Started pretty brilliant, halfway or so through started falling apart

I LOVE the premise of this. God how I love it! Unfortunately, between a director who has, in the works I've seen, been pretty choppy about putting scenes together and a writer with no drama experience on paper, it has seriously fallen apart in ways that make it only watchable for the action and fx... The dialogue became downright "12 year old fanfiction" level corny and the core emotion, as well as the actors depicting it moment to moment, gets rather lost when, you know, you don't put the scenes together logically.

It had massive potential. Japan could seriously take this and do something magnificent, I think. It is YET ANOTHER instance where anything remotely involving sci-fi elements becomes a handicap simply because it's airing in Korea and in turn made by people who grew up with this odd inability to take notes from over 40 years of badass content worldwide. I just want to sigh.

I'm still giving it a 7 because Park Sung Woong and (weird Japanese 90's hair aside) Choi Jin Hyuk and Jo Dong Hyuk all kill their scenes and Park Sun Ho is awfully cute in this... though made a bit of a wimp overall except for one episode he was allowed to be a bit strategic. The worst offense is Bradley: Jang In Seob's character. SO MUCH POTENTIAL and I really like that there's a backdoor to communicate with these people because of their hyperadvanced chips... in the end, though, they really didn't imagine enough for the guy or the genius Susan (Jang Seo Kyung's character) who supposedly gets a slightly sinister smile turning humans into machines, like they took a psycho genius from a mental ward and made her a police agency doctor...

They give SUCH underdeveloped backstories that behold, here is character-as-prop #1... and 2-32 are over there. It's sad. They should've stuck to the characters and honored the talent they hired.

That said, I don't really regret watching if only because hey... they're kinda smoldering hot a lot of the time, not gonna lie. It took me this long to realize that Jo Dong Hyuk (Tae Woong) is who played the super sexy painter in Love Affairs in the Afternoon. I love that the 4 men-Park Sung Woong, Choi Jin Hyuk, Jo Dong Hyuk, and Park Sun Ho (who I'd seen in Best Chicken as the lead but otherwise only in support roles) are all attractive in totally different ways. Bradley (Jang In Seob) is definitely more support material but he looks pretty handsome in this, too... pity there weren't more females, but that's pretty much every OCN story of this kind and really anything revolving around crime and police/detectives/investigators... Guess that's one reason I have so much affection when they DO put females in high positions. At least let us dream of slightly more equal roles. The character of Jung Hye In, Mi Na, is kind of a wimp, too-flexible, yes, but they didn't have her using her different build the way anyone would, well, anyone trying to avoid horrible injuries. Suppose she's not that 'anyone' in this. Her role in Graceful Family-which was much more female-centric-was far more powerful than this where she was literally programmed to be a damsel detecting distress of the one they -really- wanted most of all to be their star case for this.

Good message, carried out a bit... hmm... poorly. I still enjoyed it. The action is generally really fun. It took til 14 and 15 to get my personal "from episode 2 or 3" goal accomplished, but they did it, just slowly so as to frustrate me. The ending was a bit anticlimactic for me, too. That said, though, I'll also say this: they did well w/Park Sung Woong's character, one really marked moment of the finale-well, 2 for many, just one w/him and the head of Argos for me, that showed what perhaps we needed more of-focused energy... but his character was pretty good, mostly (the director-writer-producers-editors just didn't really let things unravel in the right order), but in turn they were lousy about keeping an air of mystery for other characters we shouldn't see through so very plainly... that alone dropped its score but the writing/direction were the main flaws. The acting made up for a pretty decent bit of it, but there are hundreds of shows I'd recommend before this, probably a good 50 action shows I find superior just from SK-add Japan's movies and you will have tons more. Sci-fi is still a weakly executed genre in SK... but they're working on it.

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Say what? Ji Soo has a beautiful girlfriend in a show? HUZZAH!

Okay, all jokes aside, Ji Soo seems to be in a couple of kinds of boxes-tragic figure boxes and "the one who doesn't get the girl" boxes. This one is indeed a tragic figure, so whew, at least he has a drop dead gorgeous girlfriend truly deeply in love with him.

If you want something that is deeply heartwarming, this show is very much it, BUT only if you can spare some tears and snot for the box of tissues you'll want near you. This is a really unusual series in a lot of ways, the most obvious being that we enter the lead's dreams, dreams impacted by his brain being altered by both disease and painkillers mind you, through beautiful animations-they are straight out of someone's half-asleep stream of consciousness in design/flow, only the person having them is terminally ill, so the fluffy and swooping and cuddly characters and rock robots etc we see and go on an adventure with are spiked with some fear, bitterness, despair, and anxiety.

When not in the lead character's dreams, we see his real world suffering along with the pain his friends and family go through. A new character in the lead's life also comes to us in the form of a convenience store clerk who is transported into the same dreamscape as the lead-it is certainly unusual, but by the end, the least seen character (physically-we see his cartoon form, of course) ends up having one of the most poignant, important roles in the whole story.

Watching this when apart from family during a pandemic is certainly an unexpected situation (the pandemic in particular). With everyone (well, who is conscientious) living a bit more constantly aware of how easily illness and indeed death are taking hold of so many around us, with our lives a bit uprooted in most of the world and our day to day lives quite different from a year ago, the time of release of this could, if it were not so thoughtfully crafted, get a bitter reaction. Instead, though, the creators seemed very aware of how delicately they needed to handle it-the balance of the moments of adventure, the smiling moments, and the tears was important to get right, and by my estimation, they could not have gotten that much better. While not a perfect production (the camera/lighting work made me wish at times it had been a Whynot TV or even Playlist Global production-still, that is a minor detail-especially for a webseries), I was immersed in the story and acting so it only briefly made it a little less perfect than the slicker productions that don't have nearly as intriguing a set up to begin with.

I'd LOVE more animation to be integrated into dramas. I really enjoyed (crime thriller-ish drama) Sketch largely because of the namesake, the sketches, and the animations really made this special; if it had JUST been the humans, it probably would have felt like a Lifetime daytime tear jerker TV movie; instead, it has its own memorable place and the tears I did shed don't feel like someone manipulated me emotionally to make me shed them.

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Amazing acting, unique perspective-Feng Shui master, find me a gravesite!

English subs finally arrived for this much-anticipated film a couple of weeks ago! Only took them 11.5 months! :) Disclaimer: Ji Sung was 90% of why I watched this, the rest of the cast the other 10%. I make a point not to watch much in terms of trailers/teasers for Korean films because I learned at some point they tell WAY too much about the characters/plot twists that kind of ruin some of the films. While not many, there are a few important character revelations that make me happy I didn't go finding any and all content available for/about it despite looking for it steadily since almost a year ago. I'm going to avoid spoilers at all costs because I personally dislike them in reviews (which I tend to read before, not after, watching something).

The story starts with us seeing a king going with his young crown prince to choose the spot he'll be buried with his Feng Shui masters and the trainees they expect to take notes and nothing else. The old scholars show a site, say it's auspicious, and all nod, all but one youngster whose father was, of course, the best of the best Feng Shui geniuses which is apparently a thing. I guess like a genius doctor can take into account all a body's symptoms thoroughly and without taking too much time, a genius Feng Shui master can assess everything about an area, the water, the dirt, the trees, the direction the sun and wind and whatnot will be facing/blowing most of the time, important monuments or things like sharp mountain peaks that impact the 'value' of a site and so on quickly, thoroughly, and precisely. They see it more accurately. The young trainee who spoke up explained that the site was in fact cursed by cold water and rocks that drew snakes under them, but alas, he was ignored. The King, now that his site was chosen, indeed says adieu soon and the young boy becomes the king too early. Anyone wanting some eye candy of the young male variety, your new king is a cutie for sure, puppy eyes exploding and all.

