famous cult show, Hong sisters' 5th

Recommended for sheer joy. 2009, 16 eps at 1hr ea. The Hong sisters 5th show, not a big hit on local tv, blew up in popularity on contemporaneous Japanese tv and thereafter online. It is has been a cult show for years. Smooth as silk kdrama, laughter and tears regularly provided. Essentially a teen love story about a teen band, mostly situated in their "dorm", an utter pop 60's fantasy piece of architecture, but all organic curves (what is this building??).

First hook-- a separated-twin story and a twin-masquerade story (in the West, 12th Night and The Menaechmi likewise floated to the frothy top of their respective cultural scenes).)

The opening scenes have a mediterranean feel, is it the "technicoloring", the nun costumes , the naked marble statues or the scooter jokes? Thereafter the show is about the emotional interactions of a small cast. So deceptively simple.

Second hook -- missing parents and other relatives provide the nec. structural mystery, and they and the antagonists swoop in and out of the 2 main sets as if they are making stage entrances.

In an HS script, look for what the HS do better, those places where their absolute bravura breaks through; not essentially in original plots or characters , but in how well they do them.

1. In this production, the use of what is essentially a chorus in ancient classical comedy/tragedy is wonderful. The fangirls who camp outside the company (afterschool?) wail and beat their breasts astoundingly and comment upon the action in silly ways. In the countryside visit the three old women are incredible, not only does their performance have perfect comic rhythm, but HS weaves in references to trot singers and specialized tv shows where the other half of Korea gets its impressions of entertainment. A quick meta to the history of music in SK, in an idol drama!!!

2. The recognition-of-the-lovers section comes a little later than expected, but when it does the carefully built-up system of metaphors and puns explodes as the characters deploy them in the service of conversations practically in code. The light of the "star" (and awfully, the moon as reflector of it/the sun) versus the light of the sun which blots out the recognition of others, darkness and light, hiding and paying attention, seeing and not seeing, showing and not showing. The ML has night-blindness, oh yes he does. The pleasure of the final tensions being resolved in poetic language is so intensely the HS' territory.

it is not useful to trace influence in a hectic renaissance time like this one where dramas run only for 2 months, performers and writers work for cheap for companies which have state monies to spend, and where many of the behind the scenes creatives have one of the excellent university degrees in theatre and film available in SK. The consequence of the hurly-burly is that any successful show is instantly imitated piecemeal by competitors looking for that secret sauce. Only those on the scene have any memories of what went into that creative process.

You're Beautiful is a show on par with Hwayugi in characters who are almost instantly recognizable after just the 1st episode. I loved Lee Hong Ki there as the unforgettable PK (and Lee se Young as his zombie friend Richie!) and I love him here as Jeremy, a character who reflects a prototype love-is-love theme. Jang Geun Suk rises from the ashes of HGD as a Heathcliff-ian ML. Yonghwa of the band cnblue is the 2ml in semi-love triangle!

Park Shin Hye is one of those heroic kdrama actresses who started working at the age of 13 and is still going strong 33 dramas later. Although her trippy little dove-of-christ characterization made my teeth grind, I can believe that that sort of naivete existed somewhere before my own era--nowadays most nuns and novitiates after Vatican II are amazingly truehearted, practical and energetic persons. And of course, PSH's performance is a perfect, absolutely perfect, foil to the comedy (the term 'straight man' in reference to comic pairs is now unusable or I would use it).

Here is a question, are the Hong sisters basically insanely lucky in casting and directors so that their intelligent, flippant and tightly constructed scripts are thus given that HS stratospheric oomph?

first posted aug 12th, 2024 on Viki

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Gong Yoo shines brilliantly in the dark

A melodramatic thriller centred on 2 leads and the collision of the utter snakepits each of their lives have become individually. Psychologically claustrophobic plot. Gong Yoo (as Han Jeong Won) and Seo Hyun Jin (as Noh In Ji) work brilliantly together as 2 anti-heroes who yearn for happiness but are trapped not just by manipulative and abusive friends and family, but by their own numbed and stilled psyches.

