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Sinasina
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I was sufficiently entertained so I would feel bad for giving it less than 8 stars, however the story is pretty bad at times. As a romantic comedy it's pretty great really, even the second pair has a good chemistry. There was no real love triangle, which I always appreciate. The actors were great for the most part too. Personally I didn't mind the casting changes, if I look at the entire series as a whole (with the novel as the basis) perhaps the ML in the second series was more fitting for the role. With My Amazing Boyfriend 1 the chinese wanted to copy the success of My Love from the Star and they've picked a lead that's extremely similar to Kim Soohyon both in looks and mannerisms & I don't think that would have worked for the story in the second season. I prefer Janice Wu over Yu Esther for the female lead role, but thanks to the long time between the two shows the change did not bother me too much. For a replacement Yu Esther was quite outstanding. I hated how the first show has ended & I'm grateful that they've given me a satisfying conclusion, at last.
So I mentioned above that I had problems with the story. First and foremost the show is really long, the 38 episodes translate into the length of a 19 episodes long kdrama, which I'm normally fine with, but there was a lot of time wasted with the (really stupid, a normal person would have seen it from a mile away) child kidnapping plot, followed by a second kidnapping plot, so yep that wasn't great. Tian Jing Zhi's character is also written in a weird, inconsistent way. In the first show she practically threw herself at Xue Ling Qiao, but in the second show even after they've gotten engaged the woman decided to practice abstinence for quite a whole for ehm reasons and once all the major troubles were resolved she decided to develop a marriage phobia, I mean come on webnovel writer you could have done better..
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Considering the makjang premise this show turned out to be a huge surprise. The typical tropes did not really come into play. The secondary love interests didn't cause too many problems & their existence was a meaningful part of the show, which almost never happens with these triangles & squares. I loved the main love line, it was awesome from beginning to end, although at its core it's quite similar to the love story in Goblin. There was an unusual amount of honesty at unexpected times! The 2 secondary couples were also fun to watch, especially the noona + lawyer pairing. The supernatural element was okay too( not great), it did make the show more interesting, especially early on. The pacing of the story was surprisingly good, almost every episode had some melodramatic parts with a good amount of comedic relief in between. The OST was perfect at creating the mood for almost every scene. I usually don't comment on sound quality, when it comes to kdramas, but generally they use budget microphones and there are a lot of pops & clicks that I can clearly hear with my higher end headphone gear. It's nice that in a drama that touches upon sound engineering I can enjoy the sound & music without those usual annoyances. Naturally this drama isn't perfect. The plot has some weaker points, such as the way our MC accepted death, or how pulling the investment has led to jail time, I mean that is pretty outlandish if you think about it. The sound engineering procedural parts looked awesome, but this is not how they do it in real life, they do make the sounds in a similar way with all kinds of props, but the scenes aren't reenacted in real time, but rather if there are 20 seperate sound sources they record those 20 sounds separately & then merge/edit them in post, plus the step sounds are looped, there is no need for sound engineers to run for minutes on end during recording.
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Having watched Memories of Alhambra first, I did not expect much from this. Here the writer does a much better job in every way, but ultimately at its core this drama suffers from similar problems. The setting is obviously much better, instead of a super boring MMO world we have a manhwa world, with some interesting spaghetti western elements, a subtle noir vibe is also present. With the premise that magic is real, sometimes nonsense stuff kind of makes sense in W, it's not like Alhambra where everything is a jumbled mess. With that said W is a mediocre drama at best, yes the cast had some amazing actors, the OST was mostly great at setting the right atmosphere and the cinematography was very pretty & the darker lighting was also very fitting most of the time, but all these don't make up for the fact that I just wasn't that interested in the villains & their deeds. The romance was fine, but this is probably the worst chemistry that I've seen Lee Jong-suk have with anyone, it's by no means below average in kdramaland, but I've expected more. A nicely wrapped up happy ending would have improved my opinion of the drama a lot, it's a shame that it did not happen, it's nice that they got together for the last 5? minutes of the drama, but for all we know Kang Chol would just end up in prison again for not having a legitimate identity... (in the fantasy genre normally I wouldn't care much about this, but in W the plot device of not having a proper identity is brought up again & again...)This writer really shouldn't work alone, if she could just be responsible for the world building & maybe the characters, while pairing up with someone that knows how to keep the audience interested.
I think she also wrote Queen InHyon's Man, I like that drama quite a bit, but the writing is not very good there either.
