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K-Dramas
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Anyone got any K-Drama recommendations?
I’m gonna end up subscribing to Viki again, but rn on netflix I’ve watched:
Hometown Cha Cha Chat – A slow burn romance about a dentist from a big city moving to a small seaside town after telling her boss off.
Business Proposal - A romance about a food scientist working for a big company, who accidentally goes on a blind date the CEO of her company for her best friend who is the heir of another large company and is being pressured to marry.
My Secret Romance - Very similar to Business Proposal. A woman and man have a one night stand several years ago. The woman ends up working as a nutritionist at the man’s company. She tries to pretend she doesn’t remember him, and he terrorizes her because he’s mad she took off after the one night stand AND pretends not to remember him.
Love and Leashes - Movie rather than series. A hilarious romance about a submissive man accidentally revealing his kink to a coworker who then asks her to be his master. It is really tame and cute. There’s no on screen sex.
Lastly, I binged all of Love to Hate You - A story about an athletic female attorney who kicks ass (literally) and doesn’t think well of men, who kids up having to pretend to date an actor called “the god of romance” but who is actually kind of an asshole and doesn’t have a high opinion of women. The synopsis makes it sound terrible, but both characters end up learning a lot of becoming really likeable.
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Sungkyunkwan Scandal is a lot of fun. It’s set in Joseon era, about a woman who was disguising herself as a man to help students cheat on a school exam, and when a student catches ‘him’, he blackmails ‘him’ into actually applying to the school. It’s a lot of fun.
Liar’s Game is contemporary, and a Korean adaptation of a J-Drama, around a woman who is pushed into competing in a mystery game to try and deal with the debts her family left her with - mystery/thriller sort of thing. Very nice.
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@Pyrephox Liar’s Game is amazing! I love the manga and the show!
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I haven’t finished it, but Beyond Evil is hella good so far; I started because a Tumblr mutual loves it. I also see Kinnporsche on my dash a lot, but haven’t watched it myself.
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Shibuya Fifteen! Is one of my favorites, it’s J-Drama but it’s so damn good!
Set in a virtual simulation of Shibuya, Tokyo which is regulated by an entity named Piece which does not allow inhabitants to live, the series focuses on a fifteen-year-old boy named Tsuyoshi who seeks to find both his lost memories and a way to escape Shibuya.
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Fuck you and fuck your eels, too!
This is savage.
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@SpaceKhomeini What on Earth did I watch aside from the shorter-haired woman being a total psycho? YouTube didn’t have captions available.
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@dvoraen A lot of pent-up rage exploding in a messy conflagration (I don’t speak Korean so good luck).
There’s a lot of food-assault and stairs-pushing on this series it seems.
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These are pretty much all I watch these days!
My Sassy Girl do not watch this very, very strange take on what was an amazingly charming movie. Go find the movie and watch it. It’s old, so some things don’t quite hold up, but I am in love with the story.
This is a weird period piece remake so it’s like half of it is nearly remaking the movie but not nearly as charming and then half of it is overly long political drama that gets thrown in. Pass!
Korean Odyssey Great premise with a girl who sees ghosts who gets tangled up in supernatural nonsense and cursed because she’s tricked into freeing the great sage who is equal to heaven from his imprisonment, but its three times as long as it needed to be. The tone was all over the place. Was it a comedy? Mostly. Was it a drama? Kind of. Was it romance? Definitely. Was it horror? I think it tried to be sometimes? But this one time ten years ago I made a web series and the level of special effects in this were things I could do with Final Cut Pro. They’re bad. They’re very, very, very bad. There’s an A plot, a B plot, a C plot, and even a D plot and honestly the D plot with the zombie was the most emotionally impacting.
I did like that while they had the trope of ‘mean leading man’ the female lead was (mostly) having none of it and is in turn pretty unfair to him in places.
But why you want to watch this is for Mister Lee, the absolutely normal person in this that never doesn’t become a normal person and every line he has is gold.