So yeah, the story revolves around gravesites but is not at all spooky somehow. Maybe the fact that almost all of it is shot in the daytime-no nighttime grave robbing going on here-was a conscientious decision since it could have become really strange really fast. Corruption isn't something I like watching that much, especially government officials being corrupt and deception by ministers against kings etc. They must know a lot of us have gotten very bored with the long segments of elite ministers pretending to beg their king to do what they are in fact being power trippy and greedy about; the amount of time watching the greedy old ministers is minimal with one exception, the eldest of the most powerful (surprise, he's a Kim!) clan. Oh, and this seems a good time to point out that the 20-something trainee, wise but modest with a pretty wife and baby, is punished horribly for speaking up (by that all-powerful rich Kim and his arrogant son. Naturally, revenge is in order, and revenge can either be so depressing it's miserly or exciting and curious. This one is on the curious and sometimes exciting side. It's never boring, at least not to me. It packed a lot into two hours of time, fast-paced but never at all hurried seeming/unnatural, just rich. It's also intriguing to think that with the strong history of honoring your ancestors forevermore they paid such close detail to gravesites (which I totally get, as no one wants to dig up dirt where water and snakes are right at the edges or the now-unsettled dirt will soon be mud full of ticked off snakes)... but on the folklore side of it, they firmly believed that things like whether trees are growing upright or knotted or water is warm or cold around an area would change the future of all people in their family forever-wealth, power, health to elderly ages, etc were all things you could supposedly change for the existing and future generations by being buried in the right spot. People fighting to the death for the spot to put their bones and/or their parents', etc is a tad ironic. I guess to them if you didn't get a good plot to die in, why bother living, eh? :)

Of course the writing had to be good for me to enjoy it, and it is solidly researched (I noticed they thanked a lot in the end credits and among them is a company Linc that links people in the film industry and probably others with universities so they can produce something more accurate and just plain better). There is enough fact from history in this to feel like the entire thing happened recently enough to be told to us by someone who witnessed it-that's the power of both the writing, filming, directing/production, and most of all the acting that is 10/10 even if they were to take out Ji Sung (I might not have watched it for another year or few without him, though, so I'm VERY glad he took the role!). This cast has all lead level actors playing what is truly like a half dozen or so main characters. None are unimportant and all of them just OOZE charisma, power, conviction, and all the things their characters have to have to levels it is a total treat, a gift, even, to see. The end gives us a short but sweet cameo from Heo Sung Tae, one of my favorite great guys to hate on screen (but Big Forest is so endearing and adorable I couldn't see him the same way for a long while and kept snickering when seeing him play a bad guy even though he never ever breaks character in the actual shows and films). He's a good guy in this one!

The music and rewatch values I gave 8's because one watch and I got everything from it I think I will but I will probably enjoy it again in another several months because it's just great acting, seamless and so in-character every second the actors stopped being actors (except Ji Sung-can't kill that charisma or my adoration, but I fully got into his role to a point of only occasionally pausing to study the intense expression he wore. His character's a total chameleon, something few can do convincingly. He isn't the lead role (second lead)-the steadfast Feng Shui master is our lead, but gotta admit Ji Sung's role is way more fun and dynamic, interesting, all the stuff he's made to be!

I highly recommend this for anyone who either enjoys unique looks into history and how humans thought about life and death and so on in different places and times or just likes the cast (I didn't bother listing them off since it is a bit redundant, but they're all top league folks). The complicated interpersonal relationships they have going on really are brilliantly executed, and you really don't quite know the motivation of people-they all wear various layers of masks and some wear many (the chief gisaeng especially). The acting is SO so good it gets a 9.5 from me -even- compared to dramas. I say that as someone who isn't that crazy about most of Korean films but loves quite a lot of dramas from there, especially things with unusual settings, jobs of the people, etc. (Repetition is by definition tedious, so like Ji Sung took a really interesting different role from what he's played so far, I liked getting something quite different, too!)

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This Murky Memories Mystery Mocktail serves up 260 minutes of a Ménagerie Magnifique

Recipe:
Mix 1 Part Hyun Joo with 1 Part Kyung Soo.
Add your 3 Parks: 1/2 doses of Soon&Eun+a dash of Hoon.
Essential bitters: Jung Ki&Mi Kyung form the base layer; a light spritz of Mok&Sik are front of mouth flavors…
Enjoy with snacks and sip responsibly for just over 4 hours of mysterious murky magnificence!

This started as a feed post, not a review, so pardon it lacking the usual structure reviews get! Title and above nonsense (the cast names of important people in the storyline and wordplay of their roles and or time on screen) are just me being silly while a bit hungry, not having a review summary, and noticing the cast member names and just going with it for no reason but semi-delirium (note: I know very little about alcoholic beverages or their mock versions as I don’t drink em). :)

This show probably won’t suit the tastes of even a third of people who like dark (in this case murder) mysteries. This would have been called suspense before the genre vs tag MDL change-there is a bit of thrill at the end, but this is more “just what is going on here?” mystery than thrill-provoking or scary even though there are a few murders (the murders are the catalyst, not the focus). With a runtime of 4 hours and 20 minutes (once you take out the very long Netflix credits), this feels like a small-scale but well fleshed out film more than a drama/miniseries.

The acting is incredibly realistic and believable throughout. It left me very curious what the leads were thinking/what their motivations truly were. I even felt myself, 2/3 or so through it, questioning whether I’d just glimpsed a few flashes of intense greed from the female lead who is otherwise a lovely, intelligent, hardworking protagonist who has faced a lot of bad luck and scorn, largely from the universal tool people love judging others on: wealth/social status. Quite the hellish chain of events turn her life upside down: struggling to advance in her career (that wealth detail), a husband who we learn right away is rotten but WOW we REALLLLLY learn how rotten in a short bit of time… and the central catalyst for her work flipping, a paternal uncle she didn’t know existed (because her father left when she was a kid) dies and an abnormally valuable piece of land, a burial ground, is left to her by default as the only known remaining family…

She has to suddenly face some long-repressed or ignored memories from when she was 5-7 or so as well as a brief one from a moment in early adolescence when her mother has brought home a slimy feeling guy (amazing how some moments and the performances of them are strong enough with just a few words, in this case “You’re pretty just like your mother,” to really make your skin crawl!) and she went to peek into her father’s life where she sees a child who proves to be her half-brother. Back to the present, that half-brother is now a young man who shows up and announces who he is, demanding that he has just as much right to the burial ground as her.

For many people, I need not mention the beauty or skill of Kim Hyun Joo. She can make me cry, rage out, or shudder in half a second depending on her script (I liken her to Kim Seo Kyung in that sense… both are undervalued globally but can carry tender or tough, warm or cold, and complex roles with ease, showing enough nuance and charm the whole while)-not that all her scripts are gold, just that she has always been one of the lovely actresses that isn’t reliant on visuals but is actually able to give powerful performances across a wide spectrum (still waiting for her to be a truly f’d up villain, but I don’t know that it’d be offered with her face). That said, I do have a fully admitted weakness for her and have since 1999. She was my goddess then, and she is my goddess now. Other goddess-level actresses like Im Ye Jin and our original wave maker (more a QUEEN than goddess but her porcelain doll visuals helped, I am sure) Lee Young Ae preceded her in my viewing timeline, but Kim Hyun Joo truly made my face transform into one of a smitten, fluttering cat wanting to perch by her feet-which proved good judgment on my part from all I’ve seen said of her these 2.5 decades of viewing her adoringly!

