This review may contain spoilers
Sun in the day
Sun in the day would have been a more accurate title.
I did like this drama. The story was captivating but the storytelling was dreadful.
The constant back and forth between the past and present could have been done better, this way it feels like we're watching the same scenes over and over again. There isn't anything new to show when you have to watch the same scene, sometimes from various angles or in different lengths. That wasn't good storytelling.
The Kdrama industry could stop adapting webtoons without fundamentally changing them. They're different medias, what works in a webtoon doesn't work in a kdrama. It's not really an adaptation when you don't ADAPT it to the media as well. Webtoons aren't storyboards, or they shouldn't be. This isn't a problem with this drama alone. From a decade watching kdramas, this is my diagnosis. Please, fix it!
It's a very interesting story but I feel like it just scratched the surface.
The characters are interesting but a bit unaware of their circumstances, even when they're entirely known to them and to us. This way, we get a warrior who doesn't face the fact he was a killing machine at the will and profit of his father, only to continue the killing to protect his love, sending that same love over a cliff for that same reason.
I would have loved to watch this story if done with more courage and less loose ends and that's the reason for my high score. It's a story that makes you think about their motivations and decisions. It's too bad the writers didn't make the characters think as much about that as well.
It's also sad that a story about such courageous characters could be so mild in its storytelling. If they filmed all the blood and swords so why didn't they show it? The story lost a lot of strength due to the age restriction. I don't understand why they decided to have such an explicitly violent drama toned down like this. It's not that I like gore but it did reduce the impact of the story and the strength of the characters.
The past and present personas are obviously different. The past characters are more interesting than the present ones. Capitalism has done a number on us, we're viewed as vapid and shallow. The firefighter stereotype is what bothers me the most. Firefighters are some of the most messed up people in the world, you have to be to be able to deal with so much trauma and pain. A delicate flower like FL doesn't seem to have what it takes to be one. She's not as complex as her past self and she keeps on saying phrases from the past that don't have the same meaning in the present. Them falling in love doesn't make much sense under that perspective. Her value for life comes from her profession and not from the connection she has to ML.
A lot of the solutions and clues are all there, everyone can see them. The characters can see them and we can see them. The characters not being able to put 2+2 means that they're daft or that the writers think the audience is daft.
For 1500 and 18 reincarnations the ghost never found it odd that FL died very single time before her 30th birthday? He had to be a good strategist to be such a good warrior, so that also doesn't make sense. In FL's dream, the father explicitly puts a curse on her and she still doesn't realise the source of it all. I would have liked it if they went deeper into what went wrong in their life together and how the father is the source of their misfortune. It's not that he didn't kill the father (though that solved it), it's not that she didn't trust they could have a life together after so much killing, it's not that she didn't love him enough. He lived his whole life for his father and then he lived his life for her. He didn't develop a sense of self and couldn't even do it as a ghost since his reason for existing was to protect her. She lived to die at the hands of a vindictive father that was angry at the person who stopped his plans and his life. Her purpose was to take the place of the ML in the father's sadistic quest. It makes sense that such a self-serving person would hold a grudge about that. To break the cycle, they had to end the source of the curse. It just feels a bit lacking. It could have been more to it.
The ending doesn't make sense. There's too much inconsistency to what happens to ghosts in human bodies. It doesn't make sense that Han Jun Oh came back and the CEO didn't. They had said that his soul had passed and that's why the ghost was able to possess the body and that makes sense. It can also make sense that the ghost has access to a lot of the memories because they are stored in the body. It doesn't make sense that Han Jun Oh comes back and the health problem that didn't have a solution suddenly has one. He wasn't there anymore, we saw that when the ghost's spirit was ejected by that yellow talisman the monk placed on his chest. The ghost was out of the body and there was no pulse, Jun Oh was not there anymore. He shouldn't have come back. It would have been devastating to see the face and shell of the man you loved everywhere, over a lifetime. A constant reminder of the love you couldn't live. I'm glad they could meet in another life. That part was a good ending.
I could talk about all these inconsistencies all night but I'll end it here. It was an interesting story anyway and I enjoyed the time I spent watching most of it.
