Reviews

Food, Friend and Found family .☘︎ ݁˖

"Alice-san chi no iroribata" is a captivating short drama set in the countryside. It showcases delicious food, explores life in a Japanese town and its culture, and includes a touch of romance. This heartwarming show will bring a smile to your face and help you appreciate the simple pleasures in life. "૮₍ •⤙•˶₊˚ෆ

In this fast-paced and often overwhelming world, where the quiet beauty of rural life seems to be fading, Alice and Harumi taught me a lesson I hold close: it’s okay to embrace my own pace. Even when progress feels small, it's still meaningful. Slowing down isn’t just acceptable—it’s essential. Life can be challenging, but taking things one step at a time is what truly matters.
‧₊˚ ⋅ 𓐐𓎩 ‧₊˚ ⋅ ᶠᵒᵒᵈ 𓎩 .⋆ﾟ

A must listen OP song 『Alice』by LUV K RAFT (らぶくらふと)
https://youtu.be/FKnbu3_AYNI

(๑ᵔ⤙ᵔ๑) . . .✮ ごちそうさまでした ✮

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How to mess up a great premise

Things I loved

1 The concept. Fresh and perfect for a rom com you can't believe there's a way to mess it up. And yet.

Things I disliked

1 The FL. She wasn't great, but I blame more the writers than her, so she doesn't go to the hated list.

Things I hated

1 The ML. He wasn't the right actor for the role. He never managed to make me laugh or make me care about him.

2 The writing. Disjoined plots and nonsensical characters that turned a great concept to an utter disaster. I gave it 2 for the premise, but the rest is below zero.

3 The wrong labeling. I thought it would be a rom com. It wasn't.

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Nice and tidy with minor flaws.

It was a nice watch. Song Hyekyo is just... you know WOW, and she had great chemistry with Bogum. The story is predictable but still well-written. There are multiple cliches but honestly, they surprised me with the ending, because after EP15 I thought we're gonna get the same old huge time skip where everything is fine and happy but that didn't happen. They even hinted at a potential 5 year skip with the flower. So the whole drama wasn't as irritating because of that.

I'm not sure about FL's mom arc tho. I'm not a fan of these types of things especially if the character is really toxic. I don't think she deserves a redemption arc. FL lead ex-husband wasn't as bad even if he was obsessed, at the end of the day he had good intentions and thankfully the writer didn't do the same boring story-line with him.

I can understand ML's mother 100%, but I'm also not a fan of these types of breakups. Most of the time it's just a waste of time, because everyone knows the ending.

The side characters were likable and fun, especially the Myung Shik and Sun Joo, also Daechan and Mijin duo. I liked their romance as well, it was a lot of fun with the bickering.

I was afraid of the typical love triangle, but they handled it well.

So, overall this was great. Nothing special or groundbreaking, but it doesn't have to be.

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Too dark for me

Things I liked

1 The ML. He's handsome at least. I can't say much for his acting skills though since this my first drama with him and I wasn't impressed. I didn't find his character was that great to be honest so maybe he should play it like that. I don't know. The thing is I was disappointed after seeing so many good reviews.

Things I disliked

1 The FL. I think she's not a great actress and her character wasn't compelling. She wasn't able to give it some depth so in the end I didn't care for her.

Things I hated

1 The script. It was too dark without make me care for the cases.

2 The lack of chemistry between the leads. I blame both, it feels like they didn't even try,

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5 just for the ML.

Things I loved

1 The ML. He's one of my favorite actors and his voice is the best ever.

Things I liked

1 The 2FL. She needs some more acting lessons, but she is pretty and a bright light in this drama.

Things I disliked

1 The chemistry between the leads wasn't there. He had more chemistry with his costar in Master of my Own and I find her awful and a true mismatch for him. Yet the chemistry was there and i gave it a 9 despite the actress.

Things I hated

1 The whole age gap for the second couple. A few years it's fine, but he looked his age and he was 50 plus when she looked even younger than her real age. I didn't hate them, but I can't put their relationship in the like list either. Too much a real age gap.

2 The FL. She's an awful actress. Nothing more to say. She doesn't know how to do comedy and she's not talented enough to make serious scenes believable.

3 The third relationship. Stupid, toxic and unnecessary after the first few episodes.

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In so much awe.

My heart is both overjoyed and confused with everything that just happened.

One thing that is for certain is how I admired how this series was written. How everything interconnected. I’m still curious as to who in the future the others are in MiaoMaio’s life, but I’m currently too overjoyed to think about it, YET. Lol!

The story of this show is quite an adventure. It contains so much life. There’s joy, guilt, love, secrets, but never any true betrayal between them. I think that is what I also admired the most. The camaraderie in this story is top notched.

