Her Highness Squid goes on a hunting trip

I really liked this drama. It checks nearly all the boxes in the fluffy romcom genre. Despite the drama having 41 episodes the OTP's journey doesn't get boring for a second, almost every moment the two leads are on screen together is a joy to watch. Their chemistry is great & they have portrayed relatively unique personalities with a lot of charm. The female lead looks kind of like a chibi vampire, I found her visuals very amusing. The actor depicting the ML did a great job, Li Xian fits this persona well. It's also worth noting that the leads conveyed emotion superbly, they did not overdo what I call "super eloquent chill Mandarin speech", in other cdramas actors delivering their lines with almost robotic emotionlessness is a recurring problem..
There is no love triangle, which is always a huge positive for me. The way how Little Squid chased after HSY in the early episodes was really fun, albeit a little creepy.
The ratio between the Esports stuff & the romance is about 50/50 which feels just about right. There are fundamental problems with the Esports related content, but still it's hugely more interesting to watch than office politics, or God forgive court life in a Saeguk.
The drama is nicely wrapped up, the ending is fairly satisfying.

I've been super entertained, hence the 9/10 rating, however objectively it should probably stop at 7. The biggest problem with the drama is that there is only enough meaningful content for about 30 episodes. In the first half there are way to many flashbacks of past events and more than half of these are extremely boring, using the fastforward button is a must. In the second half the flashbacks become even worse, some of them are just 1:1 repeats of flashbacks we've already seen and some others are just present time scenes from earlier episodes.

There quite a few additional things I can quibble about, don't take these too seriously, but here we go. ⇊

Hu Yi Tian role in this drama is a bit confusing & meaningless. Other reviewers talked about how he is too big of a star for this role and I do agree, but to me it seems he spent less than 1 hour filming most of his scenes. He is not present in most scenes, not sitting anywhere on the bus, simply he is just not there whenever the camera is pointing at multiple team members. It seems like first they recorded the dialog without him being there & then later they just showed us a close up of him reacting with a similar enough looking blurred backdrop.

How the inevitable breakup occurred irked me a little. Specifically how ML promised mom that he would break off all relations & stay away forever, a conviction that only lasted at most like two weeks. I mean it sounded almost like he is making on oath and then.. In the comment section I saw recommendations that it's the best to just skip episodes 20-30. Personally I feel that would be a pretty big mistake. The official breakup only lasted from ep22 to 26 and there is not much angst there, I wouldn't even call this real separation. Arguably those were some of the better episodes and I did not even care about the YaYa couple's story all that much.

Product placements were a real problem, some of them were so separate from the flow of the story, that they can just be considered regular ad breaks. At one point the team went to some sort of luxury resort. The ML who is supposedly always low on cash stayed in a room that shared a transparent wall with a giant aquarium with sharks in it and later on he invited FL over to stay in the presidential suite. (they called it "her room") There is no way those were not honking product placements, right?

Every now and then there were some weird dubbed voiceover happenings. This did not bother me too much, but I'm mildly curious if it was related to some sort of microphone failure, or they just changed some of the dialog in post..

CTF is completely different from how it's described in this drama. Reaction time and APM are hardly relevant things, it's more like highly trained IT experts/programmers solve puzzles, some parts of CTF competitions involve speed, but it's hardly the deciding factor. This is related to another problem, how moms in the show don't see the value in what these kids are doing. CTF competitors can easily get prestigious jobs in the IT industry. To me it feels like the novel this is based off of is about gaming & the writers were just too lazy to replace the story and dialog that seems clearly League of Legends related. Like there is no way in hell that a top of the line CTF expert wouldn't "speak the same language" as Tong Nian.
People doing intense mouse movements in gaming chairs, while a group of commentators can barely keep up with what's happening makes no sense in the context of CTF.

There were a few cringy foreigner related scenes. People speaking Chinese in an environment that does not make any sense etc.

Lastly the Chinese patriotism was a bit too much, then again I've seen quite a few American sports movies where they went even further..

