Bloody Romance is a fascinating amalgamation of an extremely dark setting and a main character that remains alive by more and more contrived reasons as the story progresses.

Story: This drama has a really strong start with a hidden female assassin village. Its surprisingly realistic concept gives it a chilliness and darkness that is absent from mainstream C-dramas. Most of the characters are mad, twisted by revenge or ambition, or lost in their own world. It’s quite interesting to see how they act, scheme, and fight for their obsessions, even if the script is not always the best. However, after the first ten or so episodes, it becomes clear that the female lead can do no wrong. Her hands have to be forever clean. This takes away the driving force from the story because it becomes clear how each event will end. It’s always the same. Despite that, there’s still a few strong scenes in the middle of the drama, but after that… the story fizzles away. The side characters sometimes attempt to breathe some life into it, but they never succeed. The ending, while dramatic, doesn’t make up for the bad second half. It felt undeserved and even somewhat random.

Romance: If all you want is two characters who are extremely loyal to each other to the point of obsession, then this story will work perfectly fine. But if you want characters with a working brain and some personal agency, then the main characters in Bloody Romance will frustrate you to death. The female lead is just present to experience the story. She either does nothing or obsesses over her love. And when she does make some decisions, it feels more like plot dictating her to do that than anything she would choose for herself. As for the two male leads… One of them is extremely indecisive and causes lots of damage as well as thousands of deaths of uninvolved people while the other falls for the female lead because she’s the female lead. His IQ drops by half the moment she’s involved, and that’s before he even starts to like her. It’s painful to watch how his plans become laughable the moment they involve the female lead.

Overall, I can’t say I didn’t enjoy this drama at all. It had fascinating and chilling ideas, but sadly didn’t deliver on most of them because they needed to keep the female lead as white and pure as the day she was born. By the end, I skipped all scenes with her and her chosen guy. If both of them were exchanged for characters with interesting personalities and agency, this drama might have become one of my favorites. Now, however, it’s nothing more than wasted potential.