A less than realistic guide to YA relationships?

Watching this show I felt that it wanted to educate me too much. It's good if teens, or young adults have access to content like this, which is probably a pretty big deal in Korea, however I cannot help but feel that shows like Dawson's Creek have all that and much more & it's done better, the educational intent is conveyed more naturally etc..
Content like this is not what western audiences watch kdramas for & if we look past all the ehm "messages" there is not a whole lot left. Four hours are not enough to warm up to the two and a half mildly fluffy relationships, despite the actors doing a pretty good job across the board. The sismance did not feel that realistic, also it's weird how in the first episode FL2 seemed to have hated FL3, but the writer did her damnedest to make the audience forget that later. (also Chlamydia is not a virus)

Still there were some entertaining moments, 6/10.

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A high school sports/romance drama pretending to take place at a university campus.

The Good:
-The chemistry between the leads
-The reasonably good acting
-The good special effects (I'm assuming Wang An Yu and co. cannot skate at the level shown in the show, but the CG? sure looked believable)
-The high quality production
-The moms ended up being a lot more tolerable than what I initially thought would be possible.
-The weak love triangles
-The fluff (though there could've been much more of it)
-The race in the last episode was pretty exciting and all anime like.

The Neutral:
-It's a sports drama first & romance drama second.
-The second lead couple's problems
-The silly, but still somewhat restrained villains.
-The (happy) ending is only so so. (reasonable for a sports fan, not so much for a romance fan)

The Bad:
-The overall story is extremely juvenile. (13 year old me would've loved it)
-The sports related subplots were really really silly as well. (don't expect an authentic speed skating experience)
-The production team could've picked a taller more athletic looking FL.
-After about 10-15 episodes it started to get boring. (not the fluff, but the skating)
-It's way too long.
-The leads took forever to get together.
-Coach Ulterior Motive
-The whole assist thing (though I've seen something similar in the Olympics in a running competition)
-Redemption arks
-The unreasonable character rewrites
-Snaky Snakewoman

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Why would a Goodie do-Gooder go back to the sloutherhouse?

Normally I don't watch romance-less thriller kdramas, because they almost always suck. They are often full of immersion breaking sloppy writing and have many incredibly silly scenes. I feel that Squid Game certainly has them both. The characterization of the ML and of quite a few other contestants had some major problems. Personally I always hated it, when a random moron wins against smarter, more motivated opponents in a setting like this, however the ML's actions often felt arbitrary, beyond just an idiot's actions. Then again the whole thing is FULL of plotholes on a fundamental level, so the players frequently acting out of character is not even the biggest problem here, although Cho Sang Woo's death is just ridiculously stupid. All that he has sacrificed to win, for THAT to end up happening, well done! (evilME would have just thrown the knife for W45.000.000.000) Also what's the deal with the policeman's plotline, is there really a point beyond giving mental demons to his brother in season2?

The ending is trash of course, the minor cliffhanger is so bad that it's difficult to put into words. The final post-game twist is almost intelligence insulting too, especially considering how I went back and looked at what happened before frame by frame and it just doesn't make any sense. (pink solder raised the gun > the camera moved out of sight > boom > back in sight > man seemingly down) This is a preproduced drama and all the episodes were released on the same day, so the assumption that the audience would just forget about past details is just wrong.

The base ideas behind the show are pretty good, I guess the creator took Liar Game as the main inspiration & borrowed some ideas from Hunger Games and other Battle Royale titles. Mixing all that up with Korean children's games worked a lot better than I thought it possibly could have.
It's rare that a Korean TV show has one person as the director and the screenwriter. Hwang Dong Hyuk may have done a pretty bad job as a writer, but as a director I can only praise him. It's incredible how he succeeded to make the MOST BORING GAMES EVER exciting on TV. I found the tug of war game especially impressive. I have played tug of war many times & also I have seen tug of war on Running Man countless times, I have never thought rope pulling could be this exciting..

