L13

What is Haemi trying to achieve by following Youngyi and Kyungjoon everywhere to make sure they're never alone together lmao. This isn't high school; you're their boss! You just look weird and are making other people uncomfortable. Get your act together.

I’m really liking the main characters’ interactions so far. Every scene they share together is charged. Also it’s good IMO there’s not too much fantasy, action, CGI, buddy comedy, etc. in favour of a focus on quieter human stories, including the protagonists’ lives.

Thank you!

Yes. The current crown prince is her son and she has four more sons (grand princes, i.e. sons of the queen as opposed to princes, who are sons of concubines).

Because of certain developments, it becomes clear to the queen that the crown prince's position is precarious and if he loses his title, not only will she be pushed out of the palace by the king's mother, but also her other children will probably be in danger. The various concubines in the palace are now trying to put their sons forward as potential successors to the crown prince.

(In historical reality, however, a queen with five healthy legitimate sons would have been undefeatable in the palace and not even the queen dowager could have touched her because of the strong preference for legitimate princes in the line of succession. In this drama, the position of the queen and her sons is weaker than it would have been in reality.)

I'm not familiar with the original webtoon, so could someone who is please tell me whether Shin Hyun-bin's character is supposed to be good or one of the villains (or somewhere in between)? Also, is there any romance in the webtoon?

I'm pretty sure she realises the grandmother is capable of anything. It was implied in her conversation with the deposed queen that the queen dowager was the one who killed the previous crown prince (Taeil? Taein? anyway).

She just hasn't said it out loud that she's afraid her eldest son will also be killed because it won't help. She'll just be treated as someone who's stirring trouble for no reason and it may give the queen dowager the ammunition she needs to push her out of the palace.

OMG

Bogeom won because he's the best student among the three, and also because he was most balanced during the debate.

The examiners were not huge fans of Seongnam's outspoken advocacy for commoners. Some of them also disapproved of his answers in the first examination, though he found champions for both his solution to the half-moon problem (the king liked it) and his construction planning response that went beyond the required material to talk about the workers' lives and needs (one of the tutors whose identity I'm forgetting happened to see that one after another examiner had already given it the worst possible grade). Clearly Seongnam's opinions, although they seem well-argued and principled to us, are too radical for many of the stuffy statesmen involved in the selection process.

Uiseong, on the other hand, may be just a bit too stupid/bloodthirsty to impress them. He has the political backing to do well, but I think Seongnam's verbal smackdown of his idea to burn the quarantined village with the villagers still inside it succeeded in making Uiseong look unsuitable in the eyes of undecided voters.

Which left Bogeom, who didn't take a one-sided position either way, which would have alienated some of the examiners, and is very good at academics. He was a good consensus candidate and it makes sense that a conservative body put off by princes with strong opinions would go for him.

All that said, there have been some signs already that the king is impressed by Seongnam, so I expect him to become Seongnam's backer in the future.

He's a great person and I also hope he doesn't die, but I think the drama is setting up Seongnam as the person who actually has what it takes to become king. Not only does he have regard for the common people, as a couple of his confrontations with Prince Uiseong have shown—like when he told Uiseong not to insult the palace servants and when he said you can't just burn sick people to end a plague—but also he has a streak of determination and resourcefulness that none of his gentle siblings possess, presumably because he had to lead a pretty harsh life outside the palace at some point.

That said, I agree the crown prince is a nice, smart and upstanding guy! In Korean historical dramas, however, the flawless crown prince always ends up dead.

Indifferent. He cares about his duties and is well-intentioned, but he doesn't see what's in front of him and has no interest in his wife, concubines or for the most part his children.

I just started ep. 3 and I'm loving the drama so far. I have to say I'm kind of surprised a woman as sharp as the queen doesn't realise Grand Prince Seongnam is the most capable child she has among the four when even the Crown Prince, who lives apart from them, can see it.

lmao you're upset because the queen and king aren't part of a happy nuclear family? They didn't choose each other, so why do they need to be in love? They're co-workers, not spouses in the modern sense. The queen's life has plenty of meaning without her sleeping in the same bed as him every night.

Yeah, she has real feelings for Minato, as she should! But people sometimes develop feelings for someone while loving another person. Life can be very messy!

To everyone saying "ooh, Tsumugi said she loves Minato, I guess she's moved on and won't get together with Sou," please look at the official poster for the drama at the top of this page and tell me honestly if it looks like she won't fall in love with Sou again.

It's like this is your first drama or something!