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Alien Girl, Chai Xiao Qi 2
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This is basically the reboot of My Girlfriend Is an Alien 1. It's just as silly and the plot just as juvenile as before. A romcom of this genre does not really need a sensible plot, at least as long as the entertainment is steady and up until the last 25% it mostly is, though I did feel it drag and repeat itself, but it's not too bad. ML's acting & chemistry with FL has improved tremendously from before & I found the love triangle less annoying, since the second ML is a straight up cartoon villain in the final episodes & has very inconsequential, skippable scenes until then. There is a tremendous amount of fluff & fun bickering in this show. What annoyed me though is that the romances -even by cdrama romcom standards- are just too shallow.
The final episodes preceding the 30 min long happy ending were basically trash, but since the entertainment value until then was decent, I decided to rate it at 6.5.
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Enjoyable, but not amazing.
The Good⌲ The leads look great together visually.
⌲ Puff executed the aloof female lead persona very well.
⌲ The cute second lead noona romance
⌲ The workplace banter up until e9.
⌲ The relatively well executed fight scenes
⌲ Effectively speaking the villainous characters don't get any screen time. (I cannot emphasize how great that is compared to the cartoon villain galore that we normally get in dramas)
⌲ There are no love triangles worth mentioning.
The Average:
⌲ The main romance. (there is just unusually little fluff overall)
⌲ The supporting characters at the company felt too average, kind of like they were drawn from a template or something like that.
⌲ The mom is horrible, but on the flip side she has very little screen time, as such causing fewer than average annoyances.
⌲ Recording conversations left and right.
⌲ The weird 13 episode format, did the bad ratings lead to premature cancellation? (then again it's better then dragging the story to 16..)
⌲ There is very little fun banter & main romance after e9, the focus shifts to other things.
The Bad:
⌲ ML keeps hitting on FL, who does not notice for half the drama & then suddenly they are dating.
⌲ The separate bedroom.
⌲ The plot flows strangely. (it's difficult to explain. There are a large number of very emotionally satisfying scenes, but the whole drama feels a bit disjointed.)
⌲ The final episode is fan fiction tier for a variety of reasons, it's really not a well thought out episode plot wise.
⌲ Redemption arc, redemption arc, everyone gets a redemption arc, yay. (no way forgiveness is justified for these people!)
⌲ Friend & exBF ...
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I have recently watched `It Started with a Kiss` for the first time. While it's been a bit of a lukewarm experience, I had nothing better to watch and so decided to give the sequel a go.If I only look at the journey and not the destination** than the sequel is tremendously better. It's still a bit repetitive, but ML had real character progression over the course of the 20 episodes & the various plots were more interesting & better written. The leads also warmed up to each other much more, reaching near perfect chemistry. Though `They Kiss Again` is far more of a slice of life/romance drama than comedy, the comedy is still omnipresent though & is rather okay. This one also has a love triangle, but It's rather short lived, it's not nearly as egregious as before. Overall the romance in this one is strong & very enjoyable, with increasing depth as we reach the final episodes. It's good stuff.
**The biggest gripe I have with this drama is the ending, it basically does not have one, not counting a 2 minute long something something inserted into the ending credits. Episode 20 is like any other episode, it's a good one with lots of emotion etc, but it really feels like the team planned for season3..
Endings are really important to me, so this contributed a lot to why this drama did not break the 8.0 barrier in my overall score.
Also I really disliked Christine. Her character is not only really poorly written, but also the whole alien in Taiwan thing is really unnaturally presented. Foreigners are often incredibly annoying supporting characters in Asian dramas in general, but good gawd. (and when I thought it could not get any worse, then her father made an appearance .. )
Overall I enjoyed this, It's really decent for 2007.
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Let me start with quickly summarizing the plot: (I may have made minor mistakes with the numbers here, but the ballpark is correct)⌲ep1-3: The leads meet and them plus their families start living together.
⌲ep4-25: Nothing happens. (Lighthearted comedy with about as much romantic progress as about 3 normal kdrama episodes would have today in 2024.)
⌲ep26-28: Makjang, SUDDENLY everyone wants to marry someone else. (this is like what the plot of ep10 to 15 of a 2005 era kdrama would be like, but fast tracked)
⌲ep29-30: Happy ending.
So basically anyone who is fine with enjoying an aimless & progress-less and a bit lukewarm comedy for more than 20 episodes straight will enjoy this and this mostly applies to me as well. Though I have been rather annoyed by the final conflicts & how suddenly things devolved into THAT.