The best things about the show are of course the incredible sets, the symbology, the OST and the incredible cinematography.
I think the art director may have contributed more to this show's success than the director/screenwriter himself. I may have disliked many things about this show, but there were moments here and there, when I felt almost astonished at what I was seeing on screen. I do understand why Squid Game has become a worldwide sensation.

People talk about this show being the big hit it is, because of the human side of it, due to all the social interactions the contestants had with each other between the games. I'm not sure if I agree, most characters could not have been more two dimensional. Though certainly the actors did an excellent job showing a wide array of authentic emotions.

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Most English speaking characters were cringeworthy as usual. They could have done much better in that regard, considering it's a Netflix production. The silly dubbed accents were not even the worst part, but rather the whole VIP member commentary in the last 2 episodes could not have been more out of place.
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If we consider kdrama a genre, not just "korean made TV drama", then Squid Game is not a kdrama. It breaks several kdrama taboos, such as it has a Hollywood like explicit sex scene (not counting the gay foreigner thing), a lot of blood & most importantly the main characters are not astonishingly beautiful people. Personally I don't particularly mind, I'm just a little surprised by it all. I guess this is a real Netflix production with the western audiences in mind, perhaps Korea only embraced it, because it has become a huge worldwide sensation.

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Watchable, if you are REALLY bored!

This is a watchable show. There is enough cuteness to provide some decent entertainment, but there is not much else there. The admittedly talented actors were more than enthusiastic enough, but that's arguably not enough in this format. Then again it's difficult for me to understand what's the point of a 2 hours long romcom to be presented this way. If I look at it like a movie - It should be fair, since I watched the entire thing in one sitting - it does not hold up. I could pick any random Hollywood romcom, or even just a random vampire flick and Kiss Goblin would fall short. On IMDB I would rate this as 4/10. The writing is weak and jittery. The production quality is decent, so it's more than a little sad that they could not find a writer to match that. I mean it shouldn't be that difficult to fill up 2 hours with some semi creative ideas, right?

On a more positive note, it's nice that the writer had no time to further ruin things by focusing on the love triangle, or Sageuk flashbacks..

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After watching the first 4-5 double episodes I was thinking that Angel's Last Mission: Love is just a cheap imitation of Goblin. Many of the major themes in the show are essentially the same (reapers & angels are kind of the same too), which isn't bad, but the execution is worlds apart. I mean sure Shin Hye Sun's acting performance was out of this world good, but that was it. I was skipping scenes featuring sponsor board meetings(?) and I did not like all the stupid scheming and the asshole second lead character. I felt that L had the same acting teacher as Jinyoung and I don't mean that as a compliment. Many reviewers did not like the second part of the show, but to me the second half saved it. They've dialed down on the stupid Chaebol corporate bullshit and instead of meaningless scheming we proceeded with murder attempts that were a lot more interesting really. Also the second lead had much less screen time, which was a huge bonus. Even L's acting has improved, I felt genuinely touched at certain scenes. It was good romance, not much of a comedy though in the second half. At times I was even sitting at the edge of my seat.

Sure the last 5 minutes did not make any sense, it is the same ending as Goblin's, but the context is different. "The Deity is cruel" should've been the main theme of the show, it makes very little sense that the Deity would change his mind like that, then again I'm a sucker for happy endings & a sloppy happy ending like this is still better than tragedy with the conclusion that love is not eternal, the person that survived should move on & forget everything.
(If I were the writer I would have went with exAngel asshole guy sacrificing himself to keep the balance for a more reasonable happy ending.. :P)

The OST does not have too many tracks, but 2-3 of them were really memorable. It's way way above average.
The cinematography was good, though the cinematographer really likes the composition form called "the tilt".

TLDR: Out of all the 50+ kdramas I've watched this is the most similar to Goblin, it's nowhere near on the same level, but it's well deserving of a watch & perhaps a rewatch .. (Shin Hye Sun should get an award..)

