Critica sin filtro

More Than Memory: A Story About Disappearing

This film is often described as heartbreaking, but that’s not what makes it special.
It hurts because it thinks.

At its core, this is not a story about forgetting to avoid pain. It shows something far more uncomfortable: that forgetting doesn’t guarantee relief, because what truly matters leaves a mark beyond conscious memory. Love doesn’t disappear when memories fade; it changes into something quieter, deeper, and harder to name.

The final revelation is devastating precisely because it’s restrained. There is no loud twist or emotional manipulation—only a silent confirmation of what the film has been patiently building all along. The pain doesn’t come from loss alone, but from persistence.

The film is also brutally honest about how memory and mercy are unevenly distributed. Some characters are allowed to forget in order to survive; others must remember everything. Not everyone receives the same kind of mercy, and the film never pretends otherwise.

In the end, this isn’t a movie designed to make you cry. It trusts the viewer’s emotional intelligence and confronts a difficult idea: some bonds are so strong that neither illness, time, nor forgetting can erase them completely.

It doesn’t explain grief.
It lets you live with it.

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A Critique That Becomes the Problem

Viral Hit is built around a premise that requires the audience to abandon common sense almost immediately. The idea that a teenager could become an internet celebrity and attract millions of followers simply by getting beaten up on camera over and over again stretches credibility far beyond its limits.

In reality, a channel dedicated almost entirely to broadcasting a boy being humiliated and assaulted would likely be removed by platform moderation policies long before reaching massive popularity. And even if it somehow survived, the protagonist would probably end up in a hospital long before collecting any meaningful revenue.

At first, the series appears to be setting up a social satire about internet culture, clickbait, and the growing obsession with views at any cost. Unfortunately, that premise quickly fades into the background.

Rather than examining why audiences consume this content or exploring the mechanisms behind online fame, the story becomes trapped in the very spectacle it claims to criticize. Episode after episode, the narrative relies on increasingly exaggerated fights, humiliations, and shock-value moments designed to keep viewers watching.

This is where Viral Hit ultimately undermines itself. The series feels less like a thoughtful critique of internet culture and more like a product engineered to capitalize on the same impulses it condemns.

Ironically, Viral Hit serves as a perfect example of its own message. Its popularity is not driven by compelling storytelling, complex characters, or meaningful social commentary. It succeeds because controversy, violence, and spectacle attract attention—even when the narrative itself struggles to make sense.

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Friendship Over Rivalry: The True Triangle in A Hundred Memories

When we talk about love triangles, we usually picture rivalry, jealousy, or even betrayal between two friends. That’s the cliché. But A Hundred Memories dares to flip the formula. Ko Yeong Rye is in love with Jae Pil, but Jae Pil is drawn to Seo Jong Hee. The twist? Yeong Rye and Jong Hee aren’t rivals—they’re best friends. That choice changes everything.

It’s a premise that echoes Truffaut’s Jules et Jim (1962), where friendship and love collide in a way that feels honest rather than melodramatic. Or think of My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997), where the story doesn’t end with the expected romantic “win,” but with a bittersweet acceptance of friendship over rivalry. That’s the same kind of vibe A Hundred Memories might be leaning toward.

What are the possible outcomes? One: Jong Hee could renounce Jae Pil, leaving nobody with anyone. Two: once Jae Pil shows clear interest in Jong Hee, Yeong Rye would realistically back away—because being the “second choice” is painful, maybe even unbearable. And three: there’s Jong Hee’s brother, the law student, who already seems intrigued by her. He could easily become the unexpected twist in this delicate balance.

And then there’s that closing scene of Episode 4. Jae Pil accidentally runs into Jong Hee, now wearing her work uniform. His silence and stare linger too long—it feels exaggerated, almost as if the uniform itself carries judgment. If it were me, I’d have gone with something natural like, “Oh, what a surprise, I didn’t know you worked here.” But the direction makes his hesitation about status clear. Is he truly shocked… or is the drama emphasizing how much appearances still matter in this world?

We’ll see in Episode 5 if he softens his reaction or doubles down. Either way, it’s a fascinating tension between natural storytelling and heightened drama.

