Meh league

1. You don't need to know baseball to enjoy it, true, but it certainly helps. Especially in episode 11 when they play a game and I was all confused.

2. The mc is a gary stu, he's always right, he has almost supernatural foresight, his plans always work. Thus the drama's episodic "problem of the week" formula has no tension because you know it will always work out in mc's favor.

3. The players are very one dimensional, maybe except one renegade. The staff has better characterization, but it all goes to drain in final episodes when they basically hold their hands and sing kumbaya. At multiple occasions.

4. The mc would be a villain in most dramas. Are we really supposed to believe that management who wants to cut costs of unprofitable team are the "bad guys"?

5. Which leads us to the repetitive formula. Everything is going fine----->management cuts budget---->mc comes up with a cheaper and ultimately more effective solution----->everyone congratulates him, except his boss who is pissed that he got outdone again (instead of being happy of getting two birds with one stone)

Ngl, I got bored in second half, but eventually forced myself to finish. The direction and acting are good, but it's not a masterpiece many people praise it as.

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This is fine

It's a fine drama. I was emotionally involved in the story from the beginning almost to the end. The tense moments were tense, the protagonists were likable, and the attention to detail was high. However, near the end it slipped a bit.

Here's why.

I think the choice to focus on the motives of antagonists and the related case was bad. First, because their motives and the case were predictable, and they themselves weren't likable or sympathetic people like narrative wants us to feel. Second, because it dragged on too long, the last 2-3 episodes are about that rather then the loop and how to break it.

I also think that portrayal of police was too idealistic, all police officers were dedicated, kind, willing to risk their lives, zealous in their devotion and the phrase "trust the police" was told multiple times, then we were shown on multiple occasions that trusting the police is always the best idea. It felt like propaganda.

The ending "slideshow" showing the endings of various passengers was idealistic too, like what kinda guy would be happy to see his estranged former criminal father suddenly show up at work with a bunch of dirty watermelons? And the boomer parents cosplaying for the cat guy, I just laughed at that.

Also, speaking of the cat guy. He "rescues" cats from the street by putting them in cages and locking them in his small room in darkness. Tbh death is probably better then such rescue.

And the romance between main characters, literally zero chemistry.

Finally, the reason why time loop happened wasn't explained.

So I can't rate it higher then 8/10. There are much better time travel and time loop works of fiction around.

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Ahistorical and convoluted

Combine "samurai warriors" with "basilisk kouga ninpou chou" and you will get this cursed, ahistorical abomination of the movie which only saving grace are obviously high production values, direction and acting.

All wasted on trash "story" portraying historical characters as exaggerated caricatures straight out of samurai warriros so if you played that you know what to expect (mitsunari obsessed with justice, sakon being a cynical war veteran with scars on his face, etc. ), ninja with superhuman abilities who seem like they came from a shounen manga, and all kinda events that simply speaking never happened....starting with the beginning scene where hideyoshi met mitsunari as a child in a temple, which is just an apocryphal rumor, and in reality he first met mitsunari when he was already 18. Or the scene where Kiyomasa Kato wanted to kill Mitsunari, but the latter found refuge in Ieyasu's mansion, portrayed many times as a stage in samurai warriors and completely untrue to history as Ieyasu didn't have any mansion there and likely no assassination attempt even happened there.

This movie is shilling Mitsunari side, and they overdid it hard. I dislike how they portrayed Tokugawa Ieyasu as a complete villain, while writing Mitsunari as a saint. Even his mistakes were because of his good nature.

For example, in the movie he wasn't caught by peasants while trying to run away from the battle. Noo, he was cared for by them and then refused to leave even when the villagers advised him to when Tokugawa troops approached, because he feared the villagers will be executed for helping him and he would rather die then fail to repay his debt to the villagers. Of course, there is zero historical evidence for that, it's just one of many examples of the author wanting to paint Mitsunari as a kind hearted idiot rather than a cowardly villain.

There were also sus moments of technical nature: teppo firing twice in one scene, flat wooden shield stopping a teppo shot, blind yoshitsugu fighting with a spear, crossbows in sekigahara, ashigaru training with swords and shields, and sus amounts of swords on battlefield that should be dominated by spears.

That being said, could be worse: armors weren't paper here, and they actually had to aim for openings in armors to kill their enemies. Overall, individual fight scenes were well done. The group fight scenes weren't so bad either: soldiers actually fought in formations, although chaotically. The blood looked good, and the weapons and armors looked real.

