Gabriela

A story with potential, that was wasted.

"Red Swan" is definitely one of my biggest disappointments, I was hopping for an amazing production with Rain and Kang Ha Neul, but it simply didn't work out, even when it had everything to be great.

The premise is good, there are a lot of dramas with the same style like "The K2", that follows the relationship of a woman and her bodyguard and how they fell in love, but the story lacks depth, the characters and the romance is really weak, the dialogues are horrible. I even laughed on episode 7 when Do Yoon asks Wan Soo to trust him... the way he say that, it was so bad, I couldn't keep a straight face. HAHAHAHA'

Their relationship is weird, there wasn't a moment when you see them falling in love, at a moment, with no explanation, Do Yoon and Wan Soo were madly in love and they not really know each other. That didn't make sense to me.

This was a drama that only made noise, but in reality it didn't have anything to show.

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Basically a copy of "I Hear Your Voice", that just didn't work.

"Why Her" follows Soo Jae, a ruthless and competent lawyer who doesn't care about anything except winning and destroys everyone that gets in her way. She did all that to survive in a men's world that don't accept her, that didn't think she was good enough and even so, Soo Jae is betrayed by her mentor and got demoted to being a teacher in a college.
There, she meets Gong Chan, a young man who tries to help in any way possible, what she doesn't know it's that they are connected by the past, when Soo Jae was Gong Chan's lawyer when he was framed for killing his sister. He hides that fact, to keep staying by her side.

The drama's premise reminded me of "I Hear Your Voice", specially because of the relation of the main characters and how they're connected with a death. Actually there's a scene that to me it's almost the same: when Gong Chan say that he's waiting to find someone and that person is Soo Jae.
The problem is that Hwang In Youp just didn't work as a main lead. Maybe it was because of his inexperience, but he couldn't get in the same level as Seo Hyun Jin and this weakened the story and also there was no chemistry at all between them.

One good thing about the drama is Seo Hyun Jin's character Soo Jae, she's a badass woman and if the writers had chosen a better actor to be her pair, the drama would definitely be different.

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Good action scenes, but the story is very rushed

"Tyrant" it's about people fighting because of a virus, everyone wants it and kills to get it. There's also Ja Gyeong, a gangster's daughter who got caught in between that.

I really don't like this format for dramas, 8 episodes were already too little, but now we have only 4? It's getting worse.
You can see the similarities with the movie "The Witch", but how there were only 4 episodes, the drama ends so fast, it barely gives you any time to process what happened.
The fight sequence on the last episode was really impressive, I couldn't take my eyes of the screen.

The cast is spectacular, to be able to see Cha Seung Won, Kim Kang Woo and Kim Seon Ho acting together, that was incredible <3

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A truly beautiful story

"Snowfall" tells the story of a blind girl named Mi Lan, who is abused by her mother and lives her life basically trapped all the time. She then saves Zhi Heng, making him indebted to her.

The relationship of Mi Lan and Zhi Heng is very intriguing, because we can't quite classify what they are to each other. It's beyond a romance, Zhi Heng gave Mi Lan a second chance to live, he saved from an abusive mother and from the darkness, gave her a purpose, a family... and that's so much more than the love between man and woman.
That was one of the reasons the drama really stuck with me, the development was really beautiful.

The drama is way better than I expected. The chemistry between Gao Wei Guang and Ouyang Nana is amazing.
There was several fun moments and I liked how the vampire creature was portrayed, it reminded of the movie "Interview With A Vampire", specially about the beauty, the seduction, the mystery around the vampire. I just didn't like the ending, I was hoping for a happy ending, they deserved that, but overall, I was a great drama.

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The meaning of love

"Ashes of Love" tells the story of a girl named Jin Mi who's born without the ability to love, because of that she's always naive, happy and free, but everything changes when Xu Feng falls in the Floral Realm and meets her unexpectedly.
Jin Mi and Xu Feng become closer and eventually are involved romantically, still Jin Mi doesn't understand what's love. There's also Run Yu, Xu Feng's half brother who falls in love with Jin Mi at first sight.
The three characters are connected with each other and when Jin Mi finds her real father, she discover that she's the lost fiancee of Run Yu. That causes the conflict that changes their lives forever.

