Reviews

overhyped, bad lead actress

i mean, the female lead is pivotal in this story and they cast someone who cannot deliver the level of acting required. how disappointing.

the male lead was great, he managed to impress me because his role is inherently stiffer. im glad i watched it just for the lead male actor. ill be following their career in the future and look forward to a pairing between him and a better actress who can convey what this drama tried but ultimately only half succeeded to.

the plot i liked but the female lead is truly pivotal and the plot is often let down by her performance. on paper though its a great historical story.

Read More

Shrek seven devils-simple yet amazing!!!

Tang San and his Seven devils together with their masters bring to us a very simple, light hearted yet amazing and entertaining Douluo continent.
The plot revilves around spirit masters and various mysteries arou d them in the Douluo continent.
The main focus however is on the seven students of Shrek academy and their stories.
I liked the emotional development between these seven students, also with their masters and how they stay lotal to Shrek academy, despite overcoming many hurdles and difficulties. They deal with powerfhl spirit masters, titled duoluos and even various academies with their tacit understanding and excellent team work.
I particularly liked the action scenes in this drama. The special effects were also good.
All the cast were excellent in their performances. As usual, Xiao Zhan never fails to give excellent performance and Tang San is another example.
Wu Xuanyi and the rest were also very good in their roles.
There may be some times, when the drama pace may seem slow, or sometimes you may get bored, but the plot is very good and as the story proceeds, it becomes much more interesting.
So, this is a highly recommended drama!! You will not be disappointed.

Read More

Smart, Slow-Burn Romance with Great Chemistry

If you love a slow-burn romance with strong characters, Only For Love is worth watching. The story is about two ambitious people – a brilliant reporter and a successful CEO – who meet through work, and their relationship grows step by step. It’s not a fluffy rom-com; it’s more about mutual respect, understanding, and how love can develop naturally between two equals.

The main leads, Dylan Wang and Bai Lu, are the highlight of this drama. Their chemistry feels real – every glance and conversation between them is full of tension and warmth. What makes this drama stand out is how mature and healthy their relationship feels. They support each other’s dreams and treat each other as partners, which is refreshing to watch in a romance drama.

The pacing can feel slow at times, and there are some typical C-drama cliches, but the storytelling is beautiful, and the business and career elements make it more realistic. The side couples are fun to watch too, though not as engaging as the main leads.

If you enjoy slow, well-developed love stories with great acting and meaningful moments, this is a must-watch. Just be patient with the pace – it’s worth it.

Read More

Dropped after 3 episodes — Beautiful FL, but the incest story is disgusting

I started Love the Way You Are (2022) for the stunning female lead — she’s elegant, confident, and a genuine pleasure to watch on screen. But after just 3 episodes, I had to drop it. The step-sibling incest romance plot made me increasingly uncomfortable and frustrated.

🌟 What I Liked:
The Female Lead (FL)
She’s absolutely beautiful, carries herself with grace, and feels like a real adult woman — not a childish pushover or helpless romantic. She has screen presence and charisma.

The Visual Quality
The cinematography, color palette, and overall production are top-tier. Everything looks amazing… until the writing takes over.

🚫 What Made Me Drop It:
1. Romanticizing a Step-Sibling Dynamic
While they’re not biologically related, the male lead is her legal stepbrother. That should be a firm boundary. Their dynamic feels clingy, emotionally intrusive, and completely inappropriate.
→ Watching him pine for her with clear romantic intent was disturbing.
→ It’s not sweet. It’s obsessive. And the show shamelessly tries to frame it as “destined love.”
This is step-sibling romance disguised as wholesome affection — and it doesn’t sit right.

2. Unfairly Villainizing the Boyfriend
I genuinely don’t understand why the show paints her boyfriend as the bad guy.

He forgot her allergy once — not great, but hardly evil.

He encouraged her to quit a low-paying, degrading job and even offered her a position in his own company.

He wanted her to pursue dance or hobbies she enjoys, while he took care of the rest.
That’s not controlling. That’s supportive. It’s the dream for many working women stuck in toxic workplaces.
And let’s be honest — she didn’t even have a meaningful career to protect. Her pride was louder than her reality.

3. Toxic Double Standards
If a female lead offered to help her struggling boyfriend out of a bad job and support his dreams, it would be framed as empowering.
But here, because it’s a man with resources, he’s suddenly labeled “manipulative”?
This hypocrisy ruins what could’ve been a balanced relationship.

4. The Clingy Brother Is Just Unsettling
He constantly crosses boundaries and inserts himself into her emotional space.
His behavior feels less like love and more like unhealthy attachment — like a boy who never grew out of his childhood crush.
Romanticizing this incest is tone-deaf at best.