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I was sufficiently entertained so I would feel bad for giving it less than 8 stars, however the story is pretty bad at times. As a romantic comedy it's pretty great really, even the second pair has a good chemistry. There was no real love triangle, which I always appreciate. The actors were great for the most part too. Personally I didn't mind the casting changes, if I look at the entire series as a whole (with the novel as the basis) perhaps the ML in the second series was more fitting for the role. With My Amazing Boyfriend 1 the chinese wanted to copy the success of My Love from the Star and they've picked a lead that's extremely similar to Kim Soohyon both in looks and mannerisms & I don't think that would have worked for the story in the second season. I prefer Janice Wu over Yu Esther for the female lead role, but thanks to the long time between the two shows the change did not bother me too much. For a replacement Yu Esther was quite outstanding.
I hated how the first show has ended & I'm grateful that they've given me a satisfying conclusion, at last.

So I mentioned above that I had problems with the story. First and foremost the show is really long, the 38 episodes translate into the length of a 19 episodes long kdrama, which I'm normally fine with, but there was a lot of time wasted with the (really stupid, a normal person would have seen it from a mile away) child kidnapping plot, followed by a second kidnapping plot, so yep that wasn't great. Tian Jing Zhi's character is also written in a weird, inconsistent way. In the first show she practically threw herself at Xue Ling Qiao, but in the second show even after they've gotten engaged the woman decided to practice abstinence for quite a whole for ehm reasons and once all the major troubles were resolved she decided to develop a marriage phobia, I mean come on webnovel writer you could have done better..

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Having watched Memories of Alhambra first, I did not expect much from this. Here the writer does a much better job in every way, but ultimately at its core this drama suffers from similar problems. The setting is obviously much better, instead of a super boring MMO world we have a manhwa world, with some interesting spaghetti western elements, a subtle noir vibe is also present. With the premise that magic is real, sometimes nonsense stuff kind of makes sense in W, it's not like Alhambra where everything is a jumbled mess. With that said W is a mediocre drama at best, yes the cast had some amazing actors, the OST was mostly great at setting the right atmosphere and the cinematography was very pretty & the darker lighting was also very fitting most of the time, but all these don't make up for the fact that I just wasn't that interested in the villains & their deeds. The romance was fine, but this is probably the worst chemistry that I've seen Lee Jong-suk have with anyone, it's by no means below average in kdramaland, but I've expected more. A nicely wrapped up happy ending would have improved my opinion of the drama a lot, it's a shame that it did not happen, it's nice that they got together for the last 5? minutes of the drama, but for all we know Kang Chol would just end up in prison again for not having a legitimate identity... (in the fantasy genre normally I wouldn't care much about this, but in W the plot device of not having a proper identity is brought up again & again...)

This writer really shouldn't work alone, if she could just be responsible for the world building & maybe the characters, while pairing up with someone that knows how to keep the audience interested.
I think she also wrote Queen InHyon's Man, I like that drama quite a bit, but the writing is not very good there either.

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Dreaming of a Freaking Fairytale!? has been -obviously- a lot of fun, despite that I don't think this is all that unique or anything, though admittedly the whole wanting to be a Cinderella openly and aboveboard concept is pretty cool. I think the biggest contributor to success is the short format. A regular kdrama mini series is 16 hours long, as we all know the kiss happens at 8 & then after some fluff complications lead to a breakup & a 2 year separation happening in episodes 13 to 15 followed by a usually rather poorly written happy ending that can be either 1 or 100 minutes long. Opposed to what I just outlined this show is about 7 hours long (40 minutes x 10eps) & almost all of that things that normal kdramas have are there (love square, breakup, gangsters, almost marrying someone else etc etc), however the quick pace makes all these very palatable & since the comedy and main romance are both very strong, I don't have it in me to give a score any less than 8.5. The ending is rather satisfying too and not that short considering the format..

