scenophile

Half a season

There are some interesting premises and character dynamics here: reunited exes, Gi-hun and the Front Man, the perspective of No-Eul as a guard...but nothing really comes to fruition because S2 feels incomplete. I think calling it S2 and S3 is kind of a stretch; it's S2 part 1 and S2 part 2. I like seeing the push-and-pull between the character pairings, and the show does a good job of adding tension using dramatic irony, but other than that, it's a lot of set-up without any pay-off.

I have the patience to wait for S3, but it just feels like Gi-hun, as a returning character, is quite under-utilized. I'm not sure I buy into the idea that he's some kind of revolutionary leader who everyone falls in line behind, and I also feel like he's approached the games on too much of a surface level. He yells for everyone to listen and follow him to overthrow the game makers, but doesn't spend actual time thinking about why the games exist, or if they planted a player the way they did in the last game. Wi Ha-jun's character (whose name I can't even remember) is underutilized too. He's on a boat, but largely irrelevant.

I also think the games just aren't as good. I understand that the show needed to go beyond the games this time and couldn't just have the same thing play out again, but I felt like there was a missed opportunity here. Now that we have a guard character, I imagine — what if the protagonists planted people in the guards the same way the antagonists had planted a player? Or what if the players found loopholes to the games? Part of the chart of S1 was that the games were very simple: cut out this shape, pull the rope, cross the bridge, play marbles. This time, in making the game so complicated — have a team of five with each person playing a different childhood game as you walk around the track with your legs tied together — it felt like we lost something. We didn't get to see how each character approached a simple game because there were too many characters and games and we were just flashing through all of them.

Regardless of all this, I think this season is a decent set-up for whatever comes next.

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Mature in some ways, overdramatic in others

Trigger Warning: Suicide, Rape

This is a drama that simultaneously feels ahead of its time and VERY of its time.

The way it handles sexual assault, PTSD, and grief is overall very mature, and I thought that the more raw and unedited type of directing and the more down-to-earth dialogue and acting really helped. The humor is subtle but there. The good-girl-bad-boy trope is present, but doesn't feel over-the-top, and each of our main characters feel like they've each carved out their little worlds before we get to watch them collide.

The chemistry is quite good as well, and I did find our leads really cute. The banter is fun — even though the female lead is shy and quiet, she and the male lead have a very good back-and-forth when its just the two of them, and we get to see how he gets her to come out of her shell.

The friendships are really great to see too, and that is such a crazy thing for me to say considering the intense way Qing Mei bullied our FL at the start. But once we get past that, I really liked her character and the way she supported the main lead. With that being said, however, this is definitely a drama that focuses only on the two main leads, so her character's personality and storyline isn't developed much beyond that.

Those are all the ways in which the drama felt ahead of its time.

Now, the way it feels exactly of its time (2004) are the subplots and just how dramatic they get. I enjoyed a few of them, like the sociopath/psychopath character who wanted to mold Chen Ling into the same as him, but the drama lost me a little bit when it went into his backstory. There's his twin's suicide, his mother's death, the dangers of motorcycle racing, the estrangement from his father, who is actually a wealthy chairman of a big corporation. That last reveal of him being a secret chaebol was the worst one for me because it's just so 2004 and made the drama seem a lot less grounded than it previously was. Overall, however, having so much backstory for him just made it feel a little unfocused.

The way the female lead's r*pist came back and everything with him blew up into stalking and a fistfight...I know this does happen in real life, unfortunately, but for the purposes of this show I wish it had stayed in the backstory instead of being blown up into something so big, which was then tied into the storyline of the ML returning to his rich family.

I know this is based off a manga and I'll probably read that at some point because I do think it's an interesting story, but I can already tell that I'll enjoy the earlier chapters more than the later ones, which is what I felt about the show.

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A good old case-of-the-week

Taiwanese dramas of the "comedy" variety are really a hit or miss for me because it's either extremely witty or extremely cringe. I'm happy to say that this is the former. The comedic timing is impeccable and the three main leads (and even all the side characters) bounce off each other very well.