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For a really shallow school life romcom this one is pretty decent. It's very similar to a typical school life anime, considering I have not watched one of those in years, It's been a pretty nostalgic experience. It does not measure up to the best in this genre (Toradora, Golden Time?), but it was entertaining enough. Despite the entire cast being early 20s idols/idol trainees they were all pretty okay, I feel that criticizing their bad acting is a bit too harsh. The ML could have done without the lipstick though.
Luckily the triangle is really weak.

The reason why it's only a 7/10 is because the first 6~ episodes were just too cringy. Every second scene made me embarrassed to the point that I needed a lot of mental fortitude to not press the fastforward button. Luckily it's gotten a lot better later on, once they started dating. (the product placements were quite bad too)

I wouldn't hold my breath about a second season. The manhwa seems much darker and grittier (my Korean is not good enough to be absolutely sure, but..), the darker themes probably wouldn't work with the cast, the mini cliffy in the last episode is probably designed the arouse our interest in the ongoing webtoon, there is no reason to read too much into it.

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All of the episodes of this drama were supposedly released on Netflix the same day, despite that the script feels like it was written during live filming, the story is not entirely coherent & there are some character adjustments. Naturally it is for the best if one does not try to think at depth about the fake science present in this drama.

Outside of the above it's a cute little drama that doesn't have major annoyances. It's solid, fairly chill entertainment. The reason why it's only a 7 is that there is nothing outstanding either, nothing really stands out. It's just a standard kdrama with a scifi spin. (The love triangle is resolved in a fairly acceptable way and it never devolved to the swords and daggers drawn type. )

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Not bad, not great.

I always liked Nara, buy I don't remember, if I have ever liked any of her other dramas. (I think I've seen like 4) Oh My Baby is her best drama so far that I've seen, at least It's the least bad of those 5..
Nothing particularly stands out that is wrong with this drama, really. I mean sure from a western viewers standpoint getting bombarded by Korean bias against single parents, sperm donation etc can be pretty annoying, but they sort of dialed that down after the first few episodes, so I could bear with it. There are no annoying parent plots, even the love triangle(rectangle) is unusually tame,, considering. I guess the problem is that I just wasn't all that entertained. The comedy is not that great. The newspaper related happenings are a yawn. At least the romance should've been on point and the leads did in fact have good enough chemistry. Maybe the writer just failed write a believable romance story? I'm not entirely sure to be honest, I just feel that something's off with it. The ending is a bit lacking and it feels a bit rushed too.

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I had a very hard time to immerse myself in this drama. Ultimately I think it's because the acting was just not that great in the first half and perhaps the pacing was a bit draggy early on and also the OST felt generic. I just did not feel very engaged. On top of all that we had the obsessive asshole type second ML that kept annoying me throughout most of the drama and I hate love triangles as a plot device in general.
Luckily sometime in the second half everything started clicking. It's like the young actors finally figured out how to act their characters well & I don't know what happened with the OST, whether the perceived improvement is just placebo, but I started to really enjoy that too by the time the show ended.
In my experience kdrama writers can almost never produce decent scripts in the "high concept" category. The webtoon it's based on must be quite extraordinary, since the story & the world building just works. Typically high concept shows fall into the trap of over-explaining every little thing, thus ending up having a crazy amount of inconsistencies & conflicting world laws later on. W & Alhambra demonstrate this very well.. Here though everything nicely falls into place, things get better not worse as we move along & miraculously even the ending is nicely wrapped in a way that I can get totally onboard with. In fact the last 4 episodes were perhaps the highest quality kdrama entertainment I've had in 2020 thus far. (well I'm yet to watch "It's Okay to Not Be Okay", but..)