I'm still far behind on this version and I fast-forwarded through 80% of the Taiwanese original, but the one thing that keeps bugging me about this drama so far is that these people only have 45 min every night, but somehow they manage to travel to their friends' houses and apartments, go to restaurants and spas, have dinner/long conversations out of the house, go from one place to another place and then to a third location, etc. in that span. 45 min is sometimes not enough for me to make a roundtrip to the neighbourhood supermarket! And Shanghai is massive! There's no way all these characters live and work within like 10 min of each other (which is what their travel times come out to).

This could have easily been solved by making the time travel window 2 or 3 hours long, which would have still been short, but at least it wouldn't have been so glaringly unrealistic.

This is one of the best romantic cdramas I've watched in terms of characterisation and relationship dynamics; I love both main leads, who fit into two cringeworthy stereotypes on paper (top student who's handsome and good at everything but doesn't date vs cute and girly famous actress) but are actually made nuanced and human here. Yu Tu, the ML, is not your typical 'unemotional' ML for all that he can be a bit obtuse and uncommunicative but is actually quite introspective and sensitive. And Qiao Jingjing, the FL, is not childish and self-absorbed even though she has a high opinion of herself; she's actually a genuinely witty, charming woman who knows where she's going in life and cares for the people around her.

(Plus unlike in every other drama about celebrities I can think of, here the leads think about and discuss the class difference between them like real adults, so there's some commentary on celebrity culture/wealth here and there that is nice to see. Yu Tu's thoughts about his career choices, his social position relative to his classmates' and his ability to provide for his family in the first half of the drama were quite realistic and sympathetic.)

I was quite impressed by both Yang Yang and Dilraba's acting, especially Dilraba's. She's very natural in this role and gives QJJ a distinctive personality. I think QJJ's character is weaker than YT's (in the sense of being less well developed by the scriptwriter), but Dilraba's interpretation of it and all the flourishes she adds by way of mannerisms elevate the role.

And the leads' relationship is remarkably nice and mature compared to the cdrama average; they have conversations about important things (!), don't misunderstand each other, hold on to their love and gradually learn more about each other's personalities and become more comfortable together. And they both turned down their exes when their exes begged them to take them back! They did NOT go out with other people in an attempt to get over each other even when they were having issues! Wow, such maturity for a cdrama.

ALL THAT SAID, as good as the leads and their relationship are, there's actually no plot at all after they get together. I did finish the drama for them, but ten episodes of pointless fluff felt quite egregious and I had to fast-forward through some stuff. So much time was eaten up by random characters talking about how handsome Yu Tu is, for example. And the first 2/3rds of the drama had a lot of filler too (basically all the gaming stuff).

Again, I did love the main couple, but the drama was seriously twice as long as it should have been and the longer it went on the more I forgot why I was watching in the first place. I guess the search for the perfect romantic cdrama continues.

I mean, of course she loves him? He's her long-term boyfriend. There are still seven episodes to go and that's plenty for her relationship with Sou to develop.

This was a really great drama! There were some minor plot points that felt a bit too convenient and I strongly suspect real-life forensic pathologists don't do quite as much criminal investigating as the characters here, but these are minor complaints. Every case was well put together and showcased different characters and their personal stories in a way few dramas achieve.

And indeed the characters were the main strength of the drama; Mikoto made for a truly admirable protagonist while remaining human (I loved how she dealt with her tragic backstory and that it actually never came up at UDI--though I wouldn't mind seeing that happen in a potential second season) and Nakado-san had his moments too (with minimal spoilers, although I'm not usually a fan of vigilante justice in dramas, I thought his calm, frigidly angry determination to get revenge was really cool). Shoji was relatable yet strong and Kube-kun was in many ways the hidden protagonist of the drama; after all, his character development and personal dilemmas framed the entire story. I loved Mikoto's family too, and the surprise reveal of a certain member of it in the later episodes was quite funny. And Kamikura-san was a star as well!

Every episode had an emotional arc to it, but the drama rarely tipped into sentimentality and moralising the way, say, a Korean show with the same premise might have done.

In conclusion, I think what really sets this drama apart from most other medical/crime procedurals and makes it so watchable is that it spends a lot of time on its characters' personalities and lives. They're not just there to run DNA tests and catch criminals but also to banter about their love lives, philosophise over drinks, work out their family and career issues, etc. And they grow on you like real people.

I hope there's going to be a second season, but it's been 4 years now, so I guess this will have to do. Funnily enough, the one subplot I most want to see picked up again is Kube-kun's growth into a doctor with a sense of purpose. In fact, now that I think about it, if they can't get the whole cast back together for a proper S2 (didn't Ishihara Satomi give birth recently? I'm not sure when she plans to return to the screen), I think a spinoff about Kube Rokuro's first steps as a forensic pathologist with cameos from other characters from Unnatural might also be interesting? Who knows.

Yes, from different mothers.

Thanks for reading my comment carefully and taking the time to clarify it!