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Amazing acting, terrible writing
i am full of so much mixed feelings after this. i had to binge-read fix-it fics. i deeply loved this but also hated parts of itThe bad:
- incredibly slow pace. I had to watch this on 1.5x speed, and even then most episodes were slow
- THE LAST FIFTEEN TO TWENTY EPISODES WERE BULLSHIT. as most of the reviewers here say, it was incredibly rushed. i lost all emotional investment and started skipping chunks of scenes because everything was so abrupt, and characters started acting out of character. the ending was also really terrible. i didn't even feel anything, i was just like, 'what the fuck'
- Feng Zhiwei's character suffered from poor writing although Ni Ni (the actress) tried her best and did a fantastic job. whenever she was dressed as a man, she was a delight to watch and her scenes were incredibly fun. the minute she returns to being a woman, she gets forced into that really annoying trope that female protagonists get in cdramas - the passive, mary sue-ish, suffering, easily manipulated woman. it almost felt like watching two separate people and it was really frustrating
The good:
- the chemistry between the two main leads!! their banter was so good. i was so delighted by their constant back-and-forth, the way they snarked at each other, the way they came to each other's rescue, the way they understood each other, and especially the way Ning Yi would start smiling/laughing involuntarily whenever he was around Feng Zhiwei. it is so rare that the male and female leads can go toe-to-toe. i haven't shipped a couple on tv so hard in years
- the acting by the two main leads. it was absolutely amazing. Chen Kun played Ning Yi and i loved his range. he would go from a mocking and overwrought 'poor me' persona to a badass, 'two steps ahead of everyone while smiling threateningly' persona. it was awesome. Ni Ni played Feng Zhiwei and she brought a lot of emotional depth to her role. Feng Zhiwei was incredbily passionate and bold. i really felt for her and cried with her every time she cried
- the sets were absolutely beautiful, and the court etiquette seemed to have been deeply researched
i really loved this but god i wished it had not been such a dumpster fire for the last twenty episodes.
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A very moving story about two lost souls
I'm so emotional after the last episode 😭😭What I liked:
- IU's performance. I love love love Ji An's story. It's basically similar to Ash from Banana Fish - someone good growing up in a horrible situation, having to do soul-crushing things to survive, becoming ground down and hardened, but coming to life when someone is kind and warm to them and seeing that life can have good things too and finally learning what it means to be alive and human. What a great analogy for childhood trauma. So many moving and scenes lines from Ji An/IU 😭😭 I really loved her arc
- Male lead, played by Lee Sun Kyun, was great too
- I love the theme of community and family, I loved the music, I loved the directing - very stylish - and I really liked all the side characters
- Lee Ji Ah's character is someone I didn't think I would like but her arc was really 😭
- refreshing that a life drama doesn't have romance as its center point
What I didn't like:
- pace was very slow for someone like me who is easily bored and imaptient. I had to put this show on fast forward and skip scenes sometimes. The last episode had so many emotional punches; I wish the writer had kind of paced them throughout the entire series, coz most of the series is REALLY slow
- some of the sideplots were kind of uninteresting, I didn't really care about them and their inclusion felt abrupt (especially the monk)
- there were some themes that I felt like the drama didn't portray so well, the biggest of which was Lee Ji Ah's character, Kang Yoon Hee. I did not like how marriage was portrayed, I did not like the way they treated her character when it came to the affair
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Dilraba Dilmurat shines in this show
This show made me cry a few times... I loved Dilraba Dilmurat and what she did with her character. I loved Ruge's sweet nature. The use of color schemes for each character made it visually quite beautiful. I really loved Zhan Feng and Yin Xue and I'd have been 100% okay if she had ended up with either of them.Complaints: villain scenes were extremely boring. I could tell how the scene was going to go just by the first few lines of the dialogue. I skipped or fast forwarded most of the sideplots because they were quite boring. The script writing was really quite weak in places. It also suffered pacing issues - a lot of the sideplots could be cut without affecting the main storyline much, and it's quite slow at certain points.
Yin Xue suffers from the usual issue that lovers in a romance genre face - not much of a story or personality beyond their devotion to the main character.
The last arc in the villain's palace was kinda eh. I'm shallow but that place was ugly.