Pyo Ye Jin has always been amazing, but it fills me with joy to see her shine so much in a main role, while also having wonderful chemistry with her rather amazing partner. ^ I really wish for this to be a financial success, selfishly just so I could see her in more high profile romcoms :-P

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I have recently watched `It Started with a Kiss` for the first time. While it's been a bit of a lukewarm experience, I had nothing better to watch and so decided to give the sequel a go.

If I only look at the journey and not the destination** than the sequel is tremendously better. It's still a bit repetitive, but ML had real character progression over the course of the 20 episodes & the various plots were more interesting & better written. The leads also warmed up to each other much more, reaching near perfect chemistry. Though `They Kiss Again` is far more of a slice of life/romance drama than comedy, the comedy is still omnipresent though & is rather okay. This one also has a love triangle, but It's rather short lived, it's not nearly as egregious as before. Overall the romance in this one is strong & very enjoyable, with increasing depth as we reach the final episodes. It's good stuff.

**The biggest gripe I have with this drama is the ending, it basically does not have one, not counting a 2 minute long something something inserted into the ending credits. Episode 20 is like any other episode, it's a good one with lots of emotion etc, but it really feels like the team planned for season3..
Endings are really important to me, so this contributed a lot to why this drama did not break the 8.0 barrier in my overall score.

Also I really disliked Christine. Her character is not only really poorly written, but also the whole alien in Taiwan thing is really unnaturally presented. Foreigners are often incredibly annoying supporting characters in Asian dramas in general, but good gawd. (and when I thought it could not get any worse, then her father made an appearance .. )

Overall I enjoyed this, It's really decent for 2007.

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Let me start with quickly summarizing the plot: (I may have made minor mistakes with the numbers here, but the ballpark is correct)

⌲ep1-3: The leads meet and them plus their families start living together.
⌲ep4-25: Nothing happens. (Lighthearted comedy with about as much romantic progress as about 3 normal kdrama episodes would have today in 2024.)
⌲ep26-28: Makjang, SUDDENLY everyone wants to marry someone else. (this is like what the plot of ep10 to 15 of a 2005 era kdrama would be like, but fast tracked)
⌲ep29-30: Happy ending.

So basically anyone who is fine with enjoying an aimless & progress-less and a bit lukewarm comedy for more than 20 episodes straight will enjoy this and this mostly applies to me as well. Though I have been rather annoyed by the final conflicts & how suddenly things devolved into THAT.

This is based on Itazura na Kiss, which I have consumed either in Anime or Manga form almost 20 years ago, I'm not even sure anymore.. Anyway the point is that while I'm not sure how accurately this resembles the original work, I can certainly recognize the plot "progression" of a nineties manga/anime from this. The nostalgia has helped alleviating the feeling of boredom for me, but I somewhat doubt a young person that never experienced that era of j-culture would feel the same way..

Oh I almost forgot, the mom in this drama is an extremely adorable character, at this moment I cannot even think of a cuter mom that I've encountered in a modern Asian drama, it's almost worth watching this just for her shenanigans.

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This show is very 2005 kdrama like, especially the first half. (The Taiwanese flavor does not feel very strong.) In those ancient classics though the final 20-40% always tends to be very makjangish with absolutely insane Brazil soap plots. Luckily in this one the crazy is toned down a lot, so while they set up quite a few of those, they fizzled out every time, the drama does not even feature a breakup. The love triangle starts out as the very annoying friendly `ge` type, but discounting one (or two) three way handgrabs, it's far more tolerable than what you would normally see in a drama of its ilk.
The romance & the main characters are super juvenile as is common in this genre, though 28? yo virgins acting like preteens is understandably not going to be everyone's cup of tea..

Overall this has been solid entertainment for me, though it does get a bit draggy near the finale. (the plot has some really stupid things in it too, like the gangster's redemption ark, I mean what to fork was that?)

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The repeated anime dancing is so silly that I could just not look away, even after seeing it 20+ times.

