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Age of Youth - Also titled Hello, My Twenties

This was a very entertaining story of a cast of young women coming of age. The cast of characters were a nice mix of young and old, (if you call 28 old), witty to smart, goofy to serious.
The story lines were mainly told within one episode showings. Topics switching from one main character to the next. It also included a few story lines that lasted throughout the series.
Acting was top notch. I found myself cheering for each character to overcome their situations.
The stories were clever. However, I did feel they were somewhat rushed to complete each one. Also at times, the episodes seemed somewhat detached. You could be speeding along on a topic towards the cliffhanger at the end. Only to resolve that situation within minutes of the next episode with many times no lingering effect on the character effected. You could have a traumatic situation suddenly be resolved, and have life afterwards carry on like nothing happened. I believe that this a result of the limitations of time allowed for each episode.
OST. I can't say I would be adding a lot of music from this series to my everyday soundtracks. But I will say that this is the first series I have ever watched the opening introduction in it's entirety for each episode, and not skip to the start of the story. The soundtrack and visuals just make you feel happy from the beginning.
I am really happy to see that there is a second season. I really love the actors/characters and am anxious to see them continue their adventures.

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A surprisingly good series. Simply good entertainment

The only reason I chose to watch this series was to watch another performance by Actress Yeom Hye Ran. You may remember her as the award winning best supporting actress, playing the part of Jeon Gwang Rye, Ae Sun's mother in When Life Gives You Tangerines. And as expected, I was not disappointed in her performance.

After watching the first episode, I pre-judged this series as a cute little funny, not too serious, maybe low budget production that was not to be taken too seriously. Maybe even a little corny. (nothing wrong with corny by the way) But as the story developed over time, the story and the characters really transformed into interesting people that you wanted to rout for. The pacing of the episodes were perfect. Nothing too fast. Nothing drawn out too long. There were some love interest mixed with humor. But nothing over the top, which was perfect. The stories were not complicated, yet they were able to keep your interest with no effort. It left you feeling like you just had to watch the next episode. Lastly, I also never felt cheated with a quick, easy answers to whatever problem they were facing. Solutions were not as predicable as I have experienced in other Kdramas. That is good screenwriting.

As a newbie, I am realizing that saying "the acting was great" is a waste of time. In Korean dramas, I think I have only ever seen one actor that was somewhat questionable in the 20+ shows I have seen so far. But I will say it anyway. The acting was great.

Yeom Hye Ran as expected, did not disappoint. She was great. As was the rest of the cast.

Lee Hong Nae and Ok Ja Yeon stood out as perfect villains. I would have to say they were outstanding.
I do want to point out that on the surface, this series appears to be a comic book, super heroish type of show. But don't be fooled. There are some grewsome events that I don't feel would be good for kids under maybe 13 or so. Nothing I don't think an adult couldn't handle. Not gorish. Just not violence children should watch. (Just this old mans opinion)

I would recommend this show for viewers looking for something different. Something easy to understand. Something to smile with and enjoy.

I don't believe there is any music I would add to my playlist. So that brings the score down somewhat.

I would rate this as 8 out of 10.

PS. I almost forgot. At the end of season 1, the ending credits did the usual still photos of the cast and production crew. I always enjoy that. But this show had a few photos with each of the main cast individually standing with their stunt double. SOOO COOL.

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Alchemy of Souls Seasons One and Two combined.

This was a difficult series to watch and review, but I will do my best.

To summarize, this is a story in which the characters of a fantasy realm belong to families/clans of mages. A few mages have the ability to use a spell (Alchemy of Souls) that can take a living person's soul and transplant them into a recently deceased person. However, after the transfer has happened, the energy of the soul in the new body needs to be recharged every so often. To do this, they must take energy from another living person which in turn causes that person to die. If the energy is not replenished in a timely manor, the soul goes crazy and kills as many people as it can to recharge itself. This is called "going wild". If the person is unable to recharge, they petrify.

You can tell just by that brief explanation just how complicated this story is. And on top of that, long complicated words are used to describe households, customs, spells, etc, which can be hard for an English speaking person like myself to understand. So much so that I had to switch back to English dubbing just to comprehend what was going on.Another complication was keeping track of who's soul was transplanted into who, and who was now using who's body. Aaawwww.

Along these same lines, I would say this series should have tried to complete itself within 20 episodes rather than 30. But who really knows if that would have been possible.

I almost did not complete this two part series because of the above complications. Also, it took almost an agonizing 8 episodes for me just to really get into the story and become vested into what was going on. However, I am glad I stuck with it because the show really takes off after that.

One aspect of the series that I liked was there were serious moments in the show mixed comical reliefs. It exhibited to me that the show was not to be taken too seriously and to enjoy myself while watching it. Many times the show was just plain silly. I think this made the show a lot more enjoyable as it took the viewers on a roller-coaster ride of emotions.

The actors were awesome as always. Jung So Min as Mu Deok (FL) was particularly good. It was hard for me at times to let go of an actor who was playing a certain character, to suddenly be replaced by another (great) actor, due to the bodies/souls switching.

I am generally not a fan of computer generated effects. But this series did a good job overall. Magic spells were great and not overdone. Thus, they were able to perfectly mix the computer graphics into the magic/fight/battle scenes into a realistic experience for this mystical environment.

There were a good number soundtracks in this series. I have added 3 to my playlist of which one stands out as one of my favorites. The song is "Just Watching You" by Jeong Sewoon. The others were Breath by Kim Na Young, and Aching by Kassy. These soundtracks helped this series with my overall rating score. (As I write this, I just added "Scars Leave Beautiful Trace" by Car, the garden to my playlist) There were others good songs. But these are the ones that stood out for me.

Alchemy of Souls was able to finish the series in the final episode. There was so much story to conclude that I did not think they would have enough time to finish without feeling rushed. But they accomplished a really good ending before time ran out. Maybe it could have been concluded over the last two episodes a little better? But the show ended just fine the way it did.

I'm glad I finished this series. For me, the rating gradually increased as the show progressed.


I will have to rate this series as 8.5 out of 10.

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