Ophanin

At first, the hero is very insistent with his colleague and she thinks it's cute. They both agree to play this little game, so I guess it's all right. Still, it's a weird relationship. Anyway. And he's got an inhuman metabolism, he gets hit, beaten up, drugged but everything's fine, he gets back up.
"Not dead yet"... obviously, the scenarium armour works well.

The pace of this series is prodigious, there's not a second to get bored (apart from episode 10 when nothing happens. Why?) Everything follows on super fast with humour, action, suspense and you really want the [redacted] of [redacted] rotten to get caught, him and his henchmen. It has its over-the-top moments with improbable situations but we accept it, that's what we're here for. I mean, the synopsis alone... haha

All the villains are foreign Koreans, from places where the Japanese deported them. I don't know what to make of that. There must be a reason.
And lastly, Drug Monster, she starts off super badass and then the series goes on to belittle and destroy her. I didn't like the way she was treated at all.

PS: rarely have product placements been so unsubtle !

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Shin Ye-eun, the more series I see with her, the more captivating I find her acting style. She exudes real authority and a particular determination in all her roles ; there's something both naturalistic and elegant about it.

In this series, there are situations of profound injustice, manipulative characters very happy to be untouchable, beatings at 10 against 1 and bullying that the perpetrators openly brag about without suffering the consequences, so some moments really hurt. In the first half, it's impossible to get a second's breathing space.

The plots all move forward at the same speed, and in the final episodes the pace suddenly picks up, so even though we had absolutely no way of finding the culprit, we don't feel cheated. We see the same scenes several times from different angles, going back to the end of some of them to go back before and give a new context. Not a bad idea. These young gentlemen are evil geniuses. I don't want to boast, it's not a contest, but here goes : I guessed about the brother and his love affair. Yep.

However, these people don't know how to respect other's privacy and personal space, they go through their friends' things a bit too easily. That said, these young people know how to talk to the cops. They lie to them, telling them only what they need to hear. Nobody respects them.

However... I wonder about the need for a minor female character who turns out to be pregnant and says she wants to keep the child because she has "no other choice". What are they trying to tell us with this ? I have my own idea. Does anyone have a problem with the fact that she's in a relationship with an older guy who's apparently a star (it's thrown out there in a second and we move on) ? yuck... Or was it to denounce a real star ? It's disturbing this narrative arc that adds nothing to the plot and leads to no conclusion.

Ps: Well done to this schoolgirl who, by changing her wig, gets +100 in camouflage, so no one can spot her. A prodigy.

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First episode, the only female characters : a nurse is insulted, a woman hangs herself, a technician narrowly avoids being sexually assaulted (saved by a man), a girlfriend in the middle of lovemaking is shot with a machine gun.
And it doesn't get any better after that. It's just guys, real tough guys, because we're real virile males, yeah.

Yet another series glorifying the police (and their video surveillance service, apparently ?). In fact, we are told that bureaucracy prevents brave cops from saving lives. And journalists ? they do nothing but annoy the police who protect us at the risk of their lives. If that's true, it's very serious !

There are lots of little visual effects that fuel a dynamic montage, even if the plot doesn't advance much. (The villain's motivations... a bit light, shall we say) For example : the strategy of showing the same scene from a different angle from one episode to the next, classic and effective. It's not necessarily the most subtle approach, but the extreme situations that follow one another without any downtime, the villain who is having a good time, and people's cowardice in the face of harassment make this series compelling. Simple but engaging.

To be honest, I watched it to unwind after When Life Gives You Tangerine.

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The Koreans still have an open wound when it comes to the adoption and so : theft of children. The Japanese and American evangelists ‘helped themselves’ and profited in an inhumane way. No reparations are planned in this regard. So it's understandable that a series like this would be released in this country.
Well, here we are swimming in eugenics, as a bonus. How horrible. Unfortunately, no one will be surprised to see this kind of thing happening soon. We are going to have eugenic laws on births, I am sure of it. We already have them on assisted suicide instead of care.