The good: Vin Zhang was fantastic as Zhan Feng. He pulled off broody, angsty, troubled antihero really well. Ruge was so sweet... I love her so much... her growth was really fantastic. I felt for her, and it was really painful watching her go through a lot of suffering and loss. Her grief every time she lost someone really killed me. I also appreciate how the show doesn't hesitate to kill off beloved side characters. Also, the ending song is fantastic.
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beautifully shot and acted but loses steam
This is beautifully shot and you can see how high quality the show is. The premise is interesting - it's based off real historical figures (I saw the memoir on my Goodreads). I was curious how this might have been dramatized and adapted. The real lady Ui-bin Seong was only known to history by her role to the king: her pregnancies, her children, her title as harem wife and her death. On the other hand, we have a full story of the king's life in childhood, politics, etc. The king's life is also very messed up and I wondered how they were going to zoom in to this one part of his life story and romanticize it.However, the drama pleasantly surprised me by adding a feminist element. This is a story about love when it is complicated by power. It's about what love means to a man vs a woman.
As much as I enjoyed these themes, I found their back-and-forth "be my concubine / I love you" and "no I'm my own woman" to be quite tedious. The drama started out very strong and it is very well-acted (especially Lee Junho) but the increasing politics started boring me around episode 7/8. Had to drop this.
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An exploration about what it means to be a mother
This show does something special. It goes beyond just telling a story, but it shows you what it means to be a mother and to have a mother. This is one of the GOATs of TV shows, up there with the likes of Go Ahead and My Mister. This show is a longform essay about mothering and motherhood, and is wonderfully nuanced and poignant in its commentary about social issues. But at the heart of it all, it's about the love story between a lonely woman and a lonely child, how they became mother and daughter to each other, and how they chose each other over and over again.(I need a Father counterpart now please 🙏)
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A good second chance love story
I'm kind of undecided whether this is a 3.5 or 4 stars (out of 5). On the one hand, this is quite a well-made character introspection narrative/drama about two people coming together and trying again. On the other hand, the middle part really drags and I wish this was 12 or (at the maximum!) 14 episodes, instead of the current 16. I stopped at around 11/12 coz of losing steam.I like that this is very character focused and really tells the stories of the two leads and the side characters. The palette is so nostalgic, like Hatsukoi and Makanai san, and the school days segment gives me the feels for Someday or One Day (I'm not over that heartbreaking ending 😭). I think the skillful use of flashbacks and character voiceover narration actually works to the show's advantage because it feels like a diary at times, and I love the glimpse into the character's inner lives.
My gripe is really the length. 16 episodes is really way too much. Where the first 8-10 episodes feel better paced in terms of introducing the characters, their motivations, angst, and their perspectives on the break-up and their lives, by episode 10-11 it feels like the show is just dragging it out. (Also Kim Ji Woon's angst is just. So. Well written!!!)
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Warm and slow-paced slice-of-life
Kore-eda brings his signature warmth and humanistic focus to a story about two teenage girls making their way in the geisha world in Kyoto. This is a show for when you are in the mood for something super slice-of-life, warm friend group/family vibes, food, and fluff. There is no drama, tension, and conflict, which gets boring if you are not in the mood for it. The food portrayals never fail to make me hungry, and I loved the glimpses into the craft of being a geisha/maiko/geiko (e.g. the ichi-go-ichi-e phrase) and the glimpses of Japanese culture. It was also fun to spot Kyoto in the background.Was this review helpful to you?
A very well-done time travel story
I don't know what to say because this was a lot. One of the best time travel stories, up there with Reset and Dark (but with less mindfuckery incest than Dark), and such a moving portrayal of grief, first love, highschool summer romance, while also being a bit of a coming-of-age story and a story about depression. Saw someone say this is what Kimi no Na Wa tried to be, and I totally see that, and I also think this is what jdrama First Love tried to be. Last episode, last scene had me ready to start sobbing 😭😭😭 I'm just. Not ok. I should have known time travel doesn't end well. Absolutely amazing performances by the cast, especially the two main leads. There is a huge hole in my heart now 😭😭 I watched this to get over Under the Queen's Umbrella, now I need to watch something to get over this (also when will Letterboxd add Alchemy of Souls etc??)*Humor is unfortunately sometimes very not funny (fatphobic, transphobic) and I wish Huang Quan Sheng's storyline was resolved properly. Also Li Ziwei's second chase of her was low-key rather like harassment?? And what is this weird thing with age gaps lmao...