Gong Yoo, suffocated and angry, as always emotes with every careful move of his body and gaze. Seo Hyun Jin's character uses her beautiful closed face to survive so the actress clearly indicates her thought processes by her timing and her movements. When Inji loses control and starts in on the usual FL idiocy (taking all the blame on herself etc.) it doesn't last long. The strengths of the performances of Jung Yun Ha (as Lee Seo Yeon the ex-wife) and Cho I Geon (as her own temporary husband, Yun Ji Oh) are central to the plot and to the success of the show overall.

The main set, the home of Jeong Won's dead parents is one of those architectural excesses symbolically perfect for the hermit-crab existence of JW in the grandiose ruins of his horrible family history. The central element is a modern chandelier of grotesque Versailles proportions hanging over a two story central space off which open all the living areas.

In Ji is inserted into this cave-like structure by a semi-sinister version of a matchmaking bureau which specializes in discreet temporary contract-marriages for transactional reasons. JW's ex, a malevolent architect herself, also fits into this set as an absent presence, since she herself actually engineered the whole premise of the show, the dual contract-marriages.

This is a good watch for fans of kdrama for whom plot doesn't matter as much as camerawork, soundtrack and the play of formulaic expectations. A great watch for Gong Yoo fans who always knew he would be smoking hot in bed. But it is a show which bends the rules for the OTP so far that it will be up to you to decide whether or not you have been emotionally deceived and how cynically this was done.

At 8 episodes of 1hr ea. we are looking at one of the new lengths for a kdrama. At this point writers and directors have to decide which standard elements to keep, how much time to allot to them etc. In my timid opinion (timid bec the extremely distinguished director, Kim Kyu Tae is obviously fully intentional in his choices) this type of story needed a 10 ep. structure in order to more firmly establish a key anchor for kdrama, the relationships of family and friends over time as context. At 8 eps, the show was way intense, and the standard time-jump later on in the show felt more jarring than usual. I didnt feel ready for it.

My advice for getting around this is not to binge the whole show at once and go to sleep unhappy, as I did. I woke up the next day with a completely different perspective and decided I loved the Trunk. The next day I disliked it, and the next day etc.

I needed time to appreciate it, and in a classic 16 ep form that appreciation would have been done in tandem with the usual chorus of observers (families, friends and village idiots) within the drama itself. Although those characters were in the story, afterwards I literally felt they needed their own small corners (time, musical themes etc) to thrive in. Without them, the development of discussion and perspective has to be internal to the spectator, as in a movie....

Addendum 31/12/24
The symbolic frame of the Trunk was obscure to me on the first watch but one interpretation bobbed up (!) from the subconscious today, just as the two trunks did in the show’s really distracting anticlimax.

Two trunks, large enough to contain lives, pertain primarily to previous events in the lives of the ex-wife and the hired live-in wife. One loses a child and the other is abandoned at the altar. The trunks are submerged amidst confusing events. The overt issues between the psychologically imprisoned pair have already been somewhat resolved before the trunks actually show up again.

The dramatic action of the Trunk moves from the light of reason in the public lives of the two protagonists down into a dark psychological space for most of the show, only to emerge again as public at the very end. The trunks follow this trajectory. For me the status of the trunks as luxury items was somehow offensively distracting, although practical from the point of the plot (luxury items are easier to trace).

The twinning of the trunks makes little sense because it confuses the simple parallels between the pairs of lovers which is the main story structure. The trunks emphasize the ML as the antagonist in his wife’s story as a parallel to the FL’s stalker. As a weird result, the hired live-in husband of the ex-wife is unjustly sidelined. It is not a pleasant surprise when poor Jun Ji Oh suddenly appears in the trunk narratives. He wasn’t given a proper role in the showscript, so this looks like random improvisation, which is impossible in a pre-produced show?

