6
What were they even thinking!
Coming to this drama after finishing Im Kkeok Jung (1996) is such a disappointing shitty experience in comparison. This drama was fundamentally flawed in every imaginable aspect. The cast members are usually competent in other projects but the directors did such a poor sloppy job in handling the cast. The drama had 3 directors and still managed to fuck up! They must have been busy fighting each other over working on the drama.Was this review helpful to you?
BAD
Where to even begin with this mockery. It's as appalling as it sounds. The journey of a dickless simp following a clown king who can't control his dick. They could have explored the world of eunuchs in many different and interesting ways but they choose to go through the absolute worst possible route and interpretation of eunuchs. I wonder which is easier, finishing this drama or castration? Writing, story, direction, cast performance, sound design, cinematography, production, and characters were all abysmal by any measure. If you were to look through the last few episodes you'll realize even the writer was fed up with the drama and turned it into a hate writing. Even if you were a big fan of one of the cast members, I don't see this being worth it.Was this review helpful to you?
Pain is temporary
A poor fantasy that failed to establish a reasonable foundation from the very beginning, it even did a worse job with its brittle world building. The low budget visual effects weren't helping its case either. The cast may seems to be fine on the surface but the characters were as one dimensional as they could come. Its second biggest selling point after fantasy is the romance, of which was the least appealing aspect of the drama. By the end, I couldn't care the slightest about either of the leads and their fate. A cheap Chinese knock off fantasy with gods and dragons would have been better than this.Was this review helpful to you?
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I had some expectations...
If you're looking for a historical drama about the foundation Goguryeo then this drama is NOT it. This drama was mostly about the in palace melodrama and conflict. Furthermore, it's important to know that this drama included a handful of fantasy elements sprinkled around all over it, so don't expect it to be grounded to reality. Han Hye Jin who played the female lead as Soh Seo No was a poor cast choice. Soh Seo No needed a more rigid and stubborn looking actress to better fit the character.A weak incapable king, a greedy prince and an underdog illegitimate prince going aimlessly in circles. Wars, fights and action were surprisingly and disappointingly scarce for a never-ending 81 episodes historical drama about the founders of Goguryeo. Which is why we had little to no planning or strategy for these wars. That one big war at the end against another nation that we waited ages for, was condensed down to just 1 singular episode of utter disappointment. In fact, the entire last episode was extremely rushed and we were given a joke of a wrap up. They had all the time in the world and they couldn't make a decent send off. The last episode was absolutely stripped off genuine emotions. It robs you the wrong way after you had gone through 81 episodes. Speaking of which, they were trying too hard to reach the 81 mark with prolonged uncut full-scenes repeated flashbacks! You would lose your mind watching it serializing.
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Decent
It's a decent drama but a few things held it back. Inconsistent pacing was too obvious to ignore. The inconsistency carries on with the writing, sometimes they are strategic and smart while other times they throw themselves as a human shield, this is coming from the same army and the same leadership. I liked the leading cast they did a good job but I wish they put more effort into writing the character Yi Hyun. While the romance is a side thing, they could have given it more attention to let it mature and develop more appropriately or remove the romance altogether. Their encounters were scarce which made the high moments less impactful due to the lack of investment in their relationship. Anyway, the drama is one of the better historical ones.Was this review helpful to you?
Driest music-themed drama ever...
Do I Like Brahms? No. While the scarce music bits sprinkled throughout the drama were great, yet, this is one of the worst music themed drama. The relationships, despite being the main focus here, proved to be detrimental, leading to a catastrophic downfall of the entire drama. The amount of brain worms these characters were ingesting was unprecedented. This is a 16 episodes drama that was purely driven by the characters self-sabotaging themselves constantly in the most pitiful and mind-boggling manner imaginable. Even trashy soap operas can be more fun. Going back to the music, I couldn't feel the cast's passion while performing, under-delivering on the music part again. You better off close your eyes and imagine. Even then, I believe there was a total of 5 very short performances for a drama themed around music!! Honestly, you're better off to go watch some classical music on YouTube. This is the writer's first full feature drama and I'm not looking forward to see more of her works at all.Was this review helpful to you?
Nope....
One of the worst "old" kdramas, it went full old melo style which kdrama thought it was cool and trendy to do at the time. Other than the nostalgic feel, this drama is a failure and got nothing going on for it. Not recommended! At least you get to see the younger version of some familiar faces.Was this review helpful to you?