Two of the three lead male costars have been in other works with her. Returning from the male lead role in Jung_E and a support role in Hellbound is Ryu Kyung Soo, certainly the most striking and unique character here (and who I would call the lead from both screen time/prominence and “irreplaceability” ie how central the role is to telling the story). He plays the half-brother to her in what is the most memorable role I personally have watched him in thus far. His character is one they refuse to give you any quick answers about in terms of telling you the motivations behind or the character of (or reasons for it)… they roll it out to the detectives and female lead slowly, methodically, and with his words and actions being unclear, and in turn we are left curious and possibly guessing. His execution was fantastic (to a point of wanting to pause on many frames and study his face and figure him out or just appreciate the craft he was showcasing though I let it play out at the speed designated, possibly because there was no 6 day or even several hour long wait for the next episode)!

The other returning costar is her co-lead from Trolley, the ever-charming/alluring Park Hee Soon with his gravelly voice and weary, melancholy expression. I’ve often found him magnetic as my eyes would declare, and it is not for some sort of “hot guy alert” reason but how he carries himself when embodying his characters and the nuanced, almost micro expressions that make him interesting to see as just about any character. Here he plays a detective who is consistently insightful, quick-witted, and incredibly thorough in investigations (the chief used an interesting expression regarding the reports written up by him, essentially saying they had ‘military level precision’ in terms of diligence and integrity [I can’t recall the subs from Netflix and don’t rely on them fully for accuracy unless the translation center in my brain is too tired/out cold and cannot process the words with any realistic speed]). His character itself is, on the surface, nothing much, but not only is there a backstory I enjoyed the telling of but he is, simply put, an excellent actor for the camera and in turn our eyes to follow as the story unravels. His exceptional intuition and veteran wisdom as a detective make uncovering details through him a delight no matter what he is in, really… well, usually. :)

Our final lead role is also a police officer, Park Byung Eun carrying out the role of a team leader with a complicated relationship with the savvy detective PHS plays. Theirs is a loyal friend&partner [, dongsaeng&hyung, hoobae&sunbae]-turned superior&subordinate antagonistic relationship, one filled with feelings of a conflict, guilt, and inferiority, between them. PBE plays the former hoobae, current superior who feels pitied and inferior in his capacity as an officer, and we see the chief belittle him and their team members show respect but not trust in his insight compared to his former superior turned underling… that makes his judgment even more poor because he feels rushed to solve the case and cannot think straight.

Writing this AFTER finishing the show in one sitting, I am of two minds. First, I think “well done, writer and director” in that they told EXACTLY ENOUGH but no more to fully grasp their present day situation and FEEL it even though it is not our main storyline. That is my dominant mindset and how I felt WATCHING it… but then in retrospect, I can see some, maybe many, feeling less than satisfied by there BEING these backstories for something so short and so plot-centered. I can definitely see a lot of viewers wanting “more action” whereas I really appreciate them giving me a story to sink into for these cops. I guess I have seen just tooooo many police officer props who exist as their title, not their name, their family upbringing, their spouse and kids if they have them, their aspirations, or even their work history beyond “this title means they are [tried tested veterans of the field/rookies who are drowning-level wet behind the ears, probably older/approaching retirement and running everything from behind a desk etc]…” assumed backgrounds.

I am a big fan of tightly controlled backstory narratives that let me feel like I am watching people with real lives and a wide spectrum of feelings, NOT PROPS/plot devices which sadly is what a heck of a lot of characters end up being. (You know how many characters solely exist to propel the story for the lead character(s) at this or that point and feel like they display a lazy writer not knowing how to get from points A to B to C? I call those characters props or plot devices because they aren’t given much to show their humanity besides their bodies… their feelings, quirks, even at times their jobs are really lazily thought through. That “tightly controlled” part is the problem for other sorts of writers who spend so much time writing up characters that they keep diverging from the core storyline and the character(s) that matter the most, whose stories are defining the arc of the narrative to begin with.

For that backstory here, since the creators opted to use a very short amount of time in total to juggle the plot and character exploration and development, they used one of the most easy to screw up tools: flashbacks. I don’t generally love writers using loads of flashbacks, but this kept the flashback scenes tight and purposeful. They weren’t the usual trite, shallow filler (the “empty calories” kinds of details thrown in that add little but bulk), at least in my viewing. They also didn’t try, in this short time, to shove deep philosophical/spiritual reflections at us which seems to be a common pitfall for thrillers that dive into territorylike shamanistic or religious rituals. The flashbacks in The Bequeathed are sensible: they happened long ago, and most revolve around people who are deceased in the story’s time frame. It would take twice the time (and SO MANY *BIG* time skips!) to make this linear and incorporate all the vivid details they use flashbacks to show us, and I don’t want that for this show! Where utilized, I found the flashbacks meaningful (many are going into the mind of the female lead as little fragments of long-repressed/ignored/“forgotten” memories get triggered by bits of the investigation and this new half-brother figure); they were consistently adding to the story positively, not distracting-thereby-detracting from it as happens more often than not, and as a perk, they were well-styled! No need to tell me about when they were flashing back to or for me to see kids at this or that age in the flashbacks-they gave the father a completely iconic couple of looks that briefly let me time travel to the times and places of the FL’s memories that were essential to the story!

The final 60-90 minutes of this were *truly* well-played! Color me impressed, but a writer managed to actually find a pretty dang original combination of details to ACTUALLY twist this thing like a pretzel JUST ENOUGH to make it memorable and different, not just a recycled plot from a thousand other stories. What overlaps is only natural… they ARE the same species, after all (both the writers-so far, though other critters might catch up one day!-and the characters written about)! What is different is still wholly human but for some reason just hasn’t crossed my eyes in this combo.

I need to give MASSIVE applause to whoever either found or designed and carried out the scene with the BEAUTIFUL kiln (/set) that briefly makes a spectacular appearance in this? I am leaving this review totally vague to avoid spoilers, but man, that scene won’t leave my head for a long while. It isn’t like kilns themselves are new to me. I have been in huge ones and used regular sized ones alike and, as dramas go, watched one being made in the awful melodrama When I Was the Prettiest from a few years ago (pottery is the starting point of its story, its primary location the kiln and studio etc, and it is at least half of why I watched). This simple, single, urn-making kiln, though, was both a massive surprise in this story but also just a magnificent place for the scene they wrote there. It is a case where a kind of “out there” unrealistic, different idea might totally flop for many but became my favorite scene in the whole show, the camera angles of it, all the actual clay(mud=clay) holding bricks together as they seal it to fire urns, seeing the inside of it (even though I assume movie magic was required, it sure felt like I was in there looking at the shelves of urns and all the sturdy brick walls around! Unless they used some GoPro sort of tiny camera in one and used very long robot arm style rods to have it shooting in all directions, I can’t imagine getting shots like that in a kiln the size of what we saw on screen, but bravo three times over if they did!!)… I dunno why, but it is stuck in my head!

This is random, but if only to remember myself later on, I want to document another peculiar near-uniqueness of this show:
It is not every day you see a display of self defense by nose biting! ;)

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Complex lead w/nuanced character growth, emotions screamed through punches/throws/kicks, A+ delivery

I usually don't post about, let alone review, shows that are already highly represented (I don't post a lot as is), but this show truly deserves the 5 hours of time anyone who can handle violent content (EXTREME bullying and extreme injuries!).
That said, I honestly recommend you NOT read any reviews before watching. It's so satisfying to go in without others' perspectives. A clean slate is perfect for this IMO. With that said, this isn't really so much full of spoilers (as I don't really go into plot much) as it is a summary of the characters which may still be more than some wish to read about.