Rookie Historian Goo Hae Ryung which I really liked and then it was 75 episodes too long, which is impressive since it’s only 20 but should’ve been 10. Liked the basic premise, but it couldn’t ever decide on a tone. Sometimes it was super serious with child death. Sometimes it was goofy with weird cartoon sound effects? Sometimes it was a silly star crossed romance! Sometimes it was Bad Men Politicking! And then it was weird Christianity stuff? That came out of nowhere. But the main character was pretty great. Strong start, but very meh after that.
Little Women not the one you’re thinking, but one that is VERY loosely based on it and by that I mean there are sisters in this show. And a kid who is basically Laurie. Kind of. And a mean rich great-aunt. And that’s where everything ends. I really liked it. I find the classism of Korea kind of mind boggling and hard to relate to considering we’re raised on the American Dream (no matter that we know it’s a lie!) and there’s apparently no corresponding Korean Dream over there, but it’s basically a crime drama/mystery about embezzlement and corrupt politicians and how if you’re poor you’re screwed.
It’s very low on romance, which was surprising but not unwelcome and I really enjoyed the focus on women being the movers and shakers in this world despite everything being stacked against them. Things get turned up to 11 a couple of times and the episodes are REALLY long, but I enjoyed it a lot.
Oh but just be warned there’s a LOT of talk about suicide and suicides.
Remarriage and Desires which is a lot less steamy than the title suggests. Probably a skip, but it does have an English dub so you can just put it on in the background and you barely even have to pay attention! It’s a bit weird. On the one hand once again the women are the movers and shakers. But it’s all focused around this high society arranged marriage club and this lower class woman whose husband has an affair and then commits suicide (or perhaps was murdered) when it turns out the affair didn’t really love him and was using him to embezzle money like a moron.
She finds out that the affair woman framed her husband and swears revenge! But she’s a super nice lady! But oh so revengy! But like, diet revenge. And there’s of course a heavy dose of intrigue! And politics which are there a lot of corrupt politicians in Korea? That is like a main theme here. It’s all Crown Princes fighting corrupt officials in the past and Poor People fighting Corrupt Politicians in the present.
Anyway, it’s entertaining enough though the love…quadrangle? Octogon?..is just really weird from an outsider’s perspective. There’s this big thing about having to be married as a guy to make yourself a good leader of a company? That’s pretty much the main conceit for why the male characters are in this. I believe there was a little one off conversation about how women usually inherit their social standing from their fathers but can increase it through marriage? So everyone wants a rich guy?
All Korean rich guys are handsome btw. And there’s a lot of forced marriages. And older moms are just universally awful.
Under The Queen’s Umbrella Subtitles only. This is another one where the ladies make all the things happen, both the good and the bad, and are the real power behind the throne. It’s a period piece so the costumes are great, but it all makes me wonder how any laws or anything got passed because it seems like all the guys are concerned with getting power behind the scenes and the King’s just concerned with the Crown Prince and how does anything get done?! Besides backstabbing and having to be one step ahead of your competition. There’s intrigue, there’s secret babies, but the Queen is absolutely the main character here and she’s amazing.
Prince Il-yeong and Prince Hodong who were barely in it were the best characters and I want to know what adventures they had during the Crown Prince trials. Would watch a whole series on just them.
Extraordinary Attorney Woo It’s basically Castle, but she’s an autistic lawyer with memory super powers. I kind of want to like it but…is this representation in a good way? Sometimes it seems to be. Other times it’s so magical cutesy that I cringe. I read an article about it because I wasn’t sure what to think, which said that in Korea kids on the spectrum get hidden away so this is a good show to help bring that out over there, but also it has problems like I said above with magical autism super powers being shown and obviously, that’s not really how it works. They DO have an episode about it being a spectrum and not everyone with autism is the same. But am I really supposed to root for a romance here when besides knowing the law she’s depicted as socially and emotionally being like a five year old with a hyper focus on whales? One of those dubbed shows I’d throw on in the background and not pay too much attention to.
Mr. Queen a Korean…dramedy? Comedra? It’s more comedy than anything but like all Korean shows has POLITICS and INTRIGUE that take over the third act. But there’s still a lot of humor and it makes me wonder if they were trying to make a larger statement (probably not but maybe?)
