Fantasy

Review – Queen In Hyun’s Man

/ Lady Divine / 1 Comment

Review – Queen In Hyun’s Man

Though the first two episodes of this drama are notoriously slow, this is one of the most interesting (and romantic) time traveling between Joseon Era & Modern Times shows out there.  Why?  Because the two main leads are so interesting (and romantic).  They feel fresh… even though it’s not a new show (it came out in 2012).  Ji Hyun-Woo plays the thoughtful scholar who snickers at jokes, explores the new world with a reserved wonder, quietly observes situations before taking action, and is totally hard for his modern companion and doesn’t hide it.

Ji Hyun-Woo and Yoo In-Na are crackling with chemistry.

Yoo In-Na plays our leading lady, an adorable ditzy actress who’s won over by her time traveler almost instantly… oh the way he talks, she mutters.  Their banter is so refreshingly real.  It feels like an actual couple, not some k-drama construct.  She’s lying through her teeth, flirting, trying to show off, and he’s teasing her, testing her.  They make this show.  There’s really no other reason to watch it.  The plot is decent, but it’s watching this 300 year time gap couple cuddle in the library that makes this show stand out.  It literally made me feel like a giddy school girl every time these two were together, starting about episode three and kicking into full gear by episode four.

You will be helplessly charmed.  It’s not cheesy or gimicky or cutesy.  These are two grown people falling in love, just… head over heels in love.  And it’s magnetic.  Check it out if you’re in the mood for lots of PDA and heart melting romance.

Overall Rating – 9/10.  Dear God, Let Me Be Reincarnated As Yoo In-A In My Next Life.

Review – Circle: Two Worlds

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Review – Circle: Two Worlds

A well done, high concept sci fi show about memories, responsibility, and identity.   The story revolves around two twins who discover a mysterious woman in the woods when they are children.  Is she an alien?  The woman disappears from their life, only to reappear again when they are in their early twenties.  At the same time a string of questionable suicides start occurring at the Health and Science College.  Who is she?  And how is she connected to these events and the lives of the twins?  Rotating between 2017, our time, and 2037, when the country has been split into “Normal Earth,” a wasteland of pollution and dust, and “Smart Earth,” a clean environment where all the citizens are on modified mood controllers and live peacefully.

There are plenty of spectacular twists in this drama and the plot was so unconventional, I had no idea where it was taking me from episode to episode.  The acting was incredible, especially from Yeo Jin-Goo… wow, that boy has an expressive face, does he not?  Murder, mystery, secret experiments, missing persons and aliens!   Who could ask for more? (Uh, I could!  sequel, please?)

As with all mystery shows – I won’t do a lengthy review since mystery shows are best enjoyed with the full mystery unraveling as you watch.  So… do yourself a favor and check it out.

Overall Rating – 9/10.  Blue Worms Are Not Your Friends.

Review – Oh My Ghostess

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Review – Oh My Ghostess

Can I just say now right now that my favorite thing about this cute little show was the epic girl-friendship between the professor the shaman?  How adorable were they?  I loved that we had two older women coming together as friends with no common ground whatsoever other than the fact they were both lonely and needed a buddy.  Sometimes that is all it takes.  Their friendship made the entire story better, like having home made icing on a cake instead of store bought.  Sure, we were gonna eat that cake regardless… but now it’s just so much yummier.

Oh My Ghostess was a cute, supernatural romance about a shy young girl who gets possessed by a horny extroverted ghost – which both makes her life better and worse.  The horny ghost is convinced if she can lose her virginity to man of vitality, then she will let go of the grudge keeping her from crossing over to the next world.  When that man of vitality happens to be the shy girl’s boss and secret crush, hilarity ensues.

“Oh, Chef!”

Park Bo-Young was so adorable and funny in this show – jumping back and forth between a wide eyed innocent and a shameless rambunctious hussy with ease – that’s great acting prowess, right there.  Cho Jung-Seok played the male lead, a persnickety chef who’s a bit of a narcissist but also a surprisingly sweet romantic at heart.  His character transformation over the show was as just as impressive as the female lead.  Throw in a bunch of playful restaurant coworkers, a gigantic cop with a little boy’s smile, the dead girl’s family, and a murder mystery or two… and you’ve got a nice way to spend sixteen hours.

It was a fun little romance and I can see why so many people have recommended this show over the years.  Add me to the list.  I recommend it too.

Overall Rating – 8/10.  Don’t Die A Virgin In Korea.

