the insane 10-years time-skip in episode 9. Any potentials it had were evaporated.

The story had insane gaps that were impossible to patch. There are a lot of points to be made about the mystery, secrets, reveals, decisions, and transformations but I would be repeating myself. It was really frustrating watching the golden spoon's rules change and evolve to fit the story's new development and narrative, a very strong sign of amateur writing! It's possible to blame the writers' heavy reliance on the source material and doing the bare minimum to script it. Since the source material is a Webtoon, it wasn't surprising seeing strange behaviors and random elements starting to seep through. It's hard to trust a Webtoon story to translate well into screen without competent writers unless the Webtoon creator was exceptionally brilliant which in this case he wasn't.

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Had potential but it failed.

Good things first :
Ji Chan Wook. This man can act. I think that's what kept me going with this drama.
The "documentary" format they tried to follow was interesting, it didn't affect the story thou. Could've been better.
The three couples storyline was fun because they were different and "realistic" .

Ok. Now the review. I never write reviews but honestly I just finished the drama and I have a lot to say.
I understand what they tried to do. Yes, it's not the typical series, the time jumps keep you with your eyes open, there's a good chemistry between the leads and JCW's extremely awesome histrionic abilities. But there's no more.
It had all the potential to become an amazing romcom but it failed. The leads' story started to go in circles and then suddenly they were just together. They built all this tension and angst for a two minute conversation at the end.
The Rin-in and Kyeong-jun couple was cute and it seemed like it would develop with an interesting plot but WHY they did them dirty at the end. Srsly???!!
And the other two characters were SO interesting but SO wasted.
Plus WTF was that final episode? I mean, I love Cho Minho but what about the other characters?
I don't know. There's a lot of things in this drama that were just meh.
If you wanna watch it, do it. It's not for everyone but it's entertaining.


Note:
- I hated the female lead so much, I'm sorry.
-I appreciate the 30 min. Episodes

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A Mortal Family

The drama was a big hot mess I don't even know where to start. The synopsis turned out to be a bit misleading from what we were presented. The family wasn't really involved as the journey was mostly one-sided led by the father. Right from the beginning we were introduced to this broken-beyond-repair family but they don't "band together" as the synopsis suggests, they just tolerate each other in this sticky situation. There were a lot of points to pick up from the story but everything boiled down to having one of the sloppiest writing efforts, this might have worked for a mediocre action flick bloated with action scenes but not for 10 episodes drama. The drama had the chance to get on the right track by episode 4 but they doubled down, and then tripled down around episode 7 when they introduced the father. They also quadrupled down when they attempted to shove in a lot of backstory in the last 2 episodes to make the climax emotional. They slapped in the +18 rating just so that they can light up a cigarette in every single scene, in particular, Kang Joo Hyun was lighting up a cigarette in every scene she had. Their lack of creativity was apparent. The most frustrating thing about the entire drama was Dong Ha never letting off some steam. He never lost his nerves or screamed out loud through the entire thing despite his world collapsing from every angle, except that one time at his students which was totally irrelevant. The last episode was mostly a very fast wrap up with no room to talk or do anything, they were cleaning off the cast that they won't be including in the sequel. With all of that, Netflix had the audacity to tease for a continuation!

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ADAaaam....

Although the twin had different styles with different clothing to make them distinguishable enough but I found it a little tiring to keep making a conscious effort to differentiate between the two. Maybe throwing on some glasses would help or I'm just too lazy. The first episode felt too tame and didn't show enough gripping elements. That scene in the forest at the beginning of episode 2 really sat the overall tone of the drama moving forward. At that point, it was obvious it's going to be the type of show that would waste time on nonsense, fail to deliver the information and dance around aimlessly. I though I would give them the benefit of the doubt; they might deliver on that with clever plays but they never did. Not even the twins element was utilized enough. After about 4 episodes, the drama lost most, if not all, of its engaging elements. The mystery turned into a snoozefest. This was beyond what's considered a slow burner. It took 11 long episodes for something noteworthy to happen. The ending was underwhelming after all that wait and they had the audacity to set up some teasers for possible continuation.

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WOW

This was fantastic!! There were of course scenes that I thought wasn't necessary
and didn't need to be repeated over and over again but this is a must watch. I'm disappointed
that the mute guy didn't make it. I was hoping that he just lost an arm and that was it and was
hoping that he was gonna pop up in the final episode. The way Uncle on the sneak trained her
for what was to come was I must say brilliant. I guess it wasn't fitting for us to get a hug with her seeing him turn up alive but I was glad that he was alive at the end but there are
things that wasn't tied up so I hope we get a second season. It looks like Pasin got So Min Hye out
and got her some help for her wounds so if there's a second season I hope to see the both of them as well.
Lee Dong Wook...there's not much to say except he's great in everything. Kim Hye Joon did a great job in the role of the niece but her character did more than one stupid thing but the character was a bad ass.
This was excellent.

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Thomas the Time Engine

First impressions are important and this one didn't have a good one. The drama really needed a better introduction for what they had, the first episode was just plain bad and it didn't serve its purpose. While I appreciate the shorter runtime of 12 episodes that OCN usually offers with their thrillers but even in this case some scenes and episodes were redundant. It didn't help its case repeating that one specific flashback of the night when male lead met Seo Kyung and lost his father about 20-30 times throughout the drama. The story had its usual plot holes just like most thriller/mystery of its kind but at least there wasn't anything outrageous. One more thing, it felt like it was the type of show that would benefit greatly from a custom made good OST.

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Really Sad Man's Story

It wouldn't have been a 2005 melo without some heavy spoilers as the introduction scene. It was meant to be a sad love story but it was more like a really sad man's story. It's expected to see such themes in melodrama but a better balance was needed. It went overboard with how much misery it inflected on the male lead, there were some false hope moments just to double and triple down on his misery afterwards. I liked how they incorporated the friendship into the mix, it helped recovering from the inevitable bad blood. Having 20 episodes runtime turned out to be too long, not enough attention on side characters/plots to keep it rolling. I didn't like what they've done with the character Park Hye In, ended up disliking her the most. Cha Hwa Jung was the one to kick start the snowball effect but the drama didn't do much with her or give her what she deserved. Regarding the ending, I've seen the exact same ending where the male lead took the same decision from another drama but I can't remember the name. Most people would disagree with the ending but it was done like that on purpose just like every heavy melodrama back then.

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If you want to watch it, do it !!!!

It was a masterpeice !!
I really liked this drama and I will surely watch it again. From the music to the acting everything was a 10/10. All the characters were well played and were relevant to the story and the focus on the story of Jeong Jinman and his niece was well done and the end of each episode leaves you on your couch wanting more. The action scenes may be a little bit too violent for those who aren't at ease with this type of scene but they are very well done. This is the 1st time I watch a kdrama made by Disney + and Hulu and I think it was very well made . So, If you still haven't watched it, you should watch it and you will not regret it !

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