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Iljimae: The illegitimate Thief
Aside from the obvious writing problems, the story itself felt like it was dragging its feet endlessly. Everything became tiring and dull after episode 4. The male lead was on a life mission to become more and more pathetic with each passing episode. Romance? A pale imitation. There was no spark, no cosmic alignment of hearts, just a void where chemistry should have ignited. And then, to compound matters, they slapped in a love square (pentagon?) that was infested with poorly written love interests between any and every one of them. The ending was a weak attempt at redemption. It rushed to tie up loose ends but ended up creating even more problems, leaving major gaps to what could have been a very simple wrap up.Was this review helpful to you?
Poong, the Joseon Virgin
The earlier episodes of the first season were decent and promising but there was a clear and undeniable pattern slowly starting to emerge after a few episodes. The drama was heading in a downward spiral throughout its both seasons. There was no clear direction to its story, I wanted it to remain as a slice of life but even that was not attractive on its own. Each passing episode felt like a downgrade of the previous episode. By the end of 2nd season, my interest had plummeted and it lost any remaining appeal. The only plausible reason for this drama to get a season 3 is if the studio wanted to commit some kind of money laundering/tax fraud scheme. It's never a good sign to adapt something and have its serialization based on public perception. This will most likely result in incomplete stories and padded semi-soft endings unless its creators were to pull through and be the exception. In more than one way, the Anime sphere shifted mostly towards this scheme in the past 6-7 years and it turned into a survival of the fittest type of race. The Kdrama is slowly heading in the exact same direction.Was this review helpful to you?
Not quite there...
It started off with a big war and lots of action. Ships, canons, battles and massacres, but that was only for the first 5-6 before dialing back the clock to the very beginning of the ML's childhood days and turning the drama into a massive snoozefest. That was a massive bait to hook the viewers in. It took 1 singular eternity before the drama managed to pick itself back up. The entire first half was the admiral backstory with little to no action. You don't get to see the admiral in action and you don't get to see what the drama promised until the second half which is way too delayed to stick around for. The production value is acceptable when taking into account that this was made 20 years ago. It's a bit scuffed but they had to work with what they had. It wouldn't matter much because that only shows with the action/battle scenes of which there were only a few (out of the 104 episodes). One of the most jarring things that is holding the drama back, aside from the aforementioned points, is its characters. A lot of characters got benched regularly regardless of their importance, relevance and prior investment. Making emotional scenes less impactful and key characters less memorable. Which also takes away from every climax and transition period. This is due to a combination of uneven pacing, long runtime, and frequent transitions. By the end, it seemed everyone was expendable, other than the male lead of course. On the other spectrum, the drama had a lot of anime-esque villain moments that I wish we had a lot less of.Was this review helpful to you?
Could have been better...
It was a seriously bad decision to show a battle as an introduction to the drama. Slow movement, bad choreography, extreme camera shaking to cover the extras' performance in the background and post production ugly blood splatter. It was clear the drama wasn't going in that direction, there was barely any fights after that. Aside from that, the drama had its issues with the writing. That can range from unnatural flow, disjointed pace, inconsistencies, and a poor transition/development of the characters. Soo Ro going into politics and a position of power was the worst direction to the character. It's outside the scope of his character and always came off as a child playing politics. The drama handled death poorly, whenever someone died you don't feel the impact and weight of their death. It's almost irrelevant after the next episode. The same can be said about the entire situation with the love interests the drama had. Which also featured questionable chemistry between anyone and everyone. With all that being said, at least the cast was decent (and you had a couple of shirtless Ji Sung scenes) to keep you distract for a hot minute.Was this review helpful to you?