Episode 10 Update
With just one weekend left before it ends, the series chooses stability over catharsis.
After Hee and Rye finally face each other and admit they love the same man, the show instantly cools everything down. Hee realizes—without anyone having to tell her—that she has no real chance against Rye. From that point on, she practically disappears from the episode when it comes to Pil: no contact, no exchange, just her own tension with her mother and the brief encounter with Rye’s brother. It’s a deliberate narrative choice: the script removes her from the love triangle and reframes her as a social mirror rather than a romantic rival. The result is an emotional void—the triangle doesn’t resolve, it simply fades away. A Hundred Memories shifts from the inner fire of feelings to the outer order of hierarchy. Visually stunning, yes, but clearly a choice for stability instead of catharsis.
The preview for episode 11 confirms it: love is no longer the battlefield—Miss Korea is. Where they once competed for affection, they now compete for validation. “Let’s play fair this time,” Hee tells Rye, barely touching her hand. It’s the echo of everything before: two women who once hurt each other trying to win the same man, now standing as equals in a symbolic arena. It’s not reconciliation; it’s acceptance.
Meanwhile, Hyun drifts into narrative limbo. His arc promised maturity and balance, but the script reduces him to a bystander. Unless the finale gives him purpose again, the ending risks feeling uneven. Because if this episode proved anything, it’s that A Hundred Memories knows how to close chapters with visual grace—but not always with emotional justice.

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Dear X (Episodes 1–4): From Genius to Overacting

Dear X starts off brilliantly — a sharp, elegant dissection of ambition, trauma, and emotional manipulation.
Baek Ah Jin, played with surgical precision in the first two episodes, feels like a modern antiheroine shaped by pain rather than redemption.
Her cold, calculated demeanor suggests a story about psychological power, not simple revenge.

But by episode 3, the series stumbles.
The script mistakes complexity for excess, turning what could’ve been a chilling, simple act into an over-engineered mess.
Ah Jin stops being formidable and becomes theatrical — a strategist buried under implausible coincidences.

Episode 4 tries to recover tension through a police investigation, but ends up draining it instead.
Ah Jin, once fascinating, now looks overacted and hollow, her silence replaced by melodrama.

Visually, Dear X remains stylish — the rain, cold tones, and restrained pacing still work — yet the emotional impact evaporates.
It had all the ingredients for a story about moral decay and ambition, but it collapses under its own artifice.

Not terrible, but uneven: it begins with fire and ends with smoke.
For now, Dear X feels more like a promise than a revelation.

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A Well-Made Legal Drama That Plays It Safe

Final Review

Pro Bono is a solid legal drama that prioritizes emotional catharsis over legal complexity. The series is well acted, well paced, and clearly understands how to trigger empathy, often relying on moral reassurance rather than sharp courtroom strategy.

The final arc confirms its true nature: convenient evidence, last-minute witnesses, and resolutions designed to comfort rather than challenge. This isn’t a flaw if you know what you’re watching—it’s a conscious choice.

What works strongly in its favor is avoiding romance as a narrative crutch. The focus stays on cases, ethics, and emotional payoff, which is refreshing in a genre often diluted by forced love stories.

As a League B legal drama, Pro Bono performs very well. As a top-tier legal series, it lacks risk and discomfort.

Episodes 1–2 Review: “This Isn’t a Legal Drama… It’s Cinema.”

Pro Bono” isn’t just another legal drama.
It’s a series that understands visual grammar, emotional language, and intentional directing.
More than a drama… Pro Bono is cinema.

The show begins lightly, almost disguised as a dramedy, but very quickly reveals a level of writing that knows exactly when to breathe, when to laugh, and when to break you.
The first pro bono case — involving a mistreated dog — is unexpectedly powerful.
It’s tender, heartbreaking, and filmed with a sincerity that Korean dramas rarely achieve. The camera work is subtle, the emotional beats are precise, and the courtroom scene is nothing short of cinematic: the case isn’t won by arguments, but by truth in its purest form.