5. Normalizing Unethical Romance
It’s alarming how casually the drama tries to push step-sibling incest romance as a heartwarming love story.
There’s a difference between exploring taboos and normalizing uncomfortable dynamics without real reflection. This crosses that line.

🤦‍♀️ Overall Impression
This drama had potential — strong lead actress, great visuals, and promising setup — but the writing completely derails it by:

Forcing a romance that feels ethically questionable.

Ruining a mature male character to boost the brother’s image.

Mistaking obsession and emotional clinginess for love.

❌ Final Verdict:
1/10 — Only watch if you enjoy forced, uncomfortable romance and don’t mind watching a show casually erase moral boundaries for the sake of “drama.”

I came for a confident, beautiful female lead.
I left because the story around her made everything feel gross.

Read More

Not Bad, Not Good, Just "Meh" (To be updated)

Note: This post will be uploaded once the series concludes next week but since I want to vent a bit of my frustration, I'm putting this here. This will probably be the shortest review I ever post but since it's rince and repeat of most K dramas I've seen for years I don't feel the need to go into too many details.

I had such high hopes for this show... and yet another 2025 K drama disappointment。Not bad, not good just mid.

It's YET another K-drama slop that puts lots of familiar ingredients in, but fails to put some soul into their main characters. Both ML and FL are devoid of any personality and the main antagonist is cartoonishly evil but everybody gives her a pass because she "used to be kind" even if she's been offering living people to a ghost and literally tortured a kid for over 10 years for her selfish evil purposes.

Both ML and FL have some complicated family history that would have been interesting to explore, at least to make us feel something for them or understand their personalities ( or lack thereof) BUT this K drama makes the weird choice of giving LOTS of screentime to Yeom Hwa, the reason why everybody's in misery. Of course she has a backstory for her behavior (poorly explained might I add) but the drama fails to make us care about her. Instead it makes a very good job of making the good guys letting her get away with literally everything, putting everybody is jeopardy because of their laxity to the point of making viewers just fed up her and mourning the screen time wasted on her concocting plan A, B, C, D, E, F... etc.
Yeah, lots of episodes going round and round in circle, not moving forward except dragging the number of episodes for nothing.

The only characters that are bringing some fun and energy to this whole mess is Bong Su "the not so evil ghost" and all the side characters on the side. Bong Su who is a whole lot of fun and who everybody loves more than Gyeon U the ML... BUT is it surprising given Gyeon U has NO personality except loving Seong Ah and being depressed?

This being said since Seong Ah is as devoid of personality as he is... they do go well together.
Also Seong Ah apparently used to be bullied and managed to get good looking guy-friend who is playing third-wheel in this whole mess. He's a good guy and the drama treats him poorly.

Anyway typical case of having a drama with lots of meandering nonsense that go nowhere but which lengthen the duration of it... and truly 12 episodes could have been the right length if more attention had been given to what we were really interested it: More details about Yeom Hwa's backstory instead of most of the time given to her planning evil stuffs, More details about Seong Ah, her family, her past, her life as a shaman etc. , MORE DETAILS about Gyeon U: Why was he targeted by Yeom Hwa, Why is he rejected by his whole family when the drama hints that the family paid Yeom Hwa so that HE would carry the all his family's misfortune on his back, if so WHY don't they treat him better, WHY doesn't he revolt etc...

I hope we get a good backstory for Bong Su... but I'm not holding my breath given this drama's track record.

WHAT A LET DOWN.

Tropes have always been a staple in K dramas but the magic had always worked before because they knew how to make things feel fresh but now?
We're past the middle of the year and once again I regret investing time in a rince and repeat story. Not bad, not good just mid.

We'll see if the two final episodes will give me enough positive feelings to rate that one up... but honestly I'm not holding my breath.

Read More

100/100 – I’m Obsessed. This Series Is Everything.

Revenged Love completely took me by surprise — in the best way possible. I honestly didn’t expect to be this hooked, but here I am, still thinking about it long after the credits rolled.

Let’s start with the plot: it’s amazing. The story keeps getting better with every episode. Just when you think you know where it’s going, it pulls you in deeper — more twists, more emotion, more character depth. It’s gripping without being over-the-top, and the pacing is just chef’s kiss.

And the chemistry between the leads? SUPERB. Like, off-the-charts good. Every scene they share is electric — even the quiet ones. You can feel the tension, the heartbreak, the longing. It’s so raw and believable, it makes the entire love story hit even harder.

The production quality is top-tier too — the visuals, the soundtrack, everything comes together beautifully. But what really makes Revenged Love special is how emotionally invested it makes you. It’s not just a drama you watch — it’s one you feel.