The romance wasn’t heavy, it was cute, sometimes I even felt like I need more, but everything was done just right that I couldn’t properly complain.

I think the only caveat I have is how every fight with the demons, whichever tier they belong too, always ends too fast. The bulk isn’t actually on the demons, but on the characters themselves.

Overall, this is such a solid drama.

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left me grieving, not just for what happened, but for what could have been...

I heard so much about Mr. Plankton when it first came out, and by the time I finally sat down to watch it, I was genuinely excited. I thought I was getting something quirky, maybe bittersweet, maybe even funny. Oh boy. This drama is trauma.
You’ve been warned.!!!

Plot*
The story follows Hae-jo, a man born from an artificial insemination mistake. A clinic used the wrong donor sperm, and that single error destroys his family. Once the truth comes out, his parents emotionally abandon him, and Hae-jo grows up carrying the weight of rejection, displacement, and unresolved anger.
As an adult, he survives by running an errand service, drifting through life without roots. One day, he gets hired by a bride who wants to run away from her wedding and asks him to kidnap her. Chaos follows, landing Hae-jo in the hospital, where his life completely unravels. He’s diagnosed with a rare hereditary brain condition. Terminal. Three months left.
With death suddenly looming, Hae-jo decides to search for his biological father. But before starting that journey, he makes a decision that changes everything: he kidnaps Jae-mi, his ex-girlfriend, on her wedding day.
Jae-mi is about to marry Eo-heung, the heir to a 500-year-old Korean historical family. She’s also just been diagnosed with premature menopause, crushing her lifelong dream of becoming a mother. Despite the pain, she chooses happiness and stability until Hae-jo drags her back into his life, literally, right before she walks down the aisle.

Spoilers ahead***

This drama is tragic, not in a poetic way, but in a deeply emotionally heavy way. These characters are carrying layers of trauma, abandonment, and unresolved grief, and the story never really lets you breathe.
Watching it feels like being trapped in someone else’s emotional storm. It’s beautifully made, incredibly acted… and exhausting.

Hae-jo - A character I could not forgive!!

Hae-jo is written as a “tragic” character, and I understand why viewers might sympathize with him. Finding out you’re terminally ill, having no family, no roots, and no future, that kind of pain is unimaginable. But understanding pain does not excuse behavior!!
Kidnapping Jae-mi was wrong! It was not romantic. It was not love!! He knew there was no future for them.
He knew he couldn’t give her the life she wanted. He had once cruelly wished that she would never have children and then chose to come back into her life after learning she couldn’t.
Also his behaviour is so wrong, instead of telling her the truth, that he was dying, that he loved her, that he was terrified, he chose control. He makes decisions for her. He corners her emotionally and physically, even when she begged him to let her go.
That isn’t love. That’s entitlement. That’s resentment. That’s a wounded ego acting out.
As a viewer, you’re pushed to empathize with him because of his illness and his past. But honestly??? His actions would traumatize anyone. If he died, Jae-mi would be left carrying that damage forever.
His behavior was manipulative and punitive. He didn’t return because of love, he returned because he was dying. And if he hadn’t been, I truly believe he would have never come back at all.


Jae-mi
Jae-mi broke my heart. She grew up as an orphan, never chosen, never adopted, always waiting for a family to want her. All she ever dreamed of was becoming a mother, giving a child the love she never received.
Then she’s diagnosed with premature menopause. It’s like watching someone walk barefoot through shattered glass.
Hae-jo enters her life when she’s at her most vulnerable, and just when she finally chooses happiness real, calm happiness, he takes it away from her. She had one chance. And he stole it. If you love someone you should want the best for them, Hae-Jo behaviour sounded more like " If I can't have it, you can't have it either."
I hated the ending they gave her. Bringing Hae-jo back only reopened wounds she never had the chance to heal from. Jae-mi is kind, protective, and that goodness is exactly what traps her. Even staying with Hae-jo feels like another form of manipulation.
She deserved a future that wasn’t built on grief.

Eo-heung — The greenest flag this drama ignored
Eo-heung was everything Jae-mi needed. He loved her for her. Not for children. Not for legacy. Not for obligation. And in a society obsessed with bloodlines and continuation, that mattered.
He is the embodiment of the Korean son burdened by tradition, raised under a strict mother, expected to carry a family legacy, trained to obey rather than live freely. And yet, with Jae-mi, he was gentle, attentive, and genuinely happy.
I cannot believe the writers didn’t bring them back together.
After everything, the ending I wanted, no, NEEDED was Jae-mi and Eo-heung finding their way back to each other. They would have found a way to build a family. You could see it in him: children didn’t define his love. He loved her! As usual for the sake of romantic the plot had to remove the good guy and glorify the bad guy.