The fundamental traumatic events in the women’s lives are not clearly acknowledged by their men, although we are to infer this, I think; JW understands that IJ is from a background of privilege similar to his own and that she is stuck in a posture of abandonment and Ji Oh intuitively, I think, understands that Seo Yeon is acting out an extreme need for control of her life because she is still grieving her loss.

All due respect to the director, but if a woman had directed the show I think that emphasizing the experiences of both of the two main female characters would have helped the balance between the main ML and the 2ML, and developing the men’s responses would have deepened their own emotional performances as well.

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really wonderful watch, part one

A story of mages and magic with both western and wuxia elements woven together. Recommended for fantasy lovers. Excellent world-building by the Hong Sisters ( their 13th script). Good CGI. An insanely cool soundtrack with a huge range, by the great Nam Hye Seung. Classy cinematography throughout never misses a beat -- a big budget production by Studio Dragon. 2022-3. Comical, thrilling and cute with a really epic romance, you can skip the intellectual understory or be amused by it. Classic Hong Sisters.

In two parts, not seasons. Likewise two separate reviews here on mdl are as one. 30 eps at 1hr.20mins ea. = about 40hrs watch-time. Part One is 20 eps and Part Two is 10. Its all, both parts, worth it.

Lee Jae Wook. then 24, took the world by storm as the ML, Jang Uk. LJW is a meticulous, skilled, flexible and charismatic actor. Jung So Min plays one-half of the FL (I wont list all of their names); a powerful, intelligent and experienced actress, together with LJW she took the series to a higher level. The talented and gorgeous Go Yun Jung, the other half of the FL, begins and ends the series with great panache , matching LJW in romantic intensity and comic interludes throughout.

Out of many great performances in the main and supporting casts I would pick out three favourites. Shin Seung Ho, as the Crown Prince, actually carries the main plot through Part One, more so than the adorable lovers. Jo Jae Yoon, as the discontent Jin Mu, is the most wonderful creepy villain ever, a consistent scene-stealer. And Im Chul Soo as the hempen Master Lee, the Hong Sisters' "deus ex machina", stole everyone's hearts just a little.

How can there be two actresses and one FL? Easily. The body of the first actress is destroyed and via the 'alchemy of souls' the soul of the first actress (Go Yun Jung as Naksu) inhabits the body of the second (Jung So Min as Mudeok) for Part One. Or, to put it another way, Jung So Min portrays the soul of Naksu inside the body of Mudeok.

The 'alchemy of souls' goes beyond the standard body swap. Forbidden sorcery, the powerful use it to steal new bodies and they employ skilled assassins to dispose of the unfortunate souls trapped in their old bodies. At different points the FL and ML are employed to kill one end or the other of this devils bargain.

How is our identity connected to our souls or our bodies? The Hong sisters pose this question off and on again in their inimitable way through this whole series. Is who you are due to genetics? Is it due to your life experiences in this body? Is your soul, in this popular sense it means consciousness -- is your consciousness separate from your body? Do you have a destiny and does that pertain to your body or your soul/consciousness, or do you create that from the choices you make as you move forward? These questions are not limited to vague popular ideas of reincarnation throughout Asia or to the theological conundrums of body and soul that leak into horror and occult films in the West. Its all one.

So, therefore; the ML was conceived while his father's body was forcibly and temporarily occupied by the soul of a creepy king near death. Is Jang Uk the son of his father, a great skilled mage who crossed a line in his magical practice, or is Jang Uk the son of the previous king and since the childless king's brother acceded to the throne, thus a cousin (mentally/physically..which?) to the current Crown Prince ?

So, therefore; the FL, a skilled assassin, mortally wounded, performs the alchemy of souls on the nearest healthy woman she can find. She wakes up in the body of a blind woman named Mudeok being sold to a brothel/pleasure house for debts, temporarily disoriented and mildly amnesiac. The energy of her soul as Naksu can heal the blindness and her memories return slowly, but neither memory or soul can restore to her the lost athlete's body.

