HIStory2: Boundary Crossing
47 oamenii au considerat această recenzie utilă
This is a very well written, well acted, well produced mini series I highly enjoyed.
The cast was very charming, their interactions felt natural, the chemistry was on point. I really liked how they included the volleyball theme. It's not only a series about cute boys falling in love, it's also about your dreams and not giving up (even though they had not enough time to explore this further). All the side characters were great to watch. It was funny, light hearted, romantic and really kept you on the edge of your seat. The music is worth mentioning too. Very, very beautiful. Unfortunately because of the low budget, the development felt rushed sometimes. Even so they did a lot with 8 episodes.
10/10
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This is my second attempt to write a review, because with time passing, my thoughts and impressions changed a lot. Let's start with the good things: the chemistry of those two guys is very nice, the production felt high quality despite the choppy editing we got sometimes, the acting was very good from everyone, the music was also great.
Now let's talk about the elephant in the room: Ji Woo's behavior. We learned in s1 that he is an awkward guy, who has some trust issues and likes to put up walls. But he was also adorable, he smiled occasionally, he was pretty lively despite most of the time appearing rather calm and looking gloomy. He had interest in the world around him, and he also was interested in Seo Joon. Seriously, he was cute. Good-looking too, a good cook. And last but not least: he was good at heart. He had a lot to offer, and I could 100% see why Seo Joon felt for him. They both had different personalities, but resonated well together. A match made in heaven. Sure, the viewer could assume they would get some problems in their relationship. Maybe their different personalities would be an issue sooner or later, maybe Seo Joon being an idol/movie star and having a tight schedule would make everything difficult. But still we trusted in that love, and - I'm talking here for myself - I trusted in those two guys because they have a pure heart.
Now we got s2. We learn they broke up. Why? Well, that's the question that wasn't answered for the longest time. We as viewers had to guess what the reason was for Ji Woo suddenly ghosting Seo Joon. He just left him a note and vanished. Is this a mystery series? We then got some flashbacks (we later learn those scenes were from the future too), we get a lot of angst, a lot of drama, in the first two episodes at least we got a bit of humor too. Nothing was explained well. They used their time to introduce new characters with their own storyline. They weren't just there to support the main story. During all that time, we still didn't know what was going on in Ji Woo's head. Instead we had to endure how he treated Seo Joon like sh*t. It was pretty obvious he didn't enjoy it though. It was his way of pushing Seo Joon away. He just put up a big wall like he did in s1 too, but this time it was too much. He just crossed the line. He was cruel. A person that's good at heart, shouldn't be that cruel. He could have behaved differently. People tend to forgive this behavior, because Ji Woo was also suffering. I can't forgive it. From my perspective, being weak and hurt and confused, is no excuse to hurt other people badly, especially the ones you apparently love. He just went too far.
So what happens next? The series is almost over, and we don't even know the full reason for the break-up. Some mysteries were resolved about Ji Woo's parents, and then we FINALLY see that Ji Woo indeed cares for Seo Joon. He decides to not run away any longer, maybe after Seo Joon told him he gave up, and now Ji Woo is running after Seo Joon. Great. Seo Joon pushes him away, once, twice, but then Ji Woo tells him, he will not be able to chase him any longer if he keeps that up, and Seo Joon gives in.
People say this is realistic, relatable, emotional, romantic, complex, mature. Is it really? The core ideas of the series aren't bad. But they just went too far. Ji Woo became a gloomy and unattractive guy who behaved like a baby - he was even crying like on! - that had no real character growth throughout the whole series. At the end he AGAIN had lots of demands, and Seo Joon was the one who now must adjust to him even more, so he won't run away. What's the message here?
The author apparently wanted to show us "that in a relationship, one always loves more and works harder". Is this a good message? One that leaves you with a warm feeling in your heart? Not in my case. It's very questionable and honestly depressing.
To sum my thoughts up: They destroyed the Ji Woo character by taking away his good qualities and emphasizing his weaknesses. They even destroyed the Seo Joon character to a certain point. He obviously loves Ji Woo, but I wonder why at this point. Why does he want to be with him? I never asked myself this question when watching s1. I thought he was attracted to his big heart. He felt safe being with Ji Woo. The writers took that away completely.
I think the director has a talent to make everything artistic, cryptic, complicated, emotional and beautiful. It's an EXPERIENCE watching her work. So she fools the viewers in thinking it's "deep". Indeed it was pretty shallow at the end of the day. Minor issues were blown out of proportions, and where we expected some big revelations for example regarding Ji Woo's parents or Seo Joon's trauma, everything felt trivial.
I still rate this series rather high, because I was glued to the screen the whole time. They did something right if people talk about it so much, discuss it so much, and in general are so deeply affected by this story. That sure is an accomplishment by itself.
