MinJi23

outstanding acting, classic drama story

I can imagine this drama is not to everyones liking as , for a K-drama, it is rather dark and at some points uncomfortable.
Although it has some very minor flaws I find it rather outstanding all in all

+ Seo In-Guk is simply fantastic in this role. I didn't know him before and after having watched some dramas for the past two years I think this was the first male lead who completely convinced me to be that person he portrays. When I was watching this I really believed this very person would exist like this, and I could not imagine him to be any way different. There are other actors I like and they are good, but in their roles I always see the real person they are, when you watch interviews with them.
Here it was very authentic. The fact his character was difficult and at times mean and cold made it even more realistic for me, as in general, people tend to be like this. They have their personal troubles and deficites, they can be mean and sometimes, not always, they might have a good side too. But in the end, they are caught in their own ways and can't get out of their own skin and troubles. And that often leads into disaster, for themselves and if one gets close to them, for others too. That is what is shown here for me and that makes it believable. Uncomfortable, dark, but believable.

+Jung So-Min was also convincing in her role. She portrayed very well the inner struggles you might have in such situation, the insecurities you might have from hard times in your childhood, the way things went ok for her with being adopted by her 'brother', but how her past still creeps back into her life and drwas her to Kim Moo-young. This drams is also good at showing certain rules of behaviour and manners that one has to know about concerning Korea. Some criticised that Yoo Jin-Kang 'betrayed' her 'best friend' Baek Seung-Ah, but was Seung-Ah really her best friend? I don't think so. It is not explained fully how long these two women have known each other but it is clear that Jin-Kang is older than Seoung-Ah, yet, probably because of her considered poor and bad family background Jin-Kang is almost submissive in her behaviour towards Seoung-Ah - which is quite exceptional given an obvious age difference between the two. If Seoung-Ah wasn't filthy rich and Jin-Kang had a better background, it would normally be the other way around. And Seoung-Ah is using this fact in a gullibly naive way all the time. Kim Moo-young even points it out (and rightly so) when he tells Jin-Kang that not even after Seoung-Ahs mother hit Jin-Kang in public and offended her deeply (and referrs to exactly that poor seen background of hers), Seoung-Ah doesn't even apologise in her next text message but just once again wants to use Jin-Kang as her servant and messenger. Is that Jin-Kangs best friend? I wouldn't think so. It's more a realtionship of power and inferiority as a given by the strong Korean conventions. Was Seoung-Ah a victim? Yes, certainly, a victim of her greedy mother and to some extent of Moo-Young, but she was not a victim of Jin-Kang in my opinion.

I found the almost creepy but strong attraction between Jin-Kang and Moo-Young very understandable, and I could relate to it personally having had such relatioinship myself too in the past. I fully understood for many reasons why those two couldn't get away from each other and also why it was in some way doomed.

+ I think this is still the only drama where the communication between the leads is realistic, as in how it really happens between people who are attracted to each other but come from difficult backgrounds. There is not love at first sight but a strong attraction. There is lots of banter and even anger and frustration - but always still strong attraction that is even growing despite the anger. The conversations these two have in the restaurant scenes and particularly at the end of episode 6 in front of Moo-Young's house? That was a scene so realistic I even held my breath the whole time, eyes wide open because I have been in such situation myself, pretty much exactly like shown here, with even a at least similar talk that left me both attracted and angry and confused and frustrated. Most K-drama couple conversations are dreamy and cute and how everyone would love them to happen but they never really do. This here, that felt real to me many times during many episodes.

+I loved the mood and the small things in the drama. The way Kim Moo-Youngs place looked, the light, the mood. His feelings of desperation, resignation, anger and still the need to somehow connect and try to understand at least some other person. That does not justify all his behaviours of course, but I found it credible. And again, when I was younger I would have fallen exactly for this type too, I would probably even have stood in front of that door of his like Jin-Kang in the end, crying in desperation and beg him to open that door, because I didn't understand his Jekyll & Hyde actions after a steady emotional up and down. But it is exactly like certain real relationships are, and how they end unhappy in one or the other way. And how they are filling you up with an almost hysterical happiness and emotions you wouldn't have considered possible for you, and at the same time they are like energetic black holes exhausting you to an incredible level.

