L13

That's how it works for cdramas, so why not?

They’re speaking up for their friend, who continues to be harassed even after death. When Sulli and Goo Hara died, their friends and supporters spoke up in similar ways. It’s true Korean society is extremely misogynistic, but getting angry at some men for caring about their friend’s tragic death is insane to me.

Celebrities don’t have to comment on every news story before they can be allowed to speak about things that affect them personally.

This sounds a lot like A Dream of Splendor, which had AMAZING chemistry between the leads/romantic tension in the first 15-20 episodes but went downhill after that. I hope Flourished Peony will emulate ADoS's commitment to mature characterisation and understated yearning while doing a better job with the plot and pacing.

An extremely stupid script elevated by good direction. Nothing about the disease, how it works, how people and institutions react to it or the development of the cure makes ANY logical sense from a medical, public health or sociopolitical standpoint,* the COVID-19 parallels already feel dated—let's make a cliché zombie show and have the characters compare the zombie virus to the novel coronavirus constantly but without making sure the comparisons really hold up or trying to make an actual point, great idea—every single character is a total idiot, characters' personalities and motivations change several times per episode to suit the needs of the plot, THE SHOW ISN'T EVEN SCARY OR SUSPENSEFUL—the only chilling moment came when the apartment complex resounded with the bangs and screams of all the infected people hiding away in their homes, but the show did nothing to build on that atmosphere—that one combat medic is simultaneously conducting cutting-edge medical research, butlering for her boss, raiding drug dens in SWAT gear, giving important press conferences on live TV and delivering quarantine supplies like those aren't at least four different jobs, the relationships between the Korean military, the civilian government, Korean corporations and foreign drug developers are never once explained or clarified, etc. etc. etc., but at the same time I'm having fun, so I'll keep watching. The soundtrack and musical direction are good.

*My favourite "this makes no sense, but we need to make our awful plot work, so just go with it" moment was when Lieutenant Colonel Military Doctor cum Private Corporate Spy cum Military Liaison for the Zombie Plague—again, why are a random active-service combat medic and a suit with a useless MD observing the infected and making the cure in an abandoned factory? I'm pretty sure there are more qualified biomedical researchers and more sterile labs in South Korea, let alone the world—said society needed to hold out longer because scientists were struggling to come up with a vaccine that could breach the blood-brain barrier. BITCH, YOU COMPARED THE VIRUS TO RABIES EARLIER (a much more appropriate comparison than COVID-19, by the way)! Rabies is still a deadly disease on a global scale, but it causes virtually no fatalities in developed countries like the US BECAUSE INFECTED PEOPLE CAN GET A SHOT AFTER THEY'VE BEEN BITTEN! As long as you get the vaccine BEFORE THE RABIES VIRUS REACHES THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM you'll be fine!

So it would have been totally worthwhile and actually mega useful to roll out a vaccine based on the antibodies they were already familiar with ASAP! It wouldn't have cured the people who were already showing symptoms, but it would have prevented further infections and saved infected people who were still asymptomatic (and don't forget the virus takes a few days to take over according to the show). That would have put a stop to the spread of the disease and allowed the authorities to focus on containing the incurably sick and rebuilding society while pharma companies continued to look for a cure. THAT'S HOW RABIES WAS SOLVED! But instead the military just let the infected rampage through Seoul and create more zombies everywhere they went because they were more interested in curing the already zombified (an impossible task at the time) than in preventing further infections in the first place. Brutal waste of time. Imagine if society had just refused to develop a COVID-19 vaccine until we knew how to cure it (which we still don't)!

Anyway, again, I'm having fun with this show, but you really need to turn your brain off while watching it. And don't get me started on how illogical everyone including the protagonists is!

This sounds like an updated version of Nirvana in Fire and the cast is gorgeous. I will be seated! I love me a scheming protagonist with a hidden identity on a quest for revenge. It’s not an original concept, but it always hits the spot for me when executed well.

A lot of students at "elite" universities dabble in sex work in the US. It's a way to make money.

I'm on episode 12 and I'm loving this drama so far, but it's hilarious to me that Lin Qiang has been working for a nasty drug cartel for months now and no one has asked her to 1. have sex, 2. do drugs or 3. kill a person yet.

NOOOOOOOO

If I got cucked by Sakaken I'd just say thank you instead of fronting like I was gonna get my girl back, but I guess they need to fill 16 episodes somehow...