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Love By Chance 2
83 oamenii au considerat această recenzie utilă
EDIT: Since this series ended I have a strange feeling in my gut. For whatever reason I don't want to think about this series anymore (and I will not rewatch it). Hearing about questionable behavior of the cast towards the only gay character in the show (Earth) isn't helping either. This really was a train wreck.
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We Best Love: Spin-off
20 oamenii au considerat această recenzie utilă
This is a mess and most likely a disappointment to many. Nothing was shown or explained clearly. It's only a "spinoff", 10 minutes long, that felt more like some kind of longer music video. I still hope s2 will answer all our questions. That said, this spinoff was beautifully filmed. The backgrounds, the colors, the places, the music were great. The acting was perfect too. Especially when there wasn't much story they had to act out. They just put some scenes together in such a random way that's hard to even form an opinion about the whole thing. Shu Yi's behavior felt out of character, which I'm not a fan of. But we don't know the whole background, so hopefully at the end of s2 all those puzzle pieces will come together and make sense.
EDIT: those puzzle pieces made not much sense. Very lazy writing.
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We Best Love: Forever the First
12 oamenii au considerat această recenzie utilă
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First of all, the music is phenomenal! I downloaded the soundtrack. It was so beautiful and made me almost cry. Well, at the end I cried anyways.
Yong Ju is a very optimistic, always friendly and smiling person who comes across as very strong. Gi Woong is more the gloomy type who is not honest with himself and very insecure. The relationship is not easy and Yong Ju has to endure a lot. It's not a fluffy love story, but you can feel the connection between those two. Seeing Yong Ju break at the end was one of the most shocking things I have ever seen in any kind of movie. It touched me deep in my heart ... incredible. While writing this review I feel like crying again.
It's such an outstanding work. Not perfect, I'll admit that. But it's so good in many aspects and such a great piece of art. Go watch it!
Btw, the movie has a happy ending. Don't be afraid!
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Episode 1 to 6: 10/10 - GREAT
Episode 7 to 12: 0/10 - TERRIBLE
Episode 13: I will not bother watching this mess any further.
For the downfall of this series mostly the bad script is to blame.
This makes a rating of 5, I guess.
My review must contain 500 characters? Very well. Everything that made this series enjoyable and unique got lost in the second half. Not even the acting was good anymore when it was one of the strengths of the series.
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Red Wine in the Dark Night
15 oamenii au considerat această recenzie utilă
Horror? I'm in for it! Gay? Yeah, bring it on! Thriller or whatever? Perfect.
But what I got was disturbing to watch, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. You know, there are detestable stories that are good, so I don't give a bad rating just becaue I don't like it. But this story wasn't smart either. I felt empty and disgusted after finishing it. Do yourself a favor and skip this one.
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I Go To School Not By Bus
11 oamenii au considerat această recenzie utilă
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Together with Me
9 oamenii au considerat această recenzie utilă
Together With Me got me so excited like ... well, never before. For someone who loves BL stories since many, many years, it's like a dream coming true. To be honest, I never had such a good dream.
STORY: Nothing we haven't seen before, but the execution was okay - until the end. There were some things I found pretty silly looking back. You wonder what all the "drama" (I'm quoting Korn, ep13) was for. Well, it's called a love story (I'm quoting Knock). They could have done a better job showing us Knock's conflict. The so called "love" between him and Pleng was not visible, that made Konck's inability to figure out his own heart a bit unbelievable. I'm not a fan of the Bright/Farm relationship, but I appreciate how they tried to show us something different. TWM is not a series where only cute boys fall in love, it's much more. Talking about cute boys, the buffed up guys (of course I mean Korn7Knock) had many beautiful scenes together. You feel the love.
ACTING/CAST: Korn7Knock (Max&Tul) did a fabolous job like everyone else. I woudn't be able to point out a single weak actor in this series. Everyone was convincing and everyone was charming in his/her own way, even the bad guys.
MUSIC: Whoever put this series together, did a great job. I loved the background music.
REWATCH VALUE: There are some scenes I watched at least 20 times (no kidding!). I plan to continue with this schedule in the future. Nobody can take this away from me!!!
OVERALL: Not sure about the rating system here, I want to give it a 10. Even though the story didn't convince me 100% , other things did. 10 is well deserved. This series brightened up my sad little life. A big THANKS to the cast, the producers, and the writers.
On a sidenote: The kisses and intimate scenes were out of this world. Like I said, not even my best dreams could turn out that good :P
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Snow White Must Die
5 oamenii au considerat această recenzie utilă
Not a pleasant watch
First of all, this is a copycat of Beyond Evil. In both series we have a small village, a murder of a teenage girl(s), a friend group of teenagers, a young guy who gets blamed for the murder, a corrupt police chief, an involved higher political figure. Sure, there is the difference, that in this series the boy was convicted and went to jail. In Beyond Evil they said, that regarding Korean law, no one can be convicted of murder if there is no corpse. In this series, it wasn't the case. He got 10 years without ever finding the dead bodies. I have no idea which series got it wrong, but that was one big difference. Sure, in Beyond Evil, the one who was accused of the murder became a cop himself, but overall, those two series are very similar. So I knew pretty fast that the police chief wasn't trustworthy at all, and the crime involved adults with higher social status and wasn't done by young boys on an impulse.Well, my issue with this series, though, and I know this review is a mess, the characters were extremely annoying, even the mother of the wrongfully accused boy. In Beyond Evil they managed to make all the character likable, even the villains and the mentally ill friends. It was such an emotional roller coaster, while this series just got me annoyed.