So overall 8/10 seems like a fitting score. The annoyances are not that minor, but everything else is just extraordinary ^^

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I already mentioned how the second ML irked me, but let's talk a bit about the actor. I've seen Lee Jae Wook in quite a few dramas before and I thought he did a great job in them, but I have never in a million years thought that he can pull of being an asshole so well. What a talented actor. I may have hated his character & I think ExYou would have been much better without him, I gotta give credit where credit is due, huge surprise! :-)

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This was a lot of fun to watch. Yes the story makes no sense and it's cheesy to the point that it's embarrassing to watch at times, but I was properly entertained. I wanted to watch a romcom that doesn't frustrate me with it's triangle shenanigans and this one really delivered.
However even if I ignore the overused prosopagnosia plot, the entire secret secretary organisation feels super stupid. Luckily they quickly shifted the focus away from them (unlike in Strongest Deliveryman.), so I wasn't annoyed too much. If you like sweetness & borderline embarrassing humor you will certainly like this show. Over the course of the 16(32?) episodes nothing too frustrating or unexpected happened, not even the chaebol family issues were pronounced. The pacing could have been a bit better, he found out her secret identity like 2 episodes too late, not that it's that big of a problem, since I think we've gotten enough fluff before the closing credits anyway.

This was airing at the same time with Abyss, this one is like 32278347823432423 times better.

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I think the intent with this show was to repeat the success of (the phenomenal)"Another Oh Haeyoung". The script has many underlying similarities, the director & the production company are the same, many of the cast members appear in both. It feels that they really had the recipe for success. Unfortunately the writing really flopped in this one. I'm of the minority that really liked the first 4 episodes. It was unique, a bit dark, but still funny enough, I was fine with the pushy, revenge hungry main FL. Then they took a week off for rewrites & in episode 6 they made major adjustments to everything, they gave actress Park Hyesoo a total makeover both in looks and personality and they tried to change the tone of the entire show, to make it fundamentally different. Following that over the course of the show there were many times when I felt that the writer made adjustments to a character's back story, or personality. Essentially there was no organic character development, but rather experimenting with throwing stuff at the wall, trying to see what sticks. The entire show only had one minor plot twist and I did not like it very much either.

Despite the bad writing it's still a good show. I loved almost all the acting performances, the main pair and the supporting cast were awesome.(especially Yun Jung) The cinematography is truly excellent, the cinematographer is probably the same as in Oh Haeyoung. The OST is very good too, especially in the earlier episodes. If I look at MyDramalist ratings I feel that there are many shows in the 8.2-8.4 range that are significantly less fun than this one, that's why I gave it 8.5 stars.

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This is an extremely addictive character driven romcom, I had an insane amount of fun watching it. Make no mistake though the story is absolute trash, nothing makes sense plot wise, luckily in this genre that's not too important. Despite the terrible plot & setting I was ready to give it 10/10 just for the sheer entertainment value. The reason why I didn't is because I did not like the events that happened in EP25-27 & the ending felt a bit too generic, the fun died down a bit for the last few episodes.

edit: the rewatch value is not nearly as good as I thought. The comedy is not the "it gets me every time" type and there is not much else of value going on here.

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It's pretty normal for dramas to have messy storylines, when they are doing live filming, however according to Wikipedia this drama was fully preproduced. For that reason I do not understand why would they even start filming a story written as poorly as this one. There are lots of things that make no sense in regards to the ML's condition, like his daily routine, if I try REALLY hard to understand, then I could maybe accept how he can wake up every day & instead of being confused he just casually reads his later diary entries & then meets ppl & he acts all comfortable with them. Anyway this entire "I have the memories, I just cannot access them, but instinct... " should have been communicated much better with us viewers early on. Even if the fake science behind his illness is all wrong, I could have been okay with all this really, but for a preproduced drama the pacing is all wrong, they made 3-4 episodes worth of filler content that served very little purpose & then we got a super rushed ending that was like 20 minutes long, but could have been an amazing 2 hours. Also the first episode is noticeably lower quality than the other 15 episodes, I was considering dropping the drama 30 minutes in. There were a lot of drama cliches used, I mean A LOT, the meaningless childhood storyline especially stands out.