I liked Xu Feng, but to be honest, Run Yu is a better character, his life story, his traumas, all that makes him more appealing to audience, when Xu Feng was always the favorite son and treated with more care, but Run Yu's jealousy was his doom, when he basically forced Jin Mi to kill Xu Feng with her own hands, making her think that Xu Feng was her father's killer. In that moment, Jin Mi broke her Yun Elixir, realizing what's love and what's she done.
Jin Mi's sacrifice at the end was to make amends, since basically everything was her fault, the brothers fighting because of her and destroying all that's in the way... I really loved Jin Mi's phrase when she's dying: "If your heart is filled with love, why would you be afraid of sadness and fear?"
Of course there's a happy ending for Jin Mi and Xu Feng, it would be too sad if that didn't happen.

The drama is truly amazing, the story, the characters, the development, the actors, it's one of the best cdramas that I have ever seen. It's really worth the watch <3

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An underrated drama, with an amazing story

"Becoming Witch" is a dark comedy drama and honestly, an amazing surprise. When woman get married, they don't enter in a fairy tale but rather in a horror movie, instead of becoming Cinderella they become witches! HAHAHA'

The story follows three women: Ma Ri, Hee Soo and Jin Ah, they are in their 40's and none of them is happy being married. Ma Ri has a cheating husband, Hee's Soo husband is always away and she has to take care of her sick mother-in-law and Jin Ah is a widow, who gained a lot of money from her husband's death. She's the only one who's remotely happy, but that won't last long, since her husband comes back... alive.

Ma Ri is a total badass. I think she's one of the best characters I ever saw in a drama, there's no other woman like her. Her crazy eyes telling the whole world she won't divorce Nak Gu or when she dreamed about killing him. There's also the car accident and the whole "Misery" act in the hospital. But the interesting thing is that despise everything that Nak Gu did to her, Ma Ri still loved him, because he's the father of her child. The scene when she finally confess that, Nak Gu is holding a gun and he shots her, the gun didn't have bullets but, that moment is really the end, he killed every last inch of love that she had in that second.
The ending is very satisfying, Nak Gu is a freaking bastard, so he really deserved all that... karma is really a bitch.

Hee Soo's ending was the only sad thing about this drama. She is a beautiful woman, who wanted to have a child her whole life, but instead she got cancer. The good thing is that she finally had some good times with her husband and enjoyed her last moments on earth, leaving behind the memories with her friends, that won't ever forget her.

This is really an underrated drama, I don't know how people aren't talking about it, it's an amazing story. Lee Yoo Ri's acting is simply spectacular <3

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A warm and beautiful story

"Kill Me, Heal Me" it's a drama about Cha Do Hyun, a man who has suffered a trauma in his childhood, leaving him with a memory lost and 6 personalities: Shin Se Gi, Ahn Yo Na, Ahn Yo Sub, Perry Park, Nana and Mr X. In a twist of fate, he meets Ri Jin, a psychiatric resident who becomes his new doctor, to help him in his daily life, as a way to stop the personalities from doing too much trouble.
With time, the two realize there's a connection between them in the past, since Ri Jin starts having the same flashes of images as Do Hyun and they seem to knew each other.

The truth is that Do Hyun and Ri Jin lived for one year together, as half-siblings, but that wasn't true, since Ri Jin's birth mother made up a lie with Do Hyun's grandfather. When Ri Jin's mother dies, Do Hyun's father locks her up in the basement and abuses the girl, her only comfort is when Do Hyun comes down to play with her. One day, Do Hyun can't take the abuse anymore and that is the day Shin Se Gi is born, his first personality, the one who burns down the house and allows Ri Jin to be set free. She's taken by Sun Yeong, who raises Ri Jin was her daughter alongside with her son, Ri On.
Ri On grows up and learns the truth about his sister past, he starts digging in the story to understands what happened. What he didn't expect is that Do Hyun and Ri Jin would met coincidentally, like fate wanted them to met each other.

Ri Jin and Do Hyun are a really cute couple, the romance is light but sweet at the same time. There's not much space to see them together as a couple, since the main focus of the drama is to see Ri Jin learning more and dealing with Do Hyun's personalities, trying to find ways to help him get better. I have to say the best scenes are when the personalities are involved, specially Se Gi and Yo Na. The humor is a great selling point of this drama!