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Disclaimer: I have not watched the so called season1, because I have been warned about the terrible plot twist beforehand. (which makes it a 2/10 drama from the get go)
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This is basically a rather generic cdrama romcom. There is almost not a single new thing here, maybe with the exception of checking marriage license authenticity with amnesia. The chemistry is average, the comedy is average, the acting is average and the plot is average too (which means it's bad objectively speaking). There is also a rather typical semi-weak love triangle, though it ends very peacefully.

What makes this drama stand out a tiny bit from mediocrity is that it's a bit shorter than normal (12ep kdrama length) and so the plot is progressing rather quickly & there are no big annoyances anywhere. It's basically 70% fluff n sugar, which is something I always appreciate, even though the romances could not have been any shallower. While the villains are really poorly written and all, the fact that they barely have any screen time & fail to cause any big upheavals is pretty great.

One thing that somewhat annoyed me is that the drama has several very forceful kisses, but it's played off as successful seduction or something along those lines..
Oh I almost forgot, some of the product placements are just direct ad breaks basically, they start talking about certain brands directly & unnaturally. (Adolph Shampoo & whatever sanitary pads)

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Not as amazing as the original, but it's still one of the better localized adaptations I've seen.

I Hear Your Voice is one of my all time top 10 Asian dramas. Up until a few days ago I did not know this adaptation existed, so I quickly lined this up to watch during my daily workout sessions. Overall I'm glad I did. It may not be as good as the original, but I would say it's about as good as watching that for the 3rd time would be like, still plenty great.

Cdramas are inherently less intense than kdramas, but since this came out back in 2019 it's still far more intense than what we are used to today. So the general mood of the original kdrama is quite nicely transferred over. The writer made some changes, from the second case onward the cases are different, but with one big exception* most of the iconic scenes, moments and even the annoying love triangle (the only bad thing about the original) is there. The casting is good, but of course not nearly as good as in the original, but they picked fitting actors.
There is one thing the adaptation did much better than the original, which is FL is not trying to push away ML nearly as much and she completely accepts ML as her future partner. I'm not a big fan of open endings, this felt nice.

*My favorite part of the original drama was when ML pretended to have a memory loss & that is essentially completely missing from the adaptation. Sure ML does get a memory loss, but the pretending part only lasts for 5 minutes & has no romcom relevance.

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A-

This is a very decent Chinese romance drama. Overall it's quite similar to You Are My Glory, but it has more comedy & the setting is different. (entertainment industry vs. corporate environment in this one) Janice Wu is always 10/10 in romcoms & this paring's been quite fantastic. Also I like "faceslaps" in Chinese fiction & this drama has plenty of that.
One big positive in this drama is that the high school flashbacks are quite well done. There are not overly many of them & have proper child actors, which is always nice to see.

So why is it only an 8?

Well, for starters the final 4-5 episodes were quite difficult to get through. The crises were not too serious or anything, but the whole "company's in dire straits" thing was really unfun to watch & then a rocket had been launched & we got fed an incredible amount of Chinese propaganda stuff before the ending credits.

There is also the matter of ML's younger brother. To me it feels like the writer thought the leads are ready to get married, so let's fix the ML's "big problem" before then, I'm quite disappointed with this, the kid was comedy gold, would have much rather watched him bicker with FL, over whatever corporate shenanigans that went down.

Also I really disliked most of the songs. Mainland Chinese rock that gets to be on TV almost always sounds really weird to me, but this drama has been perhaps the worst offender so far.

Oh I almost forgot, the drama is full of insane product placements.

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I have conflicted feelings about this movie. While I -a fan of the drama- have somewhat enjoyed watching it, it did feel redundant & a bit messy. In all honestly I have extreme doubts that someone who has not seen drama could even understand let alone enjoy this. The plot is about as complicated, if not a bit more so than the original drama's main plot (it's the same with complications basically), but all that is presented in 100 minutes, It's a bit like imagine Back to the Future 1-2-3 as one 100 minute long movie, would we even root for our heroes with that little buildup to the various time travel events that happen there.

Oh well, Wu Bai is still legend & Last Dance is still one of the best songs I have ever heard!

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