Fate brings our soulmates together not without a lot of noisy complaining by both. The merry flirtatious upper class Jang Uk, desperately seeking a master who will open his gate of energy, suddenly recognizes a girl attacking him with a crab leg as soul-shifter by the blue marks in her irises.

The rest is an enormously fun show. Enjoy. Since I am doing two revuews for two parts, hint hint, an absolutely enormous cliffhanger ending to part one which cannot be revealed heer can be gently hinted at in the part two review.

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Yah! A Woman Blows Her Top

Park Bo Young plays one of the great funny heroines, Tak Dong Kyung (DK), who, liberated by a prognosis of brain cancer doom, blows her top at her horrible boss. "Yah!" , best described a a pragmatic expression of extreme annoyance on steroids, effectively freezes the recipient in his/her tracks. Love it. And she keeps on breaking out of her good-girl place.

Really really great script. Phooey to the critics. Huge themes, huge reversals, very tight very funny dialogue. Four main sets, the office of the editing co, the cafe at ground floor, a huge man's living room in gray and stone which MM attaches to one wall of DK's yellow and pink (with red accents) rooftop apartment and the hospital.

Seo In Guk as Myung Mal/Kim Sa Ram/Doom (MM) and the adorable Dawon as DK's younger brother, are the foils to Bo Young''s performance. MM is an embodiment of a word like doom used to describe a person's allotted (i.e. semi-ordained) lifespan and fate combined. He is not a helpful Grim Reaper guiding souls, but more like a fail-safe for death's prerogatives (similarly to the Greco-Roman Nemesis).

He is DK's "doom" and she is his fate. A 6 ft. tall black-clad wish-granting boyfriend with a bad temper and a webtoon editor fall in love, perfect. She ends up facing a choice between the entire world being destroyed or her boyfriend ceasing to exist, but NB. this choice is governed by a contract which MM/Doom made with her while in a self-destructive mood.

DK also gets to meet God, or at least the god of this world, who describes herself as the gardener of the Garden and MM as a butterfly. The metaphor is shifty, but the hospital is the scene of much of the action, the lovers meet there, the family unites aroung DK's illness, and god in her current incarnation is a child with a heart condition.

Dk does go into the noble self-sacrificing mode (its all my fault blah blah blah) for an episode but it doesnt last too long. Luckily the 2couple-plus-a-spare are the actors Lee Soo Hyuk, Kang Tae Oh and Shin Do Hyun, who all should get respect and better roles than they have had so far. They are brilliant here.

A Studio Dragon show with the composer Lim Ha Young. The writer is Im Me Ah Ri (beauty Inside).

On my top ten best ever kdramas list as of 12/24: Goblin, Hwayugi, Because This Is My First Life, Just between Lovers; the K2, Run On, Doom at Your Service; Tomorrow, Alchemy of Souls (earliest to latest) and Mr. Plankton .

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Clever cute, funny and sweet

Clever, cute, funny and sweet. Every fan has a favorite light romedy and Run On is mine, my 'Paris' drama -- the romantic and sentimentalized view of Paris in light midcentury comedy is so like the image of Seoul now, a city made solely for lovers....4 lovers wander in and out of one of those great cafe settings where artists could meet patrons and lovers can eavesdrop jealously; no one suddenly develops a fatal illness and lovers' misunderstandings are honest mistakes, not willful blundering.

All 4 have intense and very different professional lives -- when love calls them out into each other's worlds, all four are clueless for awhile. Bridges have to be built, concepts have to be translated, lovers struggle to understand. A grown-ups' world where lovers can be childish with each other and men weep when they are sad instead of going all morose. Wonderful and fully developed supporting characters fill out the main leads' narratives.