The drama is really good, it's one of the best stories I have ever seen. The characters are amazing. I loved the way the drama developed the story with Do Hyun's mental problems, showing there's nothing wrong with that, it was his way to cope with everything that happened, even his own guilt and that we all need someone on our side, someone to help, to lean, to understand. It's a beautiful story <3

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Falling for Gong Yoo <3

"Coffee Prince" it's a drama about Eun Chan, she's the breadwinner of her family and because of that, she doesn't have time to care about her looks, so everyone thinks she's a man and since she needs to make a living, Eun Chan sometimes uses that in her favor. One day she meets Han Kyul, he immediately thinks of her as a man and the two begin a friendship, that turns into a "forbidden love" since Han Kyul thinks Eun Chan is a man and she doesn't have the courage to tell the truth, fearing of being rejected.

I totally understood why it took so long for Eun Chan to tell the truth, nobody saw her as a woman, so it was better to be just another guy friend, than trying to confess and be heartbroken. The problem is her feelings for Han Kyul just grew stronger and she couldn't keep it hidden anymore. The scene where Han Kyul finds out Eun Chan's a girl it's really impressive, he felt betrayed, specially because it took a lot of courage in him to confess his feelings thinking Eun Chan was a man, but at the same time, Eun Chan had the courage to tell she's a woman... but it was too late and Han Kyul finds out from another person.

This was the drama that made me fall in love with Gong Yoo. It's a perfect drama in every sense, specially because it's an older one and the romance is beautiful, the way the writers put the relationship of Eun Chan and Han Kyul was really good, it's like a BL, until the moment Eun Chan's identity is out.
It's a must see if you like Korean dramas, it's one of the best that I had ever watched.

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"Somebody" follows the story of a programmer named Sum, who is introverted and has a hard time interacting with other people. She spends most of her time chatting with strangers online through her AI program. She starts chatting with a man named Yun Oh, unaware that he is a serial killer.

Their relationship is quite strange, but that's exactly what I expected, since both characters are like that. Yun Oh is clearly a psychopath, but Sum isn't far behind. She had all the traits of a psychopath, she just never acted on them. At first, I thought she was with him knowing he was a murderer, but later it was implied that Sum thought he was innocent, especially when Mok Won started questioning her.

I enjoyed seeing Kim Young Kwang playing a role like this, he is the biggest reason to watch, since the drama ends up being quite disappointing. There was no depth to Yun Oh's past, his motivations and I think this was essential to understanding the character.

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"The Story of Ming Lan" is a drama about the life of Shen Ming Lan.

Ming Lan is the daughter of a concubine. Both she and her mother are mistreated by their relatives, surviving on next to nothing, until one day her mother dies giving birth, due to an evil scheme by another concubine. Ming Lan then goes to live with her grandmother, the only person besides her mother who loves and treats her well.

Time passes, Ming Lan grows up and falls in love with Yuan Ruo, a young man she grew up with. However, their relationship ultimately fails, as Yuan Ruo is the son of a former princess, who refuses to accept her son with a mere concubine. She marries Ting Ye, someone who helped her when she was a child and saved her on numerous occasions. He becomes the support, the partner Ming Lan needed, someone who is always by her side and defends her in everything and to everyone.

The romance between Ming Lan and Ting Ye is so sweet, they have great chemistry on screen, and one of the things I liked most was that the drama focuses heavily on their relationship, forming the foundation for the entire story. We see Ming Lan slowly falling in love with Ting Ye. At first, he's clearly the one who loves her most, but by the end of the drama, Ming Lan nearly sacrifices herself to save Ting Ye, showing how things have changed.

Ming Lan is incredible in every way. She's one of the best characters I've ever seen in a drama, an independent, strong, and audacious woman who goes after what she wants and doesn't stay silent when she sees injustice. She avenged her mother's death by setting a trap for Mo Lan's mother. When they tried to do the same to her friend as they did to her mother, Ming Lan was a total badass, preventing a tragedy, and she did it while pregnant, without any fear. Then they poisoned her grandmother. Everyone wanted to cover it up because her grandmother wasn't related by blood to any of them, but Ming Lan wouldn't let that happen. She fought tooth and nail and saved her grandmother. A total badass!

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"Happiness" is a drama about a group of people trapped inside an apartment complex, trying to survive an outbreak of an unknown virus.