The four over-trained young people sometimes mess up and act impulsively. They avoid confrontation several times and covering for each other. I like their dynamic.
With relatively little character development, we can still distinguish different personalities, which is all we need, really. They work well together. Less is more.
Everything moves quickly, and the series flows smoothly as we move from one traumatic story to the next.

The only concern is the main villain. She changes her behavior too abruptly from one scene to another. It becomes tiring after a while. How can we trust someone so unreliable ?

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Go Min-si can play both a cold-blooded killer and sociopath in The Frog, and an adorable, funny, and kind chef in Tastefully Yours. She can also paint strange but colourful pictures and cook delicious spaghetti. Don't eat it !
A very good thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat without being sleazy. It shows the consequences of events on the characters' lives. And the fact that there are two timelines without us realising it for quite a while is so clever.
The only annoying thing is those few scenes that are imagined and only take place in the mind of one of the protagonists. My time is precious, you know ? I have to look outside with a nostalgic air, and that's not going to happen on its own.

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Palace intrigues, Zang Hai's revenge, power struggles, diabolical plots, convoluted mysteries that we always manage to unravel... it's all very well done. It's a joy to watch each episode. It's a long and beautiful play about the corruption of power and revenge. The plot keeps us in suspense, wondering what schemes Zang Hai has been plotting right under our noses without us noticing, and suddenly he extricates himself from the trap he has fallen into, that mischievous little raccoon. I think it's brilliant that the main character doesn't know how to fight with weapons, but with his mind, his rhetoric, and his knowledge of the mysteries of power. Following him has been fascinating.

The music in this series is simply wonderful. It varies greatly, doesn't repeat itself too much, and adds so much to the atmosphere and elegant grace of the staging. The musical composition is exemplary, making you feel respected, with the main theme returning tirelessly without becoming boring. The sets and costumes are equally impressive. It's incredibly beautiful. A feast for the eyes and ears. Episode 27, the putsch episode with percussion and soldiers' choirs throughout, was masterful.

There are sword fights in the rain, of course. How could there not be ?

All this is very good, but... what a beautiful couple Zang Hai and Zhuang Zixing make. They gaze at each other intently and tenderly, take hot baths together (‘It's not a coincidence. You came here for me, didn't you ?’), and meet secretly at night. Just like Princess Antu and her good childhood friend, Eight. Very very close friends and affectionate, of course. No double meanings, naturally. What do you think... *turns the table upside down* Stop the queerbaiting ! you're not Disney, are you ? Kiss each other, for God's sake ! I've put incense everywhere, sorry.

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"I love the moon, yet the moon doesn't know"

Yet another series where a female warrior fights with a whip.

Yeah, not to brag, but I also saw Mulan when I was a kid, and it wasn't too bad. (no memory) And then, I'm all for inclusivity but against the army, which causes a terrible dilemma when watching this great series.

The feminist message is always welcome, but unfortunately it doesn't fly very high (a french expression) ; I imagine it's difficult to be more “offensive” in a series set in historical costume. Despite this, He Yan remains incredibly strong and independent, she is afraid of no one and teaches her male counterparts some valuable life lessons. She even inspires one of them in his quest for revenge. However, the message can be interpreted as follows : women can also become military leaders if they work ten times harder than men, come from the aristocracy and survive assassination attempts. Not sure that's very positive !

Nevertheless, unfortunately, everyone eventually discovers that this talented soldier is actually a woman in disguise. I didn't know that heart rates differed between men and women. It's like in some Indian films where nurses can tell if a woman is pregnant by taking her pulse. All of this is extremely credible, of course. The science of the pulse.

‘I'm here to tell you that regardless of my name or gender, I would always become General Fei Hong.’

