ItsAMe

Have you ever watched Western gay movies? The "more masculine" actors in Cdramas look still as beautiful, flawless and gay as one could be. There is absolutely no way you would ever see a straight Western man who would look like that in a Western movie/series. And since you seem to be an expert on Asia: What makes you think that Asian beauty standards are comparable with Western beauty standards? (Very masculine looking Asian actors such as Simu Liu are called ugly in Asia.)

Arabs in the islamic world are often perceived as gay in the West because (straight) Arab men tend to touch each other in a way only gay men in the West would touch each other. Also their perfectly groomed beards are perceived as gay. Do they do that because of Western propaganda or because they are practising for the next Netflix drama?

"Got turned off" sounds gay af, by the way. It sounds as if you were watching Kdramas to get "turned on" by non-gay looking actors. If you don't want to give that impression, maybe talk less about gays. Being so obsessed with gay stuff is suspicious. Keep away from Kdramas if seeing Asian men makes you feel uncomfortable. If you prefer so-called traditional values, stick with the approved stuff your imam recommends to you.

Hehe, that's the entire plot. Please set a spoiler tag!!! ^^

The ears make him unique. Otherwise, he would just be a pretty man among lots of other pretty men.

No, that's not my point. I don't see how you could interpret my answers this way. Bear in mind that we were discussing because your initial question was about the difference between Korean numbers and the rest of the world. We are not discussing whether a drama is good or bad. Taste is subjective anyway. Also, we didn't agree or disagree on anything, so we cannot A2D.

As somebody who has been working in the entertaining industry (not movies/series but a similar field) for about 2 decades, I just shared my experience with you. I also worked in advertising in the past, so I know how to interpret statistics to get answers.

The numbers we are getting on the internet are more or less worthless because we don't know the details. The industry pays a lot of money to get the details. Based on those details, they make predictions. If we see something trending, it's already too late to produce more stuff like that because the trend will very likely be over once we are done.

The numbers we see on the internet just tell us whether a drama is particularily popular/unpopular in Korea or somewhere else. They don't tell us what "popular" means. And who the people are who find a drama popular. People who enjoyed Squid Game are not necessarily the same people who enjoy a romcom. There is no "the Kdrama".

I hope that made sense now. Thanks for reading.

Without knowing the exact details on the viewers, the statistics will not help you in any way to answer your question. As aforementioned, popularity also depends on how something is perceived. It is not that difficult to be interesting for a couple of seconds. The difficult thing is to remain interesting.

In the early 2000s, Bollywood movies were veeeery popular in the West. For a few months. Same with Chinese martial arts movies such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Zhang Ziyi was so popular back then. Or a few years/decades earlier: Bruce Lee, Jet Lee and Jackie Chan movies. Japanese/Korean horror movies were also very popular in the early 2000s.

According to the statistics, 20.6 million Asians live in the USA. 6 million subscribers would be about one third. (Of course, those 6 Millions are not Asians only.) 331.9 million people live in the USA, which gives us ~1.8 % who subscribe to KOKOWA.

There are about 8 billion of people on this planet. 75 million subscribers on Viki is not that much. Viki is one of the few sources where we can legally watch Asian dramas outside of Asia. And it's cheap compared to, for example, Netflix.

Unlike Japan, Thailand and other Asian countries, Korea invests in advertising. And Koreans advertise their stuff not just to Asians but also to non-Asians. Squid Game was everywhere despite the pandemia.

Also, for a long time, Western series consisted of dozens if not hundreds of episodes. You never know if your favourite series suddenly gets cancelled. There is a high risk not to get any ending. The best thing about Korean dramas is: There are lots of dramas which are only 8-20 episodes long. And the story is complete.

However, this does not tell you why certain dramas are more popular in the rest of the world than in Korea. And the total number of subscribers also does not tell you in which countries a specific drama trended, and how many people (absolute number) watched that drama in a specific country. What those people used to watch in the past. What they watch nowadays (apart from Kdramas).

Oh, and the rest of the world usually does not care about Asian/Korean scandals. Your statistics don't tell you anything about the current news, scandals and rumours in Korea. The rest of the world watches Park Min-young dramas even if Koreans try to cancel her because she dated the wrong guy.

"Cultural differences" and "values" are placeholder explanations. With those three words, you can explain basically everything.

Oh, ok, so if a 40 yo actor plays a 5 years old child in kindergarden, I should ignore the age gap because the story says so? It's a story about the first love. 12 years later, 40 yo actor is suddenly supposed to be 18, and the 5 yo actor is replaced with some 18 yo actress. Age gaps don't matter. What you claim is what you are. Obviously.

In a good drama, the visible age gap matches the story. I didn't mind that the adult FL was older in "Crash Course in Romance" but the writer should have adjusted the story. What bothered me was that I was supposed to pretend that FL and ML were the same age while they were clearly not. Good, that's my problem. Other people enjoy dramas where the 40 yo hot actor chases after a minor, and fans make up excuses. Since he's hot, everybody who disagrees has got a problem. (Yes, I'm talking about Goblin.)

Trending in other countries does not mean much if we don't know the exact numbers and what "trending" means exactly. Also, Kdramas are still rather new and exotic in non-Asian countries, so we cannot compare the numbers without knowing who exactly was watching a drama. People who are new to Kdramas might have lower expectations than people who watched hundreds of Kdramas. To them, the hundredth iteration of the same story still feels original.