Abandonment is the beating heart of this drama. Jae-mi, abandoned as a child, growing up believing she was never enough.
Hae-jo, emotionally abandoned by the family who wanted him until he wasn’t biologically theirs. The constant fear of being replaced, discarded, or forgotten. It give this drama very heavy touch, and you are constantly reminded though Hae-jo's journey to find his biological father!

The drama also paints a sharp picture of Korean family structures, patriarchy, bloodline obsession, controlling parents, and the crushing expectation placed on men to carry family legacy at all costs.

Visually, this drama is stunning. The Korean provinces, the mountains, the wide open landscapes, honestly it was a feast for the eyes. So beautiful that make you genuinely want to visit Korea, and see all of these beautiful regions! Specially the part when they were climbing the mountain in Busan, it mad eye feel like travelling to Busan just to do that and enjoy the beautiful scenery! I found that the contrast between the beauty of the background setting and the heaviness of the story was clever mix.

There are so much I could say about this drama but I don't want make this review longer, so ...Mr. Plankton is a beautifully made drama. It’s powerful, emotionally intense, and unforgettable.
But it left me grieving, not just for what happened, but for what could have been. After everything these characters endured, I wanted a softer landing. I wanted healing. I wanted hope!

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When a good concept does not survive implementation

Revamp the Undead Story is a story about Punn (Prem Warut), owner of an antique shop, who frees Ramil (Boun Noppanut), a powerful thousand-year-old vampire, from an ancient painting. Punn finds himself in a complicated situation when he starts helping Ramil regain his powers while being part of a team of vampire hunters.

Honestly, it's a good premise, the idea behind the story is great...
But damn it, what New did here makes no sense at all. Like all of director New Siwaj's series, it starts off well, it starts off interesting and captivating. But from the middle to the end, it seems like everyone gets lost, and you kind of just finish it because “Oh, I'm already here.”
The choreography is well rehearsed (despite the slightly weak special effects), but it lacks camera work to make it more realistic, and the use of different sound effects—it's not possible for every punch to have the same sound. The dynamics of the vampires are very interesting. Methas (Mark Jiruntanin), Ciar (Barcode Tinnasit), and Mekhin (Aun Napat) have very good interactions. The way they all met and actually respect Ramil is a cool thing to see. The sets and costumes are also good choices.
So you ask me, but what's the problem?
The main couple's dynamics are sabotaged.
It's no secret that Siwaj doesn't know how to direct couples to the point where they look GOOD together, which makes me very sad, particularly because he used to be very good at it. This isn't the first time New has worked with BounPrem; he already directed Between Us, so what has been lost since then?
The interactions are superficial, the main couple seems to have a friends with benefits relationship, and the situations to deepen the dynamics between the two are... forced, so to speak.
But then we come to another point: the writers.
The choice to have Ice Chalermpong and Seh Thanaporn write a script together. He did series like Never Let Me Go and she did The Trainee. Without getting into the topic of these scripts individually, but both do series with different styles, he uses drama as an outlet and she uses comedy. And they didn't find a middle ground.
So the dramatic scenes are crude and the comedy scenes are heavy, and the whole series is stuck in this rut.

Revamp had interesting potential, I expected something better after Golden Blood, but it seems we haven't gotten very far. The series could have been the best in the supernatural genre, but the potential was wasted and the obligation to deliver quickly overshadowed the act.

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CUTE and worth watching but silly

The silly part is not just about the whole “curse” thing.

1. Accidents with buses are decided by the road police, not by teachers.
2. Schools like this have entrance check points, so pupils can not enter if they are not in the uniform.
3. School pupil patrol does not have the right to violence, this would be a violation of the code.
4. Flower pots are never put in places where they can be dropped onto the heads of pupils.
5. Phones are said to be banned in the school, and yet they are shown openly used right in classes later.
6. The current level of social media development would not have allowed any events in the school to be hidden from the sponsors the management cares about.
7. the way how face damage from fights is shown in the series is the funniest ever because they use like one smallest bandage piece per a face for this, which is nothing like what actually happens.

A POSITIVE shocker: the lads are not written to be hardcore straights who are shocked to find out that they have all of a sudden become gay. And even when they are not friendly to each other in the beginning, they still throw assessing gazes, which is incomparably more realistic compared to lots of other series where the encounter is simply hostile because neither of the lads are written as bi/gay.

The Hollywood-style over dramatic music is a bit distracting.

A PSA: never accept friendship requests from unknown accounts as this series shows. Those are most certainly neural networks-enabled bots to spread spam or malware to rob you.

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This drama stressed me out.

I was watching this drama on last December and it was disappointing.