By the way. Speaking of gender. Did you know that there are countless examples of people changing gender until the end of the medieval period ? Especially from female to male, to be honest. The historian Clovis Maillet discusses this in his book 'Les genres fluides' (in French only, I'm afraid) and Patrick Boucheron in his lectures 'Le sexe du Pouvoir'. (french too, sorry)
A character like He Yan could very well have lived and been recognized as a man in the West, if he had wanted to. This fluidity, which lasted until the emergence of hetero-patriarchy around the 14th century, poses a problem for research because for people of those times it was not an issue, it was just the way things were, so it is sometimes mentioned, but not always, and we can only guess at it. A person is a man because they live that way and are recognised as such, period. When they die, it is quickly noted that an abbot was buried in women's clothing, because they return to the gender assigned to them at birth on the day of their death. And then we move on. Sometimes it is really just the pronoun that changes on the death certificate.
In a Confucian society like China, I have no idea if it's comparable. Not sure.
Anyway, trans rights are human rights. No matter where or when.

‘I killed you once, and I can kill you again.’

The episodes move quickly. Don't blink too soon, or you might miss a scene. I challenge anyone to get bored watching this. It never stops. The plot moves at such a pace that I didn't really follow the conspiracy that is discussed so eagerly throughout much of the series. Sorry, fellow scriptwriters. But sometimes we jump a little abruptly from a night-time festival to the headquarters of a distant city. (Very entertaining episodes, though.) And we don't really know what Chu Zhao is doing for quite a while, whether he's an ally or an enemy. Oh well, never mind, do your thing if you want. In the last few episodes, he was becoming a pain, it has to be said.

The humour works really well despite the tragic events at the beginning. The heroine has fun when she decides to take control of her life and flirt with the commander, Huaijin. The two play cat and mouse. It's extremely cute and funny, and often brings a smile to your face. Zhou He/He Yan is hilarious when she strains her voice to annoy Ryan Cheng/Huaijin, pushing him to his limits as he tries to remain impassive.

"Commander, I just want to feel your sword." Everyone calm down. It's his sword, actually. Um. Not like this.

The fights are beautifully choreographed. Sometimes defying the laws of physics. Well done, cables ! We get to see all the settings, all the weapons, all the clashes, everything, night and day, in the rain, in the snow, on top of a mountain, in alleyways, on a battleground. What a treat !

"I'm the ghost of the one you murdered." I'll make a note of that. I'll have to use it again.

As for the music, it's certainly beautiful, especially the string quartet, but it's too present. We need to breathe, after all. Unfortunately, that's how Cdramas are made. I'll have to get used to it.

"Once upon a time, only the moon could see my face." Same here. What a coincidence.

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These two detectives have no concept of personal space or privacy. They should have lived together from the start.

“Can I trust you ? To the point that even if the truth comes out, your trust will remain ?”

A thriller that starts off very strong but runs out of steam two-thirds of the way through. We have everything we need to solve the mystery, and we get lost in confirmations of what we already know, and we wait a little too long for the solution. Twelve episodes would have been enough instead of sixteen. The beginning offers dynamic staging, nighttime rain, and landscapes like fields of reeds. But it quickly becomes shot-reverse shot and close-ups on faces. It's curious because the same thing happens in Good Boy by the same director, Sim Na-yeon. But they're still quality series !

I saw Kim Shin-rock in two good series this year, where she played completely different characters. So much so that I wasn't sure it was the same actress. I find her here, again in a radically different role. I love this kind of professional who knows how to reinvent herself and deliver demanding performances.

On the other hand, the series presents journalists as disrespectful and stupid troublemakers. And the police as a big, supportive family in the positive sense of the term, sticking together against the bad apples. Whereas, well... the police are mostly a mafia that covers for each other so they never have to answer for their actions.

Ps : In episode 1, it is explained that you can only report someone missing if they are a minor, autistic, mentally disabled, or suffering from dementia. In Korea, if I, a responsible and independent adult, cut ties with my dangerous family, someone can report me missing and send the cops after me ? What a nightmare ! People disappear for their own legitimate reasons. The police are there to continue harassing them.