It does matter. In "Crash Course in Romance", they used younger actors for the younger versions. Those younger actors looked basically the same age as they were supposed to according to the story. However, the age gap between ML and FL was very obvious and significant. While I liked the actors, the casting made no sense at all with that story. For me, the actors need to look the same age if the story claims the characters were the same age.

Taking offense because the story didn't equal your personal experience is like saying that all people who commit suicide were exactly the same. Most people who commit suicide experience their individual suffering. People in real life kill themselves for the most ridiculous reasons. I don't see how one could watch this drama and believe that the ML is supposed to represent anything specific or, worse, the watcher's life. Well, actually, I can see why somebody would believe that. US-American propaganda nowadays tries to make people believe that actors were ambassadors of a perceived group, and that fiction was actually real, and everybody lacked empathy and needed representation on some screen, and then everybody needed therapy because all emotions apart from pure happiness were unnatural. Sounds expensive, doesn't it? In the past, random people who claimed that some author or drama maker or whatever was writing about their lives were called crazy. Nowadays, those people are encouraged.

Dramas are mainly made to entertain people who generate money for the people who create those dramas. This drama is fiction. Even if we notice similarities with our own lives, it does not have anything to do with us. If we forget that and internalise those artificial needs injected by very intelligent marketing people who know psychology well, our lives will become even more expensive.

FL disguises herself as an eunuch. Only males are allowed to be eunuchs. Women would get executed. This was mentioned multiple times throughout the drama.

ML knows that his 'favourite' eunuch is actually a woman and even supports her. As an unwed crown prince, he's actually not allowed to be around women. And since FL is thought to have killed her parents, ML basically commits treason by hiding FL.

In the last few episodes, FL's true identity comes to light.

There wasn't much to the story but I enjoyed the acting.

If we are in a live and die situation, we just randomly kill without any hesitation? Maybe you do but most people don't unless they are radicalised, which is not the case in this drama. At least, they wouldn't kill without any hesitaten or remorse after one or two days. If they did, starving people in Africa would simply kill everybody around them until they get the food source, and there would not be any starving people anymore within a couple of days. And no overpopulation anymore, by the way. This is not MY morals but the morals of the majority of people on this planet. People usually don't kill other people, even in extreme situations. Or do you also deny that people are starving in Africa, for example, Malawi? If you prefer Asia, just take a look at Yemen. There are plenty of examples.

I'll rewatch the relevant episode next year to see if she (whoever that might be) tried to kill FL after Jun-hee got voted out. If you are right, that's good for you. :)

I think both actors are handsome, and I wouldn't mind if FL dropped ML for the 2nd ML. However, what makes you think that FL and 2nd ML would be a better couple in this drama? There hasn't been much interaction between them. Storywise, it is pretty clear that FL and ML are happy together. They worked on their relationship.

From what I read, you claimed that it would make sense that all mafia members are totally fine with killing because "reasons". The example with Africa was the proof that your correction made no sense in this respect. If you wanted to argue that this was a drama, and things happened in dramas, I could correct you by arguing that there was no sparkling vampire to save everybody.

A good drama follows its own inner logic (and does not break its own logic) and it also does not contradict certain aspects of real life without providing a plausible explanation. That's what multiple people here in the comment section criticised, not just me.

WHY did Somi try to kill FL? And when? If you read again what I wrote in my initial comment, you'll notice that I mentioned the reason why FL should have been killed first. It made little sense to kill somebody else first, especially since the doctor and the police had not been known at that point.

According to the game logic, nobody of the mafia tried to kill FL until the last episodes, by which I mean the killing at night, not the voting. Otherwise, the last episode would not have made any sense. Thinking about killing somebody is not the same as trying to kill somebody.

What made you feel the acting was shitty? To me, it was average. Neither particularily good, nor bad. Maybe Kim Woo-seok's acting was a bit below the average compared to the other actors in this drama but I wouldn't call his acting shitty either.

What exactly are you correcting? Do you really believe that all people become killers after one day without any hesitation just because they have to survive? If so, why isn't the world a better place with fewer people? Why do wars last so long? Why do people in overpopulated African countries still starve?

Also, "the mafia" didn't try to kill FL multiple times. According to the game logic, the mafia (= all members of the mafia) had to meet and decide unanimously. This was mentioned multiple times in the drama. There was no attempt to kill her until the last episodes. The mafia simply let her investigate.

If you want to correct something, please be more specific, so people are able to understand what you mean.

What exactly are you trying to express? I'm not quite sure if you agree with me, disagree or just wanted to share your general opinion with me.

Yes, exactly. And in that context, the parents mentioned that Se-eun somehow had become that girl who was supposed to always win. Or maybe I am remembering that part wrong.

Yeah, that's what is bothering me most. The whole premise makes no sense because the children obviously have no chance, and the parents don't seem to have any goal. The goal cannot be to run that expensive hardware forever.

Yeah, the story was fairly confusing in this respect. The writer should have spent more time on Se-eun's ghost story. We don't even know if the ghost was there because the parents inserted it, or if the dead Sa-eun somehow managed to get into the game, or if it was just a glitch/bug/whatever. Too many open questions. :/