We start with a stone-faced high school kid, a complete loner whose parents, divorced middle class workers (an academy math teacher and athletic coach), pay him little attention. He dives into his studies like his life is on the line, goes to cram academies and not much else. When he places first in a math competition (that is either schoolwide or regional/national-something bigger than their class), the guy who places third (a rich, entitled kid who rebels by drinking, smoking, and buying fentanyl from a hulk-like runaway/homeless/orphan thug in a gang that exploits teens) gets irritated and makes him a target.

From there, violence becomes the main feature, but the reasons for being violent, the methods of fighting, and the approach to it are different for all of the key figures. There are, of course, lackeys that gang up on people in swarms, but they picked a truly unique lead here. How he fights is pure strategy. He's truly weak-his stamina makes him take 50% longer than classmates to run a distance most take 6-7 minutes to do, so he instead uses his brain. He scans his environment, calculates the best strategies he can, and goes for quick shocking moves, not a steady flow of hard punches. He is, to be frank, a badass in terms of his brain. His lack of social skills, though, is less enviable, but his apparent lack of need for friends/him seeming fine flying solo does make others (like the attention-seeking third place kid who we can assume has some home life issues/parents pressuring him to be the best because "how can you lose to someone without our abundance of wealth?" but we don't actually see the background of them because it would distract from the short and fast-paced show's focus).

Alongside him are two other classmates, one right away, another soon after. From the beginning, our second lead is a righteous classmate whose MMA skills are unparalleled, a sweet guy who works multiple jobs to help take care of the grandmother he lives with. He protects not just the lead from others but others from the lead early on. He gets along with everyone, is truly good-hearted and generous, and is impossible to dislike for anyone but the few bullies with their ego issues who can't stand someone being so well-loved by everyone, someone so assured in who he is that he doesn't mind anyone's opinion of him or anger easily at all. They become friends in a quite unique set of encounters day to day, but it is a hard-earned friendship for the golden retriever-like faithful pal.

Soon after the initial two have been introduced to us, a transfer student enters the picture. He is a rich kid who was bullied severely at his former school. His family situation, though, is nothing to envy. His father is an Assemblyman who we learn adopted him solely to improve his image. There is nothing but annoyance and hostility because he is a nuisance-he isn't winning awards that the Assemblyman can show off but instead is occasionally taking him from work when beaten up by other schoolkids at the school of all-wealthy people.

This show's fight scenes are incredibly powerful... for something with only 5 hours of viewing content, I found myself truly impressed by the sheer variety of reasons for fighting and ways people end up fighting people who are often total strangers. It wasn't a variety pack that was just "create all kinds of scenarios and throw them all out there to just have as much violence as possible" from my viewing. Nothing seemed farfetched, a scary fact. Sure, the chance of ONE PERSON having this assortment is farfetched for reality, but this almost has a "Girl From Nowhere" "tour of this town's adolescent violence" feel through the lens of the ML.

I always LOVE when students look like everyday students. Seeing a load of flower boys/princess-like girls is harder to get immersed in. I love that this particular ML, despite being able to "glow up" and look very pretty (I've seen him in such roles), looks like a pretty common, average kid. He isn't this tall model-looking guy with an anime-like face but a kid whose expressions make him seem generally not-so-attractive. The golden retriever who can fight like nobody's business, well, okay-he's like a young Jang Ki Yong and no one's going to deny he's got some really handsome moments here. The third player, too, can look rather intriguing in a way that has a bit of what make Lee Soo Hyuk and Noh Min Woo so drop dead gorgeous. He is an awkward squirrely skinny kid here, and his hair is intentionally made unflattering, his glasses not really doing much for him, either-they made the two friendless ones LOOK like kids who don't have friends. Pretty impressive on makeup/hair/wardrobe and of course the acting, too!

One thing really stood out about these kids' faces, the ML's in particular. Watching the stoic lead show warmth as time goes on and seeing the transformation in his EYES when slowly getting a bit closer to the SML is powerful! The acting is truly spot on start to finish, and there's a scene where the SML (golden retriever) mentions feeling a bit strange as he expresses how the lead, this kid who was nonchalant and "are we close? Do you know me?" with people who talked to him when attention went his way, is actually a really warm, considerate, kind person... it was one I'll remember a long time. Despite there being SO much violence, we really do see these awkward kids blossom... and one fall and develop intense envy and bitterness and sadness/loneliness and derail for that matter. The ML's development, though, is kind of magical. Even the end is showing a still-transforming adolescent. He's one of the most intricately written teen characters I've seen in a LONG time (maybe ever), and his delivery was IMPECCABLE.

You will feel such a wide range of emotions... sometimes the violence will be deeply satisfying (even though it shouldn't), other times deeply disturbing and even heartbreaking! It's like these actors really did punch out all of their characters' strongest emotions with every single punch, throw, etc. For the male lead in particular, we see the journey of his psyche and can tell his emotional state from the way he engages in violent acts. It's truly well-done. I'm REALLY stoked it's getting another season, something I rarely feel so excited about!

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Personal growth, overcoming pain, communicating better, and strengthening bonds that last a lifetime

This one actually held me captive til the end as an eager viewer, not a casual turn it on and zone out sort which is kind of how parts of No Gain No Love hit even though Shin Min Ah is captivating… don’t get me wrong; I still really enjoyed it, many of its characters (the writer especially) charming and just beautifully written and portrayed, but it doesn’t have quite the balance OR critically the lasting power of Love Next Door for me (still, the weeks LND had hard, faucet-breaking episodes, NGNL was a big comfort to mend my soul after aching so much-they have their places, this one just digging its lil heels more deeply in my heart).

I keep saying this here and there, but JSM creates amazing chemistry with EVERYONE. If her next costar is a silent but sentient rock, I will be like that rock and yearn to speak to her. I will be sold because how-can-you-not?

This isn’t romcom territory. There is plenty of romance. There is plenty of comedy… but fluff it ain’t. These are people with real struggles, real pain, and most of all real, deep friendship, enviable most all the time though occasionally quite frustrating like the real life stuff it represents…

People wanting a romcom surely felt a bit frustrated at how many times this triggered a mess of tears in non-sociopath viewers. (I imagine this didn’t get on the radar of many sociopaths unless as a study of humans without their affliction in which case it is a solid one though I can imagine being infuriated at the illogical way humans tend to be in the face of intense feelings and even pretty shallow ones sometimes).

The way families come together is just gorgeous. Episode 15 was one I watched happily til I left for work then snuck away during break to watch the last 20 minutes… I kinda knew I would probably choke up, and boy, I went from laughing at someone else getting smacked with onions to being slapped with them right in the eyes myself because of this tiny bit of dialogue: “ Seok Ryu was sick; how could I not be worried? She's your precious child, the apple of your eye. She's the daughter of my best friend. You know how much I adore her. How could I not care about her? ... I'll protect her with you. Just like you raised Seung Hyo, I'll love and take care of Seok Ryu, too.”

Geesh, just smack me with all those onions you used a bully ahjumma’s face to peel and split in half already, Hye Suk!