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It's impressive to advance investigations across multiple time frames like that. They intertwine from one case to the next to paint a complete picture at the end. What a feat of writing by Kim Eun-hee.
These multi-layered plots are always fun, as witnesses are needed to provide new clues, so we revisit previous scenes and discover each time that someone else was there and saw everything. All those prying eyes !
It really is the excellent suspense series it promised to be. Each episode ends with mounting tension and a new element to the investigation. It takes several minutes to get there, not just painful cliffhangers. And thankfully so, given the traumas that are addressed. It's emotionally heavy going. The walkie-talkie scene: "I've waited 15 years for you. Say something, please !"...

That said, body language is complete bullshit. Only charlatans sell their expertise in this field, which has absolutely no scientific basis. It's on a par with psychological assessments for the courts. Complete rubbish. And profiling isn't based on anything either. (We can attribute all sorts of intentions to murderers since their opinions don't count. And we will never be inside their heads) At least it makes for good plot devices. And we even get the hypnosis sequence to recover memories, the whole shebang ! (Memory isn't a hard drive where you can retrieve a file of memories.)

Accidentally, a series that denounces the police. Welcome to this conference.

From the second episode onwards, we see that the police lie to extract confessions. They lie and intimidate the suspect. It's scandalous, but tragically, these people have the right to do so, and even if they didn't, they would never refrain from doing it. They also have no right to kill people or deprive them of medication and sleep in their cells, but that has never stopped them.
Later, the young inspector threatens an old gangster with charging him with illegal gambling if he doesn't give him the answers he wants, and this is presented in a positive light because it advances the investigation. It's just threats and abuse of power, even corruption, since he's turning a blind eye to a crime in exchange for something...
In fact, these police series always put us in the shoes of police officers who do unacceptable things, but because we want to know who is guilty, we end up validating them. Instead of rebelling. What right do they have to ruin other people's lives ? Their curiosity and ability to destroy us should be questioned, but never is.

At one point, a police officer lectures during an interrogation, saying that the victims had families who loved them. It really annoys me to hear that. What if the people who were murdered were alone, isolated, without families ? Would it be okay to kill them then ? Great message.
Another lecture from a policewoman to a colleague : he should shut up and obey instead of trying to "impose his opinions"... he was just trying to help with the investigation and the chief wasn't listening to him. And then she adds : "I don't know why you hate the police so much." I have a few ideas, if you want to hear them. But don't change a thing, you stupid police officers ! Keep up the good work with your 6 out of 10 unsolved cases. It has never been the goal of the police, anyway, contrary to what the copaganda would have us believe. And it's not a question of rules or laws preventing them from doing so, they already don't respect the law.

Throughout, the section chief is portrayed as a poor cop tortured by his choices, and he is offered redemption when he searches for a scarf, evidence that he could have shared instead of keeping it to himself. He wanted to ease his conscience, selfishly, after lying and destroying. The guy is a scumbag, period. I hate the way crime series redeem bastards who have done nothing to earn forgiveness. He's suffering in his little heart ? That's the least he deserves. It's like asking me to mourn the murder of a Nazi by another Nazi (a totally hypothetical situation). No, no, no, my eyes are dry.

In this series, with all their little speeches about being good police officers, I started to wonder if it wasn't all tongue-in-cheek. They spend their time pissing people off with their haughty, moralising attitudes without ever arresting the right people. Those losers. And then they're all miserable, the poor things.

No, but I liked the series, eh ! It's great. It's just that I can't stand stories about nice detectives devoted to truth and justice. It's so far from reality.

PS: In episode 7, the woman in the café is reading a huge tome by Walter Benjamin. Good for her. I love that philosopher, but I don't know if I could read that to relax in a crowded place.
PS2: Saying that you become a serial killer because you were abused as a child is very silly given the prevalence of adultism against children.
PS3: Either talk or eat, but don't do both, you bunch of slobs ! What is this mixing ?

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Not a fan of the young murderer who is necessarily insane and also dresses up as a woman. Surely we can stop with that after a while, can't we ?
And IQ is classist nonsense (invented to keep poor people out of higher education) and racist, to boot. (The famous world map of IQs that fascists love.) Right, let's stop with this crap, shall we ? Come on, let's do it.