Jung Kyung-ho delivers a compelling portrayal of a former judge who is brilliant yet detached from real human suffering. His fall from the bench forces him to see the world he once judged from above, revealing a man who is rigid, proud, and emotionally clumsy… yet fundamentally just.

Supporting actors shine, especially Seo Hye-won with her controlled comedic timing, and So Joo-yeon, whose natural reactions elevate every scene she appears in. They bring warmth, contrast, and rhythm to a story that could have easily fallen into cliché — but never does.

“Pro Bono” starts as something light.
Ten minutes in, it becomes something else.
Twenty minutes in, it has heart.
By the end of Episode 2… it has a soul.

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When Love Meets Reality

Once We Were Us follows two former lovers who unexpectedly reunite on a flight to Korea ten years after their breakup. Through flashbacks, the film reconstructs the evolution of their relationship—from youthful university romance to the moment reality finally caught up with them.

The story itself is fairly conventional, but the film finds its real strength in the performances of Moon Ga-young and Koo Kyo-hwan. Their chemistry feels natural and grounded, not only emotionally but physically as well. Small gestures of intimacy—hugs, touches, casual closeness—help the relationship feel believable in a way many romantic dramas struggle to achieve.

Interestingly, the film also reveals something about Moon Ga-young as an actress. For years she has often appeared somewhat restrained in K-dramas, but here it becomes clear that the rigidity may have come more from the format than from her abilities. In this film she feels noticeably freer and more natural.

What ultimately sets the story apart is the reason behind the breakup. There is no dramatic betrayal or tragic event. Instead, the relationship slowly collapses under something far more common: financial instability and the emotional toll it brings.

Because of that, Once We Were Us ends up feeling less like a classic romance and more like a reflection on how time, pressure, and economic reality can reshape even the strongest relationships.

Sometimes love is real.
But life can still weigh more.

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A Well-Made Office Romance That Brings Nothing New

After 12 episodes, it became clear that Love Under Audit was never really about auditing, corporate politics, or business ethics.

It's an office romance wrapped in the familiar K-drama formula: love triangles, jealous rivals, workplace rumors, secret relationships, corporate power struggles, noble sacrifices, misunderstandings, and conveniently timed emotional crises.

The biggest strength of the series is its cast. Shin Hye-sun and Gong Myung carry much of the show's emotional weight, making even the most predictable situations watchable. Their chemistry is solid enough to keep the story moving even when the writing falls back on well-worn clichés.

The problem is that the drama rarely takes risks. Almost every major development feels recycled from dozens of previous office romances. The story constantly chooses the safest possible route, making it easy to predict where everything is heading long before it gets there.

Even the corporate storyline eventually becomes secondary to relationship drama, rumors, and personal conflicts. At times, the company seems less interested in making money than in managing everyone's love life.

That doesn't make the drama bad. It simply makes it familiar.

In fact, that's probably why many viewers will enjoy it. It delivers exactly what it promises: romance, attractive leads, emotional tension, and a satisfying ending.

My biggest disappointment was that some of the supporting characters—especially the protagonist's sisters—were more entertaining than several of the main subplots and deserved much more screen time.

In the end, Love Under Audit is comfort food television. Easy to watch, easy to enjoy, and just as easy to forget a few months later.

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From Sublime to the Toilet

Hope achieved something very few films manage to do with me: for a good portion of its two-hour-and-forty-minute runtime, it had me completely hooked. And perhaps that is precisely why its final stretch pissed me off so much.

The film begins as an excellent science-fiction thriller. A small Korean town is confronted with an inexplicable event, and information is revealed intelligently: first we know something is happening, then we discover the creatures, then we realise there is more than one, and eventually we find a crashed spacecraft. Each revelation expands the mystery without destroying it.

And in the middle of all this comes Jung Ho-yeon, providing a perfect lesson in how to introduce a badass character. Nobody needs to tell us how extraordinary she is, show us her résumé, or explain what she can do. We simply watch her act and discover it for ourselves. A character is not badass because the script tells you so. They have to prove it.