Siwan's character, Ki Seon Gyeom (SG) at first seems very slow on the uptake. A sprinter on the national team, a compliant child of an actress mother and an awful hypocrite of a father, we see him through the eyes of Shin Se Kyung's xcharacter, Oh MiJoo (MJ). MJ is the heart of this piece, the real POV, a film translator and subtitler who sometimes does some live interpreting. Shin Se Kyung's voice is so wonderful, both warm and sarcastic with a wide range of emotional expression, and her portrayal of MJ is of an active, hardworking intelligent woman. She always keeps on running metaphorically forward towards a life she has chosen, with a great mane of auburn hair rippling like a flag behind her.

MJ's changing descriptions of SG inform our own view of him, at first 'odd' (seen. even by his teamates as distant/arrogant), then bafflingly restricted verbally, (she of course is very verbal with her friends). Suddenly in civilian clothes a real beauty, and slowly more expressive as bit by bit as he and she work their way to understanding the close tie they feel almost from the beginning. She and the viewer finally see him as adorable and his constant steady attention to her as the faithfulness of a true romantic lead.

Luckily so, because the second couple generates enough steam and smoke for a whole other drama. Written in classic point/counter point with the more realistic and careful OTP, Kang Tae Oh as Yonghwa (YW) and Choi Soo Young as Seo Danah (DA) are nearly equal to them in screen time, action and arc. This is a deliberate move because the underlying theme is an exploration of the poisonous remnants of a once rigid, systematic ,and highly detailed mostly male social hierarchy.

The longest arc in the story are the individual results of a scandal involving really violent bullying in the national team, where one member turns his anger and jealousy of SG upon a more vulnerable teammate. SG's life is changed by his solid moral compass and refusal to hide the scandal. MJ serves as interpreter for an interview the victim gives to the international press and she translates the subsequent English article for online publication. SG embarks on a journey of self-discovery with MJ, while his real personal strengths and abilities become clearer to the viewer.

The script contains many funny gender reversals and commentaries on the concept of hierarchy and power, some subtle, some played more broadly for laughs. A JTBC show with Kim Se Jin as composer. Writer -- Park Shi Hyun.

On a first watch I recommend looking forward to a real debacle of a birthday party, SG and NJ's first two meetings, and Dan-ah's and Younghwa's last fight.

Hope y'all enjoy Run On as much as I do!

On my top ten best ever kdramas list as of 12/24: Goblin, Hwayugi, Because This Is My First Life, Just between Lovers; the K2, Run On, Doom at Your Service; Tomorrow, Alchemy of Souls (earliest to latest) and Mr. Plankton .

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still one of the best romantic-fusion modern dramas ever

A story of healing true love in the aftermath of a national disaster. A quiet and delicate show, punctuated by the intrusive memories of the two leads of being buried alive as children in a shopping mall collapse. A fictional story which reflects a national trauma in '95; the show's accident happens in '05 and the action of the story is set over a decade later.

Junho and Won Jin-ah are brilliant in the leading roles, magnetic personalities with a powerful and romantic attraction to each other. Their performances overshadow a second lead couple who hold an important place in the script. The two pairs demonstrate a contrast between families broken by the aftermath of the disaster and those from families who were responsible and who retained relative wealth. All are psychologically scarred by it. A third lead couple is one of my all-time favourites because they are fully developed characters and funny without being over-the-top sterotypes.

The soundtrack by Nam Hye Seung, is compelling but not overpowering. Memories contrast the pastels of the intact mall and the following billowing clouds of dust and glittering shards of class, with the grey dark scenes of the entrapment and rescue. The RL scenes are shot mostly in a clear daylight (out on the construction site etc.) or a well-lit office where the first couple end up employed by the second.

To begin with, neither of the pair recognizes each other from the event so long ago. The FL has traumatic amnesia but deals daily with her parents' pain; they are unable to move on from the death of her younger sister. The ML only has one family member, his younger sister, left and lives in poverty; his opportunities were destroyed by his severe injuries and by the corrupt blockage of his family's compensation package. Slowly all concerned shift away from their long-held coping mechanisms: anger, forgetting, sadness, guilt and regret.