I watched this series solely because of Kim Hye-soo, and she really carries it. Unstoppable, funny and poignant.
The irresistible Jung Sung-il is so funny as a jaded character with a keen sense of justice. These two form a dynamic duo that makes this story, full of twists and turns, very engaging. You think it's going to be a comedy with seasoned reporters, but the real theme is the rich's stranglehold on the media. Rich people who made their fortunes under Japanese occupation, no less.
Park Seo-yeon, I wondered where I had seen her before, and it was in a similar series (a mix of investigation and humour) called ‘From Now On, Showtime !’.
The whole team of crazy journalists is endearing. We want a second season. Oh yes, we do !

Eat the rich. Save investigative journalism.

PS: Kang Ho employs the well-known ‘YouTuber strategy'. Namely, behaving like a selfish little shit and pretending to be a victim at the first sign of trouble. All that was missing was for him to equate criticism with harassment, and we'd be all set.

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“The moon is beautiful tonight.”

A series written and scripted by women. It deals with the problems and judgments they face. All in a melancholic atmosphere. Zhang Jingyi plays an ordinary, courageous teenager who carries the weight of the world on her shoulders, following her role as an agile and assertive warrior princess in Legend of Zang Hai. She and Zhou Yiran bring great strength to their characters, who are determined in their own way without being exuberant. Their actions speak for themselves. Overall, this is not a hypocritical series that raises issues without really addressing them.

It is clear how devastating it can be to hide the truth from your children. And how essential education about sexual and emotional health is. This should not be up for debate. Lives are at stake.

The two main characters come from different backgrounds and repeatedly give the adults the opportunity to explain themselves, to make amends for their mistakes and their silence, but to no avail. They consider themselves untouchable and well-meaning. It is not a question of means. The parents do not consider their children to be fully-fledged human beings with needs and rights. Sadly commonplace. With their backs against the wall, forced to reveal the truth, the two protagonists are told that the violence comes from them. Family comes first. Suffer in silence.

Bullying, people distancing themselves, unfair rumors... these are difficult moments to deal with. When you've been through it, it's always a challenge. In the world we live in, there is only one solution : to collectively take responsibility for saying stop. Individual courage doesn't make a difference ; it has to be collective. But the thing is, most people see no point in taking action when they're not directly affected. And so the cycle continues. The series shows this very clearly : there is no excuse for people who saw and knew but said nothing. And if the victim rebels against the injustice they suffer, they are punished. Even our death doesn't satisfy our tormentors ; the harassment continues.

Xiao Beiyu went through so many things that could have been avoided. And there's nothing we can do for her ; we can only watch helplessly as her life is pieced together by her little sister. Some parents have children because they can't have dogs, as they say. Beiyu's video testimony does not excuse them for their behavior and how they treated her while she was alive and killed her a second time by hiding the reasons for her death. Being kind for three days does not make up for a lifetime.

Qingyu's father appears unassuming at first, but the more we get to know him, the more we realize his malicious position as the good family man. Always there to maintain the patriarchal order without taking responsibility for it, hiding behind his wife and family decisions. His honor as patriarch takes precedence over the well-being and dignity of his daughters. You can present it however you want, but that's what remains in the end.
And then, when he tries to confide in his daughter, he talks about himself and himself alone. And we're supposed to offer him redemption because he understands that his daughter is dancing in secret and he doesn't say anything instead of forbidding it... Doing nothing is a small price to pay. The men in this series, my God, they make you want to resort to violence... especially cousin Jinrui.
As for the mother, we're in gray territory. It's hard to forgive her, and yet she does what she can to survive. The actress delivers a phenomenal performance.

The little brother and friends, together, supporting each other, helping each other, and listening to each other, they are the light that this world needs and undoubtedly does not deserve. Ming Sheng, always there, ready to do anything for others without expecting anything in return, he has a kind heart.

In short, exceptional character writing.

