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Makjang Adjacent--lots of fun!
Reborn Rookie is a makjang-adjacent chaebol succession story in body-swap clothing. The powermoves and counter-measures are outsized and satisfying. Lee Jun Young is entertaining as a footballer turned aged corporate chairman in a young man's body. The range and variety of antagonists provide plenty to hate and twists galore with occasional reflection on how parents can shape their childrens' direction, ambitions, and sense of self. Action, Entertainment and just a Touch of MeaningWas this review helpful to you?
Vigilante Education
Casting aside procedural safeguards and conventional limitations, Teach You a Lesson explores a method of rectifying abuse in the educational system by meeting fire with fire. A newly founded national agency ERPB (Educational Rights Protection Bureau) investigates and "corrects" verbal, physical, and financial violence committed by students, teachers, parents and bureaucrats in shocking yet satisfying ways, inspiring people to take back their righful places in the system. Through it all, the trauma and loss that inspired the founder and primary investigator of the agency weaves coherence through the episodes as the cast learns to work as a team to right wrongs and restore accountability within the educational system.Was this review helpful to you?
A lot to Watch and Re-watch
If you can get past the comedic tone and information overload of the first couple of episodes, Hello Monster moves from a who dunnit to an emotional and psychological dance with a brilliant cast and smart script. It poses nature/nurture questions as well as how to resolve broken relationships and what to do with unconventional moral frameworks. Support characters do more than just feed into the main storyline and the episodic cases feed into an over arching story in a satisfying manner. There is a lot to watch and re-watch. Enjoy!Was this review helpful to you?
Relationships Matter
This series is a thoughtful exploration of how people deal with trauma. The children at the beginning of the series are adorable and they demonstrate a child's perspective of how they react to trauma. We see them as teens and adults as they work out their more mature perspective and try to grow past their hurt. The dad, played by Choi Won-young, is the emotional anchor of the characters . Kim Hye-eun's character is horribly toxic--I hope people don't think that the son's repeated reception of abuse is the "right" path to take with an abusive parent. Neverthless, the interaction felt real and was well acted.Overall, this series is heartwarming, brilliantly acted, and well-paced. It's one of my all-time favorites--I highly recommend it.
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Artsy Love with all Your Senses
It's my 3rd time watching Encounter and it's like watching poetry or art. I love the visuals, the use of music, the framing of scenes and people, the use of literature. Watching the expressions of love grow as the ML helps the FL by expanding her boundries with safe frames and naming concerns in ways that help her redefine trauma. It's all beautiful. The movement is slow but real. This an opposites attract gem to be uncovered gently and treasured. Sit and enjoy.Was this review helpful to you?
Amazing Acting, Highly Recommend
This series was amazing. If I could give it 20 stars out of 10, I would! The story is rich with character types that feel like reading a complex novel with depth and symbolism. What it says about power and how different characters embody differing viewpoints about power is fascinating. I agree with everyone about the ML's acting and the others are great too. Highly recommend this series. I'll be rewatching it.Was this review helpful to you?
Bright and Fun
I'm not sure why everyone seems so harsh with their criticism..I Love Love Love this series. It has heart and celebrates dreams, dreamers, and the struggle to accomplish one's passion. Kim Sejeong is the soul of this series and she does a marvelous job of motivating others as she finds her own way in life. The cast is fabulous, the little stories are interesting and the overaching story holds it all together. I particularly liked one of the side stories that discussed trauma and how the writers dealt with it sensitively. Bravo!Was this review helpful to you?
A Dark Tale with Great Music
Shrouded in mystery and suspicion, Dear Hongrang paints a visually artsy tale of longing with multiple interests fighting for dominance to modernized traditional beats. A child’s disappearance long ago and his reappearance challenges the order of a prosperous art guild, while a new wave of missing children compete for attention. Characters with long shadows carry wounds that damage and destroy. A bit uneven, bring tissues.Was this review helpful to you?
Pleasant, light and forgetable
Conflicts arise and are resolved with a Teflon-like quality in this idol-obsessed romantic tale, rich in ideas that provide little accumulated consequence. Bubbly Nam Da-reum works to impress her employer and gain direct links to her bias/preferred idol. Love triangles, corporate sabotage, armchair relational psycho-therapy—it’s all there, lightly told, wrapped in music, and delivered with a sunny smile.Was this review helpful to you?
Personal Justice
Judgement, it seems, depends on who renders it in this ‘judge as detective’ rendering of Juvenile Justice. Each judge carries a past that colors their perspective on episodic cases exploring what happens when poor parenting, poverty, and other social ills collide with systemic injustice. An excellent cast supports this grim yet hopeful tale of the justice system's successes and failures, the fragility of youth, and the consequences when the village fails.Was this review helpful to you?
Audit Terminator or Mary Poppins?
Pursuing corruption with deft and relentless fervour, it is easy to misjudge Cha-Il as a Terminator in Sherlock Holmes' clothing using a veneer of spreadsheets. But scratch the surface of The Auditors and the opaque outsider with questions of “Wolf or Bloodhound?” looks more like Mary Poppins. Well-developed characters and the question of whether innate trust in humanity is compatible with auditing occupy this well-constructed, straightforward tale.Was this review helpful to you?
Great set-up, nicely told
Double Happiness is a warm-hearted tale of a chef trying desperately to please his controlling divorced parents by sandwiching two wedding ceremonies on separate floors of the same hotel on the same day. Ritual, superstition, social expectations, and family dynamics all feed this pressure cooker of a rom-com, told with deft humor and compassion.Was this review helpful to you?
Lots of loose ends but better than S2
After indiscriminately obliterating favorites and members of the cast of thousands, Season 3 narrows our focus back to a few remnants in a power struggle of the classic variety. Examples of humanity and monstrosity in various forms of good and bad emerge as people, monsters, and neo-humans struggle to find a status quo in this new world. Thankfully, a few favorites from Season 1 make it to the end to embody some of the larger notions introduced from the beginning, but very little is resolved, leaving questions to ponder and consider.Was this review helpful to you?
Gorgeous actors, Delightful characters
Such a fun story, even as I rewatched it. An enemies-to-lovers tale with gorgeous actors who really listen and watch each other. An idealized relationship, the way people ought to behave, putting others before self. Trauma, obsession, miscommunication, resolution—it’s all there, with a light sheen that keeps the story moving even when it’s moving. Though others may be satisfied with lingering, the threads kept tying beyond necessity.Was this review helpful to you?
Start with the second half
If you decide to watch Vacation Principle, the first half is best seen at the fastest speed your server is able to go, unless you enjoy seeing people with no ambition, no job-prospects, and no common sense learn to barbeque and do things with oranges. But the second half introduces narrative consequence and adds relationship and learning which makes the series almost worth the patience that the poor pacing requires. The concept of Chae Jong Hyeop's character was ultimately interesting, but it took way too long for the story to get there and it was too bad that his hair obscured our ability to discern anything more than the sparce dialog rendered.Was this review helpful to you?