The early action sequences are excellent, and it is important to distinguish visual effects from practical stunt work. Some of the VFX are far from convincing, but what the stunt drivers do with the cars is something else entirely. Some of those manoeuvres and crashes are genuinely spectacular.

The problem begins when the film enters its interminable final chase. What had previously been action that moved the story forward becomes repetition: run, shoot, scream, run again, shoot again. And then an even bigger problem appears: the physical rules governing the aliens change according to what the screenplay needs.

These creatures can move at astonishing speeds, yet later they cannot catch a car, people running on foot, or even a horse galloping down a road.

Apparently, the aliens' speed and strength are inversely proportional to the importance of the character they are chasing.

And just when we expect some kind of conclusion, the film decides to open another movie instead. A gigantic mothership falls from the sky, an extraterrestrial hierarchy is introduced, there is an emperor, new characters played by Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender appear, and suddenly an entire mythology emerges just as the film is ending.

Which only creates more questions. What brought down a ship that enormous? How does an object of that size enter the atmosphere over South Korea without triggering a military response? Where is the Korean military? And does a civilisation capable of interstellar travel really have no auxiliary vehicles or smaller craft, forcing its creatures to chase people and horses on foot?

We know Na Hong-jin considers this only the first half of the story and intends to continue it. Fine. That explains the ending. It does not justify it.

The audience paid to watch this film, not half of a film whose continuation may arrive who knows when. And the elements introduced at the end create frustration rather than mystery.

A film can leave questions unanswered. The problem begins when those questions no longer make you eager to discover the answers, but instead make you feel that part of the film you paid to watch is missing.

Hope had an extraordinary film in its hands.

And then it flushed it down the toilet.

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From Seoul to Hollywood in Three Glances and a Flower

Final Review Typhoon Family: A Storm With No Wind”
Typhoon Family ends with a happy ending, but the drama never truly worked.
It suffered from narrative hamster syndrome: constant suffering, constant chaos, no real progression.
The writers confused accumulated misery with emotion, and movement with storytelling.
The performances are good —especially Kim Ni-ha— but the script wasted them, giving her nothing but crying scenes with no emotional range.
And yes, happy ending, villains in jail, romance finally consummated… but as bland as the rest of the show.
A happy ending can’t fix 16 episodes that never connected. 2025 is full of dramas where the actors are better than the script:
Moon River, Dear X, Would You Marry Me?, No Other Choice. Typhoon Family just joined the list.

Episode 1
The first encounter tries to be tender, but it’s the most overused cliché in K-drama: he falls on her. The only new thing is the melancholic wrapping — the “prestigious” version of the same old stumble.

But then comes the subway scene. The dual visual language.
She (Kim Min-ha) is filmed in tight shots, soft light, and desaturated tones. Her gaze dominates the frame; the focus stays on her eyes, not the background. It conveys introspection, timidity, and vulnerability.
He (Jun-ho), on the other hand, is treated oppositely: wide framing, glass reflections, warm tones, even the pink bouquet as a symbol of vanity and artifice. He knows he’s being watched.
Together, the montage creates a mirror play: she looks, he poses; she feels, he performs.

The separation sequence is built with classic Hollywood grammar. The slight lip bite marks the exact instant when inner emotion becomes conscious. Then, the shot of the falling flower works as a universal symbol of lost contact or missed opportunity — a motif used over and over in Western romantic cinema (from Brief Encounter to Before Sunrise). The camera leaves her alone, the frame widens, and the background fades: solitude in motion.

The falling flower perfectly closes the emotional arc of their encounter — a silent yet unmistakable symbol of attachment and memory.
She doesn’t say “I liked him,” she doesn’t say “I miss him,” but the simple act of keeping something so ephemeral says it all.

The warm light, the curtains, and the static framing turn that moment into a visual sigh, almost a poetic epilogue to what just happened. It’s a device straight out of European romantic cinema (think Amélie or In the Mood for Love), yet used here with Korean subtlety.

It feels Hollywood not because it imitates, but because it adopts the language of classic romantic cinema: the visual construction of destiny, the orchestral music that accompanies without interrupting, the flower as a tangible symbol of remembrance, and above all, the restrained emotion that becomes universal.
That fragment alone is enough to justify the entire episode.