Ps : The surgeon father is in a relationship with a nurse who is barely ten years older than his son. Let's talk about that.
Ps2 : All those men waiting for Qingyu outside her high school are embarrassing. Do they think they're Jerry Seinfeld ?
Ps3 : Justice for Mumu !
Ps4 : Thanks to this series, I finally understand why Chinese productions associate couples with the moon.

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Sets, costumes, music. It's standard for Chinese dramas, meaning very high quality. The fights are superb, with all the swirling fabrics and blades slicing through the air. And then killing by piercing the body with wires is inventive and very beautiful visually. (My God, what am I saying ?) The first two episodes follow a frenetic pace, after which things calm down a bit, but it maintains its framing, slow motion, high-energy inserts, mini-flashbacks, etc. (Long-focus close-ups, on the other hand, are still illegal. Forbidden !) The most frenzied conspiracy in history. And the editing doesn't give you a second's respite. Great art.

There is virtually only one woman in this world, the fierce Zhong Xueman, but on the other hand there are many men obsessed with Xiao Beiming, the “wanted detective”. Men who are extremely devoted or willing to do anything to find him and prove that he is not dead, lost as they are in imagining him gone. Lost to the point of dreaming about him, in a friendly way, of course. These Chinese dramas and their queer baiting are trying; we suspect that they can't do any more, but still, it's trying. Do or do not.

Xiang Hanzhi, aka Xueman, looks very young, and it's quite strange to see a character like hers evolve in this world of men as an equal. That said, the actress is very good in her role as an invincible fighter.

The Mission Impossible-style masks are brilliant ! And very practical. They quickly abandon them, too. You never know what to do with them. Apart from that, the humour is sparse but always effective; we would have liked to see more of these scenes.

There are some minor oddities worth noting, such as Xiao Beiming, who is too ill to move in one episode, then jumps in to save his friends in the next ; and at one point he has to hide or risk being identified and put in prison, but ends up walking around freely among the crowd. Quantum camouflage. Then, when he is taken prisoner, he walks around everywhere with his hands cuffed, but he gives instructions to his former fellow inspectors, which is funny. In France, we have a former president (a scumbag) who was sentenced to wear an electronic tag to avoid rotting in prison like everyone else, but because it annoyed him and he didn't respect any of the restrictions (being at home after 10 p.m.), the courts decided to take it away. Take a leaf out of his book, Xiao Beiming.

It's a shame about the slump in the middle, as episodes 17-18 are more like summaries of the story than anything else. After that, it picks up again, at its own pace, with numerous reminders of where we are in the investigation. So this is not a series to binge-watch, as I did. The series loses momentum towards the end. What a shame. I was a huge fan of the first half.

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(TW: this series deals with sexual assault, alcoholism and domestic violence.)

Jeong-woo's courage and patience, though. Everyone condemned him and no one will ever apologise. Then his ‘friends’ don't help him, cowardly and sneaky. It makes me so angry to see their behaviour. The total lack of guilt on the part of the perpetrators is infuriating. I was drawn to the hero's determination. That's the real crux of this series, his determination to prove his innocence, so much so that the background of the characters who take his side is barely mentioned and not exploited at all.
The first episode is exemplary in its abrupt narration; the rest really takes its time, it's too long, far too long. For example, we get a piece of evidence to understand what happened ten years earlier and for an entire episode, it's just there, nothing is done with it, no one studies it. Eight episodes instead of 14 would have worked much better.

Next: the portrayal of autism. Frankly, I'm fed up with it. We're always reduced to circus freaks in perpetual crisis. Here, on top of that, he's some kind of dangerous madman. I'm really sick of it. Maybe one day we'll get a real, honest portrayal, namely a poor, isolated person, nothing spectacular, which is what most of us are, and not a rich kid with his own little painting studio and a dead body in his basement. Pfff.

Kim Bo-ra gives yet another good performance, still with a slight resemblance to Shelley Duval. In episode 7, one inspector asks another if the actress (he calls her by her real acting name, not her character's name) is more popular than Choi Na-gyeom, a character in the series; a strange joke, even sexist... it must have been improvised, I imagine.

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