The cases are pretty interesting, but I admit that none of them really stood out to me as much the main arc of the lead recovering from the accident that killed his father, or even as much as just seeing the trio be goofy together.

It's the humor and the family theme that really make the show. I won't lie — I shed a lot of tears whenever the ML shared scenes with either of his parents, and I think it's those scenes that will stick with me the most.

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Vibes but no plot

This review is coming at you from a non-novel reader, just FYI. But it's another one of these beloved dramas that I ended up just not quite clicking with.

The concept is fantastic. I love a good time travel / isekai type story à la Scarlet Heart Ryeo or Romance of Tiger and Rose. The acting is sometimes good and sometimes a little awkward.

I feel like my main issue with this drama is that so much of it feels unearned and aimless.

There's a sort of "mystery" subplot surrounding a conspiracy reveal that appears for maybe three episodes, and it's all played out so fast from the moment it's first mentioned to the final reveal. We never really follow the story; we just know it's happening in the background, and then the big reveal happens and the story just ends.

The romance, which is the biggest part of the story, gives me much of the same feeling. I am absolutely a hater of insta-love and "destined love," and here it really does show my biggest problem with it. I'm just not understanding why or when they fell in love with each other, and we're given these romantic moments when I feel like they should still be getting to know each other better. It's weird because the potential is definitely there — the massage scene, for example, is A+ — but it would've been even better if it felt earned.

It also feels aimless in the sense of Jom's time travelling not being explained. It's explored at the start when he's so frazzled and trying to figure out what's happening, but he gradually just starts living a normal life. His situation is only addressed when he's forcibly confronted with it, and it leaves a lot of questions by the end. I constantly wished the drama went deeper into this aspect and upped the stakes. I think this is where the conspiracy subplot could've been used, because it could've given Jom a goal, and a "oh, THIS is why I came back" moment.

Ultimately, the ending also feels quite rushed. I know there's a sequel though, so maybe it'll help. Nevertheless, I think the vibes are still there, and I know the novel probably explains more, but from a drama-only perspective, that's what I felt.

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Eccentric lead, Underrated drama

This drama is so underrated. From the very first episode I was captivated by the female lead — there's something about these very eccentric but straightforward and socially unique leads that just feel so relatable and immediately create a different dynamic wherever the drama takes place, which, in this show, is a newsroom.

I really enjoyed the episodic format of this one as well, and it was even more interesting than typical episodic dramas because of how well they tied in the subplots of each side character with different cases. By the end of the show I truly felt like I knew every single person working in that newsroom.

My only criticism is a minor one: I enjoyed the backstory arc of the main female lead, which was revealed about halfway through the way, better than the actual ending arc, which was treated like the finale. It's not a dealbreaker by any means — in fact, logically it makes sense for the story to wrap back around to present day, but I just felt like it wasn't as emotionally hard-hitting.

Overall, I still really enjoyed this drama and I'm sad at how underrated it is.

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Draaaaaaag.

If this was a romance about Dao Ming Si and Shancai, it made no sense that the two of them maybe got about 60 minutes of screentime, with half of that all being in the first episode before everything went to crap.

It's all been said before, but there was absolutely no reason we had to wait 13 episodes for Shancai and DMS to meet again, and then ANOTHER 11 episodes for him to get his memory back, all for nothing to come of it until a 10 minute reconciliation at the end, all without any sort of meaningful communication between them before that.

I could write an entire thesis about why I hate the amnesia trope, and I know the source material is to blame for this arc even existing, but with that being said, I absolutely could not bring myself to care about anything that happened during the amnesia, much less any scenes between Ye Sha and Dao Ming Si. It was refreshing, sure, that she wasn't a manipulative mean girl like in the other versions, but amnesiac DMS was basically scrubbed so clean he wasn't himself. Most of their love story occurred in a world without familial or financial pressures, which made it feel low stakes. And all of that doesn't even compare to the fact that we, as the audience, knew how the story would end anyways and all the wishy-washiness just felt very dragged out.