The favorite quote of one of the more unique characters (a loan shark by day and a doctor at night for those who cannot afford healthcare) is from Im Chul Woo, whose books often deal with the aftermath of the bloody Gwangju uprising of '80. "..Suffering, resentment and regrets are your strengths. With these strengths, somehow survive [this] ugly and frightening life."

A Studio Dragon show with the composers Park Sang Hee and Nam Hye Seung. Writer -- Yoo Bo Ra.

On my top ten best ever kdramas list as of 12/24: Goblin, Hwayugi, Because This Is My First Life, Just between Lovers; the K2, Run On, Doom at Your Service; Tomorrow, Alchemy of Souls (earliest to latest) and Mr. Plankton .

posted simultaneously on viki

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wild plot, great kdrama

A very kdramaey BL college story. Much much better than Semantic Error. 10 episodes at 40 mins ea, so not a weekday drama, Wild plot, good drinking scenes. Secondary characters have some dramatic weight. Skorean scriptwriters always entertain, such is the trust they engender. The main characters here have real family backgrounds and discussions are had of a possible future for our pair in the real world beyond uni. My only caveat is a protest at yet another timid paler blonder small guy falling for an outgoing taller darker guy. Hate the predictable height and/or coloring tropes.

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traumatic amnesia tenderly portrayed

A nice watch. All the love stories ended up where they should. Riku Hagiwara was princely. I wept a little. Sometimes stories about imbalances of perception and memory can be pretty unsettling but not here. Some beautiful moments. My favorite, a priceless eyeblink, one of the stylized kdrama moves used to mark the recognition of true lovers, which obviously is normally used in the beginning episodes. Here, no surprise, it occurs further on. And a shout out to a collection of truly precious infant actors and the cinematographers who caught their beauty and wildness perfectly.

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excellent comfort sageuk

Excellent comfort sageuk. Big budget production.
The salty beginning abounds in double entendres surrounding sex and marriage, both gay and straight. The end episode is a lot of fun likewise. I liked the silly moment where the king decides not to have sex with So Rang because he suddenly is enlightened about how dangerous childbirth actually is for mothers. Since sneakily the show implies that they have become lovers relatively early on, this makes no sense but it's still cute.

In the middle the baddies stay very very worrisomely bad until their satisfying punishments. Unsatisfactorily, the madness of the king means that So Rang is removed from the streets where she shone and is confined to the palace. She weeps and suffers and actually visually and in behavior returns to her well-brought up self before having escaped her stepmother's murder attempt many years before.

Aired in 2022, this feels as if it were from a more hopeful era. The FL Park Ju Hyun is the clever jokester girl we see portrayed in a time of gender role change. Confucian values are sometimes relied upon and sometimes undercut. The bits and pieces of the plot sometimes feel as if they are surrounded by air -- this is not an elegant show, not nuanced, not a great love story (yet their affection and desire feels very real), but it is a story with enough heart, in the end, to win you over. Underlying issues brought up are sex trafficking and improved government support for families.

As with many basically good kdramas, the secondary characters shine. My favourites, eccentrically: Court Lady Won and the chief eunuch, played by true veterans. Kim Woo Seok of course. Also the strangely glowing Ban-tan (Noh Min Woo, accompanied by his actual brother!), who runs a secret haven for lovers and their children.

first posted on viki july 10th 2024

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a two-layered script and the powerful acting skills of Park Ji Hoon

Excellent, intelligent and interesting. I am surprised at the vehemence of the comments...the show was not elegant, but powerful. It has a theatrical style that people dont like in dramas? I did semi-binge it -- maybe that was better than actually waiting week by week?

A choice made to go with a two-layered script and the powerful acting skills of Park Ji Hoon, foregoing the pomp and set pieces of a fantasy sageuk, was a success. The psychological layer is sound -- an *alter* robs a person of energy and volition, altho it provides a way of not facing a losing battle with terrible abuse and trauma.The therapy for reintegrating a poisonous *alter* is long and painful and not always completely successful even then. Park Ji Hoon, uniquely capable of expressing strength through vulnerability in his roles, is also good at creating trust and vulnerability in onscreen relationships with other actors as well, so the story frame was perfect for him.