Update episode 2
If episode one was saved by a cinematic moment —that subway scene, poetic and restrained—
episode two collapses into mediocrity.
Nothing stands out.
It’s empty, slow, emotionless, filled with shouting and recycled melodrama.

With two leads of this caliber, such a weak script is unforgivable.
The problem isn’t talent — it’s direction.
Episode two doesn’t stumble… it crashes.

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A Brilliant Story Built on Terrible Decisions

The finale remains remarkably consistent with the drama’s central premise: a tragedy of errors fueled by paranoia.

The protagonists spend the entire story building an increasingly complex web of lies to avoid prison. The ultimate irony is that the law clears them of the murder, while the real punishment for both families is realizing that they destroyed their lives, their families, and their peace of mind trying to cover up a crime they didn’t commit.

A completely happy ending would have felt false, but sending them to prison would have betrayed the logic of the script itself. Leaving them legally free but trapped in the ruins of their own decisions was the perfect place to end the story.

And this is my only real complaint.

The writer seems to need someone to pay, so the leaked affair video is used to publicly destroy the characters.

To me, it’s narratively ridiculous.

First, because the story had already given them consequences without needing to punish them.

And second, they could have simply sued the police for leaking the video.

Boom. You screwed yourself.

They might have ended up even better off.

If you resolved the murder plot with intelligence and logic, the characters’ final arcs deserved the same level of sophistication—not a last-minute dose of public humiliation.

For a moment, that decision turns an elegant psychological drama into a manipulative piece of cheap melodrama.

But it is one misstep in a script that accomplished something extremely difficult for eight episodes:

It turned a chain of stupid decisions into an extraordinarily intelligent story.

5/5 for the entire season.

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My Little Bride is a film built around a question it never answers.

The premise is simple: a 15-year-old girl is forced to marry an older man because of a promise made by their grandparents years ago.

What surprised me is not the age difference itself, but how little the story actually needs it.

If the heroine were a university student, the plot would remain almost unchanged. She could still be in love with the baseball player. He could still have romantic interests of his own. They could still be trapped in a marriage neither of them wants.

The film spends a great deal of time watching them live together, share a house, and navigate married life. Yet it never provides a convincing reason why the heroine specifically has to be a high school student.

The same problem applies to the marriage itself. There is no inheritance, no family business, no meaningful consequence attached to refusing it. The entire plot rests on the stubbornness of a grandfather, which feels surprisingly weak for a story built entirely around that decision.

This is why I found myself questioning the premise more than enjoying the comedy. The film relies heavily on a situation that attracts attention, but never fully justifies it within the narrative.

The strangest thing about My Little Bride is that the more you analyze it, the less you need the bride to be "little."

A very memorable premise supported by a surprisingly fragile foundation.

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Tokyo Tower (2024) — A Moral Double Standard Disguised as Romance

The 2024 television adaptation of Tokyo Tower presents itself as an elegant, contemplative drama about forbidden passion, but beneath its beautiful cinematography lies a deeply fractured script struggling to balance infidelity melodrama with an idealized notion of pure love.

Its main structural problem is the constant tonal dissonance between the actual conflict and the artificial gravity imposed upon it. The ending of episode seven, when a voice-over declares that “our hellish summer finally came to an end,” perfectly exposes this disconnect. The two male protagonists are single university students, with no families to support, marriages to destroy, or careers at stake. Presenting a period of reckless romantic adventure as some kind of existential ordeal reveals a badly calibrated sense of lyricism that mistakes the anxiety of getting caught for Greek tragedy.

This lack of dramatic rigor becomes even more obvious through the creation of a scapegoat designed to protect the romantic hero. In order to keep Toru and Shifumi’s relationship on an almost immaculate pedestal, the script dumps nearly all the toxicity, guilt, and destruction onto Koji’s storyline. The result is a glaring moral double standard: one young man is punished for ruining lives while the other remains a tragic, misunderstood soul. One affair is stained so the other can remain beautiful.

