Viajero

Love the two leads, but please not another love triangle where a guy comes between two best friends.

I really like the previous times I seen both female leads. Kim Da Mi has been great in everything I've watched her in, no more so than in The Witch Part 1. Meanwhile Shin Ye Eun was great in Jeongnyeon and Revenge of Others, among other shows. I just hope this doesn't turn out to be love triangle where the guy gets between two best friends.

I had a much more mixed reaction to this series. Positives were the highly sympathetic leads and that the strong women empowerment message doesn't detract from the story. Unfortunately, I thought the series fell short when it came to good execution and direction. Though it has a strong start, the plot could have been much tighter, getting increasingly sidetracked on quickly resolved unnecessary secondary storylines, before beginning to drag towards the end, with some noticeable plot holes. When it comes to Chinese historical fiction from 2024, I thought Blossoms in Adversity and The Double were significantly better.

I thought she was fantastic in My Mister. Despite playing an introverted character who barely speaks, she still managed to perfectly capture the complex mixture of toughness, tenacity, cold calculation, low self-image, vulnerability, and desperation of her character. What she gave us wasn't some over the top soap opera acting, but rather true artistry.

I find that their subtitles are often pretty bad. I usually use it only as a last resort.

This sounds like something I would want to watch. I wonder when, if ever, it will be made available in my region? I hate it when Disney+ buys the international rights to Korean shows because they are much less likely than any of other streamers to make it available worldwide.

Interesting. I thought the FL brought the most depth, with the most realistic and appropriate reaction to her circumstances. Both MLs basically played exagerated charicatures.

I can't figure out the order in which the reviews are placed on this site. I always kind of assumed that the reviews with the most likes (the most helpful) were listed first. But in this case, they put all the negative reviews up front, including several with much fewer likes than positive reviews. What gives?

I felt her stiffness was a good reflection of the character she was playing. A world-weary young woman with deep wounds who doesn't easily trust anyone around her. She's built up thick walls to protect herself from the world. I've seen Bona act much more expressive in other shows like 2521, when it better suited the character she was playing.

I really liked it. One of the best romantic dramas I've watched this year. Plus a great cast. I can see why they cast Kim Hye Yoon in Lovely Runner.

I haven't finished this show yet, but so far I'm liking her character here much more than her characters in Lighter.

China taking over is news to me. I regularly watch both Korean and Chinese dramas and on the whole, I think the Chinese have some ways to go to catch up with Korea when it comes to the quality of the writing, production, and yes, acting.

This doesn't surprise me. Good Boy is entretaining, but Our Unwritten Seoul is one of the best series of the year so far.

I thought the Canadian show was very good. This one is going to have to go a long way to match up.

I would add that when it comes to movies (as opposed to TV shows), on the whole I find Japanese movies to be superior to Korean movies and far superior to Chinese movies.

On the whole, I find kdramas are more likely to be better written, with better acting, and have higher production values. But there are some very good Chinese shows. The problem for me is that the most popular Chinese shows are either overly wholesome modern romances, or historical fantasies (which just aren't my thing). But I have found a few better more realistic modern romantic dramas and a few good historical dramas where the fantasy elements are minimized. My impression of Japanese shows is that they tend to have some quirks that make them perhaps less appealing to a broader international audience. I've come to really appreciate the uniqueness of many of these Japanese shows, but can understand why they are not for everyone. As a rule of thumb, when looking at MDL audience scores, I automatically subtrack 0.3 pts from the scores of Chinese shows and add 0.3 pts to the ratings for Japanese shows. This seems to better reflect my own tastes.

In my opinion, the quality of kdramas has improved markedly since the international OTT platforms started producing their own original shows in Korea, and this very much includes the quality of domestic productions. I find that your average domestically produced kdrama from the early 2020s tends to be clearly superior to your average domestically produced kdrama from the early 2010s. Another way to put it is that I've watched over 200 kdramas produced over the past 15 years or so and the only one from prior to 2018 that makes my Top 30 is Empress Ki (2013). In pretty much every genre, there are multiple dramas produced over the past 7 years that are as good or better than the best drama in that genre produced before then. To the extent that the international OTT plaforms forced domestic producers to improve their product, then I'm the last person to complain.

This sounds a lot more like fantasy than science fiction. They should be careful how they label these shows to avoid confusion.

I agree with everything you wrote, except that I actually thought that, on the whole, these characters were at least as interesting. HP did have more comradery between the main characters, which makes sense given that they had known each other since med school, while the ones in this series had just met.

I personally thought she was the best thing about this series, just like she was one of the standouts in Moving. She perfectly captured the world weary downbeaten character she was playing.