roddib

I'm scared uff

what a relief!

many thanks!

The story of KCIA drug smuggling operation during the military rule had ingredients for a 30 episode drama. Yet they squeezed it into 6 episodes. Like a synopsis without well developed characters, without in-depth exploration of the historical background, without properly giving a life to all the players and characters involved. If this had been a c-drama (like Narcotic Operation) we'd have spent 3 episodes hanging out in Vietnam alone. I really didn't get Woo Do Hwan's role. It's not like we really got to know Baek Ki Tae's family. Or the yakuza family that had max 20 mins screentime during the whole run (so why even introduce it).

Yes, there's going to be S2, but I already struggled to keep up with the plot when the episodes were 1 week apart. Can't imagine to remember anything about this when S2 eventually drops.

I believe Disney had a full script but butchered it just like they did with Arthdal Chronicles' final season. Disney is all action and little character depth or world building.

Jung Woo Sung was absolutely stellar in this though. It's worth watching his acting which, as one of the reviews says, is like he was acting in the real masterpiece of a drama that Made in Korea could have been. I have to mention also Roh Jae Won, he was excellent. Hyun Bin's character is a ruthless murderer and drug trader and people mistook him for a good guy. He was pretty good and shed his usually goofiness but would have needed to go one step further to portray true evil (which can be done by small gestures).

This is a 7.5.

ep 5

The slacker robot (ep 23) was very funny

Are there any videos the dance in the last ep in YT?

ep 23 was great. That was a very touching moment. Yes, I guess the plan is to get all young men on boat and then kill them. The eng subs are not the best. Sometimes better, sometimes require a lot of guesswork. I wish important historical dramas such as this had to be per rules manually translated.

The rats for Rat was a shocking scene, uff. (Luckily not too many of those in this drama)

I never watch previews - usually they kinda mislead and make us expect something more dramatic than actually happens.

exactly. Only Youku seems to be unaware of this fact.

thank you! I had lost hope for being able to see the final episodes. The eng subs in Youku are not understandable. I guess people at Youku do not follow geopolitics at all or care about quality historicals that much. Japan's recent remilitarization efforts and the new prime minister's tactlessless re. China makes this drama utterly timely.

kisskh doesn't have high resolution for anything

turned out really boring (am somewhere around ep 35. The antagonists have way too much screen time and they're not interesting at all. The police are more or less useless - something that irks me a lot. Going to finish on accelerated speed just because I came so far already (although it's my new year's promise never to do this again).

eng subs are very bad on iQiyi

Inoue is disgusting to the max. Desperately want him sent off from the island. Why does he have to be both smart and bestial. Unfortunately he's still around in ep 14.

Thanks a lot I was going to look up whether the Tokyo raid succeeded but you saved me the trouble!

Exactly, also German bioweapons researchers were brought to the US overnight in Operation Paperclip and hence got immunity from prosecution in the same way as Shiro Ishii and his collegues. Bioweapons research is still funded by the US and now takes place in countries outside of the US, for instance in Eastern Europe. That there are bioweapons research facilities Ukraine has already been admitted. I think there are also currently many things that people just do not like to know. I'm just beginning to realize that my own country has been vehemently denying its collaboration with German nazis. Many of us had a lot of time to read in 2020, lol, and much of what I read was around bioweapons research.

The translated episodes are gone, it's such a huge disappointment. I got to ep 15. Tried ep 16 with Youku's subs but it's not understandable at all.

Exactly, review (what people like to call censorship) means that certain basic standards of quality are met whilst artistic ambition is encouraged

Drug trafficking plots are not censored. See e.g., The Narcotic Operation, The First Shot, Escape From The Trilateral Slopes, etc. Plenty others in the works, e.g., Just Fight. (https://www.reddit.com/r/CDrama/comments/1q58vl9/just_fight_%E6%9A%B4%E8%99%8E_from_iqiyi_officially_wrapped_up/)

For dark crime dramas, see a list here: https://kisskh.at/list/Lp6QvXR4

I'm sorry to say it's not always easy to find the dark crime dramas. But in general these are highest quality, highest rated (in Douban), popular with the domestic mainland TV audience. MDL audience is 15-25 years old girls so you won't see any hype around dark thrillers.

***Pls do not repeat misinformation re. censorship if you're not absolutely certain that what you say is true.****

The Narcotic Operation: https://kisskh.at/771571-dong-qu-chun-lai
The First Shot https://kisskh.at/745353-the-first-shot
Drug Addiction https://kisskh.at/58605-drug-addiction
Escape From the Trilateral Slopes https://kisskh.at/744133-bian-shui-wang-shi

So the level of AI translations is getting better. I used to filter dramas on iQiyi and Youku based on manually vs. auto translated. It's good news that this is no longer necessary (for me) in the case of new releases. For me at least, the subs in River Sunset are completely okay.