In the process, the story also strips its female characters of genuine agency. By eventually presenting Kimiko as a woman whose life was ruined by an irresponsible young man, the narrative refuses to let her fully own the decisions she made as a married adult. Instead, it concentrates the blame on Koji rather than exploring something far more interesting: an adult woman consciously choosing to escape the monotony of her life and then having to face the consequences of that choice.

The short format — episodes of roughly twenty-six minutes — only makes these weaknesses worse. Crises are accelerated without enough time to develop motivations organically, forcing the story to rely on dramatic shortcuts and contrived turns to reach its conclusion.

And this leads to perhaps its biggest mistake: trying to disguise consequence as liberation.

The final café encounter between the two older women is visually constructed as a gesture of female solidarity and emancipation, but dramatically it feels much closer to shared resignation. Neither woman truly chooses the destination where the story leaves her. Both are pushed out of their previous lives after their affairs collapse.

The scene does not show two independent women celebrating their newly discovered autonomy. It shows two shipwreck survivors sharing the wreckage after paying the highest price for a summer fantasy.

In its determination to sanctify some characters while condemning others, Tokyo Tower ultimately betrays the complexity of the adult drama it initially promised.

Beautiful packaging wrapped around a script too afraid to embrace the moral ambiguity of its own story.

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Woody Allen, but ten times more unbearable

I finished Until the T-Shirt Dries, and the easiest way I can describe it is this: Woody Allen, but ten times more unbearable.

It carries all that neurosis, guilt, and intellectualization of desire so characteristic of Allen. A bus accident traps Sakiko and Sonoda in an almost solipsistic paranoia, obsessively trying to discover what their partners were really doing behind their backs.

Like Annie Hall or Deconstructing Harry, the series repeatedly uses conversations with imaginary projections and absent people, allowing its characters to debate their own emotional voids instead of taking a single real step forward.

But there is one fundamental difference.

Woody Allen usually filters his neurosis through cynicism, black comedy, or tragic irony. Until the T-Shirt Dries tries to execute a similar device with leaden solemnity and poetic pretension, and the pacing completely collapses as a result.

The frustrating part is that the series actually has some very good twists. At times, it seems as if it is finally going to become a fascinating mystery. But every time the story starts moving, it stops again to contemplate its own navel.

And although the relationship at the center of the story never becomes physically sexual, I still consider it infidelity. Two married people secretly reserving time for each other, traveling together, and building an emotional intimacy deliberately hidden from their spouses does not suddenly become harmless simply because they never had sex.

After ten episodes, Until the T-Shirt Dries ultimately felt like an exercise in the screenwriter's self-indulgence at the expense of the viewer's time.

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A Thriller That Respects Your Intelligence

Vanishing Point is an intricately structured thriller with an exceptionally well-constructed narrative. It doesn't rely on forced twists or last-minute revelations. Instead, it builds suspense through patience, precision, and a remarkably controlled rhythm.

At first, the film appears to follow three separate stories: a missing child, a young woman trying to discover who assaulted her, and a gambler whose father's death leads him into an increasingly disastrous chain of decisions. What initially seems disconnected gradually becomes an elaborate narrative puzzle.

That is the film's greatest achievement. The clues are always there: a gesture, a footprint, an object, a suspicious behavior, even the physical layout of the apartments. The film doesn't hide the truth from us; it hides the meaning of the truth.

At 140 minutes, Vanishing Point is unusually long for a contemporary thriller, yet it maintains an impressively consistent pace. Each storyline keeps moving, intersecting and constantly recontextualizing what we thought we understood.

The gambler is particularly remarkable, both as a character and as a performance. Every decision he makes to solve one problem creates another, producing a convincing psychological descent rather than an artificial escalation of the plot.

Most importantly, Vanishing Point never asks the audience to stop thinking in order for its story to work. It invites us to question, suspect, make mistakes and reconsider our theories while playing completely within its own rules.

Intelligent, tense, carefully structured and surprisingly human, Vanishing Point understands something many mystery thrillers forget: a great mystery doesn't need to prove that it is smarter than its audience. It only needs to give us all the pieces and know exactly when to let us see the complete picture.

Highly recommended.

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