This is based on Itazura na Kiss, which I have consumed either in Anime or Manga form almost 20 years ago, I'm not even sure anymore.. Anyway the point is that while I'm not sure how accurately this resembles the original work, I can certainly recognize the plot "progression" of a nineties manga/anime from this. The nostalgia has helped alleviating the feeling of boredom for me, but I somewhat doubt a young person that never experienced that era of j-culture would feel the same way..
Oh I almost forgot, the mom in this drama is an extremely adorable character, at this moment I cannot even think of a cuter mom that I've encountered in a modern Asian drama, it's almost worth watching this just for her shenanigans.
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This show is very 2005 kdrama like, especially the first half. (The Taiwanese flavor does not feel very strong.) In those ancient classics though the final 20-40% always tends to be very makjangish with absolutely insane Brazil soap plots. Luckily in this one the crazy is toned down a lot, so while they set up quite a few of those, they fizzled out every time, the drama does not even feature a breakup. The love triangle starts out as the very annoying friendly `ge` type, but discounting one (or two) three way handgrabs, it's far more tolerable than what you would normally see in a drama of its ilk. The romance & the main characters are super juvenile as is common in this genre, though 28? yo virgins acting like preteens is understandably not going to be everyone's cup of tea..
Overall this has been solid entertainment for me, though it does get a bit draggy near the finale. (the plot has some really stupid things in it too, like the gangster's redemption ark, I mean what to fork was that?)
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The repeated anime dancing is so silly that I could just not look away, even after seeing it 20+ times.
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Well Intended Love Season 2
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Disclaimer: I have not watched the so called season1, because I have been warned about the terrible plot twist beforehand. (which makes it a 2/10 drama from the get go)---
This is basically a rather generic cdrama romcom. There is almost not a single new thing here, maybe with the exception of checking marriage license authenticity with amnesia. The chemistry is average, the comedy is average, the acting is average and the plot is average too (which means it's bad objectively speaking). There is also a rather typical semi-weak love triangle, though it ends very peacefully.
What makes this drama stand out a tiny bit from mediocrity is that it's a bit shorter than normal (12ep kdrama length) and so the plot is progressing rather quickly & there are no big annoyances anywhere. It's basically 70% fluff n sugar, which is something I always appreciate, even though the romances could not have been any shallower. While the villains are really poorly written and all, the fact that they barely have any screen time & fail to cause any big upheavals is pretty great.
One thing that somewhat annoyed me is that the drama has several very forceful kisses, but it's played off as successful seduction or something along those lines..
Oh I almost forgot, some of the product placements are just direct ad breaks basically, they start talking about certain brands directly & unnaturally. (Adolph Shampoo & whatever sanitary pads)
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Not as amazing as the original, but it's still one of the better localized adaptations I've seen.
I Hear Your Voice is one of my all time top 10 Asian dramas. Up until a few days ago I did not know this adaptation existed, so I quickly lined this up to watch during my daily workout sessions. Overall I'm glad I did. It may not be as good as the original, but I would say it's about as good as watching that for the 3rd time would be like, still plenty great.Cdramas are inherently less intense than kdramas, but since this came out back in 2019 it's still far more intense than what we are used to today. So the general mood of the original kdrama is quite nicely transferred over. The writer made some changes, from the second case onward the cases are different, but with one big exception* most of the iconic scenes, moments and even the annoying love triangle (the only bad thing about the original) is there. The casting is good, but of course not nearly as good as in the original, but they picked fitting actors.
There is one thing the adaptation did much better than the original, which is FL is not trying to push away ML nearly as much and she completely accepts ML as her future partner. I'm not a big fan of open endings, this felt nice.
*My favorite part of the original drama was when ML pretended to have a memory loss & that is essentially completely missing from the adaptation. Sure ML does get a memory loss, but the pretending part only lasts for 5 minutes & has no romcom relevance.
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A-
This is a very decent Chinese romance drama. Overall it's quite similar to You Are My Glory, but it has more comedy & the setting is different. (entertainment industry vs. corporate environment in this one) Janice Wu is always 10/10 in romcoms & this paring's been quite fantastic. Also I like "faceslaps" in Chinese fiction & this drama has plenty of that.One big positive in this drama is that the high school flashbacks are quite well done. There are not overly many of them & have proper child actors, which is always nice to see.
So why is it only an 8?
Well, for starters the final 4-5 episodes were quite difficult to get through. The crises were not too serious or anything, but the whole "company's in dire straits" thing was really unfun to watch & then a rocket had been launched & we got fed an incredible amount of Chinese propaganda stuff before the ending credits.
There is also the matter of ML's younger brother. To me it feels like the writer thought the leads are ready to get married, so let's fix the ML's "big problem" before then, I'm quite disappointed with this, the kid was comedy gold, would have much rather watched him bicker with FL, over whatever corporate shenanigans that went down.