The music is fine but nothing special. The entire romance between Mitsunari and fictional ninja girl was pretty much non existent, so the genre romance is misapplied to this movie.

As many other people said, to understand what is going on here you need to know of the events portrayed in the movie, as well as who is who, as the movie itself haphazardly jumps from one scene to another without explaining what is happening and why. And as I said before, because of various historical inaccuracies and "alternate" interpretations on these historical events, I wouldn't recommend this movie to people who want to learn japanese history.

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Hard to rate

I thought a long time what to rate it. I actually wanted to rate it 7, but then I looked at other dramas I rated a 7 and thought this doesn't deserve that rating. There are just too many flaws. Such as:

-The story has too many logical inconsitencies and makes no sense, neither time travel mechanics wise, nor characters and their motivations, nor various plot twists make sense when put together. It was clearly a story that focused on generating dramatic situations rather then being clever or well written.

-Dropped plot points that were never explained like the bald assasin from the future or why was the antagonist allowed to see the future since childhood, why did child ml know the future too etc.

-Too many over the top action scenes like FL falling down the stairway and shooting mid flight.

-Some of the ML McGyver's like shooting cola capable of knocking out soldiers (or killing them, not sure which) are implausbile too, starting from the very first airplane scene

-The antagonists are incompetent. Even considering their motives revealed in later episodes, they still do stupid shit they shouldn't have done like surrounding protagonists in a tight circle and aiming at them with guns (friendly fire guaranteed)

-The post apocalyptic future is radiocative so every time traveler is contained, but actually they don't suffer any consequence and look and live healthy. Also FL and her father walk in gas masks outside, but actually they don't need them and are fine without them too. guess the masks are just for fashion.

-The character of FL is annoying, childish, withholds information from ML for no reason and is quite dumb. Still she grew on me eventually, but she's not some cool FL like she could have been if she was written better. Also her saying to the other guy multiple times she didn't kill anyone when she killed at least several dozen people in the future is laughable.

-music was sometimes unfitting and weird

there are some good things tho, such as:

-very good color palette for most scenes, and very good direction and cinematography

-good acting from most people, esepcially from ml and the antagonist

-these two are also the most interesting characters

-the plot prioritizes drama over logic, but it does drama (and melodrama) well

also, this drama is different from many others in the sense that it starts bad and gets better in second half (and also more confusing). it took me several episodes to get invested in this story, but once I was I actually enjoyed watching it

so. I think 6.5 is a fair rating.

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rip gg

The strongest points of this series are the scenery, costumes and classical music and songs used as soundtrack. It's all just beautiful.

The second strongest is the acting from FL, which was just amazing. You could feel her emotions in every little movement.

The mid point is the story. I know it was based on real life events, but I can't help but think that the main characters (especially the guy) could have avoided all of that if they made better, smarter choices along the way. However, once they arrived at certain point, I understand why they would prefer to rest rather then struggle and suffer more.

And the low point is the ML's acting which was wooden and completely failed to capture the emotional complexity of his character. I think he was cast for his face alone.

It is worth noting that I could immediately tell which characters are korean and which are japanese even before their nationalities were stated from the way they spoke japanese. Koreans kinda chained the words together like in korean language, while japanese made proper pauses between syllabes and words. I appreciate this detail.

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I was told it was great.

And surprise, it turned out to be great.

It's hard to say what this drama is about without spoiling the plot. So instead of talking in detail about a spectacular, might-blowing story that made me cry on several occasions(I don't usually get emotionally invested in fiction), I'll talk a bit about the form, without spoiling the content like I usually do in reviews.

And the form is, of course, amazingly done too. This drama has some of the best cinematography I've seen in Korean dramas so far. The music, acting and pacing all combine to deliver an outstanding series.

Though speaking of acting....I'll be frank, I don't like Kim Hye Soo. I know she has many fans, but I seriously dislike her plastic face that can only play with overly large eyes and slight tilts of mouth. This made it somewhat annoying to watch the series at certain moments, considering how much screentime her character has. The fact that her character wasn't particularly likable(though she was written like that on purpose, so it's not a fault of the drama) adds the fuel to the fire.

But I digress. Both male leads were great, and the villains were actually hateable. Yes, I usually sympathize with villains in dramas. Usually, they do something bad, then get severely punished by protags, and if they happen to have some sad backstory, it usually makes me empathize with them even further. The only thing that usually makes me root for protags, and not sympathize with the antagonists, is when the antagonists are shallow/overly black/saturday morning cartoon caricatures. But then that means what I really hate is bad writing, not the characters.

