TeoKajLibroj
Ireland
You have to be in the right mood to enjoy this
If you're in the mood for something cosy and comforting, then you'll love this. It's ideal if you just want to relax and watch an easy slice-of-life show with delicious without worrying about any drama. The costumes, food and setting in general all look amazing.However, there's also a risk that you'll be completely bored. There is essentially no plot in the show, over the course of nine episodes almost nothing happens. There is also no tension or conflict in the show, everyone is friends and they always agree with each other. There's never any barriers in their way or difficulties to be overcome. There's no suggestion that cooking for a large household is difficult or that you might ever have frustrations with your job or housemates (or even how Kiyo became as good as a professional chef). Instead, there's a level of constant smiling and laughing that you normally only see in propaganda.
Oddly enough, it doesn't show much about the life of a maiko, so it's vague about how they actually earn a living. How do they entertain these much older men? What if they have a difficult client or someone they don't enjoy talking to? Are there challenges with maintaining such a traditional lifestyle in the modern age?
The show would be much more interesting had it grappled with these questions instead of presenting it as an almost perfect world where everyone is always happy and nothing ever goes wrong. Success is most enjoyable when it feels earned.
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Too much filler, not enough story
I loved Reply 1988 and Reply 1997 was pretty good so I really wanted to like this, but I couldn't even finish it. It just felt like 90% of every episode was filler and just killing time, rather than developing the characters and storyline. In fact there's very little character development at all and despite watching 10 episodes, I still don't feel like I know the characters well or care about what happens to them.This is especially the case for the main characters, the show didn't give me any reason to get invested in their lives or care about their stories. Na Jeong is the centre of the show but there's nothing interesting about her. Her main trait in the first 2 episodes was being a basketball fanatic, but that is never mentioned again over the next 8 episodes. The fact she is attracted to someone initially introduced as her brother is very weird. I don't know why anyone in the love triangle is attracted to each other, they all seem like blank slates.
The other characters were more interesting but unfortunately they were mostly kept to the side. Despite supposedly being about a friend group, it's ridiculous how little time they spend together. It's not until the 6th episode that they are all in the same room together hanging out, until then I didn't feel like I even had a proper introduction to them. In the first 10 episodes, I don't think Na Jeong has more than one conversation with Samcheonpo, Haitai, Yoon Jin and Binggrae. These supposed friends seem to live parallel lives.
Finally, the show over-relied on toilet humour. The episode where everyone got food poisoning and was constantly running to the toilet was the worst one.
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Decent but unfocused
While this show certainly has good parts, the problem is that it's not clear what the core story is. There's various plotlines with journalists, cops, club hostesses and gangsters but none of them are focused on in great detail. Instead the show jumps from one plotline to another, with some big moments coming out of nowhere while others are dropped without any closure. The ending is too abrupt and doesn't even start to resolve any of the plotlines, which felt underwhelming.The storyline and characters are interesting, but the show is undermined by a lack of focus. The parts about the Yakuza culture and the police were very good, but the parts about Jake's lovelife were not.
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