The second layer of the script avoids anachronism deftly; shamans (2 of different genders in 1 body! How cool is that!), folk-beliefs in possession, and seriously vile and violent fratricidal palace politics create a workable fantasy plot. The court was much more despotic (OMG the usurper Sajo Seung!!!) than the usual SK historical so some of the arch and delicate stylistics were done away with. The supporting cast was too strong to mention individually here but they were vividly wonderful and wonderfully manipulative. On a psychological level they so gaslit the ML that he had no idea which way was up until his true love came to rescue him by falling through the roof of his in-town design studio.

The beautiful but simple *mind-room* stage for the interaction of the 2 parts of the ML has an Alchemy of Souls feel, water and architecture. The 2 -in-1 MLs compete for the FL against each other -- a unique love triangle which is astonishingly successful dramatically. Both men (same actor) engage your heart, and the chemistry between each and the FL is visceral, emotional and touchingly tender.

You may find the last 2 episodes difficult -- the true drama is internal as Sajo Hyeon battles to take control of a fully integrated self-- this is crucial to the story.

Do watch and enjoy!!

ps. I cheered when the alter bullied the usual crop of corrupt aged court ministers!

pps. psychological melodrama is redeemed here tastefully by a careful fidelity to just enough of the stylistics and rules of kdrama to keep a balance to the weeping and pain that everyone goes through. Dramatic indeed but still fun

ppps, Why wasnt the ML given credit for designing the white outfits at the end?

first posted on viki july 10th 2024

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realistic and beautiful

How is it possible to tell a true love story in only 4 eps of 30mins ea.? So often BL is limited to this size. Let Ninomiya Takashi show you how: deftly, economically, realistically, beautifully, with two supertalented actors and one hell of a screenwriter. Watch, watch this.

Only one caveat and a stupid one because so much has to be intimated and inferred in such a short piece; I cannot think of any portion of this I would like to excise in order for Itou to truly seek forgiveness at a certain point, but for Nishi's sake I wish I could.

First posted on Viki May 29th 2024

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Combo hero-coming-of-age, wuxia, espionage and imperial intrigue.

Good watch. Prob'ly shot in 2018/9, 46 episodes -- only Part One of story! Combo hero-coming-of-age, wuxia, espionage and imperial intrigue. Many truly talented actors as supporting characters creates central focus on balancing nodes of power. The hero Zhang Ruo Yun/Fan Xian has excellent very masculine charisma and utter fidelity to his beloved.

A giant spy agency operating in the bowels of brutalist concrete architecture is balanced by the brilliant Chen Dao Ming as Dad the emperor puttering around with archery in slouchy white robes in his man-cave study, controlling his fractious family and state from afar. Fan Xian's story ties together this portion like the red string of fate.

Out of the city next, the fights get better (to my ignorant eye?) and the hero matures, fighting off various ladies' romantic overtures, and physical dangers, with aplomb, acting as ambassador to a northern country. Lots of cool 9th level masters and very dangerous enemies, and Fan Xian's faction starts to take shape.

To me the feminine rulers he grapples with in a northern enemy country seem like a cynical nod to then-fashion by the author or director (I am watching this during pride month which makes it feel particularly insulting) -- the northern emperor, obviously a woman, unacknowleged by plot (weird), is sismancing a great female martial artist, and then later suddenly one of the more politically ambiguous characters back home develops a bromancy henchman.

first posted July 2024 on Viki

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Big budget, lushly scored, epic romance all 10star.

BL, big budget, lushly scored, epic romance all 10star. The script is at least a 12. Unique use of the reincarnation theme. Normally Re-I is played for laughs or to solve a mystery. Here it is used as a frame for healing trauma -- the romantic tragic deaths of a pair of lovers from opposing families scars their communities, families and their hastily reincarnated selves who must work thru negative and positive attachment in order to live freely in their new present reincarnations. Great stuff.