I liked how the rather brute cop was fair enough to listen to the wrongfully convicted murderer and helped him solve the case. I liked their "bromance", but I also have seen better ones. Nothing really got me attached to those characters or their pain.
The main character did a terrific job with his acting, but that doesn't save much if every other character is just lame. Him crying about his dead friends got me emotional, just to find out later that those two girls were some annoying b*tches. The friends were rapist. The other one was sitting for 10 years beside a decomposing body.
Ugh.
I regret watching this, sorry guys. I still try to be fair with my rating.
EDIT: Apparently, this is based on a German novel. I know the author, since I am German, though I didn't read the book. Still, this is very similar to Beyond Evil in so many aspects that's the comparison is justified. I'm also sure they changed many things to fit the Korean police system and politics.
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Enjoyable but forgettable
I have seen previous works of the main leads. They are both good actors. The premise sounded interesting, the CGI was nice. This is my cup of tea, even though the conecpt is pretty old and overdone. Fighting some mysterious creature/virus/alien in space, doing some mysterious, dangerous and inhuman research, a dystopian world, humans on the way to save humanity - that's not new. The whole idea about the luna water was pretty unique, though. In general I was on the edge of my seat most of the time. I binged it in one day. Still the plot felt empty. Many things didn't make sense. At the end I was wondering what did I even watch? There was no real conclusion. It's the kind of space survival movie, where most of the crew doesn't make it. Despite the whole series being rather pointless and forgettable (also a bit depressing), it was an interesting watch, and worth my time.Considerați utilă această recenzie?
This series' author also wrote Trapped and MODC, and again, I have the same criticism. There is only one explanation for the author's success I can come up with (some even call her the "queen of Taiwan BL"): She puts so much stuff into her stories, that there is something for everyone. You like a couple where one guy is much older? Check. You like a couple with unexpected top/bottom roles? Check. You're into student-teacher stories? Check. You like the tsundere type and the cold/stoic type? Check. You like big height differences? Check. You like the one being manly, and the other being cute? Check. You like mafia guys? Check. So I assume whoever reads this found at least two points they like. So go watch it!
Seriously, the author talks about stuff she doesn't know anything about. In Trapped those police officers behaved like children playing detective, now in Kiseki the mafia guys behave like children running a car repair shop and doing some street fights. The older mafia guys are sitting in the hot tub, looking dangerous and talking in a way that it sounds important. It's low budget, I know, but don't go there, if you're not capable of making it believable. The whole plot is a mess. Two young guys going to prison for 4 years is a good example of the weak wattpad-style storytelling. You could write a whole series about their experience in jail, but they brush over it, and they even get out in the same episode. Not much changed, as if they had seen each other just months ago.
Back to the same criticism I had regarding Trapped and MODC: There is no balance regarding the mood of the story. Kisekei had some very touching and serious moments, but then it gets incredible cheesy and corny. It's funny, and in the next moment it's tragic. The author apparently wants to evoke as many emotions in the viewer as possible. The result? It's a mess.
But not only the plot is a mess, the acting is too. Ai Di (Louis Chiang) is the only good actor, I would even say, he is the only "real" actor. What do I mean by that? He embodies the character wholeheartedly. Even if the character develops or changes over time, you still feel it's the same character. I have no issue with Chen Yi (Nat Chen) acting. He is doing a good job, and it's not uncommon that an actor reaches a new level when paired with someone talented. But still, it's obvious he isn't as good as Louis. Unfortunately, everyone else, from the younger guys to the older guys, is just here for the paycheck.
My final thoughts and rating? I love the 2nd couple, they are my guilty pleasure for many reasons. I hope those two get a new series, because I love their chemistry and acting. Everything else was forgettable. The main couple was too cheesy, and Taro Lin should really work on his acting. For me this was second hand embarrassment.
7 stars for the effort (they did some things right, and some scenes were beautifully filmed), but since I'm madly in love with Ai Di and Chen Yi I will give 8 stars.
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That said Yoon Eun Hye played the tomboy convincingly. I have seen a few korean dramas but I'm not an expert. Compared to other dramas "Coffee Prince" seemed to me very fresh, not so much cliche. The guy was charismatic and how the love story evolved ... It was very nice. The kisses, the interaction between the characters, it all felt so natural, funny and passionate at the same time. It makes your heart beat faster. Don't miss this one. Just don't.
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