Anjelle

Are there any subs out there other than the CC subs I've been seeing? I've tried the show, but there are a lot of typos and errors and it's very distracting.

The first episode was all over the place and I didn't feel anything for it one way or another, but I'll give it 3 episodes to see if it'll find its footing after some time. Here's hoping!

Yes!!!

I feel like this drama could have been cut down to 8 episodes. There's so much flip-flopping from the characters that really doesn't need to be there.

It's nothing like the Cowboy Bebop and Death Note adaptations, don't worry. While it's not perfect and they've cut out the side plots and streamlined everything because they only had 8 episodes, they did a really good job and it's a fun watch. I went in extremely hesitant but came out of it having a good time. There's also a lot of of little easter eggs hidden throughout each episode that show off characters they couldn't include or details mentioned in Oda's SBS answers, the wardrobe changes are all outfits that the crew has worn in cover art and other promotional media, and it's obvious a lot of care went into it. I think you'll have a good time if you give it a try!

I agree. I didn't mind them making changes to the source material, but a lot of the changes they made have been making the series worse. The evil stepmother was unnecessary and the development from recent episodes is just adding more unnecessary problems to solve. I don't think they can wrap this up nicely in only 6 episodes.

I'm enjoying this drama a lot more than I expected. Normally I get bored of slow-moving dramas really quickly, but this one's been a lot of fun so far. The humour is great 😂

Agreed! But I guess we have the new season now because of it, and at least we get to see Rang in that. It's been a while, and I'm just glad my bitterness has faded over time. But I really didn't care about the main couple either... They were the biggest setback of the story for me.

Oh my god I didn't realize until now but you're so right

Hard agree. I'm not really a fan of long looks and passion in kdrama romances, I find it tired and a little exhausting. I think this slow build up of them getting to know each other and working off of one another feels a lot more organic and real. I can relate to it more with my own relationship. But I'm also asexual, and my wife is too, so maybe it really is just an ace thing lol.

I don't know what it is about this drama but it feels so nice to watch. It's funny, but it tackles some serious topics, the dynamics of the characters are all interesting, the FL has a friend who actually FEELS like a friend, and it's a bit early to tell but it seems to have nice depth... It's been so refreshing. I hit such a slump with kdramas in 2022 but this feels like a step in the right direction!

That was the biggest drawback for me. The rest was so fun, but it really spoiled the whole vibe of the show. I still enjoyed the rest of it though.

That's the point. They're saying there's a 1% chance of the the babies being marked as psychopaths being geniuses instead. That was Choi Ran's very terrible moral dilemma in this whole thing. It's one of the things that made me want to throw my laptop at the wall.

As for the dog thing, god, I barely remember that, but I agree with them that it was a stupid leap of logic. That whole interaction didn't prove anything. I've had dogs all my life and people pet dogs like that IRL all the time. The worst thing you can do with a dog you don't know is actually petting the top of its head, which is another thing that people do when they don't understand dogs. But even if a character doesn't know how to act around a dog, it doesn't mean anything concrete. It's silly.

That's why they put it in quotations. It's not the psychopath gene, it's the genius gene, and they can't tell them apart. They know lol

I haven't seen the show it what, a very long time now so I can't say anything here nor there on any of your points. That's not how I remember it but for all I know the subs were bad while it was airing. Regardless, it's been a long time, the show has finally faded from my mind. This was probably the worst drama I've ever watched, looking back on it, and I will never touch Choi Ran's writing again and I'm better for it X'D

Yeah, I think it's something some people will tolerate more than others. It depends on your own preferences. It's something I'm not keen on, so it usually turns me off of shows, whether it's a psychological thriller or a romance, or whatever.

Oh boy. Well, I won't know how I'll feel about it until I watch it, but hopefully it doesn't ruin it for me!

The point I was making with the characters "having no interest" is that they feel like they were written just for the plot and don't exist outside of it. When that happens, it's hard to empathize or care about a character. I personally could not bring myself to care about any of the characters involved because they felt like caricatures, so it made things boring for me. It also just makes it feel like the writer didn't put much thought into what's actually happened to the characters besides that single event that happened in their lives or other, small things needed for the plot, which is a turn-off for me and I wasn't a fan.