So why 7 stars & not 4? Well, the romance was cute. The chemistry could have been better, but it was not bad at all and the leads had some pretty awesome moments together. I wanted to watch some fluffy romance & this show did deliver on that front. The villains were just a decoration, they did not do much to make me annoyed. I expected a lot of makjang, but both of the main villains were dealt with effortlessly & none of their attack plots were long, or very distracting. It's nice that the love square was quickly dismantled early on.
The OST was okay, nothing special though.
I don't know about rewatching it, I probably won't!

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This was a very entertaining romcom. The entire cast was great, Park Seojoon did not disappoint & Hwang Jungeum was especially great, this was my first time seeing her in a drama, but I do remember her from Runningman, she turned out to be a surprisingly skilled actress.
This drama is very similar to Fight for My Way & Secretary Kim, not because of the main male lead, but rather it has a similar vibe overall. Here unlike in the 2 mentioned above there is stronger triangle/square, but luckily compared to other kdramas they didn't overdo the makjang & the second leads gave up before I lost my patience with them.
I loved episodes 13-16, essentially we've gotten like a 4 hours long happy ending, they didn't even overdo product placements, most brand names were taped over.
I'm detracting a point from my rating, because the big misunderstanding took way too long to resolve... Sure the story is a bit of mess at times too, but it's not like we watch this genre for the story, right?

(The foreign actors were terrible as per usual, even the English phone conversations were embarrassing to listen to, but this is the same in all kdramas...)

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This should be watched after 97

Reply 1994 follows a similar formula to 1997. It's focusing on the friendships/family & the triangle evenly. I generally don't like triangles, here without the "who is the husband" flashforwards it wouldn't have been so bad, because the second lead never had any chances & he did not have an excessive amount of screen time either.
What especially annoyed me is how the main leads have broken up at episode 18-19. If I wanted to be generous I could understand, that the writer's intent for them was transitioning from puppy love to mature love via hardship, but the entire thing made little sense to me. Kdrama logic is certainly insane on many occasions, but she had to go to Australia of all places for 2 years, as a computer science graduate..... I understand why this would resonate with Koreans, because this is exactly how 30% of the couples break up, when the guy goes to the army for 2 years, but it was still very frustrating to watch.
The pacing is strange too, the first 16-17 episodes were rather slow & relaxed, even boring at times, then everything went to shit, followed by one episode that quickly wrapped up everything in 30 minutes, as if nothing happened. (then they talked A LOT about Korean football, maybe the product placement quota needed to be filled up?) This could have been a real excellent 16 episodes long drama, had they taken out the unnecessary filler.

Despite all the above Reply 94 was still quite amazing. The nostalgia factor is still there, the cinematography was way ahead of its time, it is a funny and witty show too. The cast was awesome, maybe even better than in 1997. Go Ara's transformation into a country bumpkin amazed me to no end.

(ppl who watch kdramas to advance their Korean language studies shouldn't bother with this, because it's impossible to understand anything :D)

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I finished watching this for the first time today, in 2019. This drama is certainly dated in many ways. The cinematography frankly isn't very good, there are many visually boring frames & the lighting is just terrible, but this was normal for kdramas before 2014, or so ~. The OST is fine, but the same 2-3 songs are overused a lot.
I'm giving this 10/10, because probably this is the best drama that Hallyu produced up until like June 2013. There are of course a lot of cliches & the first 5-6 episodes are a bit boring, but from the first gender bender moment onward this was quite awesome. Typically I REALLY do not like gender bender, I think this is the second time after the anime movie "Your Name" where I had good time watching this genre. All the couples had great chemistry & the comedy was spot on too. The typical plot devices used in dramas to ruin everything for the characters were only very lightly used, which is very unusual for an older drama. I can get on board with the "main complication" that the plot had. The ending was quite long and satisfying, even the amnesia part was quite amusing. Also it was very nice that there were no annoying love triangles, or pentagons here, not really anyway. Luckily the token love interest director-nim did not have much screen time, or success. The cast was pretty good, even the evil ajumma mother was tolerable.
No kdrama fan should miss this, it's probably a huge contributor to the korean wave & it's worlds better than shows like "My Girl 2005" and "Boys Over Flowers".