- if I would want to criticise anything then it would firstly be that some circumstances are rather unlikely. The idea that these two kids where from Haesan, one of them got lost somewhere and all of them live almost aroud the corner in a megacity like Seoul more than 20 years later and meet like that - it is very unlikely.

- the scene with the origin of the burn marks wasn't done in a good way. The kids were fully clothed and if that water would have hit them, they would have had some minor burns, but never such large scars for the rest of their lives.

-the whole stabbing scene and the follow-up was a little unbelievable . So Yoo Jin-Kook loses his police cool and while he later says he felt sorry for Moo-Young, he suddenly decided to stab him on a public road. Jin-Kook confesses to his boss who...does nothing actually, doesn't accept his resignation. Then his little sister just acts rather normal after shortly screaming at her brother? Not believable. Her reaction at the first moment was right, she said he must be crazy, and she was scared then and angry especially because she is very much in love with Moo-Young. The next thing would certainly have been that Jin-Kang leaves that house. Jin-Kang would have been afraid of her own brother after his rather surprising and totally crazy actions. I would have wished that whole part would have been done differently or they would have left it out. It would have made much more sense to me if Jin-Kook would have gotten into a rage and then into a fight with Moo-Young, if he had beaten him up maybe. But that stabbing with murder intentions was an unfitting twist here.

Summary: despite these flaws this drama touched me deeply, maybe really because I could relate to the main characters and this kind of relationship so personally.
I will certainly rewatch it at later as this kind of human darkness draws me in sometimes.

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I despair....

... I really do despair because I am eagerly waiting for a K-drama with an intelligent storyline.
The last one I saw in the more action-related theme was 'my name' which was comparably brilliant.
Since then, no matter what is super hyped before release, I take a look into it and despair often after a few minutes in, and get angry because the writers seem to have left their brains at home in bed. Oo

Shortly, why is that the case for 'Black Knight:

1. So there was a huge (and I mean HUGE, as shown) asteroid that hit planet earth around 2030. We are now located in 2071 in South Korea and what we see is total devestation 40 years on. It's claimed that only 1% of people survived the initial hit of the asteroid. Fourty years later there is still no sunlight, extremely polluted air and people can only go outside wearing oxygen masks and they have to buy oxygen for their homes to survive.

What is wrong with this initial picture?

If such a huge asteroid would have hit the earth, and as there is so much destruction still seen 40 years later in Korea? People wouldn't just have trouble breathing and wearing some masks ( they often just take off by the way, for having funny little bad stunt fights, talking, whatever), - what would have initially happened would have been that the 25 (at least!) Korean atomic plants would have blown up and they would have had ( and those few who then would have survived still would have) an atomic catastrophe. People couldn't get outside not only because they couldn't breathe much, they would be grilled like a steak outside, there would be no food or drink available as everything would have been highly radiated. But hey, let's totally ignore that Oo

2. So, going on from my point 1 with the radiation - there would be no power nowhere. It's almost funny that in that destructed world they show they all have smart phones, electricity, computer games, driving cars with whatever fuel/gas and everything is shown like that asteroid hit did NOT happen, like technology of the 2020s just went on like there was no interruption - how totally impossible Oo
If the asteroid would have hit like shown, apart from air pollution, no sunlight (which would by the way bring other very bad consequences..) and the rather unimportant total radioactive pollution, no one could generate any kind of working energy. No, not even huge modern high tech wind engines, there would be no infrastructure, no raw materials, no nothing. Everything concerning technology up to the date of the hit would be GONE. Especially funny the scene in the futuristic business room with about a thousand huge telly screens - just funny with no source of electricity. Totally illogical no-brain nonsense.