We also get to see a little bit of Meizuo's romance and Ximen's family arc in this one. I didn't realize that Ximen's romance arc wouldn't get a conclusion (which is slightly disappointing as it was my favorite part of the Korean version), but overall I don't think I had the patience to appreciate either of these side stories because they took up screentime while the main story was still being frustratingly slow.

On the other hand, think my favorite part of this drama has to be Lei. He's come so far since the start of the show, and he got all the meaningful conversations Shancai should've had with DMS. I didn't have SLS in every adaptation of Hana Yori Dango, but this one...oof.

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Outdated but the casting is still great

I'm gradually making my way through all the Hana Yori Dango adaptations to compare them, and had saved this one for two slightly contradictory reasons: One, I knew it was older and it might've been more problematic, and two, I knew how much of a craze this drama started and actually had pretty high expectations.

I'm not going to talk too much about the plot — we all know what the story is and it's true that most of this doesn't age well, and this being from 2001, it's a lot less sanitized than the newer versions like China's 2018 Meteor Garden and Thailand's F4: Thailand in 2021.

However, I do think the pacing was just...sort of off. I felt like it was really slow in between plots — 29 episodes is way too much for this type of story. At the same time, when one plot moved to the next it felt kind of abrupt. I also just felt like the level of drama didn't necessarily match up what was actually happening on screen, maybe because of screentime distribution, or because side characters often came in and out without enough exposition.

Ultimately, I think the strongest part of this drama was the casting. This is maybe the only version where you really feel F4's commanding presence. Dao Ming Si is actually a good balance of intimidating/imposing and brainless loser, and Lei manages to pull off aloof and gentle but also powerful. The other two are a little less memorable, though.

I also think the casting and acting for Shan Cai was great. Compared to the other versions, she's still spunky but feels much more down to earth. There's no overacting (which the Korean FL is the ultimate culprit of), and she all around seems much more grounded and logical, and less whiny than the others.

A final comment I have is — and this might be more of a fault of the source material than the drama itself (which I haven't read) — but I just think this version had too many boys fall for Shan Cai when they could've just kept it platonic.

I haven't watched season 2 of this one yet, but so far my favorite adaptation of HYD is still the Japanese one, which seemed to hit the perfect pace with many less episodes.

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About emotional turmoil

As someone who absolutely despises infidelity in shows, I went into this thinking that I was watching it simply for Puff/Jasper, who I had loved in Pleasantly Surprised. And yet, I turned out to be ~pleasantly surprised~ by this drama and the way it handled cheating and emotional turmoil.

For anyone who goes into this expecting a whirlwind romance and two people who can't help but be physically attracted to each other's touch, I give a few words of warning: this is not that sort of drama. Instead, this drama was really intelligent and emotionally thoughtful, which made me enjoy it much more.

This is a show about two people who are both trapped, in work, in life, and in their relationships. The physical attraction they feel towards each other is the first opening of that Pandora's box, sure, but what was always more important was the other things: what do you need out of a relationship? how do you deserve to be treated?

I know people found the female lead's restraint frustrating — and it truly does last throughout most of the show. But I actually really loved it because it was a lot more realistic. I think of people who have been in relationships for years and worry that it would all go to waste if they give up now, and worse, people who have been treated a certain way for so long that they start thinking that it's all they deserve. I found her internal conflict super relatable and was really impressed with how emotionally and morally intelligent this show was.

Overall, I loved how down-to-earth everything seemed. The show had its dramatic moments, but they made sense and it never felt like they were spitting out tropes to be dramatic. This is a show that really takes its time and lets its main character take as long as she needs to think, and dramas like that don't by very often anymore.

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Frustrating with a capital F

This was one of the most frustrating dramas that I've ever seen, for a multitude of reasons.

First of all, the pacing and plot distribution was just all wrong. The main male lead's own e-sports team was not fully established until episode 30 (yes, episode 30 out of 35), and that meant that we got barely any time to see how the members would actually grow together. The team felt like a hodgepodge of different characters, randomly pulled from here and there, and until the very end I still felt like only understood them in their previous contexts, not how they would grow in this new environment. We were only given about five episodes of gaming montage, and it was not nearly enough to convince me that this team would win, and that they deserved it.