Review – Tunnel

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Review – Tunnel

There’s a lot to like about this show.  The unusual plotline.  The adorable cop shenanigans and bromances everywhere (all the main cops are dudes in this show and they’re all extremely lovable).  The tangled web of time travel.  The serial killer(s) and their damaged childhoods.  I enjoyed the whole thing.  A quality drama, highly recommended.

Overall Rating – 8/10.  Grumpy Time Traveling Detective Solves An Old Case.

A little bit more about characters follows (very, very mild spoilers)

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Review – Strong Woman Do Bong Soon

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Review – Strong Woman Do Bong Soon

Strong Woman Do Bong Soon reminds me a lot of iZombie.  It has a playful “comic book” style that knows how to have fun.  Zap, Boom, Shabang!  Those over the top, tongue-in-cheek comics where though good guys fought off villains, no one was injured beyond repair and good humor ruled over seriousness.   Think… the bright friendly, child-saving Superman of the 1900’s… not the monotone angsty Superman of the 2000’s.  Do Bong Soon is here to save the day, damn it!  And you’re going to feel great about it.

 <-This NOT That-> 

I adored this show!  It had so much going for it… which I will be discussing with massive spoilers below… but above all else, it was romantic.  So, so soooo romantic.  Cute romantic.  First love romantic.  Original Superman romantic.  You remember… the big-grin fly me over the city romance of a hunky guy smitten with a feisty girl.

Overall Rating – 10/10.  Saved The Day.

Spoilers and Fangirling with Much Discussion Ahead!

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Review – Bride of the Century

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Review – Bride of the Century

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Two things were made abundantly clear by this cute, odd, quirky, melodramatic, supernaturally-tinted show.  One, Yang Jin Sung is a adorable!  Two, Lee Hong Ki… maybe not so much.  Don’t get me wrong, I love this little guy… but he just doesn’t have the chutzpah for leading male status, in my humble opinion.  Yang Jin Sung, however, blew me away.  I actually didn’t realize it was the same actress playing two characters until the end of episode one, she was that good.  Her face is so expressive and she can go from sticky sweet to hardened bitch face in two point five seconds and both are perfectly believable.  My favorite is her little lip curl – which makes me think of the famous lip curl of Jang Keun-Suk.  I’ll be bookmarking her other dramas and watching them soon.

Bride of the Century is mainly a story about women.  It’s about a rich, rich family with a sexy ghost watching over it for generations… but she demands payment for her services, in the form of the first wife of the first son of each new generation.  This is a conundrum for the mom of the current first son, as she wants him to marry the gal of her choice but needs to get that sacrificial first marriage out of the way before her plans can be realized.  So it’s scheming demon, and momma is willing to go to great devious lengths to get what she wants… but soon finds herself at war with another momma who doesn’t plan to lay down her daughter’s life without a fight.  It’s the behind the scenes battlefield that so many women wage wars on and claim victories over.  The battlefield of other women (dead and alive).  It may the be the worst thing patriarchy has done to humanity – setting women against women.  But it’s a great thing for dramas and novels.

Overall Rating – 8/10 – You Can’t Trick A Ghost With A Doppelganger, But You Can Trick A Man.

Discussion and Spoilers Follow

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Review – Signal

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Review – Signal

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I heard everyone raving about this show but I thought, “Ugh, a cop show.  Ugh, sounds like Frequency.  Ugh, matching up an older woman with a younger man again.  Ugh Ugh.”  I should have slapped myself across the face.  And so should you, if you are entertaining such thoughts.  Snap out of it!  Signal is AWESOME.

Yes, it’s a cops-solving-crimes show that jumps back and forth between the past and present, connecting cops and crimes across decades.  And yet I was riveted.  None of the cases ended like I thought they would.   None of the future’s interventions had the outcome I expected.  None of the usual cliches and tropes applied to this show.  There was no noona romance, for one thing.  Instead, a seasoned female cop works alongside a young cute rookie and NOTHING HAPPENS except for work.  Gasp!  I was sooo happy.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, men and women can be friends.  They can care about each other and not want to have sex.  It is, in fact, possible to live and work in a nonsexual way with half of humanities population.  Signal was a revelation!

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It was also very dark.  The crimes were horrible and gritty.  The justice system struggled, realistically.  Crimes were unsolved.  People died and their killers were never brought to justice, not in this past, not in the present.  It was hard to know what the right thing to do was.  People are so many shades of gray, after all.  The story lines were complicated and compelling and every single episode was gripping and intense.