3. Also other things wouldn't be available, for no one, also not for any 'upper casts'. There would be no world trade of no goods, for a looooong time. They wouldn't have fancy new uniforms, weapons, high tech gear, they woldn't have any kind of high tech clothes with high tech mixed fibres, they wouldn't even have hair dye.

I made it into episode 2 giving it a fair chance, but after seeing the young guy getting shot in the head from behind point blank, and I mean fully hit, and then he... is still alive and can sit in a driving truck? Enough for me, total nonsense.


Other things I didn't like: the 'backstory' isn't only total nonsense like that, they just don't give any real backstory at all. The first episode starts with some action fight scenes that didn't really make sense, in between there is this strange family setting in the house where the siblings (?) banter around, all of it with some kind of clownish slapstick music all of a sudden - wtf?

And I could go on for quite a while. Please K-drama writers, stop this trash story writing that is an insult to anyone with half a living brain cell! K-dramas were so good in the past, any genre of it, there were always good ones with great storylines, intelligent plots, what happened? This one is so bad, if you have ANY basic knowledge of anything, it's unwatchable.

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Why it is total BS

I'll make this short because this really angered me:

This show is absolute nonsense - why?

1. It's another flick of in slow motion torture porn going on forever and ever - who enjoys watching such sick stuff to such extent?

2. It is ab so lu te nonsense that the FL would look ANYthing like she is shown. In fact she would have been dead a hundred times after how her father is beating her to a bloody pulp. But let's for the sake of it imagine a very petite woman of probably 45kg soaking wet could survive such attacks, and several of them, where a VERY tall, strong man is kicking her into the stomach, groin, chest etc ( Did I mention that it is absolute bs she would survive this?)... so, if she would survive these attacks for some supernatural reasons, she would be scarred EVERYwhere, her face would be scarred up and down, she would have so many broken bones that she probably couldn't walk and stand upright without very lengthy rehab training, if ever at all again, and I laughed out loud after seeing the end of ep. 3, she is practically mushed potatoe in the end, and next scene in ep. 4 she is sitting in a hospital bed just with a little band aid in her still perfectly pretty face - seriously Ef off with this total nonsense!

These shows glamorize super crass violence and make it look like someone like this very tiny woman could just walk away from such attacks and plan any kind of ridiculious revenge while she would have been dead a hundred times. Are people so daft they don't even realise this simple fact? Does anyone know anything about basic physics, and basic knowledge of what a human body can take or not? I doubt the whole freaking mankind if I see something like this receives 8.4 here, absolutely hilarious.


3. Did I say this is bs already? Well, and on top it is a total insult to EVERY real victim of severe domestic violence, and people supporf this and rate it with 9.0 or 10.0.

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sadly a fail for me

I was really looking forward to this as I had watched a few really good dramas with Seo In-guk before, and was wondering about this new show.

Well, this one didn't work for me. The first two episodes had some funny elements although I started to find the side characters annoying because of the massive overacting.
I watched on and for my taste the elements that were meant to be comedy were just way over the top, be it facial expressions, verbal expressions, movements, it all sadly seemed to clowesc for my taste.

I also have to say I don't like the female lead in this role. ( I don't know her from any other shows yet though) She for a change has too few facial expressions and I can't really see her acting qualities in this show. I don't believe for a second that she is a police woman, especially in scenes where she gets hyper emotional, screams like a mad person or beats a man in the hospital bed who has just died and totally loses it, while doctors and colleagues are watching on. Someone with the police can't be that emotional and lose their countenance.

Also I don't buy the lovestory between the leads. It's one of the few shows where I really can't see any chemistry between them: I always felt like I see the actors 'acting while acting'. I'm constantly aware of it. Them just reproducing their lines they learned, I never believe they are really the characters they play or have real conversations.