Also I really disliked most of the songs. Mainland Chinese rock that gets to be on TV almost always sounds really weird to me, but this drama has been perhaps the worst offender so far.
Oh I almost forgot, the drama is full of insane product placements.
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Someday or One Day: The Movie
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I have conflicted feelings about this movie. While I -a fan of the drama- have somewhat enjoyed watching it, it did feel redundant & a bit messy. In all honestly I have extreme doubts that someone who has not seen drama could even understand let alone enjoy this. The plot is about as complicated, if not a bit more so than the original drama's main plot (it's the same with complications basically), but all that is presented in 100 minutes, It's a bit like imagine Back to the Future 1-2-3 as one 100 minute long movie, would we even root for our heroes with that little buildup to the various time travel events that happen there. Oh well, Wu Bai is still a legend & Last Dance is still one of the best songs I have ever heard!
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It's on the cusp of greatness, but the writing has ruined it.
To me it feels like this drama had most of the ingredients to become something really special. Namely, we've had amazing actors and an absolutely amazing production team. With a better writer this could have almost been a Goblin. To me everything outside of the plot is working really really well. The lead couple I think had great chemistry & the actors did a phenomenal job creating some really touching scenes, to some extent letting the audience feel that emotional roller coaster in a good way.But of course the plot has almost ruined everything. In the comment section I remember reading someone criticizing that most romantic progress in the drama is conveyed by side characters trying to convince the leads that they have something going on. I can kind of agree with that take, the romantic plot just meanders aimlessly, even in the final episode. I cannot believe that anyone would think this show has wrapped up nicely! Is this even a happy ending, is it even an ending, what the heck has happened?
The biggest problem of course is that this is a time travel show and the plot is completely random. Deus ex machina is considered by most people a writing tool that should be used very sparingly if at all, in this drama though it is everywhere. In general it's quite difficult to write a time travel plot that makes sense, oftentimes the audience is expected to turn off their brains, but this is perhaps the least consistent time travel story I have ever witnessed.
Of course the pacing is totally off as well. So much time is wasted on meaningless stuff like that delivery guy's story, but when it comes to important stuff everything is so condensed. For example the title has saved 10000 times in it, then why is that important plot point so rushed , why are the events that led to this standing on such a shallow footing?
The show has a love triangle, it's not a very offensive one, but at the same time the second ML keeps popping up, he confessed in the final episode as well.. I very strongly dislike love triangles, this is close to the limit of what I can still endure.
(This is supposedly an adaptation, but it barely resembles the kdrama & only does so very early on..)
The OST is quite good, the song "慢慢走吧 Man Man Zou Ba - 王梓赫 Ray " is really really great. (you can easily copy paste the Chinese name and find it on Youtube)
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Twins separated under oddly mysterious circumstances is a very popular trope in Chinese pulp novels, as such I was kind of looking forward to watching this, despite knowing full well in advance how bad some of the plot is going to be. As far as this genre goes the setting could have been far worse, it's pretty bad of course, but due to a lack of explanations the parts that are told the audience are honestly not nearly as outlandish that I've seen, or rather I've read before. With that said most of the drama is very enjoyable, the fluffy romance is quite up there, the leads look great together and have good chemistry. While the children are not very skilled child actors compared to what's normal in a cdrama of this budget, they are of course very cute & adorable making the drama even better. So why is this only a 7?
The big one is that the ML has made some questionable choices that made me dislike the character a little. Also the episodes (4-5) preceding the finale are quite bad, but stuff like this ALWAYS happens in this genre, so I suppose I should've known what's coming.
Can triangle haters watch this?
I think yes, because the ex is only present for a couple of episodes and she is rebuffed with resolve, for me at least this much is bearable.
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A simple and warm show
So basically this is an extremely warm, but at the same time very simple show, which is quite remarkable, when considering the CEO + Cinderella setting. In fact I cannot recall a single other cdrama that was this chill & conflict free during its entire run. (despite the the semi corporate setting)So why is it not 10/10?
It's true that there are no major flaws, but at the same time the show feels way too lacking in complexity, like a Hallmark romance flick and I'm saying this is an avid Asian drama watcher, without expecting any significant mental exercise. Also it's not just the simplicity, while there were some decent humorous moments, the comedy is not exactly top tier. While the leads do look good together, I've not been entirely sold on the chemistry either.
Well I lied, there is one major annoyance & that is the OST. The "You are part of my life" song is rather horrible & they kept playing it seemingly all the time..
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