Sae Bom and Yi Hyun have been best friends since they were teenagers and this friendship has continued even after they became adults. In order to get an apartment in the most famous place in the city, the two get married only on paper to have priority access. It all seems like a dream come true and Yi Hyun plans to confess his feelings for Sae Bom, taking advantage of the opportunity of now being married, but everything changes completely when a psychotic outbreak causes people to attack each other for no apparent reason. An infected person is released in the condominium and begins to infect others. Sae Bom and Yi Hyun, along with other residents, enter a battle for survival... the problem is that the infected are not the only danger.

Do you know what message this drama conveys?! Human beings are the real monsters.
When watching this drama, it was impossible not to make comparisons with the movie "The Mist", because both have a very similar setting and narrative. They are about people who are trapped together during a situation that is out of control, in the case of the drama, an outbreak of a virus that turns people into a mix of vampires and zombies. But the biggest problem they have to overcome in reality is not the infected, but the people who are by their side.

There are so many horrible things that happen, that it makes you rethink before trusting anyone, because in the beginning everyone was nice, but as soon as things started to get worse, their true faces began to appear. The killer doctor and the so-called "representative" of the building, it is easy to identify that they are sociopaths, so everything they did during the drama was no surprise, but some characters surprised me. The son of that older couple telling everyone that his mother was infected and then stealing all the food?! Bastard. The worst of all was when they all joined up with the killer to force Yi Hyun and Sae Bom to turn the power back on. People are really the worst.

Yi Hyun and Sae Bom are absolutely adorable. I wasn't expecting romance, but the drama is full of moments between them, the couple is the central basis of the story and everything else is secondary. Every time Yi Hyun saved Sae Bom, it was a confession of his love. The scene where Sae Bom finds out that Yi Hyun is infected is amazing, her expression when she sees him holding the door and seeing that none of the infected wanted him, not even at that moment did she give up on him.
And when she returns to the apartment looking for Yi Hyun, that kiss was incredible, a scene that showed both the love between them, as well as the way Sae Bom trusts Yi Hyun, since he was infected at that moment.

This was one of the best dramas I've ever watched, it has everything. Great characters, a very well constructed narrative and impeccable development.

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"Newtopia" is a dark comedy drama about people trying to survive a zombie apocalypse.

The story revolves around two groups in different parts of Seoul, one with Young Joo and the other with Jae Yoon. The two are lovers, Jae Yoon is in the army and Young Joo basically spends the entire drama trying to get to where he is. I have to admit that I didn't expect the girl to be this badass, but I have to applaud her for killing the zombies with the chainsaw! It was amazing.

Ji Soo's acting isn't anything spectacular, she made me laugh several times, but in the more serious moments, she couldn't keep a straight face, like in the train scene, but since the drama focuses on comedy, this doesn't end up being very relevant.

Arron Park is amazing, he ended up stealing the show several times. And is it really true that he didn't end up transforming because he was drunk? But does that mean he needs to drink all the time? The moment his body no longer has alcohol, he will probably transform, like what happened to that boy who was with Young Joo's group.

Speaking of Young Joo, it seems like the girl was tripping on acid during this zombie apocalypse, everything that happened to her seems impossible. The zombies talked to her, shouting her name the whole time and she was even saved by the ghost of a train station employee. Oh, we can't forget how she suddenly met Jae Yoon's favorite singer and he was just singing, in the middle of all this and the worst part is that we can't even say it's a lie, because she has the tape signed by him. HAHAHA'

I don't know if there's a need for a second season, I even liked that they didn't explain much about how the outbreak started, we just saw all the chaos it caused. I didn't expect anything from this drama and I ended up being surprised, it's very fun.

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"KinnPorsche" is a drama about the romance between Kinn and Porsche. Kinn is the son of a Mafia boss, and one day he unexpectedly meets Porsche, a bartender who helps him escape from someone who was trying to attack him. Kinn then hires Porsche to be his personal bodyguard. As they spend time together, Kinn and Porsche realize that there is a clear attraction between them.

The romance between Kinn and Porsche is intense, passionate and engaging, their chemistry is literally breathtaking. Of all the BL dramas I've watched, they were the best couple, without a shadow of a doubt.

Pete and Vegas aren't far behind. The romance between these two started unexpectedly, but at times, they stole the show even from the main characters. There was something very tragic between them, as Vegas initially kidnapped Pete and tortured him to get information about Kinn for his father, who is part of a rival Mafia. The problem is that Vegas and Pete end up falling in love, because by spending so much time together, Vegas opens up to Pete about his feelings, his life, his traumas and the two connect, but at the same time, Pete was traumatized by everything Vegas did to him. It is a really troubled relationship, but it really grabs you, you want to see them both doing well, having their happy ending... sometimes even more than Kinn and Porsche.