That sadly goes for the side charcaters too, especially the other couple. Again, way too much overacting, especially the male side character with the way he speaks, when in some situations it's obvious that he can speak normally.
As I think Seo in -Guk was brilliant in other dramas, I can still see why he might have chosen this role now. In the past he was in several rather serious and even tragic roles, - but, and that is the point - in those he was really outstanding. I believed every single second that Kim Moo-young in '100 million stars...' existed, like that person existed for real for example. I still bet doing 'Minamdang' was a lot of fun for all the actors, as it was a funny show and the feeling gets through they might have laughed a lot on set.

I know 'Minamdang' is meant to be comedic but for my taste it it was just too much of these slaptstick elements, so many that I couldn't believe the serious story parts in the background anymore. You can do comedic K-drama and make the characters real and believable to a degree, like in 'suspicious partner' for example. But Cafe Minamdang' just couldn't convince me. At some point I was even fast forwarding and getting impatient for 'something to happen'.
I did enjoy many parts of the soundtrack though.

So, if you are really into slapstick/ hullabaloo shows, this one might be the right thing for you, otherwise, probably not.

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Best thing I have seen in ages

So, for some unknown reason this drama skipped my attention at the end of 2024 and only accidentally I stumbled upon it seeing Park Bo-young in a thumbnail and started watching.

I’ve been watching K-dramas for many years now, but I haven’t seen anything as good as this, not only regarding K-drama, regarding anything I have watched in the past decades.
Just a week ago I wrote a 1.0 review for ‘heavenly every after’ being really frustrated what the writers and director did with an actually interesting and important topic like a possible afterlife. All the things that went wrong there? Were down SO right in ‘Light Shop’. I never gave a drama a 10.0 in every area, this one got the full 10.0 in all of them.

The actors in this are altogether beyond fabulous. I can’t even say who stands out as they all do. The soundtrack is so multifaceted, so sensitive, capturing not only the entire mood in the alley, but also the specific situations of the characters, sometimes only with a few keys played on the piano.

But from the start: I started watching this without reading a summary before. I watched the first episode, was mesmerized the whole time and after it finished, I didn’t have the faintest idea what is going on. Just a feeling, much like the shown characters themlseves who just seem confused. Same thing happened with the second episode – I watched it, totally fascinated, but no real idea what is happening there.
And this goes on for a while, until episode 5 at least, when things start clearing up a little bit. This is a philosophically very deep, sensitive and touching take on a possible afterlife realm. Not only humans are there, also loyal pets who, beyond death stand by their humans, not giving up until they are safe.
Human souls are wandering endlessly in the dark alley until they find their way into the light shop. Only there they can find their individual soul light and move on, either to another realm in death, remaining in the limbo alley for longer, or going back to the realm of the living.

Each story of each character is very touching and combined with the extraordinarily good special effects to make the alley tangible for the viewer, I was glued to my screen the full 8 episodes without missing a single second. I think I never watched a drama where this happened. Not only were the individual stories very moving, sometimes heart breaking without any of them being attention seeking or over the top, the whole setting was thought-provoking in a deeply philosophical way, at least for Agnostics like me. Many things I saw there fit my personal vague feelings and thoughts of what might come after death. Many things depicted even fit some personal experiences I have made with death and what might come after this earthly timespan. I guess this specifically struck a chord with me.

Apart from all that I was again very moved by the death-and burial rites in Korea in general, which have so many gestures of acknowledging and respect for the deceased – something that has gone amiss totally in many parts of Europe I know at least. There death is totally avoided, and if it occurs, it’s either an emotionless factorylike thing (concerning the actions of many doctors and nurses), a grim business where profit counts at funeral homes who want to sell you absurdly expensive coffins for tens of thousands of dollars trying to convince you to spend more and more with guilty conscience speeches of the lowest order. How refreshing was it once again to see the morgue director in the hospital in this drama, who talked to every deceased person, called them by their name and told them individually with a bow, what the next step would be. How refreshing was it once again to see there just is one sort of light wooden coffin and the yellowish linen death garments that are so carefully put on the deceased.