I highly recommend not reading too much about it before starting it up.  It’s nothing like Frequency (the movie or the show).  It’s a mystery and all mysteries should remain vague and ponderous until you actually watch it unfold before your eyes.  I don’t like to do lengthy reviews on mysteries for that very reason.  So I leave you with this – just watch it.  When you’re done, you can pick at the little pieces and discuss characters and debate the ending all you want to.  Somewhere else.  This review is just to get you to bite and spend sixteen hours devouring this amazing show.

Overall Rating – 10/10.  Dark Crime and Magical Realism.

Review – Goblin – The Lonely & Great God

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Review – Goblin – The Lonely & Great God

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Quite possibly one of the most mysteriously addicting shows I have ever watched.  Despite it’s problems, and we’ll get into that later, it absolutely stunned with witty banter, romance, bromance, mystery, and the supernatural.  And the music!  What originally seemed like a mish-mash of supernatural mythology worked perfectly in this Korean drama.  Gods, goblins, grim reapers, cursed children, and ghosts all wandered the streets together.

If you haven’t seen this show – open another tab and watch it immediately.  Without delay.  Count up how many candles were lit during the making of this drama…(seriously, they went overboard with the open flames in this show) and that’s how many feels you’ll get.

Overall Rating – 10/10.  Everyone Is Okay With Gong Yoo Living Forever.

If you have watched it (probably more than once already, am I right?) then you’re probably itching to talk about it.

So let’s discuss…

SPOILERS FOLLOW

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Review – Scholar Who Walks The Night

/ Lady Divine / 3 Comments

Review – Scholar Who Walks the Night

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Supernatural historical dramas are some of my favorites.  Even though I have yet to see one with a really solid plot, I always enjoy them.  You would think that a drama about trying to overthrow an ancient vampire who lives in an underground lair beneath the royal palace and secretly controls the Joseon monarch would be fantastic.  Eh.

Okay, maybe the plot was a little boring sometimes.  I mean, how many secret diaries does it take to kill a vampire, am I right?  But did that spoil my enjoyment of this show?  Nope.  Still loved it.  Why?  Cause vampires, that’s why!  Who doesn’t love a good vampire story?  Throw in a pretty girl disguised as a boy (love that trope!) and some romance and I’m hooked.  Add an incredibly sexy evil vampire as the bad guy… and I’ll pop my popcorn and settle in for a long binge watch.

Overall Rating – 8/10.  Dark Shadows of the Joseon Era.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

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Review – W – Two Worlds

/ Lady Divine / 2 Comments

Review – W – Two Worlds

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Every once in a while a drama pops up with a premise so outside the box that you can’t help but love it.  Even if it gets caught up in twists and turns and makes a big messy knot of its own plotline.  Even if describing it to friends makes you tongue tied.  Even if just trying to REMEMBER all the random turns and sharp angles and unexpected twists makes you feel crazy.  Even if you could have chopped off the last five episodes and not missed anything.  You forgive it.  Cause… wow.  The plot!  The amazing, spectacular plot!

W Two Worlds is a story about a hero.  A hero the likes of which only exist in our fantasies.  In comic books.  In graphic novels.  In Korean Dramas….

This drama is full of action and adventure.  It’s a mystery.  It’s a thriller.  It’s a science fiction show.  It’s a dark fantasy and a fairy tale mixed together in a blender.  It’s all over the place!  And it’s fun.  It’s really, really fun… cause honestly, there is NO WAY you will guess what’s going to come next.  From episode to episode.  It just keeps changing shape, changing genre, changing our expectations.  It’s a glorious chameleon of superb and complicated writing, solid acting, and no holds barred imagination.

Our hero is the star of this show (in the general sense and in the meta sense).  He’s an Olympic sharp shooter.  He’s orphaned by an unspeakable crime that he’s framed for.  He’s a man on a quest for vengeance.  And he’s inexplicably wealthy, young, and attractive.  Basic hero formula.

Only he’s NOT REAL.

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He is the creation of a writer in another dimension.  He is the main character in a graphic novel.  The world he lives in exists for him and because of him.  And his story line is about to come to an end… the writer is finishing the series and finishing off our hero with it.

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But our hero is not ready to be put down!

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Remember that old video to Take On Me by Ah Ha?

Rating:  8/10.  A twisted, convoluted, extraordinarily fun show that proves reality is what you make it… and what it makes you.

Let’s Discuss!  SPOILERS AHEAD… but not very many….

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