An Office Flop
The drama failed to establish a good hook with its premise or with its first episode in general. Most of the drama was spent with an awful repetitive cycle of whining from the hardships in their workplace.The writer realized this problem and started to bring the characters' personal stories and relationships more into focus with the workplace aspect becoming less prominent as the drama went on. The workplace challenges couldn't hold their own weight to service the drama. The weak and uninteresting tension it tried to create made the matter worse. Coming from the same writer who wrote Hyena (2020), this drama wasn't good in comparison.Was this review helpful to you?
Dysfunctional Characters
The drama kicked off with good modern visuals and an interesting fantasy setting on a mystical island. However, it quickly unraveled. The fantasy elements, though visually appealing, peaked in the first two episodes, while the remainder felt like a rehash of what we'd already seen. It's strange that they revealed all their cards in the beginning, leaving the rest feeling empty. The female lead was sent to the island to work as a teacher, but this plotline was completely irrelevant and didn't last for more than one episode. The direction the drama took with the fantasy story turned out to be quite disappointing afterwards. More on characters, the female lead was an unstoppable cringe generator with her non-serious interactions, especially with the male lead in the earlier parts. It was the writers way trying desperately to build chemistry between the two, but it was impossible without rewriting the characters themselves. However, the character that suffered the most from both the writers' curse and the cast choice was Goong Tan. It doesn't take a blind man to see what was wrong. The drama ended up being this shallow shipwreck of recycled ideas and bland characters.Was this review helpful to you?
Did They Try Their Best?
It had a pretty normal start with introducing the story and the characters, nothing about it peaked my interest. The story itself was too safe, tame and outright boring, they didn't attempt any challenging situation even when they wanted to create conflict or tension. The comedy was a hit or miss, they didn't have a lot of material to work on in the first place. The main running joke was the unemployed main guy which got really stale overtime. The drama also lacked good dynamics between the cast, the small size of the active cast didn't help either. The side stories ended up being white noise. Too many of them had a good potential to craft something meaningful but the drama refused to take any of them seriously and gave each one a halfhearted resolution at the end. I can see problems and gaps from translating the manga into a live action format, something didn't click. I'm sure the manga fared better for such themes and stories.Was this review helpful to you?
Messy
It started with a lousy introduction that was too ambitious on paper and then began to jump between one plot after another until the end. There was a desperate need for a better coherent structure and pacing. The characters were more or less fine but, despite being one of the most important characters, the ghost lacked a better characterization to make her role more impactful. The last 1-2 episodes were fundamentally bad, their main purpose was to lay down a handful of new elements for an imaginary sequel. This is a bad common practice streaming services have been pulling since forever to keep hold of the viewers attention regardless if they were planning for a sequel or not. The only acceptable scenario for such a practice is to have a direct sequel to follow it. Anyway, the drama was very mediocre Sci-Fi with a handful of failures.Was this review helpful to you?
Hirugao: Love Affairs in the Afternoon
2 people found this review helpful
Sexless Tea Party
You'd think there was room for this deep dive into human desires and the messiness of relationships, but the drama just stumbled into this predictable mess of melodrama and characters you could barely see through. The characters were supposedly torn apart by the whole moral dilemma of their sneaky affairs but they did the bare minimum in that regard. Even the romantic tension felt too forced, superficial and lacking. The drama would've benefited from focusing on the main infidelity only. In comparison, all the previous points also applies to the KR version except that they were less drastic and detached than this one.Was this review helpful to you?
Ja Must Go
Well, I had a little higher than usual expectations from looking at the cast members but at least it didn't take too long to show what it had in store for us. The drama kicked off to a bad start leaving an ominous bad impression. The first 1/3 of the drama was set in the past giving us a ridiculously boring and generic backstory of the leads, starting with their parents and moving on to their birth, early childhood, and teenage years. These kids turned out to be the worst part of the drama, totally unlikable – both the characters and the actors playing them. And it didn't get any better when we were introduced to their adult versions. The romance and love triangle were downright despicable, filled with self-pity, sappy motivations, and a bunch of whiny kids. A wild suggestion, why not take the drama from the beginning of episode 39 into a different direction? Extend it with another 20 episodes, remove the romance, have the FL be the empress of her nation, and conquer neighboring nations.Was this review helpful to you?