In small but important scenes it was shown how utterly important, even life-changing in the literal sense – small gestures of good will, or small gestures of pure spite and evil in life can be. I was almost shaken, (having had a mother-in-law who her whole life through made everyone else’s life pure misery with her never ending spite, hatred and lies) when the anxious mother is waiting in front of the operation theatre after the accident and as a viewer you side with her, you feel for her as her son is in acute danger of dying in there… and then… she grabs this cell phone, the girlfriend of her son desperately tries to call him and his mother, spiteful as she is, sends this message to her, lying, that her son is dead and that it is the girlfriend’s fault he died. This ugly, hateful and nasty gesture in an instant changes your feeling towards this mother. Where there was empathy for her a moment ago, there is only disgust and disbelief about such devilish doing. And this small hateful gesture has direct consequences, not only in this life, as the poor girlfriend is taking her own life right then, also in the afterlife, for both, the girlfriend and her son who is there in limbo. As much as this emotionally bothered me, as good I found it captured what is happening in so many families between mother-in-laws and girlfriends or wives of their sons, and as true it rings to me what consequences, on a much broader sphere such behaviour could possibly have.
But there are so many more scenes, impressions, ideas in this show that touch very important topics for actually everyone as, in fact, everyone will die one day.

I am so happy that that the writers and directors of this drama decided against the current trend of just making another horror – everything explodes-torture porn – what every crass, perverted scene can we make up no one has done yet – etc.-show calculating this will probably reach the broadest most dumbed down audience and make the most money. Instead, they made a sensitive, deeply philosophical, slow-paced show, often without much or any words, where you don’t get spoonfed every little detail, but you have to just wait and feel in and think yourself what could be happening.
I will certainly rewatch this as I think, knowing what it’s about will make me sense more details and make me understand more of the story in a second go.

I recommend this for everyone - well, with a working brain, that is not dumbed down with all the rubbish that is out there in tons, for everyone who does think philosophically about topics like the afterlife with an open mind of what might come there without anyone really knowing.

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fail

it's really hard these days to find good dramas with an action score. I was looking forward to this as Ji Chang-wook is a long time favourite (although I prefer his non-action roles), and Wi Ha-joon was promising in several roles, I really liked his mysterious criminal vibe in 'little women'

That said, after having watched the three first episodes: what a disappointment. I think the first 25 minutes of the first episode was just really bad fight and brawl scenes. And not much else actually.
I'm afraid it didn't really help that I recently rewatched 'my name' with Park Hee-soon as the most charismatic, evil and attractive drug kingpin EVER, with such authenticity it sent shivers down my spine constantly... so, seeing Wi Ha-joon now trying really hard to be an equal character? No chance. I can see him acting while acting here, maybe even trying to copy several things from 'my name'.

The storyline didn't really grip me, lots of fights, flat characters. Young guy wants to take over the area of the old boss guy, so far, so non-exciting.
Ji Chang-wook... I don't know, he is trying hard too here, but I don't buy his character either. All the cursing seems fake, all the smoking too, just everything.
I also don't like the whole atmosphere and vibe this show has.

If you want to watch a brainy, actually deep, and psychologically interesting and multifacetted story, see amazing aesthetic visuals and brilliant, authentic characters, main and side roles with intelligent action included? Watch 'my name'. If you want 30 minutes non-stop bad blood-spatter action and actually good actors trying really hard to fit roles they are not (yet) up to? Watch 'the worst of evil'.