I would bet everything in my bank account that her father was abusive and she killed him in self-defence (even if it was premeditated and/or excessive or whatever). That's just how kdramas are.

I'm really excited for this, but I hope they change some elements of the movie, especially the ending.

(SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE AHEAD)

I think the ending where Duri sacrifices her youth and her chance to live an easier and happier second life with a good man in order to save her grandson works well/has an emotional impact in the movie, but it would annoy me too much in a 16-episode drama. I really hope she doesn't go back to her old self at the end and disappear without a word from the life of the guy who liked her so much.

Like, they could still give us the same climax where the grandson has an accident and needs an urgent blood transfusion and Duri chooses to donate her blood to him and thereby give up her youth, but after that—cue ONE YEAR LATER time skip or whatever—I need her to be walking down the street one day and find the magical photo studio again, take another photo, go back to her younger self, and go back to the producer dude.

It's not that I don't understand the message of the movie, which would be undercut to some extent if Malsoon/Duri just got to live out her life again and did it differently, but I like my romance to have a happy ending too much to tolerate angsty/melancholic bullshit like that.

I also need the drama to spend more time on Malsoon's daughter-in-law and I need Malsoon to realise how terrible she was to her and to make up for it by doing nice things for her DIL as Duri. In the movie she got neither punished nor redeemed by the narrative for abusing her DIL (and favouring her son and grandson over her granddaughter). What was the point of showing us her internalised misogyny without doing anything about it? Isn’t seeing that women could and should live better lives one of the big opportunities for growth/personal enlightenment inherent in the premise of giving an old-timey granny a second youth?

I think this is a relic of the Japanese original, which is all about getting into the University of Tokyo. Though of course your point that any good university would be transformative for these kids, not just the top ranked one, applies equally in Japan… Now that I think about it, you see a similar pattern in American shows and films about high school, where characters are often obsessed with getting into their dream school (usually Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, etc.) even though they could probably be just as happy and still succeed in life if they went to, like, Pomona or the University of Virginia. I suppose making one university the end goal is a way to simplify the stakes and amplify the drama.

Thanks for the recs! A Moment but Forever is probably not going to be my cup of tea, but In Blossom looks good and I wasn't aware of it, so I added it to my to-watch list.

This is not what I wanted to hear, but it makes sense. Thank you!

I need this immediately after Prisoner of Beauty got canned. It looks so good! Do we know when we might expect it?

I don't think it's "rude" to make movies that show the Nazis were evil and I don't think the UK has stopped doing it...

Thank you! Wow, I didn't recognise him at all in the first episodes.

It's not uncommon for kdramas to display too much wounded national pride and obsession with the past whenever they mention Japan, which I as a foreign viewer don't relate to (and as someone who despises nationalism in all its forms, even as a reaction to historical injustice, I don't like it much either).

However, in this particular case, the drama literally takes place during the Japanese occupation of Korea, when Japan ruled over the peninsula and exploited and oppressed Korean society with remarkable violence and cruelty. This is a historical fact.

What is more, Unit 731, which inspired the human experimentation subplot, is also a historical fact and the show actually shies away from representing the full extent of their evil. Both their methods and the number of people they killed were even more horrific than the drama reveals.

Considering all of this, the show humanises its Japanese characters to a degree I wouldn't necessarily expect from a kdrama. Some of them are shown to be regular people just trying to live their lives within an unjust system that happens to benefit them, and some are shown to be horrified and disgusted by what the Japanese military is doing. I've watched plenty of kdramas that didn't extend quite so much grace to their Japanese characters but portrayed them as categorically evil instead.

Depicting a fictionalised—and softened!—version of a real-life atrocity is not unfair to Japan. Like, they did do all that in the 40s, and the drama takes place in the 40s. What do you want?

If this was a drama about Soviet or Polish characters during WWII and it showed some Nazis committing crimes against humanity that were extensively documented in real life and can be looked up on Wikipedia, I should hope you wouldn't complain that the show was stoking anti-German prejudice.

Is the actor who plays Sachimoto credited in the cast? I don't think I see him.

The drama had some really touching moments, but it also got draggy in episodes 5-6 and frustrating in episode 8, in which all other subplots and characters were suddenly sidelined in favour of Igarashi's illness and death. The drama should have spent less time milking the tearjerker scenes in the finale and a bit more time on the exam results/aftermath and resolving the other characters' personal stories. In particular, Maki and Yuta's romance was concluded very poorly in my view.