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  • Laatst online: 12 uren geleden
  • Plaats: Hic Sunt Dracones
  • Contribution Points: 12 LV1
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  • toetreden op: december 13, 2019
  • Awards Received: Flower Award1

burhaa aadmi

Hic Sunt Dracones

burhaa aadmi

Hic Sunt Dracones
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The Love Equations: Special Episode
3 mensen vonden deze beoordeling nuttig
jul 11, 2020
1 van 1
Voltooid 0
Geheel 10
Verhaal 10
Acting/Cast 10
Muziek 10
Rewatch Waarde 7.0

Osculation overload Everything an SP oughta be

This cute little postscript was perfect - perfect in tone, perfect in length, perfect in content. A sweet treat after a sweet Drama. Many PRC Dramas seem oddly reluctant to display much labial interaction between the leads, so this SP's massive dose thereof was a real delight to a hardcore brony like me. I am definitely going to keep an eye out for all the core cast in future, especially the lovely lead. Right to the end the feisty fun was kept alive, and so this 27.5 episode Drama is now one of my favourites.
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Triad Princess
2 mensen vonden deze beoordeling nuttig
dec 21, 2019
6 van 6
Voltooid 1
Geheel 4.5
Verhaal 3.5
Acting/Cast 4.5
Muziek 1.0
Rewatch Waarde 1.0
I was eagerly waiting for this because I liked both the Lius in the last Dramas I saw of theirs, but this one was confused, badly written and all over the place.

The first problem was the pacing: Only six 40-minute episodes long, NOTHING happened in the first two episodes that advanced the core stories, meaning the last four were super-rushed, and felt like the writers were stuffing things in to tick off a checklist. This was ESPECIALLY noticeable with the OTP. In terms of character and relationship development, They went from zero to horizontal in less time than it takes to type this. By the end of episode, I was seriously thinking of dropping the Drama, and only stuck it out because it was so short.

The development and portrayal of Eugenie Liu's character was bizarre too. She alternated between giggly naive schoolgirl crushing on her idol and foul-mouthed fighting ace with head-spinning rapidity. Never mind that anyone who was so calm and composed when receiving or dispensing violence would not, could not, be as naively starry-eyed as her other half was portrayed. Unless she had a Jekyll and Hyde thing going on.

The bullying agent was a disappointment as well. She came across as one-dimensional, when her back story had potential. As did that of the other lead actress.

I read recently that Netflix's first TW Drama bombed there. If the quality of this second attempt is any guide, I can see why. In summary, the best thing that came out of watching this Drama was the urge to rewatch "The Smile Behind Your Eyes"

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The Best of You in My Mind
5 mensen vonden deze beoordeling nuttig
jul 16, 2020
24 van 24
Voltooid 0
Geheel 4.0
Verhaal 3.0
Acting/Cast 8.0
Muziek 2.0
Rewatch Waarde 1.0
Deze recentie kan spoilers bevatten

Regressive Misogynist Merde - RANT FOLLOWS

I started this one starting after "The Love Equations" and at first it seemed very promising, especially the cemistry of the OTP. But in the end it turned out to be toxic trash. The one consistent theme of the whole Drama was that women NEED a man, they can never be better than a man at anything and need to be coddled and helped by "their man" because they are, after all, "just a girl"

This theme was introduced with the FL who was lied to for TEN YEARS by her parents, and we find out her YOUNGER brother knew about it. They all decided she had to be lied to "for her own good" to "protect her". She was also manipulated by the ML from the beginning it turned out, and even her little brother consistently ignored her requests and did whatever he and the ML deemed "best" for her.

Then, when the younger brother met an amazing woman, older than him and who LITERALLY taught him, he not only ended up becoming her equal or better in every field in which she excelled, he also had to be her RESCUER. That was a major facepalm moment for me, when the Drama proved it simply would not permit a woman to be superior to a man in any way, but would insist on them being shown as dependent on men.

This message was reinforced when noble idiocy cropped up in the final quarter. When this happened in "The Love Equations", the FL fearlessly called it out as the idiocy it truly was and there were real consequences. In this one, it was lauded as "noble" and the FL even APOLOGISED to the ML for letting HIM down.

In short AVOID this Drama unless your idea of "romantic" is troglodytic chauvinism, where women happily simper and can't exist without a good man to make up for all their many feminine frailties. If that sort of regressive bakvaas is not your idea of a sweet Drama, try The Love Equations, instead.

