Watch Lighter and Princess first!
Listen to me. Have you seen Lighter and Princess? No? Watch that first. You’ve seen L&P already? Then be prepared for a downgrade when watching this. These two shows are quite comparable. The setups are the same (a college romance in the beginning) and the basic structures are similar. Both include a breakup at the midpoint with a timeskip (not a spoiler), with a significant business focus sprinkled in between while ML desperately attempts to salvage whatever love they have for each other. It’s difficult not to compare them.The first 14 episodes or so are fairly standard. Nothing to write home about. A college romance. He’s a sneaker designer starting his own business, while she’s a struggling college student entering the world of business finance to support her mother. Slowly but surely, a romance develops, only for the show to break them up in the latter half of the story. Sound familiar? I told you it’s similar to Lighter and Princess. This is where the writing truly begins to test your patience.
I wouldn’t call it toxic per se but the “will they, won’t they” shtick was really annoying. The pushing each other away in order to protect the other person had my eyes rolling numerous times. ML is particularly guilty of this, and his decisions led to significant consequences.
There is a second couple, but many would find a professor-student relationship pairing weird, but I didn't think much of it. Their storyline was not particularly interesting by the end anyway.
For me the best thing about this show was the opening duet performed by Arthur Chen and Sabrina Zhuang. Really good.
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The most insufferable love triangle.
K-drama rom/com writers should be banned from using love triangles in their stories for a few years. The love triangle in this show is so exhausting, insufferable, and time-consuming that it overshadows any positive aspects the show might have had.Our Universe had everything it needed from the very first episode to become a decent show. A young ML and FL who, unfortunately, become the guardians of their nephew. She is looking for work, he finds a job with a famous photographer, and somehow all three end up living together under one roof. That’s it! If the story had stopped right here and just focused on these characters, the kid, and their working circumstances, things would have turned out for the best.
Instead, a second male lead and a parent is shortly introduced to pivot the show off a cliff. With these two new awful characters, the show forgot why viewers tuned in the first place. The pushiest love triangle I’ve seen recently, to the point you wouldn’t be mistaken if you thought 2nd ML was the main lead of the entire show. Then this terrible parent conveniently shows up, bringing even more problems. What a rat. No one watching this show came for this badly written melodrama. Everyone online is asking if we can return to the family storyline with no hope in site for five excruciating episodes. Big oof.
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Yikes. A very messy story.
Love Phobia aired alongside the Netflix giant Boyfriend on Demand. It stood no chance. Why compare the two? Because both feature AI/virtual boyfriends as their initial hook. Unfortunately, this show is such a mess that there’s no need to compare them.Like any normal viewer, I initially thought this was a semi-serious romance with a touch of comedy. However, Love Phobia proved me dead wrong. The real story hidden behind the scenes involving everyone connected to the mother is far worse. What the writers pulled here blew my mind with how awful it was. Motives were shaky at best and comically bad at worst.
For what it’s worth, I did quite enjoy the romance between the main lead and the female lead when it was the primary focus. I also liked the cheerful young female coworker. However, the overall story is so bad it overshadows any positives about the show. Save yourself eight hours and avoid it at all costs.
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Not Shining
Still Shining had everything going for it. A serious romance and mature story with visuals to back it up. Acting was excellent with realistic characters and decisions. Regardless of the choices ML and FL made and how horrible they are at communicating it all fell in the realm of possibility. However, around the halfway point, cracks began to appear, and character motivations and reasoning started to falter.When you realize there are only four episodes left, but the writers decide to introduce a second female lead, you know something is up. I was rooting for 2nd FL, but honestly WTF is she doing on this show? What a waste of precious time. The writers had her ask the male lead to roleplay a breakup, even though they never dated. I understood the context of why she did it, but are we serious right now? The writers seemed to want the show to appear smart through her with the nonsensical lines they made her speak all while neglecting the main focus of the story with an ending fast approaching.
This ending. My goodness. This show is definitely more about the journey than the destination. A rough journey at that. And a journey I’d argue not worth starting if you have other shows you’re interested in.
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Frustratingly Beautiful
This show is frustrating to watch. Your ability to finish it depends on how well you can tolerate Eun Jung being repeatedly manipulated by her toxic childhood friend, Sang Yeon, throughout various periods of her life. Some cosmic force seems to keep bringing these two back together for the worse. The obvious solution would be to cut all ties, but then it would only be a three-episode series—and we can’t have that, can we?It’s easy to hate Sang Yeon, but to me, she was equally pitiful because of the struggles she endured. I was deeply invested in whether she would ever find her moment of happiness. I really like shows that portray a character’s entire life, and it’s done here with Sang Yeon.
The show addresses some heavy topics related to Sang Yeon's family situation that I did not expect.