The only thing that could get to me more than that followed immediately… how sweet is it to promise that boy (whose face still looks 8 when he gazes lovingly at his only one forever) that despite it being tiring, hard work requiring a lot of devoted energy and making her become one with the oil… she will make him rainbows to eat forever?! Tell me ANYONE who wouldn’t be just as smitten in that moment whether she was acting or confessing to an actual lover? She makes just about EVERYONE fall for her over and over. It is just impossible to not love her (even though some early *cough*Playful Kiss*cough* titles were severely lacking)! If I got promised rainbows from such a unicorn-like mythical creature of beauty, I would be quite at risk of having organs harvested as I followed her entranced.

The parents and Mo Eum (and Yeon Du-ahhhhhh she calls soooo sweetly, awwww) are absolute icing on a delicious cake. Some bites of the show are bitter and salty from my tears, but okay, we’ll have salted caramels a while! In this case, nothing at all felt particularly forced/fabricated thanks to acting that really is above and beyond expectations even with mine rather high for the veteran cast playing the parents especially! It felt like every single character grew immensely through this… and HEALED… and crucially went from holding on somewhat bitterly to really charging forward embracing life HAPPILY as they sorted out their own very real-feeling issues.

The finale had a lot of predictable moments, but I savored them because this is THE LAST show I wanted another surprise from! I was kinda annoyed that the thing I knew would happen as soon as she was in cooking classes, her ultimate future, took SO long to even mention when it was so dang obvious what would happen… but I was okay with how they rolled it out even if literally no one was at all surprised by anything but how long it took lol.

Ultimately, this became a story about growth, overcoming a whole lot of pain as well as COMMUNICATING BETTER WITH THOSE YOU LOVE DANGIT, and strengthening the bonds that last a lifetime. I was not envious of their situations overall, but man oh man, their friendships-FAMILY regardless of blood ties, truly-were enviable and honestly pretty rare in this day and age. The more people in my generation and particularly my pretty spread out nation succeed, the further away from our roots we tend to get, so I live near NO ONE I grew up around. Makes me glad I don’t have any real issues socializing with strangers anymore (kind of interesting that the super quiet introvert from my hometown, me, seems like an extrovert in this place I live now where they even say there is a massive “freeze” because outsiders have so much trouble finding their people here. Who knew being a nerd would make it EASIER to find community?! Still, when I think back to the people I grew up playing with like the young adults here, nostalgia hits and I realllllly get homesick. This did bombard me with that more than a few times, but it’s been actual decades since I’ve seen ANYONE who knew me before I was 18. I wouldn’t recognize any of them, it feels safe to say, since even their faces are hazy memories (bad thing to say as the managing editor of the yearbook, but they really are hazy memories, even the teachers caricatures at this point, most all of them long gone from the living realm).

Since I am hiding this behind a spoiler, I’ll say one big spoiler detail that made me so grateful: thank you, writer, for not killing anyone off! That early “renovate a funeral home” thing really was getting under my skin with comments about it all the time and them teasing that it could be the FL of course but also the ML’s mother. I am so glad they had them instead mend wounds from the past and go forward closer and more full of love than they ever had before. My heart doesn’t have to weep. I don’t even mind sad or mixed endings, but this one I really just did not want to be manipulated emotionally by in that particular way-don’t take (probably her) away just when our forever 8 ML has finally said all he needs and grown close to her how he has wanted all these years (be it the FL or his mom, as it happened with both so beautifully)!

Wonderful lovely watch. For all the moments characters were frustrating, they were fully understandable and realistic in the ways they made me wish they were different… That is a pretty big feat to accomplish between words and location details scribbled on a page and a human carrying out the instructions and saying the lines!

Solid 9.5… the writing not always perfect necessarily, it was more than made up for by the cast embodying people I know as if the writer spied on, well, a LOT of real life humans I’ve known over the decades in all kinds of capacities… sometimes, the “flaws” become strengths of their own in scripts… in real life, though, still do your best to not be perfect, no, since that will just make you awful, but at least don’t, like, acquire new problems like crash test dummies acquire displacements of their parts!

Gonna miss this show a LOT.

(PS Kate told me to post this lengthy feed entry as a review, so all meanies who want to argue with or fight me, you gotta go through her first, and our cult leader has lots of weapons and magic curses for people that mess with her minions!)

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A path to heal earthly wounds, rekindle love & devotion, and make one's final moments ethereal

This is one of the most flawless works showcasing the constant choreography of marriage and in particular marriage involving one spouse or the other becoming a caregiver for the other who is chronically or terminally ill. The dance of this program is intricate, delicately moved through, and nuanced in the case of the couple here (courtesy of two of my favorite talents who both have voices and facial expressions that soften me but also deliver quite a bit of aching as we see them endure and suffer)... every tiny position of hands and arms, every gaze, be it a steely smile to hide the pain or the writhing that is almost impossible to be unaffected by, is really powerful.

In particular, beyond their body language and expression, much of the dance here is one shown largely through the incredible effort to detail put in buying ingredients with earnest attention to quality, in preparing them with a reverence for the ingredients knowing they may be among the last ever eaten by the person they love most dearly... even filtering fiber-laden juices three or four times, eventually with doubled up conical coffee filters after muslin that gets washed and reused and I believe paper towels just before the filter... just the level of love to juice fresh produce then spend an easy hour filtering over and over cautiously for just a few sips, sips that are "bland but everything needed is there" as she likens these reduced/less weighty and rich, heavily filtered clear liquids to her husband.

The process of saying goodbye, of seeing the body fall apart bit by bit, is so powerfully depicted yet with so little fanfare. The sincerest kind of grace is delivered quietly, after all. There's also a truly special support character played by versatile actor Yang Kyung Won-I've seen him be everything from the vilest trashiest criminal with money to... well, this has to be the single most wholesome character in the background I've seen in a kdrama. I really can't think of a better "support" both for them as cast and moreso as the family enduring illness that has no cure, only potential comfort and shared time.

This isn't exactly a spoiler (especially as it could be any moment of the food-centered show), but if there is a "climax" to this in terms of intense emotions, it's after the husband decides to make a dish that he doesn't realize requires the batter to rest for a whole day... and the following day, the wife is not able to eat at all and gets rushed to the ER, the batter ruined ultimately, his quest for perfection being futile-that is when he really has to come to terms with how everything is "now or never" and he truly can't do it all-his helpless feeling is crushing to watch, and yet... in that same hospital, some "innocent" pork belly slices become a way to throw that anguish aside and celebrate a happy moment through a little bit of scheming.

Likewise, one of the single most touching moments came from the grocery store "Oasis" worker, a true oasis to not-so-knowledgable men of the house trying to navigate a store so foreign to them, really about as desperate as people stuck in a desert needing water... he lead them quite perfectly (and had awesome uncle energy with the 20-year-old son), but when another "batter needs a day" situation happened with an out-of-season dried item that requires 4 days to rehydrate... the ML leaves despondent and empty-handed only to have magic happen in the form of that compassionate community member, the kind anyone caring for chronically ill family needs in droves.

If Yang Kyung Won's character doesn't inspire at least a few viewers to look at all the healthy-LOOKING people around them and consider the illnesses harbored by so many as they put on those steely "content" faces and smile their way out of any discomfort they'd cause another (or the unwelcome poor you sort of pity they may receive in turn from those who enjoy broadcasting others' issues)... and be more kind in general, I don't know what kind of drama/film really could without being preachy. His compassion is as layered and complex as the illness he's helping the family members manage-he guides them gently and with little questioning or drama but with the biggest pompoms attached to his giant heart, clearly. He's my MVP of the series.

Bravo to the entire cast and crew. That tiny bit of whistling quietly taking us out of every episode also felt genuinely thought-through and perfect for what this aims to be. They did it magnificently, even if my chest feels heavier for the viewing.

