Not enough sea action...

What's up with the ending of episode 2 and onward? They straight up gave us random spoiler scenes and cuts from different points of future episodes. This was just a cheap tactic trying to hold the viewers hostage early on. Maybe because episode 1 wasn't well perceived? Kicked off to a bad start already. Song Il Gook and Chae Shi Ra were okay. Choi Soo Jong isn't appealing in historical dramas as always. Park Soo Ae was meh, she's better off in regular melos. The story and directing were equally problematic mainly regarding two insufferable themes that is love and rivalry, of which both were subjected to pathetic writing. If that wasn't enough, you got too many repeated montages of flashbacks to keep you annoyed. At the end, we got a "let's just wrap it up and end it" type of ending. Some characters were completely robbed off of a reasonable ending. It wasn't even a matter of historical accuracy, that's irrelevant. Emperor of the sea but they were 99.9% of the times on land.

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Not quite there...

The drama had one of the worst introductions out there. You can never expect anyone to be interested after watching the first 4 episodes. As if they were purposefully made to push viewers away. Anyway, the drama had some brilliant and creative moments at times but all of that was overshadowed by the dominant hot garbage moments. You may expect something worse than Oblivion NPC's level of dialogue and directing. All of the three male leads sucked and disappointed. There was a big massive slump between episodes 35-45 that was rough to get through. Villains and ending were meh.

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Bearable

Didn't like the introduction of them while kids everything about it felt disingenuous. Pacing issues were too obvious to ignore. The plot moves extremely slow +10 episodes for every single event with little to no side plots to keep you occupied. The problems didn't end there, the drama suffered from the extreme low tension in its writing. Most of the events that were suppose to create tension were caused by health problems. Speaking of which, they pulled the health problems card way too many times on too many characters. Regardless of the historical accuracy but that was poor storytelling for how it was implemented. Which leads me to my next point, regular boring side characters would usually get a 12 course meal for their affairs while super important characters would be cut off short and not get the same treatment. The important characters were robbed off of their climax too. Anyway, the drama had technical issues, the same scene can have different color grading between different angles. The drama had some nice moments with the leads but that's were most of its appeal ends.

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Not good

The drama was infested with cheap drama/melodrama tactics to keep it alive for too goddamn very long 134 episodes because otherwise it can't reach that milestone. Which turned it into a mind melting irritating watch. These details were highly unlikely to be historically accurate. Looking back at it I don't recall a lot of big events/moments happened during these 134 episodes, it feels empty for what it tried to achieve. The bothersome experience doesn't stop here but extends to its production also as if that wasn't enough. About +80% of the entire filmed footage were extreme face close ups. You're most certainly guaranteed to feel nauseous being subject to that for too long. My guess is that it was done purposefully to hide the background and cut on the budget. Cheaper to film and easier/faster to edit. The more I watch Choi Soo Jong the more I realize he isn't suitable for historical dramas.

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Interesting

Historical dramas had been failing me for a long time for one reason or another. Watching this one made me realize what's missing from any semi-/modern historical drama. For the past 20-ish years, historical dramas had been playing it gradually too safe and too clean. This drama isn't perfect or even great but it gave me a fresh and new perspective on the genre. Those who were beaten up or being tortured actually looks like it. Its scuffness is what sold it for me. The set design isn't squeaky clean and polished. The set is reasonably lit at night while taking into consideration they used to use candles instead of high beam studio lights back then! This might be the first historical drama I've seen that didn't feel like a cosplay show. You may find something similar in movies but ever so rarely in K-TV series.

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Do better!

It's called The Iron Empress so it's expected for this empress to carry certain characteristics as implied by the title but eventually everything boiled down to her being super stubborn gradually making me dislike her over time. It messed up her character value in one way or another. All of the characters that were in position of power were delusional and gullible which is exactly what the drama was built on. This is a cheap way to create melodrama to drive the drama, it's fundamentally annoying no matter how they spin it and justify it. So don't expect any clever plays by these samples. The drama clearly lost focus by the end. The writer wrote the story into a corner after a very long, repetitive and tiring melodrama and didn't have much to show for the ending so they resulted in throwing new events to have an ending rather than having both events running in parallel. How historical accurate that last portion was is irrelevant if it was presented with poor storytelling. This wasn't an enjoyable watch. The Iron Empress needs to touch some grass.

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A decent flawed attempt...