Before the team was established, was show was just super frustrating and it never gave you a breather. Both the main characters basically just kept getting yanked left and right by evil antagonists — different characters, I might add — and that's the main source of plot development. It made both the characters feel really passive, and it was irritating how both of them seemed to recognize who was mean to them, but then became completely clueless when they were sabotaged and things went wrong.

There were simply just too many antagonists. Everyone aside from the two leads and about five side characters were either evil, easily manipulated by evil characters, or were just judgmental and obnoxious. While most e-sport dramas are inspiring and about people coming together, this one, for 30 episodes, felt like it was more about how people could be pulled apart. And the way many of these antagonists were handled were extremely weird — either they were given a redemption arc that felt out of the blue and unearned, or they were just unpunished and it felt like we just moved past big events.

I was not a fan of the romance either. The first ten episodes were a constant cycle of the FL making decisions to be nosy and annoying, followed by the ML being extremely rude, and then the FL randomly crying over her dead mother. I was not emotionally invested enough in her backstory to care about these sobfests, and when the leads suddenly started flirting and going on dates one episode later as if they had never argued, I had to backtrack and make sure I hadn't accidentally skipped an episode. It didn't help that the ML kept getting flashbacks to his first love throughout his initial interactions with the FL. Regardless, throughout the course of their flirtationship and relationship, the communication was just not there. The female lead constantly saw things and jumped to conclusions, and she never heard out the male lead, and all I kept thinking was that it never felt like their relationship could withstand outside forces.

The second couple was alright; they had some cute moments but were overall quite cliche with the typical more outgoing female character. Still, Lu Yiyi often came across as more abrasive.

I think the best part of this show was Pei Xi (and I am eternally grateful he wasn't dragged into a love triangle) who I think we desperately needed more backstory for as he had a really intriguing relationship with the ML, and Lin Yixuan (the sidekick, if you will), who wasn't that exciting of a character but provided the loyalty and friendship that was missing from a lot of the show.

Overall, I've watched a few gaming dramas and this is definitely not one of my favorites — the title for that still goes to Falling Into Your Smile, a drama where its strongest point was a female lead who was actually in the e-sports industry and who was capable and career-focused. At this point I'm a little over these gaming dramas where the FL has to be an outsider; there are moments where it's done decently but even when the FL in this drama was getting into e-sports commentary and joining the Phenix team, it felt like she was always asking questions and never knew what was going on.

The one thing I will give this drama is that the OST is quite good. But everything else...if you want to watch a gaming drama, I recommend you look instead to Falling Into Your Smile or Out With A Bang.

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I pretend I do not see it

Unfortunately it seems like this is one of those sequels I would prefer to forget about and likely will never watch again, except for maybe parts of that first episode and some scenes where the leads are just spending domestic time together.

The chemistry between the leads is absolutely still there, and all the intimate moments are still beautifully shot and make you feel like you're intruding on something very private and meaningful.

As someone who absolutely despises infidelity plots, it was really difficult to even give this drama a chance, and the end result was exactly as I expected — infuriating. It's not only that I feel like we went through so many learning moments about communication in part 1 just to feel like the characters regressed to a worse place, but also that the side characters involved in the infidelity plot weren't enjoyable to watch at all. There was none of the chemistry the show tried to convince us of, and all of the deep moments or life lessons felt icky considering the circumstances.

There are far too many time jumps, which felt lazy and meant that emotions seemed to appear out of nowhere without proper build-up and forgiveness happened without feeling earned. The subtle visual symbolism and showing-not-telling was also absent, despite the cinematography still overall being great.

I feel like the only reason I still don't absolutely hate this to the point of a 1/10 is because there's just so much magic between the leads when they're on screen together and because the scenery is still gorgeous.

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A Good Start, An Intriguing ML

I'm a huge fan of films and shows about high-stakes games, and this was no different.