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The title really should be called Bycatch. Missed opportunity.

I can't read a lick of Chinese characters so I have no clue who the people are in this. MDL has no info, either, about who cooked up this strange story. We essentially have a fisherman's son who runs the shop, some bored 20-something delinquents who steal from his rich friend who then asks him to help retrieve the bike or whatever was stolen this time etc... they fight, they race, they do small town bored 20 something stuff... and in a race they encounter a pretty girl on the road and it's not totally clear if she just collapsed or the ML hit her, but he obviously stops racing unlike the other twit and takes her to the hospital. To raise suspicion, she's barely wearing a nightgown and is barefoot. I very briefly thought perhaps she would be some victim of sexual assault or something... nope. That white nightie is a bit damp. There's our land bound mermaid.

From here the story gets a bit, well, rushed and basic, so basic. Any time I can remember over 80% of anything over an hour when over an hour has passed since viewing, eh, it is pretty doggone basic BUT to be fair it also means the scenes were all distinct and visually really memorable. THAT is where this has a definite plus from me-it is visually as varied as some 20+ hour dramas I've seen if not moreso, and we change elevation, lighting, 'class' (wealth perception), safety, etc in a hurry with nothing but very clear visual cues from the sets. The story that takes place IN each setting, though, gets kinda meh. Ooh, the hurt pride guy sees you interested in a girl... opportunity to take a hostage and gather your pals to beat him up, right? Geez. It's a bit too full of cliches to love.

I'll leave the end story spoilers out because it looks like I'm one of the first few to actually see it who use MDL, but while the acting was mostly fine, it didn't grip me, touch me, make me deeply sad, etc. Things felt watered down/rated G. Nothing really hit me the way I would expect it to considering my stance on environmental issues, my sensitivity to violence, etc... I think it'd be different if the dialogue/voice over material was in Korean since I could just listen and be immersed-if the dialogue is any better in the native language, that is, and not actually this incredibly simple (not always bad but... here, it felt a bit lame, elementary, and just boring). The subs where I watched it (kissasian but their file already had hard subs in it when it was uploaded) were occasionally awful in that they don't have very thick or dark/high contrast borders/shadows-shading like they should and when the screen would have part of it be bright the subs kind of disappear, making me go back for a story I hadn't really gotten any sense of desperation or pain or fluttering or giddiness for-if a story is good, I don't mind repeating a scene if I didn't catch everything (not ideal but worth it to get all the subs read!)...

I can completely believe that the FL is a majestic sea creature, though... the girl is incredibly beautiful WHOEVER she is (the sea creature? Not as convincing beauty-wise). The older man from her inland village kept reminding me of Kam Woo Sung to a point where I was constantly startled when his face was shown. The ceremony thing... oof, just creepy AF. Drug her, serve some of her family for dinner, and have her run off only to get hurt solely for the purpose of fame? Delusional creep. The sea devoured the wrong folks.

Now onto the reason this was made, maybe, the propaganda which in this case I wouldn't mind if it did a good job of selling their point. Alas, they did a rather lousy job integrating it. Was this ACTUALLY a school project and you just happen to have a really connected teacher who'll get you some people to make something aesthetically sufficient while you sell us on nature?! The message was kinda just WEIRD because teaching about species extinction through a fantasy creature is just... that's just bonkers. I do appreciate that this one does not retain the head and bust, though. It's more believable in that respect (and yes we all came from the sea, whales with legs so to speak)... but I dunno, the whole 'you don't know what you got til it's gone' (song lyrics used, possibly misquoted) idea here is a little flimsy-taking care of nature etc... only works in this case if you're advocating veganism... for overfishing, there are plenty of actual species we no longer have-river trout etc. Protecting nature as a whole... I'd say this is more a golden rule or children inherit the sins of their parents kind of story or just 'don't be a dick' plus a bit of only take what you need... those I can totally see integrating here. To really make the moral thrown at us make sense, we have to actually believe there were fish-human transformers that we just happened to make extinct. That's a bit freaky a premise. This felt a little too aimed at adolescents, perhaps, but also felt immensely odd coming out of China given how THEY are pushing for wealth and fame at the cost of their land, clean water, fish, and so many species.

This turned into something way too long. In any case, it's a 5-pretty to look at but dull in dialogue and script actions, what I can't help but call mediocre, entirely mediocre.

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Short, sweet, and to the point web series I found very enjoyable

The Guilty Secret aka I Have a Secret aka I Met You Again is a 12-episode slice of life web series from the company Playlist Global who are best known for A-Teen (my favorite of theirs) and Love Playlist though Just One Bite, Seventeen, and The Best Ending are also pretty popular. All their dramas center around high school, usually the last couple of years of it, at least what I've seen (there may be some 20-something characters in there, too). This one, as with many, is set in school where most teen-geared dramas do. It's clearly meant to cater TO teens and preteens, but I still like their stuff to varying extents despite being an elder to the ones in it! The episodes go from 8-15 minutes in length and are all available now on v live as I Have a Secret; they'll all be on YT as Guilty Secret pretty soon (9 are there as of this review), but they do delay the release there for whatever reason.

The basic setup (spoilers would be pretty tough given the length of episodes and slice of life feel but I'll refrain from any) is that a trio of girls and pair of guys make up a pretty tight, loyal friend group in a high school. The main character is a somewhat bookish girl who has the typical teen reservations/nervousness but is still eager to be around her friends, loyal, honest, careful not to hurt her friends, and so on. She's in the reading club along with the more quiet of the guys who we're never told but get a clear idea has a crush on her and is very protective of her and loyal. Her closest friend is a bubbly, somewhat loud but harmless, hypersensitive girly girl in the "Animal Club" which I am not sure exists in real schools but whatever floats their fictional boats! She's dating what seems to be the most popular guy in school. That said, we don't see an awful lot of guys at all in the story-they're definitely plot devices though the quiet one gets a bit more screen time and isn't always doing one of 3 things like the popular one who is either seeking food, wanting to play soccer, or with his girlfriend flirting or arguing. The last of the females is an idol trainee, quiet, shy, and apparently at least half Japanese. The characters are a bit cliche, sure, but how much can you create complexity with about 150 minutes total and a school setting/peer relationships to portray

Enter the sixth character (an easy favorite acting-wise) who becomes the game changer. She went to the female lead's academy, became friends with her quickly, and became the confidante to the lead. Secrets that could only be told to her were told as she went to a different school entirely and would not know who was being talked about. One day, she disappears from the academy mysteriously, and with it the female lead's secrets disappeared... until she transferred to the lead's school and quickly knew in a matter of hours who was who. Oops. What once gave her strength has now become a weakness, someone who could easily tell everything to everyone. Will she, though, and how will she use the information? I'll leave the rest for you to find out in quick cute snippets.

The acting is very believable throughout. The characters aren't anything special, but that's kind of what MAKES Playlist Global's web series special-they are completely ordinary stories about ordinary lives. Being a teen is enough to create drama without being an abnormal teen, at least when the total time is under 3 hours! It was a pleasant 2.5ish hours of time and one of the better recent web series I've seen (A-Teen is still their best and possibly -the- best of this genre to me). Music? Eh, not a lot of it to speak of-again, we're talking about episodes that are only a few songs long total. Rewatch value? Hmm, better than most web series and short enough to certainly casually have on again, but nothing new will be discovered, I don't think, if you watch it without distraction the first time, so I'll personally be moving on to another series or few!