This drama was a constant coin toss for me. Sometimes it was good and enjoyable while other times it was over-sentimental, cringe and dull. Although the drama was 36 episodes long and packs a lot of events but most of these events were shoved together into the last 1/3 of the drama while the first 2/3 were very stretched out with little to no movement. The romance was treated as an instrument to push the main lead down or to bring him back up, not really romantic. Baek Do Yang character needed more attention especially that we had an abundance of free time. The last 5-10 minutes had a really unnecessary last minute maneuver. Anyway, the drama is good enough to be watchable but with a big asterisk.

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On the verge of meh-ness...

Although it's politically themed drama but it's a watered-down surface-level politics and the excessive overdramatization didn't fit its theme. Repeating the exact same dramatic flashbacks multiple times throughout both seasons further highlights my point. It ended up relying on these melo moments rather than having a better written political drama and a more engaging dialogues as you would expect from a good political drama to have. What also didn't fit its theme is the male lead constant overreacting and overacting for his role. The romance of the main leads and the pair up of the secondary leads were all out of place. On the other hand, the OST was nice, it reminded me of Comrades (2010). The drama is okay if it was your first political drama, can serve as an easy introduction to the genre.

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On the verge of meh-ness...

Although it's politically themed drama but it's a watered-down surface-level politics and the excessive overdramatization didn't fit its theme. Repeating the exact same dramatic flashbacks multiple times throughout both seasons further highlights my point. It ended up relying on these melo moments rather than having a better written political drama and a more engaging dialogues as you would expect from a good political drama to have. What also didn't fit its theme is the male lead constant overreacting and overacting for his role. The romance of the main leads and the pair up of the secondary leads were all out of place. On the other hand, the OST was nice, it reminded me of Comrades (2010). The drama is okay if it was your first political drama, can serve as an easy introduction to the genre.

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Poor attempt

I don't even feel like typing much for this one. The drama was increasingly unreasonably frustrating to watch with each passing minute out of the 1440 minutes runtime. It's a shame that the talent and the budget had went into this drama.

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Decent

Turned out to be a decent story. I really appreciated how it focuses on the individuals with a reasonable scoop while taking into consideration their surrounding rather than throwing in mindless connections to make the story more grand without relevant purpose such as wars/nations/kingdoms/factions. Although it started to lean a little bit into the other side towards the end, unfortunately, this is the fault of its runtime. Which brings me to my next point, the drama is definitely too long for its content and it would benefit greatly if it were to be condensed down to ~25 episodes, it would make a much more compelling package. Because of this, the drama had a serious issue with flashbacks. There was a one piece of dialogue that was repeated almost every other episode for its entire runtime, a bit too much! I liked the first 2/3 more than the last 1/3, things were changing at an unreasonable pace as we were approaching the end, you may say it was rushed. The last ~10 episodes were full of rapid changes where the drama felt like it lost it direction and didn't know how to stir it towards the end. The production seems to be passable despite its flaws even when taking into consideration that this was made in the early 2000s. Some scenes you will notice some great attention to details while other scenes you can see the tape of their fake facial hair.

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Bad

It's nothing but a dreadful watch, following this piece of artificial soulless junk made me wonder why some cast members, who are well off, accept such projects. I feel like somewhere not too long ago writers stopped trying when it came to these high-society themed dramas. A squeaky clean wardrobe, a massive mansion and a handful of dirty secrets won't cut it anymore. The shallowness and the lack of substance made a killer combo for a mind numbing experience. The drama's message absolutely wasn't worth 20 episodes to tell its tale nor was it interesting or entertaining to follow. In fact, they did a goddamn poor job in that regard. I'm fairly certain if you were to pick up any random drama from Park Soo Ae or Kim Kang Woo catalog it would be a guaranteed better watch than whatever this was.

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Decent

The drama has its appeal despite the handful of small annoyances sprinkled throughout. Every single character has a trait or two which was over-amplified a bit too much that it came off as overbearing and annoying. The writer was trying too hard to force the viewers to sympathize with In Soon that it took away from her value as a character but it got better later on or maybe I just got too used to it that I subconsciously ignored it. The conclusion could've been better, some characters were brushed off just to wrap it up quickly. Where this drama shines and gets its appeal is with a handful of moments here and there where the writer shows his prowess with its dialogue away from the goofiness. Moreover, my favorites are the ones where the silence surrounds everything, no background music, no dialogue, no movement, everything is consumed by the void while some static images play in succession.

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