It is a little cliche in terms of its characters: the ML is smart and cold, while the FL is bright but naive. With that being said, I really think the drama could have focused more on character backstory and growth. While I liked the contrast between the leads, the ML was the most interesting character of all, while the FL felt like she was there as a plot device, just for his character development, to get him and all the side characters to open up.

And to be honest, I just don't fundamentally agree with some of the messaging here; Nao really feels naive and trusting to a fault, and it felt more frustrating than inspiring.

Still, I liked watching the games, particularly the earlier ones that were more simple and psychological. I love thinking through my own potential solutions and it was actually possible to do that at the start, whereas the later games got more confusing with a lot of rules and loopholes. If you're like me and like being able to treat shows like puzzles, this show is good for that at the start but starts diverging from it. Overall, it became a show where I would just sit back and watch things play out.

Sidenote: the editing is SUPER dramatic and it's kind of funny sometimes.

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Wish it was longer

Review is for the Special Edition. The way I feel about this one is similar to how I felt about the first one — everything about the leads is great (the chemistry, the tension, the banter) except for how much time we actually got to spend with them. I'm glad the misunderstanding wasn't dragged out, but it also made it feel like drama for the sake of drama between the two seasons. I also thought the side characters' story was decent, but once again, there were so few episodes that I would've preferred getting more of the main leads instead.

Ultimately, I still think I prefer season 1 over 2 for its innocence the campus setting, but this is still a satisfying ending to the story, and the OST is beautiful.

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Jumpy pacing, weird editing, Half-baked acting

Having heard so much about this one and how iconic of a BL it was, I really went into this with high expectations. And unfortunately, I was so disappointed.

The drama seemed off from the start. The dialogue is quippy — and almost constantly. There's barely any room for conversation that sounds natural or is more serious because they're always joking or making banter to upbeat music. I constantly felt like I was missing something, like the development between the characters was constantly skipping steps and we were rushing to get to the certain moments. I grew confused about what the relationships between characters were, like if there was a love triangle that suddenly appeared and disappeared.

I also think the editing for the show was off. It jumped from scene to scene, often giving me whiplash. I think the drama was in dire need of more "transition" scenes (think lingering on people just spending time together, cutting to empty sets, scenic views before going into the other plotlines). Instead the show sometimes would cut from one story directly to another during what seemed like in the middle of a scene. But other than that, even the editing for scenes sometimes seemed weirdly cut.

I also didn't really connect to the acting of any characters; part of this is because of the previous two comments — the pacing and dialogue didn't give the characters or actors time to marinate. The leads have their moments that really put a smile on my face, but other than that, I still didn't really feel that the emotional scenes were earned or convincing. The chemistry fluctuates. As for the side characters, I didn't care at all about their stories at all, and the chemistry also wasn't there.

I know most people were most disappointed by the ending and the lack of intimacy between the characters. I definitely do agree with this to some extent. Adding overblown drama in the form of a cliche misunderstanding in the penultimate episode really wasted time, especially when the plot point felt like something that should've come earlier. The truth is, though, that by the time I got there, I already didn't feel any stakes or emotional investment.

Overall, this is a drama that might've been big when it came out, but I've personally seen way better BLs — better plot, better chemistry — that have come out since then. Two that I've recently watched: Bad Buddy and Not Me.

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THE MOST ADORABLE COUPLE YOU WILL EVER SEE

PatPran have officially become one of my favorite couples ever. The way they actually communicated and were supportive and misunderstandings were not dragged out — even generally they were so adorable (one of the few couples that did not get boring after they got together) and it was so amazing how they were on the wavelength all the time because they talked to each other. The banter was super fun as well.

This is one of those dramas I wish was longer because there was actually so much here that I wanted to see, especially in regards to how the families and the main couple dealt with the familial conflict over time (instead of a time jump we got). Even it was more about the backstory, the flashbacks, or with the side characters, the content was so rich and I would've loved more of it.

Still, I think it's safe to say that in terms of the healthiness of the main couple — they did everything absolutely right. They perfectly embody my favorite part about the "one person fell first, the other fell harder" trope and have one of the most iconic rooftop scenes ever. MY LIFE IS FOREVER CHANGED BECAUSE OF THEM.

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