But in Signal, we have some villains that are psychologically deep, complexly written, with multilayered motivations behind their actions, yet....at no point does the show make me sympathize with most of them or stop rooting for the main characters.

I also liked how the ending sequences showed the previews for the next episode....by showing scenes that would only happen many episodes later, or not happen exactly as they were shown at all. This added to the entire time travel and chronology confusion feel of the show, by playing with the viewer on meta-level. Well done!

In the end, some things weren't explained. But perhaps they weren't meant to be explained. Thematically, the show is about not giving up hope when fighting for justice, and putting down those who feel beyond law and punishment and making a mockery of police and innocents. It's also about cause-and-effect, and how we might not always get what we want. These themes are executed to a satisfying conclusion, and that's what matters the most.

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Fun action movie

You know, I approached this movie with zero expectation.
Top review on this site is just 6/10.
It's a movie based on video game that I never even heard about.
Wuxia so probably full of tropes and archetypes.
A Chinese production, so the cinematography and CGI will probably suck....

Frankly speaking, I only hoped for some cool fight scenes to watch in between more serious things.

But boy. Did this film deliver!

The CGI was good and the direction was quite professional. The quality of the movie isn't different from big American productions, it was really quite a surprise!
The characters, tho rather archetypical, were all likable and well developed.....as far as you can develop characters in a single 90-minute long film. It's a job well done.

And the fight choreography was nice too.

Really, the only point this movie seems to be lacking is the storyline. And it's still quite good...especially since I expected a total trainwreck. It really only drops the ball in the second half, I think it was rushed. The movie could have used additional 20 minutes of screentime to flesh the events out! Also, I think the entire subplot with mc's origin was....totally unneeded and didn't account for anything(other than making ground for a possible sequel).

So as a movie. It was good and I had a lot of fun. As a video game commercial? Didn't tell me anything about the game, and probably didn't even try. It's fine. As a Chinese production? Job well done!

I recommend it.

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The emperor is naked

All the reviews praised this drama as 10/10 best thing ever, and with netflix taking it down in a couple of weeks, "Healer" arose interest from fans both old and new.

But is it worth the hype? Well, after seeing 5 episodes, I'm afraid to say....no, not really.

But first thing first. I realize I'm not a target audience. I expected a thriller with some love story, but instead I got love story with lots of melodrama and some thriller. Very little action.

The mc is batman-like hypercompetent gary stu, supported by super-hacker who can just hack anything in 3 seconds if she just looks at it through mc's magic super high tech glasses. No one must know his identity, which doesn't stop him from enlisting at news agency where he pretends to be a clumsy, stuttering dumbass in character development as old as Clark Kent.

There he falls in love with a girl he was originally paid to stalk. However, little does he know they are actually amnesiac childhood friends with childhood promise, and every single villain and side character they will encounter from now on is somehow connected to their past!

Oh did I mention that the first time they met in person the bus they were driving stopped too fast, and the female mc conveniently fell in Healer's embrace? Perhaps I also should mention that he's so hyper-competent at combat he can defeat multiple armed thugs at once, and parkour fast enough to catch up with a car. Oh, and of course, everyone takes notice of how handsome he is....

In other words, the story is full of tropes and cliches. It's fairly well-executed, as far as acting and production values and direction are concerned, at least based on these 5 episodes I've seen so far. But it's just....boring and predictable.

The FL is pretty cute, but so far, she's just been a clueless damsel in distress. Any sign of competence shown in the first episode went poof, she can't even notice she's being stalked by multiple people at the time.

And don't get me started on melodrama. I had to turn episode 5 off when FL's wheelchair-bound mother got the worst acted epilepsy attack I've seen in years just when the name of her amnesiac missing daughter was mentioned.

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It's like murder

First 7 episodes: Great suspenseful thriller
Next 7 episodes: Monster of the week vigilante torture porn
Final 6 episodes: Evil government conspiracy melodrama

Seriously, it's like they murdered the story. They turned the mc from cool serial killer, into a slightly less cool vigilante, into a repentant bitch. Because koreans are pussies who can't have a serial killer for mc, the dramas even of this particular genre must be preachy and politically correct.

From ep14 onwards the mc feels so guilty about killing people he had no emotional connection to, that his entire goal is to give himself in and get a death sentence, but evil conspiracy who cleans up after him won't let him so he wants to defeat them to finally die. What kinda protagonist is that, and what kinda goal is that? Cringe, that's what.