All said, I'd be quite happy to see a second season of it (and I came with low anticipations). It's got good cinematography for what it is, the limited sets are all well-lit and make for a nice looking set of videos, and the chemistry is pretty natural-teens being teens. It's not soapy or sappy (overly dramatic or cringeworthy sticky as honey romantic), and it has very clear messages each time and a really nice ending I won't say a thing about here! :)

Enjoy!

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Rewarding viewing experience, more thoughtful("slow") than OCN's fast paced thrillers

Train was, for me, a rewarding viewing experience. The pace feels more slow than the usual OCN rapid guns firing all around kind of plot (I saw some comments from people who were dropping it early because they took more time than usual setting it up), the script very methodically handled (to me that is good because stories like this are very easy to screw up majorly), but all the actors handled their many 'stages'-Yoon Shi Yoon nothing short of fantastic as usual-incredibly well, the nuances between them making it really clear where they were and what they were thinking/how they were processing information. The last episode's twists are not shouted but murmured at the audience, making it (to me) more convincing and making it sit with me longer than loud OMGOMGOMG shock value ones where everyone in the story is running around in a tizzy. The very end was, as you can hope no matter the story, just beautiful. A tiny bit of humor in an unexpected chase mixed in with the sentiment needed to close the story with both resolve and further curiosity. It left me totally satisfied-emotionally, mentally, stress-level-wise, etc. It closed the story out very well for me.

OCN doesn't use a ton of music, especially not compared to their sister network tvN, but I really LOVE the main song in this drama and never tired of it-it is Joe Won Sun's "I Will Never." The key lyrics that will stay in my head for months go something like this:

I’m gonna find you
Neol nohchiji anheulke
I’m still fighting for you.

I’m gonna find you
Nan meomchuji anheulke
I will never give up on you.

8.5/10 is my rating. I'd probably give it, on a hundred point scale, an 88, but it's not quite "9-enough" to put it in my near-perfect-experience list, mostly because it's both quick in not being very long and slow in some of the story pacing being more like a 16-ep show. Part of me, having been "makjanged" more lately than I'm used to, sometimes wanted even more story though it doesn't actually need it and may have become cluttered with too much else added. I am glad, though, they didn't throw us any of the usual rich sleazy execs and politicians being corrupt and horrible. Those are a dime a dozen and tend to detract from the main story unless it IS the main story. Still, another solid OCN production with perfect acting performances by nearly all if not everyone, great, convincing sets/visual images of the town, beautiful camera work and editing (which are near-guarantees with OCN), and a set up that created enough struggle without being impossible to navigate, intrigue and just enough complexity without being convoluted... and YSY's eyes along with Lee Hang Na's expressions (the police chief) were really key in bringing a rich story out.

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Take a trip to a very weird place... no need to bring shrooms; they're baked into this

From the poster, you might think this is an anime version of Willy Wonka or Oz... you wouldn't be entirely far off. It's definitely on the absurdist humor end and you really need to either be in the mood for it or be like me and have it saved for over a year (I'm 95% sure Old Anime Lady's high rating is what made me add it) and come back not knowing what it is but seeing you have enough time to fit it in and just riding the wave... well, I was definitely clueless about just what I was watching in some respects-this isn't my typical movieverse, it isn't the sort of thing I would be recommended by even my most hard-core Japanese movie fans (maybe because this is not a 'safe recommendation' in terms of everyone enjoying it)...

It's intentionally over the top, campy, corny, and all the while really funny in a way not unlike Kurosawa taking on Shakespeare... or Princess Bride, maybe... or the one thing I can think of that gave me weekly doses of a different-yet-similar feeling, just with way more actual story and depth even in a single hour than this, Pegasus Market, a show that is also really hard to explain but for PM's side it's because there's SO MUCH to explain I can't begin to fumble through it.

Tonde Saitama shouldn't be taken seriously, but DO let yourself get thoroughly sucked into its weird wild world which is truly like a Choose Your Own Adventure story brought to life. It doesn't always make a ton of sense, much-or most-of it is really silly, but my word, it hit the spot... was the spot my funny bone, my hypothalamus, the adrenal glands sitting atop my kidneys, or a single neuron that got to dance for 100 minutes and change? I can't say. I didn't dare analyze what it was doing to my head. I just enjoyed the mild giddy trip. If you want something really our of this world-I mean, this is some alternate version of Japan, I THINK, that these actors got roped into living in... I think. Again, not my typical movieverse and I don't quite get all the periods of time in Japan in any scholarly sense, but I'm pretty sure it's a fictional history. I think we'd know if Japanese history was NEARLY this interesting in the tiny details of it all. :P I had a happy ride. I might watch it again sometime to see if it holds up.

Oh, definitely worth rewatching (and I DID): THE CREDITS... omg the song for the credits is just too too perfect-but only as icing applied after you have licked plenty of the batter off the spatula while your cake is baking and cooling... this is definite dessert territory, not savory, just light, fluffy, and sweet. I guess I needed that very thing.

[Okay, one mild critique-I know it's kind of normal, but this is one case where a girl playing a guy really didn't work that well for me. The story made it a bit weird-to a point where only the clothing half-indiciated this was supposed to be a guy in this story taking place initially in the rich capitol of Panem in the Hunger Games-where are the whiskered animal-people among these people dressed up like they're an ensemble of heavily decorated cupcakes and birthday cakes? :P Small complaint, though-just slightly confusing since it's so clearly a female and they didn't even try to make the actress anything less dainty than the Princess who felt pain sleeping on 30 down mattresses atop a pea.]

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Heartwarming, powerful, Ma Dong Seok brilliance again

So disclaimer here: I'm a massive Ma Dong Seok fan. I'm a sucker for him. His acting combines the best of tough big guys, justice-centered protectors, and vulnerable sweet teddy bears with tender hearts. Basically, he is what the characters he often plays (when he's the lead especially) are... perfect protagonists you REALLY root hard for. This role is no exception.

A Korean boy adopted to the US is bullied for being the only Asian and becomes stronger, tougher, etc to protect himself. He becomes a fantastic champion athlete only to be subjected to discrimination and accused falsely of fixing matches in his sport so someone else, some rich entitled prick with paler skin, will win. The setup isn't all that unusual, but you instantly like him and can see he's truly good though a bit hopeless about his future. Jobs working security aren't the best.

Then comes the friend, the one who's like his little brother, from many years back. The friend's dad is in severe debt after being cheated and the friend needs a lot of money pretty fast to get loan sharks away. Sports gambling is all he knows. At first the lead is not totally opposed to the quick money because he'd given up hopes of any championship statuses... the friend made a 'mistake,' though, if selfishness were his only goal: he gave the address of the athlete's mom to the athlete.

So here's where movies that set up quite similarly (seems the adoptee finding biological families story is pervasive in SK or maybe I've just had more exposure to them than normal) often fall apart. The family here has, of course, ADORABLE little kids, both of whom I'd seen elsewhere and really like, and when you pair Ma Dong Seok with such tiny bodies it's bound to be either super sweet or super corny. Whew, they kept it really touching, endearing, and just good. Nothing new at all, but it is a formula that really works, one MDS can really deliver in!

I rarely rate sports related shows and films very high; they aren't really my thing. Ma Dong Seok breaks the mold for me. Usually I feel no particular affection toward athlete narratives. I don't get emotional when my nation wins Olympic gold medals. I just feel neutral at best and mostly think pro sports are a bit annoying. Not here. Maybe because it's not the Olympics but a really quirky sport (arm wrestling) or maybe because they hit all the emotional points exactly right... it really works well. I could see myself rewatching it, too. Then again, I have The Devil/Cop/Gangster in my "rewatch-worthy" folder, too, so again... it's the power of Ma Dong Seok. Winnie the Pooh has nothing on him for winning me over like that tiny tiny girl calling him uncle!