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I've been putting off watching this for a long time, mainly because of the plot summaries that I've seen. The only reason I've only decided to watch it because I'm a big fan of Gong HyoJin. This is such a nice surprise really. Despite the heavy topic & the melodrama tag this is a very nice heartwarming story. Obviously the romance is outstanding, there are no bullshit plot devices, such as love triangles, there is no second male lead. The procedural part was mostly interesting, sure there were some parts where I felt my intelligence was insulted a bit, but I understand that they wanted to make sure everyone in the audience can understand everything easily. So I guess psychology is interesting, I knew this when I was a kid, but I have not thought about this in a Long time. The cast is truly very good, almost everyone's acting was on point. I liked the OST too, the title track is especially cool. The way how the drama dealt with the ML spiraling out of control was okay too, we knew from episode 2-3 on that this was inevitable, it turned out way better than I have expected.
One negative I guess is Kangwoo's character, there was no casting mistake and I can see the intent behind this character, but I just felt something was wrong with him, it's hard to put into words what exactly. When I get around to watching this again in the future, I will skip the scenes he has been appearing in.
I have recently watched Age of Youth, this drama is obviously completely different, but it also deals with dark/difficult topics, but I greatly appreciate the much more positive outlook on life here, this is how melodramatic content should be delivered, the 10* rating is easily given, if this isn't 10 stars, then I don't know what is.

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This was not at all what I was expecting. I wanted some light comedy to cheer up my week, nope this wasn't it. Right now I'm struggling with the flu as well, so quite honestly this wasn't much fun to watch sans the first few episodes. So 4/10 for enjoyment in my current situation, i'm giving it a 9, because this hard to define genre is not something Hallyu can pull off well, in fact this might be the first (Korean, there are some similar animes out there)dark spice of life drama I've seen that managed to deliver. Sure it has a lot of stuff that I don't like to watch, such as domestic abuse, but overall objectively this drama is very special. The cast is truly outstanding, the OST is nothing much, but it fits just fine.
The ending was okay and I liked how the supernatural element was dealt with, I understand why meany viewers were disappointed with this, but I felt this was just perfect. I'm going to remember this show for a very long time, bittersweet as it was.

Would I watch this again? Probably not.
Am I going to watch season 2? Probably not either, because based on reviews it's even darker & I really don't like actor swaps..

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This was fairly entertaining, it did not feel like time wasted. That said there were some cliche moments & some unnecessary plot developments. The second male lead definitely overstayed his welcome, the actor had the exact same character in I Can Hear Your Voice, but here he had a LOT more screen time.(I hate forced triangles) This feels like the same sub genre of romantic comedy that Secretary Kim & Oh My Venus belong to, but the writing is definitely inferior. For example I was anticipating the moment of Rui returning to work after his identity is known to everyone, but they completely messed up the timing with the "OH noez Bok Nam is dead, let's separate for life" plotline , so the comedy of that anticipated moment was completely destroyed for no conceivable reason what so ever. The ending is a bit of a mess too, it is supposed to be one of those 3 hour long happy endings, where everyone is getting the happiness they deserve, but then the focus has shifted to some side characters that I did not much care about and even for them I was like WHAAAT is happening at times, like how Mari's story ended on a sour note, or how that SooBin cameo has turned out.

I listed many negatives, none the less this is still a great show. There were about 4-5 truly outstanding episodes & they did not drag out the stupid shit too much. I'm also surprised how I did not figure out the obvious meaning of Kobashi, I was embarrassed about my mind being blown in that big reveal scene at end, which was a pretty great way to end the show too.
Kim Byung Chul surprised me, at first I couldn't even recognize him being the same actor that played the main villain in Goblin. Such a great supporting actor! I'm suspecting that the gene that makes certain Koreans look like rock fishes, or blow fishes help them with acting somehow.

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