221 Dramas in 365 days is VERY impressive, especially since you "only binge-watch, one drama at a time" That's nearly 2 dramas every 3 days for the entire year, without counting the 83 movies. That makes me feel MUCH better about my own FFing, because you must have watched many of them at like 8X :)
Still huge and not sad 27 is still a young twenties :)
What saddens me is smallmindedness, petty-mindedness and plain fuzzy thinking. All of which are on display when people rant against age gaps. People who fixate on age gaps between actors is that those people who get upset by it are ignoring a very important fact: They are fixating on the age gap between ACTORS. If the CHARACTERS have that gap, then perhaps the arguments (specious though I find them) against age gaps may have some faint shreds of validity. But if a 27 year old actor is playing opposite a 37 year old actor and their CHARACTERS are similar age, then to get upset by the fact that the ACTORS are of different ages is as stupid and absurd as complaining that an actor who plays a neurosurgeon is not ACTUALLY able to perform brain surgery.
Kim Go Eun and Jin Han in a Chinese romantic action drama. She speaks Mandarin.
"She speaks Mandarin" So do all those L1 Mandarin speakers whose voices still get dubbed over - it's sadly very unlikely her voice would be left undubbed.
I just have to say what an absolute JOY it is to FINALLY be experiencing this again "The Torture of Waiting for the Next Episode to Air" - Watching orest of Secrets 2 as it airs and it's the first time in YEARS that I've been edgy and irritable because I have no more episodes available this week! Such sweet pain!
Thank you for taking time to read this article and comment!I understand completely about seldom as your reasoning…
I do listen a a reasonable amount of music, less than most here, I suspect, and mostly Western classical (Beethoven, Mozart etc), or songs from old Hindi films. THOSE I do pay attention to, and my views on the importance of good OSTs in Hindi films is not far from your expressed here about East Asian Dramas. So it could be about the level of understanding - I get more out of Hindi songs than East Asian ones. This might be why the one "10+" Drama on my list which I rave about for its music has a soundtrack that is 95% English songs :) I think you've raised a very perceptive point here - most of my favourite Dramas do not rely much on music, at least not vocal music. The K Drama I'm watching right now, at this moment, is Forest of Secrets 2, and I don't think it even HAS an OST as such. Dramas like Yeah That's How It Is, Goodbye to Goodbye, Mr Fighting, etc, all rely much more on dialogue than music - BGM for mood perhaps, but no songs that leap into my memory. The only 2 K Dramas I can think of whose whole OSTs really stuck were Goong and Queen In Hyun's Man, along with a handful of TW Dramas - In Time With You, In a Good Way, My Queen and Love Contract come to mind.
Thank you very much for your thought-provoking reply to my comment. It's always interesting to take a step back and analyse WHY some things resonate while others don't and to be reminded of the endless variety of experiences that draw people to the world of East Asian Dramas.
What a delightful first article, well done! It's always a joy to see enthusiasm expressed so vividly.
A well-chosen and well-designed OST really can make a difference, but for me it seldom makes THE difference. Of the 15 Dramas that I've scored as 10/10, or even higher, in the case of 10 of them, I can't recall a single song, and 3 of the other 5, just the title track. I enjoyed Clean With Passion For Now, and REALLY enjoyed Life, but I don't recall a single track from either one. This would be true for at least 80% of the 360 or so East Asian Dramas I've completed so far, not counting the 60 or so dropped.
Then there are the other cases, like the VERY disappointing Best Hit (Hit the Top) - A drama that ended up eminently meh and forgettable, except for Yoon Mirae's gorgeous "Sky" . School 2015 was a colossal bomb for me, except for "Reset".
I'm more likely to be impressed by carefully and thoughtfully selected BGM, which often really strengthens the given scenes, exactly as intended, but which doesn't stand on its own.
Great to see MARS get a plug, simply an AWESOME Drama. My lasting takeaway from TW Dramas is the delightful Ariel Lin, from classics like ISWAK/TKA to turkeys like Tokyo Juliet (ugh!) . Some of my other faves are Back to 1989, In a Good Way, My Queen (SO MUCH better than the ultimately limp K remake Witch's Romance), and of course In Time With You.
For me, there are basically NO upsides to watching airing Dramas, which is why I gave up doing so years ago, with only VERY rare exceptions, like the currently airing Forest of Secrets 2.