Kinda watchable
The drama had a nice concept but the story was too thin for a full run drama even with the added side stories. It's also why they sneaked in a useless love pentagon that didn't get anywhere. Although you may find the FL's behavior passable as a teen but that wasn't the case as an adult, it was increasingly challenging to endure watching her. It simply didn't serve the narrative. After seeing her character in action I had a strong hunch to why they broke up. Such a reason may be valid when written adequately but, in this case, it came off as a shallow excuse to progress the plot. Even if we were to over glance that, they ended up giving a half-assed resolution to their underlying problems and opted to supplement the rest with an overdose of mindless lovey-dovey scenes while eliminating any opportunity for the drama to delve deeper into the emotional package they threw at us earlier on. Another prime example of the bait and switch technique the Kdrama industry have been going through recently and it doesn't look like this will change. One last thing, there were some obvious amateur editing mistakes sprinkled in the drama. One singular scene may have multiple camera angles but 2 different color grading, even for the same consecutive face shot.Was this review helpful to you?
Disappointing !
It's disappointing when a drama have potentials but falls apart quickly because of lousy writing. The subpar acting by the kids diminished its value even further. The male lead pulled a tremendous effort to help keeping the drama afloat. The villain was poorly written and cartoonish for this genre. There was a necessity of a better dynamic between the wife and husband given the type of story they were telling. Forget the thriller/mystery bait, it quickly turned into another comical melodrama that lacked any real emotional impact. The last episode was seriously sloppy and rushed it will certainly leave you with a sour taste. On the bright side, the OST was pretty good.Was this review helpful to you?
Not recommended!
One of the poorest past-life/reincarnation written stories. I can't stress enough how sloppy and incoherent this was. The entire drama was solely driven by this triangle which is why most things were neglected. I was expecting a smart play between the characters and their reincarnation but what we got is a copy paste between past and present. At the same time, the memories from the past played a minimal role in the grand scheme of things. The characters from the past had the exact same traits as their present counterparts, which made things ever so slightly more dull. I don't know what the writer was aiming for because all I see is failure in all directions. I couldn't get over the fact that they treated the direct point-blank bullet to the head ordeal like a casual broken bone with minor scuffs!!!Was this review helpful to you?
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Fun little drama but the concept became stale mid way through with some skits weren't as good as the earlier ones. It would make a great comedy movie with some refinements or at least cut it down to 6-8 episodes while removing the boring bits and this would be a solid package. The music bits were decent. On another note, whenever they use CGI it doesn't blind well especially the shot of the main building they keep using.Was this review helpful to you?
The Queen for 7 Minutes
Realistically, the drama was mostly about the backstory, the queen for 7 days turned out to be the queen for 7 minutes. The spoiler/teaser introduction and that first episode in general left a bad taste in my mouth. There was no need to show moments from 18 episodes later this early, if their intent was to try to hook the viewers by showing spoilers then they failed. And don't even get me started on that loathsome love triangle that seemed to stain the entire drama. The pacing was all over the place—slow moments that dragged on forever and irrelevant sidetracking. The whole sibling rivalry angle was given a generic development. The not so good brother tried to justify himself but the writer didn't put an ounce of effort into that. Really frustrating writing towards the end.Was this review helpful to you?
Had a chance....
I liked the wide camera angle shots but this is where the long list of things I liked about the drama ends. The drama tried to juggle too many genres at once that each one ended up lacking in one regard or another. I didn't find the loud aggressive comedy to be appealing in this particular case. The romance being carried solely by a few kissing scenes didn't hold its own weight. That's just physical affection. The same can be said about gen-z playing politics.Was this review helpful to you?
Just Another Husband
Whip out your makjang bingo card (easy misunderstandings, cut short scenes/dialogues, holding back when scolded, wrongfully convicted, extremely incompetent police, extremely capable characters with pulling any string, eavesdropping at the right moment like a superpower, triple birth secret, pseudo incest, comeback as rich, fake death, too many crimes with little to no punishment... ) honestly you could fill a stack of bingo cards. Given its length there was obvious planning issues, the drama hit a major road block at episode 66 and had to hard press the reset button, setting everything back 20 steps. That wasn't enough as the drama, once again, soft hit the reset button at episode 105 and one more time at episode 114 to buy more time. This drama wasn't different from the ones alike it at all but there was a serious drop in overall quality in the second half. It got seriously sloppy and lacked the slightest attention to details. One example is how important scenes are empty, such as the company's 30th celebration had a couple of tables and only the family was there, yet they were delivering a speech as if it was a major event for the entire company. Another one with the investors voting where they showed only one investor. There were many other examples were the drama needed to hire a few random extras to fill some gaps. On a side note, where did Bae Dal Bong disappear? Per usual, character stop showing up suddenly with no explanation has become a normal occurrence with modern daily makjangs. I could go on forever but everything can be boiled down to the fact that if the drama kept its consistency from the first half it wouldn't have been as bad. One final thing, while Uhm Hyun Kyung is mostly fine but she lacked a tiny bit of oomph to better sell the revenge story here.Was this review helpful to you?