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Leverage
4 mensen vonden deze beoordeling nuttig
dec 18, 2019
16 van 16
Voltooid 0
Geheel 6.0
Verhaal 5.0
Acting/Cast 7.0
Muziek 5.5
Rewatch Waarde 1.0
The original Leverage was one of my favourite TV series, and one of VERY few US series that I enjoyed watchging for its entire run. I was excited by the casting for this one, so was keen to check it out. In the end, it was the casting that kept me going to the end of a rather stodgy, pale and humourless remake. Kim Sae Ron shone, her character the one most like the equivalent in the original, and she played it well.

While Kim Sae Ron's "Parker" was good enough to keep me hanging on, sadly, the same can NOT be said for Yeo Hoi Hyeon's "Hardison". How much of it was the writing and how much the actor, I don't know, but what I do know is that while Hardison in the original was awesome, and the complicated relationship between him and Parker was pivotal, in this version, the hacker character was just lame and annoying. Also, the Korean remake REALLY missed a great chance by not casting someone like Sam Okyere. I say that not simply because he's of African descent, as the original was, but because in the small roles I have seen him in, he gave off the same sort of amused detached outsider vibe of the original.

Some of the heists were fun in this remake, but the "big bad" was a big bore - seen it ALL before. K Dramas seem to have a fetish for mysterious cabals, and the EXACT nature of this secret plot have been used more times than I can remember in Dramas I've seen. The result was that I FF'd large chunks of this Drama to make sure I didn't fall asleep from boredom. Hence, 6/10 - and young Ms Kim is responsible for 4 of those 6.

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Untitled Park Ji Eun Project
3 mensen vonden deze beoordeling nuttig
jun 19, 2024
16 van 16
Voltooid 0
Geheel 7.5
Verhaal 8.0
Acting/Cast 9.5
Muziek 8.0
Rewatch Waarde 2.0

STUPIDLY OVERLONG

Soo-chul a waste of space: Da-Hye had a more meaningful arc & his dead brother had more impact on the story by the way his mother reacted to his death
The last 2 eps were a makjang meltdown. Clichéd & lazy. Makjang is fine in a makjang Drama, not here.Better as 14 60 minute episodes, with a different end.
BUT, some outstanding TRUE romcom - lol & sweet. The OTP worked, both of them. Lots of thoughtful and intelligent conversations between them, which was a delight And they dampened my eyes even when I knew how it ended, which is a tribute to the power of their acting.

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Luo Yao Knew What He Meant
3 mensen vonden deze beoordeling nuttig
jan 7, 2024
24 van 24
Voltooid 0
Geheel 10
Verhaal 10
Acting/Cast 10
Muziek 8.0
Rewatch Waarde 8.0

Korea should take notes

This Drama was sheer perfection. EVERYTHING was right about it: The tone, the length, the story arcs, the character development, the music - everything.

The perfection of tone and length were closely related. Because the Drama was a perfect length, just 14 hours total runtime, the tone stayed sweet and positive throughout. I am a hardcore brony, who just LOVES a good romance Drama. In recent years, Korea has stopped producing any. Instead K Drama writers have decided that nothing says "romance" more than having a serial killer as a major part of every "romcom", or resorting to fantasy pairings like a girl with a demon, or a girl with Cupid, or a girl with a Reaper, etc. etc. etc.

What the writers of THIS Drama got write was in understanding that a simple, sweet, uncomplicated "girl meets boy and it's love at first sight" story is ALREADY pure fantasy, and doesn't need any other baggage thrown in. No need for dark scary psychopaths whose only real function is to pad out the overlong run time. No need for love triangles, stalker exes, or anything to spoil the short sweet fluff. Evefn the creepy, sleazy client was presented a brief a nod to reality and a setup for more OTP bonding.

This worked because the characters were well-written, and this leads me to the main reason why on my personal database, I scored this as 11/10. This Drama is very much in the model of Itazura Na Kiss and all its clones, but with one HUGE difference. From It Started With a Kiss to A Love So Beautiful and lots of similar Dramas in between, I have watched "cute ditzy girl falls for hunky brainiac" A LOT, and this is the VERY FIRST ONE EVER where the FL had an academic strength in which she excelled the ML and even taught him. That was ASTONISHING. My drop rate for C Dramas is high, more than 50% of the C Dramas I start I drop, and that's because of the toxic chauvinsitic misogyny rampant in modern C Dramasd especially. The heroes are good at EVERYTHING, the Fl good at nothing, except pehaps EQ. Not this one. To see an ML & FL tutoring each other and helping each other as true peers was beautiful.

