This review may contain spoilers
Foxes, folklore, and feelings that hit harder than the CGI ever could.
There’s something so quietly satisfying about a drama that leans into the supernatural and still manages to feel human. Tale of the Nine-Tailed didn’t need to convince me of its mythical rules or worldbuilding with exposition dumps or fancy lore charts. It just dropped me in — gumiho, gatekeepers, underworlds and all — and somehow, I went with it. Not because it always made perfect narrative sense, but because it felt emotionally true.
Now, the central romance between Lee Yeon and Ji-ah did have its moments — it was sweet, wistful, a little doomed in the way all fox/human love stories seem contractually required to be. But it was the fractured, feral relationship between Yeon and his younger brother, Lee Rang, that really locked me in. That push and pull between love and resentment, betrayal and the aching hope of still being loved? That’s where the show’s heart lived.
Kim Bum gave Rang this incredible volatility — not just anger, but that deep, snarling kind of hurt that comes from having once trusted someone too much. His bitterness never read as villainy for villainy’s sake. It was bruised loyalty turned sour, and watching him teeter between revenge and reluctant vulnerability was way more gripping than any monster-of-the-week segment.
And then came Kim Soo-oh as the soul of Geomdung, Rang’s childhood dog reborn in a little boy’s body — and that just wrecked me. No words needed. Just this silent, devastating echo of unconditional love. Every time Rang’s expression softened around him, it cracked something open in the show that none of the epic fantasy stakes could touch. That bond didn’t just humanize Rang — it quietly gutted him. And, okay, maybe me too.
Visually, the series didn’t hold back. Glossy, stylized shots of city nights, ancient forests, shadowy temples — it all looked cinematic without screaming about it. The effects were hit-or-miss, but the aesthetic ambition? Solid. It knew what kind of story it was telling, and it committed. Even when the plot occasionally veered into the melodramatic or padded its runtime with less-than-compelling side quests, the emotional current stayed steady. Loss, love, sacrifice — all the usual big-ticket items, but handled with enough restraint that they didn’t feel hollow.
By the end, what lingered wasn’t the spectacle or the mythical creature lore. It was the loyalty between brothers frayed by centuries of pain, the love that refuses to die even when the body does, and that strange, beautiful ache of having been loved by something that never asked you to be anything more than you already were.
Tale of the Nine-Tailed didn’t reinvent the genre, but it didn’t need to. It simply told a fantasy story with real soul. Strange? Yes. Occasionally messy? Sure. But when it landed, it landed deep.
Now, the central romance between Lee Yeon and Ji-ah did have its moments — it was sweet, wistful, a little doomed in the way all fox/human love stories seem contractually required to be. But it was the fractured, feral relationship between Yeon and his younger brother, Lee Rang, that really locked me in. That push and pull between love and resentment, betrayal and the aching hope of still being loved? That’s where the show’s heart lived.
Kim Bum gave Rang this incredible volatility — not just anger, but that deep, snarling kind of hurt that comes from having once trusted someone too much. His bitterness never read as villainy for villainy’s sake. It was bruised loyalty turned sour, and watching him teeter between revenge and reluctant vulnerability was way more gripping than any monster-of-the-week segment.
And then came Kim Soo-oh as the soul of Geomdung, Rang’s childhood dog reborn in a little boy’s body — and that just wrecked me. No words needed. Just this silent, devastating echo of unconditional love. Every time Rang’s expression softened around him, it cracked something open in the show that none of the epic fantasy stakes could touch. That bond didn’t just humanize Rang — it quietly gutted him. And, okay, maybe me too.
Visually, the series didn’t hold back. Glossy, stylized shots of city nights, ancient forests, shadowy temples — it all looked cinematic without screaming about it. The effects were hit-or-miss, but the aesthetic ambition? Solid. It knew what kind of story it was telling, and it committed. Even when the plot occasionally veered into the melodramatic or padded its runtime with less-than-compelling side quests, the emotional current stayed steady. Loss, love, sacrifice — all the usual big-ticket items, but handled with enough restraint that they didn’t feel hollow.
By the end, what lingered wasn’t the spectacle or the mythical creature lore. It was the loyalty between brothers frayed by centuries of pain, the love that refuses to die even when the body does, and that strange, beautiful ache of having been loved by something that never asked you to be anything more than you already were.
Tale of the Nine-Tailed didn’t reinvent the genre, but it didn’t need to. It simply told a fantasy story with real soul. Strange? Yes. Occasionally messy? Sure. But when it landed, it landed deep.
Was this review helpful to you?