I could accept if he stayed true to what the drama presents as his nature (suspend disbelief here, all saiko-pesu are ruthless serial killers amirite) and continued doing what he's good at, but his plot armor eventually run out and he got defeated. That would be cool. But a protagonist who actively strives to his own self destruction? That's just painful to watch.

FFS. 8/10 for how great the first half was, just skip the rest.

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Idiocy

What a feast! Let's see....

-A magic melee stun gun more potent then any taser ever dreamt to be, you can touch anyone through thick jacket for a couple of seconds, it makes bzz sound and they drop down lmao
-Miracle telescopic baton that can one shot guys
-If you think mc taking 10 guys alone in the first episode is over the top, wait until you see two male leads taking 30 guys armed with baseball bats a couple of episodes later!
-Car chase where smaller car somehow topples a bigger van, and then they get out of the car and run towards the other car with heavy load of gold, while the other car is just calmly waiting there instead of driving up and picking them up.
-Police is nowhere while all of that happens
-Nobody uses guns, not even gangsters
-Similarly, nobody uses katanas, machetes or other melee weapon available on the market. A rare character is smart enough to use a kitchen knife, but of course kitchen knife is useless against the power of boxing.
-The thugs use these shitty hollow aluminum bats instead of normal wooden ones or wooden kendo swords. Of course when they hit our characters it makes a bonk noise and nothing happens, our heroes are too high level for this shit. But of course if they pick up a hollow aluminum baseball bat, the thugs are screwed!
-Useless ML with his useless crying mother, really, entire story wouldn't have happened if she read what she signs.
-Useless FL who's trying to be smart but forgot she's an idiot.
-Pretty cool second ML who has no stakes in any of that and I have no idea why he's hanging out with these losers.
-Antagonist casino plan is fucking idiotic but in a universe where taking loans on stolen ID cards of homeless people is a viable scheme it might just work.
-People get beaten and cut pretty deep in the face but are perfectly fine the next day, no nerves or anything damaged.

Even though I'm only 4 episodes in I can see it's a proper shitpost of a drama, can't wait for what dumb shit will happen in the second half.

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Trainwreck

The solution to trolley problem, according to this drama, is a trainwreck.
Don't chose between few and many, just pile them up on top of each other and sabotage the wheels too so the trolley falls over too after running over everyone else.
And true to that notion, the final episodes are absolute trash.

Not that the first 3/4 or so were so great, either. It was an extremely slow melodrama, with awfully dumb and naive FL who was not at all sympathetic even tho the story did everything to paint her as such. Truly the slowest story progression I've ever seen. And if only the plot reveals were worth it! But no, it jumped from one lackluster reveal to another, in between constant flashbacks to shit we've already seen and prolonged scenes like FL taking a whole minute to decide to answer a phone call or not EACH AND EVERY TIME.

But the absolute garbage the story turned in the end is second to none.
The morals are very sus too ,"sympathize with rapist if he committed suicide" and "tell on your own family if they broke the law" aren't things I can agree with.

Not even superb acting from almost everyone involved, especially Park Hee Soon and Kim Mu Yeol, could save this one. The camera work, scenery and soundtrack were wasted too (not that the ost is that strong anyway, it had like one memorable melody it kept overusing). Don't let anyone fool you by saying this is a mature drama for mature people, it's trash. It's also not makjang, it's not a thriller, nor is it similar to some other titles MDL recommends below, it's no Misty.

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Big Mouse

MDL be like:

-Get a drama with dumb writing, black and white characters, overpowered gary stu protag who has titanium plot armor, and an ending where all bad guys are punished regardless of their crimes and ml and fl live happy ever after: FUCKING MASTERPIECE SLAY GIRL!!!!!11

-Get a drama with clever writing, multidimensional characters, where protagonist struggles all the time to get what they want, and the ending is unhappy or bittersweet: REEEEEEEeeeeee *hellish screeching*

It so happens that Big Mouth (should be Big Mouse) is in this second category, and this explains any complaint or bad review you might have read of it. Really it's just MDL idiocy, the drama is great.

The only faults I could find are:
-The last episode felt rushed
-The ML can't act and was clearly chosen just for his looks. But it actually works in his favor here, somewhat, considering what kinda character he plays.

Extra credit to all the humorous and unintentionally humorous scenes that you might not expect from this kind of story and to acting of Yang Kyung Won who just dominated every scene he appeared in.

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