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Heartwarming and family-centric
😭😭😭 Dramabeans' review-recaps summarized everything I might have wanted to say, especially the ones covering the last episodes: www.dramabeans.com/2022/12/under-the-queens-umbrella-episodes-15-16/I think the main cast just really stayed with me: their poignant moments, their warm and rich relationships, and their complex characterizations. IMO one of the best uses of death of a loved one as a motivating force. The flashbacks of the previous Crown Prince's warm and playful moments with his mother and his brother that are flashed to the audience at just the right moments never fail to make me feel emotional. I do also love the complexity of the revenge political plot in the ending, although the ending was rushed. Not without its flaws but I LOVE a middle-aged woman as a protagonist (like EEAO), and the focus on mother-son relationships. More please 😭
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A pure shot of dopamine
Suuuper cute and fun in the beginning but sadly fizzled out by the end. Full of tropes and cliches, but self-aware and doesn't take itself too seriously, the show is an absolute delight in the first 5-6 episodes. I literally almost squealed and laughed out loud on PUBLIC TRANSPORT multiple times while binging this. It's like a pure dose of joy and sunshine.The second main pair grew on me sooo much and I felt more invested in them than in the lead couple. Young-seo and Sung-ho are just 🥺🥺🥺 so precious 🥺🥺🥺
Sad that the second half of the drama became like a conventional kdrama (just like Extraordinary Attorney Woo), losing much of the liveliness and character of the first half.
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An exploration of gender roles in Japanese society
Thought this was gonna be one of those weird Japanese shows but it was surprisingly thoughtful. I find it hard to find jdramas that suit my taste because of the clash in cultural values and all that but this was very enjoyable. I enjoyed the social commentary on gender roles, the high production values, the good balance between crack and seriousness and bite-sized episodes.Also I have good memories of this show because I had an interesting discussion with my sensei about gender roles when I mentioned this show to her lolol.
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Zhao Lusi is great in this
My face was like: 😃🥰-->😐🧐 as the show went on.Ever since Bai Fengxi became the Empress, everything started to suck. I'm pretty familiar with cdramas and so the rushed and bullshit ending wasn't a surprise but still disappointing. The first half was very fun and cast was pretty good for the most part. I still rewatch parts of this at times when I'm missing Zhao Lusi's character. I loved it the most when she was in her jianghu disguise, because she had her own story and she was pretty badass.
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Somewhat draggy historical drama
Was gonna give this a 7.5 star but then the drama ended up being way longer than it needed to be. It was very fun seeing Dilraba play a very different type of character but I was most blown away by Zhao Lusi. I just watched Who Rules the World and wow she is so versatile!! I am now going to make my way through her backlog. I want to just point out that I loved how well written the female characters were and the sisterhood between them. So rare in cdramas. Leo Wu was ok, his face doesn't emote that much but it fit his character in this role.Was this review helpful to you?
Fun bodyswape romcom
I came from Go Ahead (love that show) because I really liked Steven Zhang's acting. It's totally unnecessary to have 26 episodes for this purely romance-focused romcom and the last 6 episodes were so draggy but Steven Zhang is VERY adorable and good-looking 🥺 VERY FUN USE OF THE BODYSWAP TROPE IMO. There was a pretty fun dynamic between the two leads and lots of comedic moments. I loved watching the male lead play as the female lead and vice versa -- absolutely hilarious. I still rewatch parts of this sometimes. What a fluffy show.Was this review helpful to you?
Interesting portrayal of North Korea
This started out really strong but I almost totally lost interest by the end. One of the most intriguing part of the drama for me was the portrayal of North Korea. It was very nuanced and I learned that one of the screenwriters was a defector. Other than the interesting setting, the strength and appeal of the drama lay in the lighthearted and heartwarming day-to-day life of the main couple while in NK, before it was bogged down by all the other plots. Side character Gu Seung-jun stole the show the minute he showed up. Why did they kill him off 😭 and in such a lame way lol. I really struggled to like the heroine at first. She is very wealthy and her disdain (played to comedic effect) of the NK citizens' much less affluent lifestyle read too much like classism... It was a bit uncomfortable. With that said, the main couple were really cute and sweet and the hero was very good at doing the intense and wistful stare. Overall, very predictable and cliche, but lighthearted and has some heartwarming moments. Great production values and music and great wardrobe for the cast too.Was this review helpful to you?