A man in the present has an accident in a pool and wakes up in the Joseon period in the body of a woman who is about to become the Queen. Here is where I’m like…is this a light trans narrative? Or at least doing some bisexuality exploration in like the softest, most tongue in cheek way? Because while at first s/he is like where is my penis and hitting on all the chambermaids eventually, and I don’t feel like I’m spoilering this because you see it coming from a mile away, s/he falls in love with the King and embraces that they might be a woman for the rest of their life.
Is this a way to get those sorts of narratives into the mainstream in a somewhat less progressive society, or are they playing it for laughs the whole time? I’m torn about it. The love story is really good. And the main character wrestles with what’s happening to them, how they could possibly be falling for a guy, how they should just try it maybe they’re just curious, etc etc. and the majority of the jokes are mostly about this guy being out of his time and basically inventing Korean street food. The sequences in the royal kitchen are a highlight of the show. But you can also clearly handwave it away pretty easily so…who knows.
I loved it. It’s 20 episodes and very few of them felt like they were dragging the story. There were times I laughed out loud and the supporting characters are great. Not dubbed so you need to pay attention.
Cinderella and the Four Knights This one is really weird. The first episode or two are great and funny. And then it’s just too long. A lot of class issues in here but it’s played as a cutesy romance for the most part with just hints of intrigue and company politics. I admit to being a sucker for anything with a destiny twist too. I don’t consider my time wasted by watching it, but it wasn’t my favorite.
I’m currently watching Love Between Fairy and Devil which I think is actually Chinese and not Korean and is approximately ten billion episodes long, but has a trope that I think I’ve seen three times at least now where the main male character wants to actively kill the main female character but can’t because of REASONS and ends up having to protect her instead and then LOVE happens.
Which is really messed up. That is not a good foundation for a healthy relationship, show runners!
But the costumes are nice and the budget is like WHOA compared to most things (looking at you Korean Odyssey) so we’ll see how long I last.
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I LOVE LOVE BETWEEN FAIRY AND DEVIL OMGOMG
ETA: I am currently taking a break from it, however, because yet it is like a million episodes long. But omg… Dongfang Qingcang or Shang Que could sweep me off of my feet any day.
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MORE:
The King’s Affection. Who knew that twins are the worst and seen as a bad thing? Don’t tell anyone on Arx! This one is LONG and starts with the girl twin being sent away at birth otherwise the male twin would be seen as lesser? Anyway, of course they find each other and end up switching places but OH NO politics and terrible things happen and the girl ends up having to pretend she’s the Crown Prince for a LOT longer than either of them had anticipated. This one is REALY long, but I liked it a lot.
Then there’s always Kingdom which is a Crown Prince fighting zombies. Pretty well done for the genre. Kind of a classic to watch these days. Definitely a recurring theme where the King is either a moron or totally controlled and the Crown Prince has to save everyone in these things. Which begs the question what happens when the Crown Prince becomes a King? Does he just get stupid/corrupt overnight? Did all his world saving as the Crown Prince, now can sit back and just be dumb and let horrible people run the show I guess.
Sweet Home is a horror-ish show that I didn’t find very scary but did find to be good character studies. I think it was MEANT to be scary, but it had lots of very fake blood in it that just didn’t do it for me. People trapped in an apartment building during an end-of-the-world scenario start turning into monsters.
All of Us Are Dead More end-of-the-world zombies, this one focuses on high school students, some of whom you will really root for, some of whom you will root to be killed in the worst ways possible.
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Finished Love Between Fairy and Devil. Is there a reason they can’t say angel? Because they clearly mean angel and not fairy.
Anyway
That was me for like the last five episodes. I really liked it. Was there filler? Yes. But they took a trope and I think did some clever things with it. There were REASONS for things and I’m sure I missed a lot of stuff that was coded in there that a regular Chinese audience would’ve picked up on, but I thought it was really well done.
And that budget! So many gorgeous costumes!
Definitely recommend even if Orchid’s dumb voice grated on me for most of it. And that’s not me being mean, she’s definitely doing a dumb-girl bit with it and uuuuugh.
I am always a sucker for an All Loving Hero though.
And Jieli is the best character (though the Black Dragon was close second). Should’ve been more Jieli!