Inconsistencies Hell
Amazing first episode that was masterfully crafted to kick start the story and prepare it to venture in all kinds of directions. There was a slight decline in the writing moving forward but it kept holding its own weight for awhile. That prison warden was quite the character. The OST was pretty decent. There was also some glaring inconsistencies like the alcoholic father suddenly becoming sober just to get to the next point in the story. However, the drama hit a major unsalvageable road block. Specifically at the beginning of the last 1/3 of the drama. It turned the drama into cheap vapid melodrama diminishing any merits it previously established for the past 8 episodes. The ending was questionable at best, it didn't really allow for real conversations to be had. It's really unfortunate after it had a very solid run before flipping the switch.Was this review helpful to you?
Loveless Love
The drama presented itself as a lamentable example of melodramatic flop, failing to connect the trappings of its genre to deliver an engaging narrative. While the premise held promise, the drama often leaned heavily on dirt cheap emotional manipulation to spawn the dumbest and laziest old melo tropes with no rhyme or reason to their existence. The drama was the equivalent of a nothingburger, it's so dry and bland that they had to slap the most generic random displays of a terminal illness element just to fill some of its runtime. The first most important step for anything in this drama to work was to actually prove how deep their love was, which the drama absolutely didn't attempt to do. The characters' writing was generally bad, especially the female lead, not a single character had something substantial to offer. To top it all off, the writer was clueless and made whatever events for its climax.Was this review helpful to you?
Who Thought A "Main Character Syndrome" Drama Is A Good Idea?
The female lead is probably one of the most insufferable characters you might encounter in a drama. Despicable and repulsive through and through. Props to the actress for putting in the effort to sell it as such. The drama was destined to fail with how they adapted it. It suffered from the same problems most long-running webtoons suffer from, by over bloating the material with events, abandoning plotlines and threads along the way and lacking coherent structure as it progresses. Unfortunately, they forgot to accommodate to what a live action format might mandate. The leads, Joo Da and her love interest, were an example, they were used to kick start the series of events just to be worth less than a background white noise later on, despite their core involvement in the concept early on. The concept had a lot of potentials but the end product barely serviced a story, let alone, something watchable.Was this review helpful to you?
Heat Death of The Universe
Well, the drama certainly failed to cheer me up. The entire show was manufactured to be a spectacular disaster. There was no one major issue that held it back but rather a complete systematic failure. Starting from the top of the pyramid, about 80% of the cast members were barely surviving to remain functional. In equal terms, about 80% of the characters were generic youth NPCs from a modern lens. Speaking of characters, how did the writer think that writing the female lead this way was appealing in the slightest? It's baffling! That's also applicable to her cheap copy-cat, Joo Sun Ja, sharing the same revolting DNA. Moving on to relationships, pairs, ex-lovers, triangles, and squares, all of which can be tagged as insufferable spectacles. The reason why the drama added the mystery side plot is because it was unbelievably dry and was in desperate need for something supplementary to help creating the illusion that something is actually happening. It wouldn't have been bad if it served a functional purpose with the overarching narrative. Now, this is a drama about cheering and dancing but this had the worst moves I've ever seen in this context. It was nothing more than choreographed performances by PE teacher for elementary kids. It's seriously bad and embarrassing! Especially when it's coming from Kpop-land. Obviously, there were a lot more to be said but these were some of the highlights. The writer worked on both V.I.P (2019) and this drama, a solid bad track record so far, should be very cautious with future projects.Was this review helpful to you?