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Brilliant acting, brilliant pholisophical ideas, minor weaknesses

So, after I had dropped this at episode 2 some months ago due to the only but major weakness of this drama - the fight/shooting scenes especially when it involves the main police officer - I gave it a second try because Kim Young Kwang is the second lead and I just had to see it to the end anyways because of that.

pro:

-brilliant acting of many actors in this one, Kim Young Kwang, sure, but also many side characters were so so good in this (the student in the goshiwon who finally lost it and snapped (Woo Ju Hyun), the police station chief when he finds out his daughter died (Kim Won Hae) , the very shy and silent bullied nurse (Kang Chae Young), Son Bo Seung as very friendly and gentle high schooler who snaps at some point understandably, and especially Park Hoon as Koo Jeong Man - fantastic acting, he really left an impression actingwise with me)

-the storyline is very intriguing on many levels. It throws many fundamental questions at you. How are humans in general, and why? What happens if you change fundamental parameters in a human society? What are ancient mass mechanisms and how are they triggered? How are they stopped? I really enjoyed this and found it intelligent and something everyone should spend some time thinking about. How do I see this? How do I feel about it? And the series got me, at some point, when the two bullied high-schoolers snap and one starts a shooting spree, I found myself understanding his actions, and I found myself thinking 'shoot the main bully, he deserves it' - the show intrigued you to feel that way and then question this feeling.

- Moon Baek - yes, I understand his view of the world too. Given his extreme childhood story and the view he very early had to have about what and how humans are? It's undertandable he feels the way he does. He has cancer too, another joke of fate, after he had it so tough very early on, so he's got nothing to lose really. And in the end he does ask very good and right questions in the last conversation with Lee Do. He does feel Lee Do is kind of self-rightous telling everyone revenge is not the answer and a deceiving feeling - how can he know for other people? Is it really what he feels or is it what he made himself believe he feels because he couldn't go on otherwise? How is it ok he shot a 100 people before and now he shoots one but not the other enemy? I found myself understanding Moon Baek to a rather great extent, and not agreeing with Lee Do on many things to be honest. That doesn't mean Moon Baek isn't a psycho of course, but not everything he says is wrong, the opposite even.

-one of the best scenes psychologically is the one where police chief Cho Hyeon Sik stand before his foe, gun pointing, tears in his eyes, and when Lee Do tries to convince him that pulling that trigger won't help, he says something I feel very true - he says ' I was wrong when I told you that back then, I didn't know anything' (until now, until I MYSELF am suffering this unbearable pain and loss of someone loved through the doing of some scum criminal, NOW I truly undertand that putting such people in jail over and over again does not bring any justice, law is not sufficient this way to bring justice). Very strong acting by Kim Won Hae, he portrayed this pain and anger very believable for me.

-and as the show progresses, more questions come up. What if you really provide guns for just everyone? How would people react? Would it bring any justice? Or would it end in bloody chaos because humans in masses are not able to deal with it? And they depicted that wonderfully, when pro and anti gun people started fighting and even shooting each other. I believe it would be exactly like that would it happen in reality.



cons:

once again the shooting/fighting scenes, in that case of Lee Do. Absolutely ridiculous what they did there =D I know they wanted to make him this ex special op guy, moving silently like a wolf in the shadows taking everyone down, but they really overdid it here. The scenes are so unrealistic it's hard to watch when you know ANYthing about how real situations like these look like ( And I do for some reason). Totally impossible he walks into a small house unarmed and there are about 30 street thugs with knives ( and not afraid to use them full force) and he takes all of them out - no way in hell.

Even more absurd was the scene when Lee Do wants to take down Koo Jeong-man - he has a sniper riffle, runs up to a rooftop ( in an area he does not know by the way!) and while in reality the car with Koo Jeon-man would have been long gone anyways until Lee Do had reached the rooftop, they seriously show him at the edge of the rooftop, with a sniper gun suuuuper far away and trying to hit a VERY fast and unsteady moving vehicle and Lee Do is standing (a sniper NEVER shoots standing, impossible to hit precisely) and shooting a car tire and of course he hits it - Ri di cu lous! Impossible.