FWIW, another show that on the athlete side felt similar (the love story of the drama wouldn't be possible to fit in this short time) is Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo. This has no romance (but bromance is cute enough), but the athlete's story rings a similar tune.

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The writing is an insult to the talent cast for it and the viewers, too

This starts with a really strong and unusual set up with excellent child actors prepping the show for success. When they become adults and the main stars take over, it's still alright for a while... then about 12 episodes in, the second lead actress (the villain) gets injured and they cast someone else and it seems like they rewrote it so suddenly she's the lead, not Lim Ji Yeon. That's where it took a really noticeable downturn. I get that they were in a hurry and needed someone who could handle a role that was aggressive and selfish and such, but it's like the contract they signed with her had some clause that she had to get at least 35 minutes of each hour on average. Maybe they started like that, but if that's the case, make the villain the lead.

The leading lady is a total doormat, something I hate because no one is going to just put up with being kicked around-they'll either run away or they'll fight back be it in a drama or real life, at least when it's to this degree of emotional abuse, manipulation, etc. Ugh. Anyway, I really don't advise anyone to watch this unless they take sick satisfaction in seeing someone trampled all over at work, by her mother in law (here, it's tradition for the daughter in law to do the prepping of all 100 cabbages for kimchi making!) who still after marriage wanted to split them up, even... The two leads aren't fighting a good fight; they're being trampled all over and assaulted left and right. The scenes with sentimental connections between the grandfather and his blood granddaughter he is unaware of are really endearing; the good characters had so much potential, but what writer has a 40-50ish year old somewhat sickly mom, her daughter, and her sick grandson from a son who died sent off to a hostess bar? What hostess bar would have them let a little boy cough all night in a dressing room for hostesses? Shipping them off, abduction, wrecking their product when her own company was going to sell them... it's just so over the top, all the worst ideas you can ever envision someone doing to someone else, that I find it not only really awful to expose a viewer to but just unforgivable, especially if we're ever supposed to understand and reconcile our bitter feelings about the villainess.

Just trash. It's called Blow Breeze because it BLOWS. Hard.

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Amazing bromance and comedy make a 12 episodes fly by as if they were 4

My spoiler-free very quick review:
The bromance made this show SO thoroughly entertaining. I don't even need to point out this but will: Wi Ja Hoon (je hound, oui! :P) is totally perfect in this role. The character development and story are also solid though some is predictable (but that's fine-it's too pleasant a viewing experience to need it to have intense suspense levels)... the scenes the writer concocted, though, were definitely not your usual even if the basic tale has been told before!

It has two weaknesses that made me throw it into "8/10 objectively, 9/10 subjectively" territory. First, the action has quite a lot of too-obvious fake punches, kicks etc. I'd say about 1/8 of the "hits" were unconvincing, but again... I didn't need it to be so perfect-had it been Jang Hyuk at the helm, I would've expected more, but it was still satisfying coming from these guys, and their chemistry more than made up for it. The camera didn't always get perfect angles with the hits so you can see no-contact "punches" fly, but what they did a GREAT job of=switching between the leads. That was truly well-done.

The second weakness is the lack of time/development for the supporting cast. The cast did really well with what they were given, but they just weren't given a lot of airtime. Their characters had really solid strong personalities, though, and I swear Lee Dong Wook would probably have intense fabulous chemistry with a fruit fly at this point. He must be hella fun to work with. I'd LOVE to see him and the FL in another show together-they had the "it" factor that made me REALLY want more of them albeit in another storyline. (Oh, and she and Cha Shi Won who played Jae Seon, the emotional big guy in the team, had really great action moves! They could definitely handle more shows, and I adored them both the whole show.)

Again, if I was objective, it'd be an 8/10, but my viewing experience was just too joyful, so it gets a 9 from me. Highly recommend-it's short, bromance and comedy are A+, and the time will fly by (if you like what I like at least). Wi Ha Joon might be my second favorite LDW pairing after Kim Beom!

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Like opening a lot of time capsules from 20 years of their lives

This is hard to rate because it really depends on what you want from it. I wanted nothing in particular as I knew nothing but who the leads were from the poster… I loved my couple of hours with them because it really fit my wandering/daydreamy mind that was fine just quietly observing while curled up with a ball of fluff.

This is a slice of life… we are getting a moving image selection of time capsules of these characters’ lives, and where they are and who they are with in that moment is all you are getting, not some huge plot of what ifs, just a beautiful depiction of how the choices of each person at every stage made them grow, change, and all the same keep looking back and letting their hearts linger at a time long past. The child actress was an astonishingly good match, something I didn’t realize until I kept seeing them back and forth. She was also just plain good at connecting to this story in that quiet, nuanced way I see depicted in a lot of Japanese art. Minimalist in some ways, sure, but more like precision, a lack of clutter in what is shown so you see precisely what you should.

What you see? Beautiful cinematography, truly. The parts that are a bit more raw like the early months working in a cheese factory for the ML feel entirely intentional. When things are more harmonious, it is very clearly meant to convey the state of mind/level of comfort and peace in that singular moment. Everywhere is thoughtfully decorated, and this one warm older woman kept giving me Kim Hye Ja feels and I wanted her to feed me, too. Even the food, while only a few moments of it were shown, was really tender…

It is, from my viewing, about finding your home (your soul’s home in particular) and healing from things that made you run from even your happiest moments. The connections are not some pretty, perfect picture. They are realistic. The leads are understated in their expressions much of the time, her more than him, but their faces show pretty clearly how they are processing their emotions… you could probably turn off subs for 80% of this and still get 90% of what is said… ah, the music is also truly good, well-fitting for this film (which is actually “adapted from a song” which sure isn’t a tag I will see much, is it?). There is a bit of a shortcoming in the story itself a few places, mostly approaching the end, and I don’t love time skip endings in general (well, I particularly don’t like these barely there time skip endings… like why not show more between the ferry fireworks end of era capsule and the final one? I feel slightly, well, slighted there. Sure, it definitely works this way, but some things, even done well, make you ask “coulllldn’t you? We would be soooo happy to see this process after so many others were shown in such detail!” Alas, they jumped ahead in a way that felt a little disjointed and peculiar after the rest was so detailed in making sure the moments would linger…

I really found myself appreciating the hair and makeup stylists here!! They found the right ways to make time pass and make them seem definitely older, and that really helped in times when things were not going as desired. It was convincing, and they carried themselves in a way that matched the visuals the team crafted through makeup and hairstyles. The supporting cast were all just excellent, too.

So that is the spoiler free (slice of life doesn’t really have a ton of spoilers) reaction for this thread of fate being entwined, tangled, snapping, tied back together, etc. for every person in this whole film… the emotions are not loudly expressed very often, but they are palpable. Just know it feels a bit like an art film that is more about impressions left than any particular plot being carried out (almost 20 years of time are covered, so lots of small plot moments make the impressions, but they don’t directly connect in a linear fashion; rather, they culminate). It is reflective and has some flashbacks that some may not love. I would not want to watch this if my mind was busy/distracted. It is something to just immerse your eyes in and soak up, to feel as you observe… I didn’t find myself thinking about any what ifs at all. I just rode its wave which was gentle enough to sweep me here and there without making me drown in any place or lose my balance. The simple words “Are you okay?” becoming a grounding force for someone in a bit of a bad place is one of its most lovely details… those tiny words can make someone feel able to breathe again, able to smile. Okay, doesn’t hurt if the other is adorable and adoring.

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