This was one of the best dramas of 2022 and I'm not just putting it in the BL category, the story is incredible in every way. There's a lot of comedy, especially because of Tankhun, who is simply magnificent. I loved how he watched Korean dramas and always thought someone was going to die, when in fact it wasn't even horror. HAHAHA'
Special note for when he made Porsche dress up as a mermaid and the funeral he held for Pete, even without knowing if he was really dead. It had to be Tankhun.

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"The 8 Show" tells the story of 8 people who decide to participate in a strange and secret reality show that will pay them only for their time. At first, it all seems like a dream, since each of them has a huge debt to pay off, so it seemed like a good idea to earn money just by spending time there... but the reality is much darker than that.

The players discover that each room earns money at different rates, dividing people into two classes: the upper apartments and the lower ones, and the real problem begins when they choose a place to be the bathroom; this is the turning point. The chosen room is number 8, since it earns more money and basically does nothing, but the crazy woman simply cannot stand it, and this marks the change in the atmosphere of the group and in the entire story.

It was obvious that the people in the upper rooms would use the lower ones to do all the work, but I could not imagine the crazy and horrible things they would do to these people. They discover that the time they earn outside their rooms depends on the spectators, on what they find interesting and funny and what they think of doing? Torture them. The four players invented little games and the fun was to see the others get hurt, in various ways, and they also took away their phones and created a system for them to eat, turning them into slaves.

When number 6 was in control, the others were tortured physically, but when number 8 takes over, this changes drastically, since the torture is now psychological. She basically turns them into an experiment, putting them into a depraved sleep and showing them videos over and over, trying to break their minds, and the most shocking thing is that number 8 was not doing this for the viewers, but for herself, she liked to see the suffering and it turned her on. Yes, she is that level of psychopath. HAHAHA'

The drama is clearly a critique of society, how money rules our lives and how our greed can be our downfall. This is the case with number 1: if he had been satisfied with the money he earned and never tried to change rooms, he wouldn't have lost all his money and wouldn't have done that crazy thing that killed him in the last episode. It's really sad because he said exactly that, that he shouldn't have been greedy, but since he had always been on the bottom, he wanted to see what it was like to be on top.

Honestly, I wanted to see revenge for numbers 1, 2, 3 and 5, they deserved it. Number 8 getting arrested at the end wasn't enough, and number 6 being okay after almost killing them didn't seem right. Number 5 should have done more than just castrate him.

For me, this drama was more intense and violent than "Round 4". It's easier to kill people, especially by imposing rules that take away the guilt, but breaking a person's spirit, making them want to kill themselves, especially because you don't know when it will end, the endless waiting, that's pure torture.

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"Till The End of The Moon" is one of the best cdramas I've ever watched.

Susu is a woman who goes back in time to stop a man named Tantai Jin from becoming the devil god and destroying the entire world. To do so, she assumes the identity of Ye Xi Wu, Tantai Jin's wife, and her mission is to destroy his evil bone, which means killing him before he becomes evil. But the problem is that, as she spends time with him, Susu discovers that Tantai Jin is not a bad person, but the way he is being treated will turn him into someone bad. So, she tries to make him fall in love with her, thinking that this way he won't become bad. The twist here is that Tantai Jin is a liar and that was his plan all along: to deceive her, because he was not innocent.

The couple basically has three lives throughout the drama: first we see Ye Xi Wu and Tantai Jin, then we have Sang Jiu and Ming Ye, and lastly Susu and Jiu Min. In all their lives, they made a beautiful couple <3

I was dragging my feet to watch this drama because I knew it wouldn't have a happy ending, as most dramas of this style barely have one. Couples who become enemies are a recipe for someone to die in the end. HAHA!
But I'm glad I watched it, this drama is incredible, it's a spectacular production in every sense. The couple's chemistry is simply perfect, with sweet and passionate moments. The kissing scenes really surprised me and Tantai Jin is a very intriguing character, sometimes he seems like a villain, sometimes he seems very sweet, he's a mystery. I wanted a happy ending for him, but I understand why he had to die, it was his way of redeeming himself for everything.

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