The big C is in this show (not a spoiler), and although it is not original, the acting involving it was a masterclass that brought me to tears.
Lastly, the soundtrack stood out to me. The three vocal tracks by Seori are so good.
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Less business talk. Focus more on the ladies!
Let me start by saying this is not romance. ML and FL did promos together for the show, and I just assumed. I was very wrong. Honestly, that’s fine because there's no messy love triangles then.Second, this show gets infinitely better after the halfway point. Before then, I found the first half quite boring. Even toward the end, the show is only good when it focuses on the female lead’s roommates and her immediate coworkers. Their struggles related to the business and the IMF crisis in the background are the highlights. Very emotional and very good, especially concerning a certain character and her child.
So, what was so bad about the first half?
Old folks talking business.
Absolutely relentless hours upon hours, episode after episode of just scheming over and over in the chairman’s office. How to hide this, how to cover that. Finance talk. Stock talk. Bonds talk. Shares talk. Even if you don’t understand the terminology being thrown around, you still get the general sense of what’s happening. But my goodness, they needed to cut down on this nonsense. It feels like 30% of the show was filmed in the chairman’s office talking about the slush fund. This series should have been trimmed to 12 episodes and it would have been infinitely better.
Otherwise, the acting is good. Costume and set designs are nice. Mildly funny in regard to her entire undercover shtick as a 20-year-old. Ending is good.
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Very forgettable.
Car salesman Chang-soo unwittingly becomes the test subject of a mysterious perfume that magically (complete with low-budget special effects) causes women to fall in love with him.I'm here for Seol In-ah (Twinkling Watermelon, Business Proposal). She plays as Jo Ah-ra, the so called "Bus Goddess" by Chang-soo. Unfortunately, Seol In-ah could not save this movie, neither could the male lead.
Just zero chemistry sums of this show. Very superficial. Just not enough meaningful time dedicated to the romance, whether it's built on lies or not. Not very romantic or comedic when it's trying so hard to be. Watch something else.
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This young actress killed it.
This young actress killed it. She carried the entire show on her back along with her way-in-over-his-head kidnapper. Their pseudo father-daughter relationship on screen is awkward, funny, and endearing, despite the unfortunate circumstances that brought them to their current situation. Since the new-family dynamic was the focus of the earlier episodes, I found the beginning more enjoyable than the latter half, as the big mystery of the show naturally started taking over.The show's central mystery of who did what to whom, which landed our fugitive duo in their predicament, is intriguing but ultimately unoriginal. The gradual revelation of a single crime scene and the events that transpired can become somewhat repetitive; however, it still managed to hold my attention. Fortunately, this series consists of only 12 episodes.
The bad guy is comically... a rich villain stereotype, something you've seen countless times before. In contrast, the other villain who works under him and handles all the dirty work is surprisingly decent. I found myself liking him because, deep down, he is actually a softie.
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This show is truly cursed.
Let me highlight the most significant flaw of this show: the recaps and repetition of scenes. I kid you not, each episode is literally 20% recap and reused scenes of death or someone getting injured. This is clearly an attempt to pad the run time to meet their obligatory episode lengths. The same death scenes are shown repeatedly, often death scenes just from the previous episode. It's infuriating.Second, they needed to give Park Mi-jeong (female lead) more lines! In retrospect, the female lead likely has fewer lines than some of the side characters. She is so underutilized that it feels almost criminal. While this makes sense given the circumstances of the deaths surrounding her, incorporating more inner dialogue or any additional lines would have significantly improved her character. Most of the time, she is merely present to be pretty and gloomy.
Next up, Lee Dong-jin (male lead) character is ... something else. Not to even sugarcoat it, if you're interested in watching a man openly stalk a woman over several episodes-like following her through dark, creepy alleys-then this is your guy. At least the show has the decency to address his stalker behavior and not pretend this is all okay.
I genuinely wanted this show to be better than it is. It suffers from a painfully slow pace (not in a good way mind you), exacerbated by the constant rehashing of the same death scenes. Despite these shortcomings, I found myself eagerly anticipating each week's episode. I was invested in how the protagonist would unravel the mystery, and the last two episodes were quite enjoyable, ultimately saving the show from complete disaster.
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Such an amazing first episode that you'll want to finish all of it.
The setup for this show was a hook, line, and sinker. An absolute chef’s kiss. I can’t recall a setup this good from a romance from a single episode. This single plot point kept me intrigued until the very end. The secret ML holds from FL is the backbone of the show, but amazingly, Radiant Season held itself up despite all the other storylines it has also.FL has two sisters and her grandmother that all live together and each one has their own story that runs the course of the entire show. I was impressed with how well these other stories turned out. I didn’t expect much from the youngest sister, but even her little high school romance was pretty solid.