This drama proves even powerful emperor can be stupid too. Even FL id from the 21st century still powerless and stupid. The story is too long for no reason, I was so frustrated when everyone from emperor do anything beside cover her head, FL should be able to remove it herself but she just sat with no action. should be interesting FL son becomes more powerful to protect his mother and kill the villains guys first. But the son get the stupid gen from both of parents. Too much verbal sparring with almost no action.

The ending was truly awful. Why did the system have to make the emperor suffer the same hardships and age as the FL? Why not just recalculate the score and make the empress young again?

Better avoid this drama.

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Comedy in historic setting. tackling social issues and being sassy

I am so glad I gave this drama a chance despite all the comments I read in MDL. This exceeded my expectations. Not a single boring moment.

The plot was great. Were there any loose ends? Yes, if we pay enough attention probably many. The ending left me hanging. But till ep 12 I loved everything about the drama. The plot that started just a linear comedy added so much dimension by bringing history, politics, inequality in the society based on gender, financial condition, class and social orientation. It showed the fundamentals of democracy and rebellion against the dictatorship. It's definitely a great plot highlighting such major issues, which is very RARE in BL. Pretty crazy how they blended all this into the comedic aspect of the drama. We need to have more dramas that include and highlights the flaws of the society that needs to be changed.

The production amazed me with how detailed it was. The crew involved in set did a fantastic job. The direction was nice. Sometimes the pacing fell off for a bit but they picked it up quickly. As someone who is not a big fan of comedy, this one definitely didn't disappoint.

A bunch of great actors indeed. Supanut was in his natural habitat but his switch from Prince to Worradej was crazy. Ping is such an introvert but he played a strong intimidating character like Kosol so well. I have only seen Pop in Pitbabe so seeing him in a role like this was crazy. Lee did so good. Belle was so pretty and loved her scenes. Aton truly blew me away. What a great actor at such a young age.

Overall it was a fun watch. Definitely something different that needs more praises.

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Too much build-up for such a short drama.

It was actually good. The twist factors were interesting—the mother mistaking her for her friend, the sister-in-law harboring deep resentment and wanting to take over the company, the nephew working under her as an intern, the intriguing boss, the problematic mother, and the male lead’s trauma. All of these elements had strong potential.
However, the pacing is the main issue. The story spends too much time beating around the bush. By episode 8, the leads are still in the developing feelings stage, which feels excessive for a drama that only has 12 episodes.

At this point, I’m not sure how the remaining twists can be properly untangled without feeling rushed or forced, which could take away the satisfaction of watching everything unfold naturally.

I’ll wait until the drama ends before giving a final rating.

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Unwatchable

Things I hated

1 I'll make it short. Everything.

2 The acting was atrocious for lack of a worse word. The FL overdid it every time she opened her mouth. These days she's one I watch her dramas but in this one, there's no trace of any talent. I blame the director first and her young age second, but it's unbearable to watch. The ML actor has no range at all. It was like he read the menu list of a bad restaurant.

3 The ML. Not only he's unattractive but a red flag all the way. Toxic behavior that nothing saves. Not even the ending.

4 The FL. the screenwriter did him dirty with the way he represented her. At first I thought she'd be cute. It turned out she was stupid, and ... stupid.

5 When they went to the grave and talked about marriage It felt to me like she was a child who was about to get scarified. First time since I started watching K and C dramas I felt so uncomfortable. Something went wrong with this drama and honestly there was not even a single thing I liked let alone loved. It should be watched only as a warning for the young girls of what not to do.

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A hidden gem of a romance drama.

As many have said I never expected this drama to be as good as it was. The romantic atmosphere was really beautiful, the directing creative and the characters felt like real people with actual personalities.

So many points that one can appreciate here, one of them the TOP quality soundtrack.
Music sets the mood and drives a plot forward by elevating a scene's impact, and finally a modern c-drama (besides the First Frost of course) that managed to do this well. The OST songs are incredible, they're now on a separate playlist on my spotify.

Every post-production decision really HIT the spot with me and I'm a very hard person to please with these things.

Now with the characters. I really loved the script which means I really liked the characters. Is it a perfect script? No, probably bc a perfect script doesn't exist since it's really hard to make a show where you can develop all characters as much as one would want, but this show did its best with what they had.
As an end-result they had relatable, strong women and men that grew from their past. Also with the supporting characters like the parents , I actually understood why they were the way that they were and the reasoning behind their behavior.

Is there anything to say about the main couple that hasn't been said? Top of the top chemistry, they felt like an actual couple, & made my heart flutter every time they interacted in my screen (it also doesn't happen that easily with romance shows).

Overall: Great directing, great cinematography, really good script, loved the acting. LOVED the music & editing.
The vibe was mature but fun and I WILL watch it again bc such well-made romance c-dramas are hard to find.

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