The biggest downside of watching airing Dramas is one that relates to a disadvantage you understated: "The Fear of the Drama Not Living Up to the Hype"
In my experience "Fear" can be replaced with "the 99.9% CERTAINTY" The Dramas I watch don't tend to generate much hype anyway, but those that do almost invariably fall flat. Again, you did a good job of highlighting why, the sad fact that writers often don't write right to the end (pun intended). For those reasons, 9/10 I'm happy to wait until they're done, download them, and be ready to drop and walk away if they tank.
Age gaps don't bother me at all in dramas as long as the people are of legal age. Just like in RL. You don't know…
"Age gaps don't bother me at all in dramas as long as the people are of legal age" THIS! Many of the "age gap" issues above, teen actors aside, relate more to poor writing or story construction. I agree with many of the summaries in terms of the characterisations, but once people are legal adults, a ge really IS "just a number" And some weird numbers too, in Korea. :)
Neko Zamurai at Number 1? AWESOME! A very under-appreciated Drama I feel. Season 1 was definitely stronger than season 2 , I think the Neko FL (feline lead ) was more noticeably the ML (main lead) in the first season :)
What a delightful article! It reminded me of the joy of discovery and the delight in the freshness and difference of it all when I started in 2013. It took me 3 months to watch 50 K Dramas, 7 months to get to 100, then another 3 years to get to 200, and another 3.5 years to reach my current total of just over 250. I started watching TW Dramas (36), C Dramas (31) and J Dramas (57) along the way and also started dropping a lot more, averaging 1 Drama dropped for every 6 started now. So I hope your fresh enthusiasm can keep alive for a long time yet, thank you for such a positive and happy read!
Getting some great suggestions on C-dramas, I've been searching for new good ones , I am looking forward to checking…
It's the only C Drama I've rated 10/10 and completely different in tone and feel to any other C Drama I've watched. It could have been 6 or 7 episodes shorter, but that's my only niggle.
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People who fixate on age gaps between actors is that those people who get upset by it are ignoring a very important fact: They are fixating on the age gap between ACTORS. If the CHARACTERS have that gap, then perhaps the arguments (specious though I find them) against age gaps may have some faint shreds of validity. But if a 27 year old actor is playing opposite a 37 year old actor and their CHARACTERS are similar age, then to get upset by the fact that the ACTORS are of different ages is as stupid and absurd as complaining that an actor who plays a neurosurgeon is not ACTUALLY able to perform brain surgery.
I think you've raised a very perceptive point here - most of my favourite Dramas do not rely much on music, at least not vocal music. The K Drama I'm watching right now, at this moment, is Forest of Secrets 2, and I don't think it even HAS an OST as such. Dramas like Yeah That's How It Is, Goodbye to Goodbye, Mr Fighting, etc, all rely much more on dialogue than music - BGM for mood perhaps, but no songs that leap into my memory. The only 2 K Dramas I can think of whose whole OSTs really stuck were Goong and Queen In Hyun's Man, along with a handful of TW Dramas - In Time With You, In a Good Way, My Queen and Love Contract come to mind.
Thank you very much for your thought-provoking reply to my comment. It's always interesting to take a step back and analyse WHY some things resonate while others don't and to be reminded of the endless variety of experiences that draw people to the world of East Asian Dramas.
A well-chosen and well-designed OST really can make a difference, but for me it seldom makes THE difference. Of the 15 Dramas that I've scored as 10/10, or even higher, in the case of 10 of them, I can't recall a single song, and 3 of the other 5, just the title track. I enjoyed Clean With Passion For Now, and REALLY enjoyed Life, but I don't recall a single track from either one. This would be true for at least 80% of the 360 or so East Asian Dramas I've completed so far, not counting the 60 or so dropped.
Then there are the other cases, like the VERY disappointing Best Hit (Hit the Top) - A drama that ended up eminently meh and forgettable, except for Yoon Mirae's gorgeous "Sky" . School 2015 was a colossal bomb for me, except for "Reset".
I'm more likely to be impressed by carefully and thoughtfully selected BGM, which often really strengthens the given scenes, exactly as intended, but which doesn't stand on its own.
The biggest downside of watching airing Dramas is one that relates to a disadvantage you understated: "The Fear of the Drama Not Living Up to the Hype"
In my experience "Fear" can be replaced with "the 99.9% CERTAINTY" The Dramas I watch don't tend to generate much hype anyway, but those that do almost invariably fall flat. Again, you did a good job of highlighting why, the sad fact that writers often don't write right to the end (pun intended). For those reasons, 9/10 I'm happy to wait until they're done, download them, and be ready to drop and walk away if they tank.