I did like this drama. The story was captivating but the storytelling was dreadful.
The constant back and forth between the past and present could have been done better, this way it feels like we're watching the same scenes over and over again. There isn't anything new to show when you have to watch the same scene, sometimes from various angles or in different lengths. That wasn't good storytelling.
The Kdrama industry could stop adapting webtoons without fundamentally changing them. They're different medias, what works in a webtoon doesn't work in a kdrama. It's not really an adaptation when you don't ADAPT it to the media as well. Webtoons aren't storyboards, or they shouldn't be. This isn't a problem with this drama alone. From a decade watching kdramas, this is my diagnosis. Please, fix it!
It's a very interesting story but I feel like it just scratched the surface.
The characters are interesting but a bit unaware of their circumstances, even when they're entirely known to them and to us. This way, we get a warrior who doesn't face the fact he was a killing machine at the will and profit of his father, only to continue the killing to protect his love, sending that same love over a cliff for that same reason.
I would have loved to watch this story if done with more courage and less loose ends and that's the reason for my high score. It's a story that makes you think about their motivations and decisions. It's too bad the writers didn't make the characters think as much about that as well.
It's also sad that a story about such courageous characters could be so mild in its storytelling. If they filmed all the blood and swords so why didn't they show it? The story lost a lot of strength due to the age restriction. I don't understand why they decided to have such an explicitly violent drama toned down like this. It's not that I like gore but it did reduce the impact of the story and the strength of the characters.
The past and present personas are obviously different. The past characters are more interesting than the present ones. Capitalism has done a number on us, we're viewed as vapid and shallow. The firefighter stereotype is what bothers me the most. Firefighters are some of the most messed up people in the world, you have to be to be able to deal with so much trauma and pain. A delicate flower like FL doesn't seem to have what it takes to be one. She's not as complex as her past self and she keeps on saying phrases from the past that don't have the same meaning in the present. Them falling in love doesn't make much sense under that perspective. Her value for life comes from her profession and not from the connection she has to ML.
A lot of the solutions and clues are all there, everyone can see them. The characters can see them and we can see them. The characters not being able to put 2+2 means that they're daft or that the writers think the audience is daft.
For 1500 and 18 reincarnations the ghost never found it odd that FL died very single time before her 30th birthday? He had to be a good strategist to be such a good warrior, so that also doesn't make sense. In FL's dream, the father explicitly puts a curse on her and she still doesn't realise the source of it all. I would have liked it if they went deeper into what went wrong in their life together and how the father is the source of their misfortune. It's not that he didn't kill the father (though that solved it), it's not that she didn't trust they could have a life together after so much killing, it's not that she didn't love him enough. He lived his whole life for his father and then he lived his life for her. He didn't develop a sense of self and couldn't even do it as a ghost since his reason for existing was to protect her. She lived to die at the hands of a vindictive father that was angry at the person who stopped his plans and his life. Her purpose was to take the place of the ML in the father's sadistic quest. It makes sense that such a self-serving person would hold a grudge about that. To break the cycle, they had to end the source of the curse. It just feels a bit lacking. It could have been more to it.
The ending doesn't make sense. There's too much inconsistency to what happens to ghosts in human bodies. It doesn't make sense that Han Jun Oh came back and the CEO didn't. They had said that his soul had passed and that's why the ghost was able to possess the body and that makes sense. It can also make sense that the ghost has access to a lot of the memories because they are stored in the body. It doesn't make sense that Han Jun Oh comes back and the health problem that didn't have a solution suddenly has one. He wasn't there anymore, we saw that when the ghost's spirit was ejected by that yellow talisman the monk placed on his chest. The ghost was out of the body and there was no pulse, Jun Oh was not there anymore. He shouldn't have come back. It would have been devastating to see the face and shell of the man you loved everywhere, over a lifetime. A constant reminder of the love you couldn't live. I'm glad they could meet in another life. That part was a good ending.
I could talk about all these inconsistencies all night but I'll end it here. It was an interesting story anyway and I enjoyed the time I spent watching most of it.
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