This series deserves all the love and hype. If you haven’t seen it yet, you’re seriously missing out

Read More

Wasted Potential

Going into this show, I had extremely high expectations. There were so many positive reviews surrounding it and while I'm not entirely sure how real-life autistic people received it, I've never had any personal experience with autism or people living with it so this was new terrain for me. I went in with an open mind and for a while, I loved what I got.

But somewhere along the line, and I'm not sure where exactly, the quality of the story and character writing began to diminish noticeably. I'm a big fan of the legal drama genre and I really admired that the cases & how they were tackled stayed fresh & original to the end. However, that's the only thing that stayed consistent, storywise. In the last few episodes, the supporting characters either forgot or forsook their own motives & gradually settled into overused tropes. The first few episodes treated them like real people with unique goals & personalities but they later became pawns in the story simply waiting for the plot to happen to them. Most disappointing of them all was Kwon Min-Woo who can only be described as wasted potential. Some characters were even set up with possibly life-changing storylines only for them to come out on the other side exactly the same.

Young-Woo herself faced a similar dilemma. At first, each episode captured her dealing with a different aspect of living as an autistic person in the legal world. Watching her navigate her vital issues, grow, and come to terms with her reality was genuinely heartwarming, and as an audience, I felt carried along. But after a while, they kept recycling her old plotlines, and she was simply going on the same journeys over and over again.

Watching this show made me genuinely happy even till the end and that's all that really matters. The OST was great, visuals were spectacular, & acting was superb. I'll definitely be watching the second season. This is a 7.5/10 for me.

Read More

pleasantly simple

it is i, the niel.

i'm writing this review after my second time watching this show. overall, i really enjoyed watching this series and thought the cinematography was beautiful. i think while watching, you need to keep in mind that the conflict/themes shouldn't be thought too deeply about. just follow the story and enjoy the characters' dynamics. the actors had great chemistry, and everyone involved was super talented!

but...i'm here to share more than just that. i think a lot of viewers can find relatability in these characters, but at times, i wanted both of the main characters to go about their decisions differently. i really disliked how a huge part of the plot revolves around white lies. this particularly annoyed me about daun's character, because he was very likable and charismatic otherwise. this particular conflict does seem rushed, which is why i think the length of the drama is more comparable to a movie. on the other hand, siwon oftentimes confused me.

in bls, i largely think that stories push for relationships that would seem to "fix" all of these characters' issues as individuals without really acknowledging the problems once they get together. in some ways, i like the comfort and found daun's acceptance of siwon to be natural and fulfilling, but i almost think that siwon is the type of character that needed to focus on himself so that he could truly love himself. at times, i just felt sad for siwon because of how desperately he wanted to be liked by everyone. in these shows, i just always wish characters could find fulfillment within themselves in addition to their partners.

i did really like how "mundane" a lot of the issues were. the dynamic both siwon and daun had with their parents was both straightforward yet complex. the show highlighted their lives at home in a way that clearly showed their differences, yet how similar their struggles were. the development of their romance was very subtle, which is what i enjoy! the music was pleasant, and the acting was nice. would i rewatch this? yes! i had honestly come back to it again because i was thinking about it months afterwards, even though it hasn't been the most incredible thing i've watched. it's very comforting and easy. boom!

best,

the niel.

Read More

Wholesome romance with no green tea

This drama was hotly requested in a subreddit. Luckily the drama is available on iQIYI app - so I watched it there to make my subscription worthwhile. It was a good watch.

What I liked:
1. Acting - Ma Qian Qian was excellent in her role as a down-to-earth struggling everyday people. I emphathise with her character. This is my second Ji Jun Liang drama and gosh both times he played a cocky guy who got humbled by a circumstance. Good actong chemistry between the two.
2. FL characterisation - She was earnest, too nice and not worldly and I liked that about her. I understood why she helped her fiancé with money matters - she wanted to have her own home & family and that moved me.
3. Supporting characters - I loved FL's boss Sister Lin & her husband, ML's cousin Lu Xu & ML's bodyguard. They all have good intentions for the couple.
4. Styling - OMG 😍 Ji Jun Liang in biker outfit! He was 🔥!
5. Romance - I'm 50-50 about their romance because ML wasn't truthful until after the marriage certificate was obtained. However their dates were cute even though orchestrated. There were some kisses wish there were steamy ones but I think director wanted a wholesome drama.
6. Antagonist arc - Yes for once we don't have green tea in this drama. The main antagonist is ML's jealous uncle and boy there was a good arc for him. I really liked the scene when he was honest with his family.

What I disliked:
1. ML characterisation - I disliked the scheming. I could see he was slowly falling for her but wish he had come clean before they got marriage certificate.
2. ML's grandmother - Wow what an insecure woman. I can't believe she was consumed by wealth.

Favourite scene
The first time ML & FL met. What a meet cute!

Read More