And a third one, quite in the end, Lee Do, once again unarmed, and funnily enough fresh from the hospital after he had been shot in the upper body SEVERAL times (which means the man can NOT move normally, let alone fight) is confronted with about 10 guys with loaded machine guns all pointing at him, and again, he takes all these pro guys with machine guns down and out - Laughable of course, he'd be dead in 5 seconds latest.


Conclusion:

I really enjoyed this because it was an intelligent, thought-provoking storyline with a topic everyone is confronted with in the news ever so often all around the globe. It puts you at the spot, making you think how do I see this? What is my opinion and why? Is there a solution? Is it the one or the other option shown here? Or none of both? So as this is so well done, and many actors in this show were more than brilliant I give this a 9 (and if they hadn't f 00ked up the fighting/shooting scenes once again like in so many such showsOo) it would have been a 10 even.
So, if you like action-loaded and tense shows but WITH brain, this one could be for you.

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just doesn't work for me

the tearjerking story of the two kids in the first episode strangely didn't touch me at all. It's really strage, as the story itself of violent parents is definitely something normally getting to me, but here - nothing. I also didn't find the two actors very convincing, and it just seemed... 'invented' and also exaggerated, especially when they are on that ship to flee, and that very young boy gets beaten almost to death by the girl's psycho dad. I didn't understand, why he didn't just tell the girl on the ship when he saw her father outside at the port, they both could easily have hidden in the ships toilet until it had taken off, and nothing bad would have happened? Next thing, the boy super tragically leaves the girl without warning her, and then he is the one going straight towards her dad at the port and bringing his attention to them both, thus confirming with his behaviour the girl is on the ship? Then we see how is is badly beaten, holding the aggro-dad off from going onto the ship... we see how the ship with the still clueless girl is finally leaving the port - and then all of a sudden, the dad is on the ship? How?? How did he even get on, without a ticket, and when the ship had actually already taken off? Didn't make any sense to me and it all seemed to be a forced story to make it extra extra tragic.

The dad can then even chase his daughter like a serial killer all around that huge ship without anyone hindering him? No personell there? No security? After he almost killed a boy for all to see at the port, leaving him there presumably dead?
The girl jumps into the water to escape the dad - cut - she is alone on a remote island.
There she has some interesting items, tea pots and whatnot, no one knows wherefrom she has all these things as she actually dropped the huge bagpack that was filled with all the good stuff on the ship, when she ran from her father.

Another cut, and it's 15 years later, so we jumped from around 2008 to 2023. Interestingly enough our now 15 years older island girl has a great haircut with nice longer wavy bangs - one wonders how she managed that all alone? Even more, she still has that same set of clothing, the only clothing she had actually for 15 (fifteen!!) years, and these clothes are perfectly fine, not torn, or ripped, colours not washed out =D

So, after these 15 long years, finally, and no one knows why it didn't happen all the years before, some dorkies with their drones are suddenly there, and our island girl is supposed to see the first human after those many years alone. They take her back into civilisation and .... I re-checked like how long was she supposed to be gone? And since when, which year? So, she was lost there since 2008. A rather modern time I'd say? Yet, when she is back in the city, she suddenly acts like a person from rather 1800, not 2008, trying to use a water tap in the bathroom, not knowing how to actually use it and then spreading water all around the bathroom like an idiot? Did she not know water taps back in 2008? they make her seem like she grew up in the jungle since she was a toddler, why?

And I could go on with these things...I really like Park Eun-bin, she had some great dramas in the past and she is good actress, but here, the story is so lacking basic sense, even she can't save it for me.

I am really annoyed meanwhile that many promising new dramas do not pay attention to anything concering logic and intelligence. Things don't have to be perfect but the mistakes just can't be that obvious and jumping at me like that, at least I get so annoyed and distracted I don't want to go on watching at all.