I will disagree with you on BY. I remember being very annoyed by the several times she became a serial killer magnet in the story. I won't go further into detail than that though because honestly I haven't seen the show in so long so I don't remember as clearly as when I wrote this review, and now that I remembered Mouse was a thing I'm re-experiencing my own sort of trauma lol.

Yohan was shown to technically not have the 'psychopath' gene, but was the 1% chance born with the 'genius' gene, which is why he felt empathy and was just misinterpreted throughout the story. Because of that, yeah, every psychopath they showed did end up being a murderer. From what I recall. Again, been a while, and you couldn't pay me to rewatch this drama.

I was in the same boat. I thought that he was going to have brain damage and end up the same way as YH, but that it was going to show that he wouldn't become a serial killer. That was my hope when he was first injured. But as the episodes went on I realized that no, he was probably the killer all along, and the show was just throwing shit at the wall to see what stuck, and that's when I stopped caring. The baby swapping was stupid and unnecessary, agreed.

Handmaiden is on my 'to watch' and I think a have an episode or two left of Strangers from Hell, but I enjoyed it so far, more or less. Mouse just rubbed me the wrong way and left a bad taste in my mouth, and I didn't like the characters, and couldn't take it seriously, so I don't think I'll ever touch it again with a 10ft pole tbh.

Men can totally be traumatized by someone they care about being sexually assaulted. Anyone can be. It's not the same vein of trauma that the actual victim feels, but situations like that can be hard on anyone involved. It's just like how hard it can be on someone if their loved one has cancer, or just dies in general, or commits suicide. So I don't think there's anything wrong with showing that, here or in other dramas, and I didn't see anything wrong with the way they portrayed the twins' or Ryung Goo's characters here.

For Ryung Goo's case, I think they did fine. He didn't overshadow the victim or her brother. He didn't "take away the focus of the person who was subjected to the trauma." He was there, quietly for the most part, and he was a part of it. And yeah, he lost his cool. His mother was raped and committed suicide when he was young, of course that trauma is going to stick with him. Of course dealing with a situation that brings back bad memories is going to be hard. But I wouldn't say he "only felt pain when his loved one got hurt." He was left alone without a mother when he was still young. Not only did his mother die but she took her own life, and (spoiler from the webcomic) he'd fought with her the last time he saw her, if I'm remembering correctly. Yes, his mom was hurt, but he was directly affected by all of that, as well. Anyone who loses someone, especially when they're left alone afterwards, feels their own pain. The loved ones of people who commit suicide hurt for themselves, not just for their loved one. Saying that his story enforces toxic masculinity or gendered narratives discounts the fact that anyone who loses someone feels pain and makes it sound like people who haven't been sexually assaulted or committed suicide themselves aren't affected by it.

But on the topic of men as victims of sexual assault, of course they can be. Women are shown more often because they are more commonly the victims, sure, but there are dramas where male characters have experienced some form of SA. Off the top of my head, I believe the most recent incident I've seen was in The King of Pigs? One of the 2 main characters experienced a wide array of bullying in middle school, some of it sexual. D.P. also had a male character who was sexually assaulted by a superior in the military. Actually, D.P. held a lot of focus on toxic masculinity and male trauma just in general. Is it often full-on r*pe? No, but saying that they don't use men as victims of SA in dramas is wrong. There can be something said for the disparity in the types of SA shown between men and women, or how often women are shown as victims vs men, but it's not like nothing is being done. It may just have to do with the genres of shows you watch if you haven't seen it. Sure it's not perfect, but with a lot of the issues South Korea has, I think they've come a long way. It's not "there yet" but these things take time, and with time we'll likely see more of it, just like how we're seeing more lgbt representation in recent years to how the issue of body-shaming is being brought up more now.

Yeah it's unfortunately a really bad issue in Korea, and I think that's why a lot of shows choose to add it to their scripts to add social commentary because it's such a big problem. Suicide is also a big issue there, so I suppose adding bullying to a show about suicide really fits.

I wouldn't say that being 'half spirit' gave him any specific advantages, but personally I do feel like his character was necessary. In the early episodes he was a stand-in for the watcher which allowed us to learn things about the world at the same time he did, but as the drama went on he became a really good foil for the other reapers on the crisis management team. He's emotionally driven, a bit dumb at times, and his heart is in the right place. We get to learn more about him and his family and he has his own moral dilemmas to face, so I don't think he was unnecessary. That could just be my POV, though.