Damn, the evil vampire has a nice wardrobe.
It’s safe to say that this drama is very much slow. I think the pacing of the drama was slower than others is because of it’s complexity since it is a fantasy historical period drama, but the storyline is not that complex or complicated so this doesn’t give the production people much of a reason to slow it down. First of all, the first episode was one big giant prologue, it gave the wrong impression on me; they made it seem like Prince Junghyun was the primary lead, and I’m aware about the title being Scholar Who Walks the Night not Prince. But they put way too much focus on his character and this prequel, it shouldn’t have taken up one entire episode, it took away from the central plot and it’s quite misleading if you don’t exactly know what the show is about. Basically, what happens in the prequel is that the Prince has written many books relating to vampires in some way, but in his journal, he writes the keys to defeating the vampire that rules the kingdom. After his murder, the journal is missing and the Scholar spends 120 years looking for it (because he is immortal now since he is a vampire). And and the prequel consists of the Scholar’s romance with his lover, Myunghee, which has put him in great sorrow.
Kim Sungyeol, the Scholar was a pretty interesting male lead, he often spoke with his eyes and made small, sometimes vague, responses. When he turned into a vampire, he really grew as a person and it’s intriguing to see the way he was before when he was a human and best friends with the Prince and now he’s a vampire who needs balance and has to refrain himself from hurting others because of his blood-thirsty nature.
He meets a book merchant who is a woman dressed as a man to support her family, who helps him try to find the missing journal and they form a relationship. Jo Yang Sun, the book merchant is very likeable, she was humble, diligent, and always put people first; the romance between the Scholar and Yang Sun was believable, they had good chemistry and were enjoyable to watch on screen together. But there were scenes that dwelled too much on them, we get it, your love is forbidden, Yang Sun is a mortal, the Scholar is an immortal, dangerous vampire.
Now I have many, many thoughts on the antagonist of the drama, which is evidently, Gwi. He was very smart, cunningly smart, he would make you loathe the King for what he is doing to his people but that king is also being victimized by Gwi at the same time and it is Gwi who is causing all of this, not the King. Damn, he’s good. And that is what I liked about him so much, he was so low key and it takes you a while to actually hate him. Not much about his past is unveiled and I was always wondering what happened to him before he became a vampire, especially when he became more prominent toward the end of the drama and I was so invested in his character. I have to say that he is my favourite character of the drama, and I love the casting choice for him, someone actually told me that Lee Soo Hyuk looks like a vampire. He really suits these type of roles.
My second favourite character is Crown Prince Lee Yoon, I can’t exactly point my finger on why I like him so much, maybe it has to do with the fact that he is played by Changmin. I was invested in his conflict with his grandfather who was the King, from the moment he was onscreen I loved every second of his screen time especially when he encounters Kim Sungyeol and they work together, it really moved the plot forward.
Scholar Who Walks the Night was an entertaining drama, it had a very interesting plot with vampires in ancient Korea (or not so ancient in this case, I think this was placed somewhere in the early 1800s, whichever decade had the earliest set of guns??). This drama is not for everyone, I must say, you have to like the historical drama genre to like Scholar Who Walks the Night or else you might get bored. With that said, I think the show shouldn’t have had so many filler scenes and parts where it didn’t relate so much to the plot, it made the drama drag on a little bit, but overall, the fillers scenes were not the worst but could’ve been left out. The show didn’t get me really hooked until the last few episodes where the story started to patch up together to make a good climax, I could’ve liked the show a little bit more if the pacing was better, however, the drama as a whole was still decent and entertaining. The bottom line is that the characters is what made me enjoy Scholar Who Walks the Night, if they were poorly developed or uninteresting, I would’ve loathed this show.
I give Scholar Who Walks the Night a 7.5/10 stars for its good acting, intriguing characters, and awesome villain.
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