Good cinematography, average acting and poor script and character development.
Harmless fangirling isn’t the issue. My problem is the sharp contrast between Sena’s profile and how she’s written. We’re told she’s a seasoned, high-profile lawyer who is mature, composed, rational; yet her motivations feel rooted in a very weak unsupported backstory. The riverbank encounter during her bullying phase is presented as the emotional anchor for her lifelong devotion, but it’s underdeveloped and feels like a one-off trope. The “I was bullied and saved by an angel” setup has been heavily overused in K-dramas, and here it doesn’t carry enough psychological weight to justify her extreme denial years later.If that memory truly shaped her, we should see how time, growth, and experience refined it. Instead, her arc feels stuck at that teenage emotional imprint, which clashes with who she is supposed to be now — an accomplished adult who handles high-profile cases calmly, impassioned and objectively. That contrast could have been powerful if explored properly, but it isn’t.
The drama had strong tools to critique fan culture and unrealistic expectations placed on celebrities. It could have done that without reducing the female lead to a near-caricature of blind devotion. It would have been more compelling if Sena started off indifferent, or even critical of celebrity worship, and then gradually went through a nuanced journey of empathy and self-realization. Instead, her growth centers on realizing something that feels developmentally obvious for someone of her age and profession.
For me, the writing and character development just don’t hold up.
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Not inspiring
Not escapism for me. Synopsis: The cost of overcoming evil outweighs the benefits, even if you succeed, you still lose so don't bother. There will always be evil in the world. At some point it appeared the writer was just killing off well built characters for the fun off it, until the murders had no effect or purpose. Did not communicate hope and the value of life not even in the kid that survived because by the philosophy of the series even they cannot risk looking to a hopeful future. No one can. This did not fit into the "the-triumph-of-good-over-evil" archetype it sought to deliver as the ending was too basic, weak, did not deliver the relief that the series was built up to deliver and left viewers with nothing to hold on to. After episode 10 it was like the series just wanted to show us how many main and support characters they could kill off before wrapping up. Even the humanity and empathy for the villain which they sought to elicit from viewers using the villain's backstory was lost on me as they seemed not to connect that into the story properly and we never could really find out what created the evil we spent 15 episodes cheering.Was this review helpful to you?