Onto ML. This guy carried the show. Sure, FL can act too, but I thought ML was great. I really liked how early on he was basically told off by FL to kick rocks by being so pushy, and he respected her decision by stopping completely. The show literally would have been over with credits rolling. He actually respected her decision. I know. Unheard of. It’s so silly but I really liked his character for that.
I think the only real criticism I have for the show is its blatant use of AI. Everyone is working at this design clothing studio or whatever, but all concept art is AI slop. Yuck.
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A judge is sent back in time.
A man is given a chance at a second life. In his previous life, he became entangled with shady and corrupt individuals and organizations, which led him to enforce crooked rulings even his mother could not defend him on. He’s plopped back in time to his very first case as a judge 10 years ago. Now, armed with years of court case knowledge, he sets out to seek justice against those who wronged him and to correct the mistakes of his past.The story is fairly straightforward. He is sent back 10 years, and episode by episode, he gradually works his way up from a low-level judge to the position he needs to be in to get revenge on those who hurt him.
The earlier episodes were the best part. He had the upper hand over everyone as he set out to resolve the terrible rulings from his previous life. What was also great was his renewed connections with friends and colleagues who had previously been adversaries, namely, his wife from his prior life, who treated him coldly as a pawn to benefit her law firm. This time around, both were given the chance to become better people.
Anyway, the second half was so-so in my opinion, as his prior knowledge no longer played such an important role. Chasing after the main antagonist was fine, but old men talking around a table and being corrupt can only be so entertaining after a while. His unraveling of a vast web of corruption of old dudes wasn’t exactly my cup of tea. Hidden slush funds and layers of bribes, not exactly new narrative territory. Luckily, all his colleagues and friends along the way made it tolerable to the end.
Overall, a good show with solid acting by the main lead.
Don’t ask how he was sent back. It’s just a quick narrative tool the show will never explain after the first episode.
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Not bad but not good
I would have enjoyed it more if I had no idea what the movie was about. The softcore scenes in the first half would have had a greater impact if I hadn’t known the general twist.I thought the "solution" to the entire predicament was a bit too simplistic and in your face. Other than that the ending fit well enough for these crazy people.
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Surprisingly Solid.
An episodic court procedure K-Drama. Not exactly something that jumps out at you to drop everything you’re doing to watch it. However, I’m glad I gave it a chance. What’s here is some clean, smart, and well-paced writing. Each episode centers around a case, which I found both interesting and relevant to current times. The cases never feel dragged out as they are resolved within a single episode.Since this is primarily a courtroom drama, don’t expect a full-blown romance between the male lead (ML) and female lead (FL); it’s only subtly hinted at. However, I really appreciate when a show addresses the issue of their age gap that makes sense to their characters.
The only negative thing I can think of regarding the show is FL’s ex-boyfriend. He is a lawyer working at a competing top law firm and consistently appears as the opposing lawyer in each case. I wish his character was smarter. He’s kinda dumb, to the point where you wonder, “How did this guy get hired at the most prestigious law firm in Korea?” I wish he didn’t resort to petty and underhanded tactics to try to win; he just gets steamrolled by ML and FL every time.
Other than that, fantastic stuff. The ML and FL family dramas are also woven quite well into the ongoing story despite the short 12-episode count. Why are the good shows so short!? I can’t even knock the nonexistent ending. I just need a second season ASAP.
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Interesting...
Under normal circumstances, I would never have given this movie a chance based on the description alone. However, I randomly saw a short TikTok edit about the film and wanted to see the ending. This movie is… interesting, to say the least. A young girl is “kidnapped” and lives with a pedophile for two months. Eventually, she is found, and he is arrested. Cue start of movie when she’s a young adult.To think that her time as a young girl with this man for two months is the LEAST of her problems is actually insane and just goes to show that the movie had quite a bit going for it in terms of story. I think that’s why I enjoyed it. It subverted expectations. I went into it not liking the topic but was pleased with the story it was telling.
The acting was good, it’s shot well, and the original soundtrack is nice. It never crosses the line in terms of visuals if you know what I mean, though there is a brief but impactful use of male nudity for the story's sake. The other stuff she goes through is far worse if you can believe that.
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Glad I gave it a chance.
The thing that stuck out most to me about this movie is its cinematography. I don’t want to be cheesy but many of the landscape shots felt timeless. Despite not being in 4k and no HDR, I felt like I was brought back in time.As for the love story itself. Wholesome, sincere, and very simple. The main FL and ML don't even speak that much to each other. Not much drama or tension, and the ending felt satisfying despite the circumstances.
I’m glad I gave this a shot despite the most unassuming poster I’ve ever seen in my life. I didn’t even know the young female lead was Zhang Zi Yi.
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