I count three amazing uses of this trope...

1. Inter-generational sorrow.. The original lovers (In and Korn: IK) suffered in the homophobic 90's and in the 21st C their reincarnations (Pharm and Dean: PD) in a BL friendly Bangkok struggle to believe in the utopian tolerance surrounding them. Y'all know what I mean, for ex. in the US weeping at gay weddings bec past fears rise in the throat.

2. IK vowed to find each other after death, so PD falls in love but they each live a life plagued with disturbing flashbacks and dreams. We learn more about IK as these increase in frequency, punctuating the narrative of the present love story with the unfolding of the original one. The astounding result is that IK and PD slowly become more distinct from each other, not less. PD cannot trust until they work thru the pain of the IK life, and this also works to support some of the ways in which Pharm, whose IK-suffering was extreme, needs to move slowly in love.

3. the families of IK were riven by the their deaths; PD reincarnated back into each others' families but we do not realize how damaged the families actually were until PD begins to reach out to introduce their loves..missing family members, changed names...so Re-I supports the reintegration motif usual at the end of longer dramas.

17 episodes at 1 hr each puts this in classic weekend kdrama territory.
first posted on Viki spring 2024

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very literary depiction of powerful trust and desire

Cinematic gem. Jdrama BL. I love this show beyond reason. A tight focus on the interactions of two characters, like a stage play rather than a drama, but with sex as part of the character arc. Total concentration on a domestic relationship partially closeted in a real world setting -- subtle and super interesting . Great, great directing by the three women who also wrote the script. A good and very literary depiction of powerful trust and desire.
The classic "unreliable narrator" is the hook which draws us into the story, rooting for Yoh and fearing that he is being abused, a feeling which slowly slips away as we realize this long relationship is actually going through a quiet adjustment matching each other's needs as they change.
Non-verbal communication is important in this story. I advise taking the subtitles loosely as a key to meaning and to depend more on other meaning clues: body language, facial expressions and delivery, the cinematic frame of the dialogue's dramatic rhythmn, and the visual clues of the camera for emotion, especially color and light. 8eps at 25 mins ea.

first posted on Viki Dec 21st 2023

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This first kiss is both wonderful and hilarious

Thank you to Director Lim Hyun Hee and to Writer Lee Shin Won for this lovely, funny show. !Fighting!

My reactions: (E1-2) I am so happy! Laughing like a nutcase. This looks like it is going to be good. (E3-4) Great, great first kiss. Completely bananas long-haired lover! Nam Shi An bias. Main romance gets sunny cool house scenes, heart-wrenching-already second romance gets yellow streetlight in darkened backstreets. (E5-6) (holding myself back from spoilers) A lesbian bestie, smiles, tears, a seriously heart-fluttering hug and a heartbreaking embrace. Oh that ominous fitbit. (E7-8) Ouch, very very PG. Sweet as honey.

Some commentators seem puzzled -- I think because the show at the very last minute loses its surreal edge and comes down to earth (a very nice earth) with a tiny thud. I still go with 10stars for quality, cinematic intelligence, art, and for Nam Si An ripping up any official documents within reach (adorably).

This is standard kdrama sequence in mini-mini form (8 eps at 30 mins ea.), all the best bits condensed. Several annoying loose ends/teasers for poss. sequel. Confession as the main issue, and its relation to personal growth.

If immature behavior is a topic I will grab the chance to say that I think the young guy/young girl/cute kid/charley-chaplin comedy characters work in Jungian terms, igniting psychological needs or functions in us, the spectators. In this comedy the childish terrors of our doll-like protagonist Jin Woo make us laugh as he ineffectually tries to stop the no-boundaries Id-representing Gi Seop from entering his house. [As Jade hinted] in BL these men will blossom quickly into true lovers, like flowers in a desert spring. They enable us to remember/compare/hope for our own spring and gain emotional strength.

Maybe that R rating is because there is a lesbian character. Ooh so scary.

first posted on viki april 30th 2024

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