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not good enough

I hardly made it through the first episode. So, they would have this fantastic storyline to start with, some kind of righteous, superpower angelic creatures who come to earth to save humankind - more or less... and what they did is they made some strange slapstick, pseudo-comedy nonsense out of this.
Music is annoying, and actionlike in the wrong settings, the actors look like clowns instead of mystical revenge angels, and the dialoges are either boring or nonsensical.
This could have been fantastic with a serious, touching approach. Instead it's just forced funny and annoying.

And, as Seo In-guk is one of my favourite actors - I don't get it. He is so talented concering acting, he did two of my favourite dramas where he excelled concering acting (especially 'the smile has left your eyes'). And for quite a while now I can't even see his acting capability because he only chooses (for my taste) totally crappy productions with awful writing and stroylines.
Still hoping for something better again in the future - this isn't it.

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Agenda ruined a great drama

In short. I thought this was such a great drama, a 9.0 drama - until episode 7 finished.
I am so annoyed by political agenda being forced into every story, even when it doesn't fit AT ALL, like here.

Anything would have made sense about the dead brother - that he wasn't allowed to study photography which obviously meant the world to him, that his rich parents really didn't approve of his girldfriend and he wouldn't have wanted to live without her, that he had been forced into the military by his father and decided to die instead, I would have even bought it if they had said he was secretely gay, as his character was played like I could have imagined that.

But to force a trans story into this, reasoning it with something like 'he always played with dolls when he was little' (which means NOTHING concering your later sexuality by the way) it's just unbearable. Netflix puts this into everything these days and I won't watch anything anymore if they do it as badly as here and ruin a good drama like that for them to get the agenda box checked on their papers.

And don't get me wrong, I am old enough to have seen 'boys don't cry' in the theater in the 1990s, and it was a true story about a real trans person and it was very touching. But what they do these days from tv production giants like nextflix, pushing this into every other story forced and kind of randomly? No.
I'm dropping this after episode 7 and I give it an 'unfair' 1.0 just for this reason, ignoring the many good aspects this drama had before.

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Strange in the wrong way

I was looking forward to this, Jung Hae-in being one of my favourite actors.
I just read the main storyline before and thought it sounded promising, but the actual series didn't deliver it for me.

The start is just confusing. So we are where? In a dystopic parallel world? Or in our world? I don't know, because if someone like the main character really existed with these kind of healing and recovery powers, and that would have been known since his childhood, he would not have seen the light of day ever again because every nation in the world would have tried to put him into a laboratory and disect him to find out his secret. That at least was my first thought after 20 minutes in.

The next thought was, who are all these people, why do all the things happen, and at some point I felt annoyed as the main character loudly speaks all of his obvious thoughts in a way nobody really does. It's just something I don't like in general. I don't like being spoonfed every single thing like that. For all the abilities he possese he seems awkwardly helpless and clumsy most of the time. I finished the first episode and most of the time you see him clutching his missing eyesocket or both his eyes in panic and uttering obvious things. He is steadily on the run and can escape, until a very tiny woman shows up, (either knowing all the secrets for an unknown reason or just trying to be the weird 'I like creepy things'- character) and after seeing his healing ability, happily throws him off a roof. Oo

I honestly didn't like any of this. It's dark, and I like dark, but this just feels unpleasant. The characters seem flat and constructed altogether, and I don't like any of them, at all, it just seems sterile and weird to me. It also reminds me of rather bad copies of some Marvel movies I didn't finish either because I disliked them.
You get thrown into the storyline without any necessary background information, instead there is lots of graphic organ cutting, pulling and slicing and this steady rather helpless out loud commenting of the main character. It would have been so much better and more intelligent the other way around. Give visual background, let the audience think and let it understand the mysterious lead character by his actions, his gaze, etc.

I stopped watching after the first episode, so if it got any better or even brilliant later I might have missed that. I simply didn't care about any of the characters or the story, it just seemed too artificially fabricated and thrown together in the attempt to create atmosphere and tension - which sadly it failed to do.

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