Taiwanese and Chinese are so good at making an incredible show on the strength of the actors and the script, without leaning so hard on the production value and a high budget to cover over creative laziness. I wish some other countries would learn from their examples.
imo, people are being really generous by calling this a melo. True melos have elements of heightened angst, sadness, and dramatic tension. But you'll notice that every time a scene starts to ramp up strong emotions, the whimsical soundtrack, or some comic relief, or a scene switch or topic change, comes in and dampens the actual drama part of this "melodrama".
When I think melodrama, I think My Heart Twinkle Twinkle or Que Sera Sera, or What Happened In Bali.
I don't even know what i'd call this except "confused". And this happens when the producers/directors don't have any strong creative vision for a story.
Someone from our world would be hysterical, shocked after seeing someone being killed in front of them. I thought…
I can. When youre in what you percieve as a life or death situation, sometimes the self-preservation is to completely shut down and go on autopilot. Combine that with the fact that she's not sure how real the world she is in really is... and you could get like a kind of shellshocked lack of reaction.
Props to Arthur for actually putting in the effort to try to act and feel the way a 500 year old might. Sometimes when an actor plays what is supposed to be an extremely old character, they drop the pretense and just act like a normal ML or FL. In this one, because ML's acting is conscientious, it's easier to stay immersed in the plot.
Whoaaa, this is good. I was just going to preview it for a few minutes and i got sucked in so fast, and now I'm waiting impatiently for more episodes, a situation I don't like being in!
This freaking Tae Hun is the most annoyed character i have seen in 2025 drama after Bongsu from Heads over Heels.…
In the first and second significant interactions with him, the second things stop going HIS way, his violent tendencies surface. That's narcissism, baby!
I watch some really toxic and messed up romances and enjoy them, but to think narcissism is sexy and romantic is a very strange kink even for me.
Can someone please tell me why this dorama failed? I had big plans for it, but it's boring as hell to watch.(
I'm beginning to suspect the script was at least partially written by AI. I could be wrong, idk.
To me, another failure of this is that it's been labelled a 'romance' and there is barely any romance element to it. It's labelled as an action and there's not much of that. It's labelled as a melodrama, and yet lacks dramatic tension. What even is this? Mobster slice of life?
Did anyone watch The Spies Who Loved Me? That show had the same problem. Eric Mun was so fiery and spicy in Que Sera Sera, and then was really good in Another Miss Oh.... and then Spies Who Loved Me looked like it was going to be really fun, but it was a long slow motion face plant. And it also had a genre identity-crisis thing goin on.
yes. There's nothing all *that* wrong with it, it's just boring and uninspired, and seems unable to pick a genre…
I loved the first season of Stranger Things, and when I heard a season 2 had come out, I knew it was going to be worse, because Season 1 was a complete package, it doesn't need a season 2. Even my kids, who can watch anything they want from any time they want, are right now watching Peaky Blinders, Boardwalk Empire, and Sopranos.
I gravitate towards vampires, red flag romances, angsty, antihero, etc. And I started A Discovery of Witches and found season 1 to be a really watchable (I won't say it was good, but watchable yes). But season 2 got worse, and i stopped at the first episode of season 3 like 'i quit'.
Its truly ironic that out of all the countries in this world, the ones making the most adventurous, creative content right now are Chinese. At least from my romance-only pov anyways.
K dramas got international attention for being creative, adventurous and boundary breaking, and for being raw and full of great acting and writing.... and now that they have international audiences, they are no longer any of those things lol.
I wonder if AI is involved in the script writing these days. I'm an amateur fiction writer, and once I used chatgpt to help me write a fiction story. I was at first totally blown away by how FAST and EASY it was to finish a fiction work that way. But after it was finished, I realized it didn't feel like 'me', and I had turned out something very boilerplate and "typical" and I didn't like it. But like Nice Guy, thinking on it, has this similar feel of the script not having a lot of personal touch or idiosyncrasies. Just makes me think is all.
"The Secret" is a separate pain.... I've never seen anything like it! I need more ambiguous dramas, from…
I tried to recc Secret to someone last month, and it took me forever to find a link for it, idk why that drama is so hard to find these days because it's a CLASSIC.
(coughcoughsouthkoreacoughcoughcoughcough....)
When I think melodrama, I think My Heart Twinkle Twinkle or Que Sera Sera, or What Happened In Bali.
I don't even know what i'd call this except "confused". And this happens when the producers/directors don't have any strong creative vision for a story.
So good!
I watch some really toxic and messed up romances and enjoy them, but to think narcissism is sexy and romantic is a very strange kink even for me.
To me, another failure of this is that it's been labelled a 'romance' and there is barely any romance element to it. It's labelled as an action and there's not much of that. It's labelled as a melodrama, and yet lacks dramatic tension. What even is this? Mobster slice of life?
Did anyone watch The Spies Who Loved Me? That show had the same problem. Eric Mun was so fiery and spicy in Que Sera Sera, and then was really good in Another Miss Oh.... and then Spies Who Loved Me looked like it was going to be really fun, but it was a long slow motion face plant. And it also had a genre identity-crisis thing goin on.
I gravitate towards vampires, red flag romances, angsty, antihero, etc. And I started A Discovery of Witches and found season 1 to be a really watchable (I won't say it was good, but watchable yes). But season 2 got worse, and i stopped at the first episode of season 3 like 'i quit'.
Its truly ironic that out of all the countries in this world, the ones making the most adventurous, creative content right now are Chinese. At least from my romance-only pov anyways.
K dramas got international attention for being creative, adventurous and boundary breaking, and for being raw and full of great acting and writing.... and now that they have international audiences, they are no longer any of those things lol.
I wonder if AI is involved in the script writing these days. I'm an amateur fiction writer, and once I used chatgpt to help me write a fiction story. I was at first totally blown away by how FAST and EASY it was to finish a fiction work that way. But after it was finished, I realized it didn't feel like 'me', and I had turned out something very boilerplate and "typical" and I didn't like it. But like Nice Guy, thinking on it, has this similar feel of the script not having a lot of personal touch or idiosyncrasies. Just makes me think is all.