Naeil's Cantabile (2014)

Badass Bunny and her recent article are to blame for me loving this drama.I will be forever grateful to her for making me discover it. This drama definitely has its flaws but I do not really remember the last time I enjoyed a K drama so much. Maybe The Forbidden Marriage over a year ago? Anyhow, that is the one K drama which pops up in my head when I try to remember any!

The story is based on japanese manga and drama which I dropped after the first episode. And even though I found the japanese FL cuter and more charming, I just could not watch that animé manga overacting and excessive grimacing. So when I started this one, I did not expect much. I thought I'd give it one episode and drop it. The next day I had three episodes left! I got hooked immediately. The story is basically the same but the Koreans toned down the manga and made characters more or less ordinary humans.

I was particularly impressed by the ML's character: he was surprisingly decent and realistic and very smart, where you'd expect someone hugely talented to be arrogant and obnoxious to others. God knows I don't like the actor playing him (I dropped every drama of his I ever started!) but here he was perfect as a handsome and talented pianist and wannabee conductor. I liked how he grows from a loner to a person surrounded by friends, how he opened up and became more approachable under the FL's influence. But what I liked the most was his lack of ego, willingness to do anything to achieve his goals, his warmth behind the brash exterior. I liked how unexpectedly down to earth he was.

His character changes when he meets the FL, a quirky piano prodigy living in a pigsty. While trying to sort her out, it is actually she who sorts him out. She is loud, without a filter, colourful, easy going and completely unconscious of other people. In contact with the ML she gradually changes, calms down a bit and becomes less childish. She grows as a character as well. Surprisingly, I did not find her annoying as I should have: the childishness from the beginning was limit unbearable. And still, I was not annoyed by her. The actress did a great job finding the right balance.

I loved the music. The actors "played" their instruments convincingly except for the violin player who was obviously struggling! I loved every support character: from the rivals-to-lovers pair of violin players, to a gay timpani player to Mini Min Hee a poor always hungry student whose instrument is twice her size! Kudos to the producers because they managed to keep the quintessential japanese drama spirit in as much as there are no really evil character though a few showed promise but they turned out to be just sheep in wolves' clothes and eventually be good and just!

What I did not like:
- Franz character: first he is completely over the top and then the actor is unconvincing in this role. This character was supposedly adopted to Germany as a child and can barely speak Korean. That lasts the airport run: he tries to speak slowly with an accent but a few episodes in, he speaks a perfect Korean only to lose it in the last episodes.
- somewhat predictable plotlines in the second part: both main characters have childhood traumas which, of course, act up when they should not.
- noble idiocy and the breakup for" your own good" are so useless
- SLS for a few episodes
- why did they wait for the closing credits of the last episode to have her play the piano with his orchestra. There were so many occasions throughout the drama when that could have solved many problems....

I enjoyed watching this immensely.

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