This equality was openly expressed in the dialogue too. The scene where the ML defends the FL to her young cousin by telling him how good the FL is at English (sad we never hear her say a single word of it) was an example of the quality of the writing. Since I rely on subtitles, and since I know how VERY much is literally "lost in translation" whenever I see a Drama where I'm blown away by the quality of writing IN THE SEBS, I think about how awsome the actual dialog must be.

I loved the sensible, down to Earth forthrightness of the FL. She knew what she wanted and went for it, but she also grew as a person and was never passive or whiny. The ML was great too, a great example of a "damaged" ML who was NOT tsundere. His little speech at a product presentation he gave about the impact of the FL on his life was magnificent, as was his thoughtful, PRIVATE proposal.

Whenever I need a remider of why I fell in love with East Asian Dramas in the first place, and why when they get it right they are truly I magical, I will FLY TOWARDS this Drama for a rewatch

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King the Lander
3 mensen vonden deze beoordeling nuttig
sep 6, 2023
16 van 16
Voltooid 0
Geheel 7.5
Verhaal 7.5
Acting/Cast 8.5
Muziek 6.0
Rewatch Waarde 2.0

Lots to like, but...

This Drama surprised me. It was a blast from the past, nothing but trope after trope, with clichés thrown in to break up the tropes. BUT, it worked - mostly.

WHAT I LIKED

1. Self-awareness. THe show KNEW it was a tropefest and embraced it, inviting the audience to laugh at its rehashing ALL the tropes. Couple shirts?! It worked because the show knew it was silly and was inviting laughter.

2. Kim Young Ok. This amazing actor just makes EVERYTHING she's in better, and the writer here was smart enough to give her lines that fit her dual persona as hallowed halmeoni and spunky gran perfectly. She was a HUGE part of the reason I stuck it out, as was

3. Ahn Se Ha. The one role that wasn't a trope - no BoF, Heirs type Drama that I've seen had such an irreverent Sancho Panza character, and Ahn's delivery was perfect. Very refreshing, especially in the first half.

4. OTP chemistry. I'm not so much out of the loop on who's dating whom in K Ent as out of the entire galaxy the loop is in, but if these two are a real couple, it would explain a lot. A by-the-numbers romcom like this literally lives or dies by the OTP chemistry, and these two sold it really well, INCLUDING

5. The first kiss scene - HUGE bonus points for this scene, one of VERY few in K Dramas where The kisser ASKED FOR PERMISSION. That is both romantic and sexy and swayed me heavily in favour of not dropping

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE

1. The clichéd mushiness of the evil half-sister at the very end. Keep those cojones, sistah!

2. The show was too long

3. The show was way too long.

4. The show was ridiculously way too long

5. The show was irritatingly ridiculously way too long

6. The show was unbelievably irritatingly ridiculously way too long


In the end, I gave it 7.5 because of everything it did right. It would have got 8.5-9 if it had been 12 60 minute episodes instead of 16 70 minute episodes

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Reason I didn't Confess
3 mensen vonden deze beoordeling nuttig
jul 27, 2021
1 van 1
Voltooid 0
Geheel 5.0
Verhaal 3.0
Acting/Cast 7.0
Muziek 2.5
Rewatch Waarde 2.0

VERY weak ML

The tags for this 1 episode special include "weak male lead", but calling him merely "weak" is like describing the Sun as "a touch on the warm side" or saying that the Known Universe is "not very small". Jellyfish have more spine than this ML, and dishrags have more appeal. I love a good beta male story, but this guy was nowhere near as high up the chain as beta, barely scraping in at omega. Go Min Shi's character was the only lead WITH character. She was the reason I scored this as high as 5, pretty much all 5 points coming from and being for her.
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Shiranakute Ii Koto
3 mensen vonden deze beoordeling nuttig
jun 11, 2020
10 van 10
Voltooid 0
Geheel 5.5
Verhaal 5.0
Acting/Cast 7.5
Muziek 1.0
Rewatch Waarde 1.0
I stuck this one out only because I wanted to see the opening "mystery" solved, and because as a J dorama, it was short enough to FF through the 10 50 minutes in reasonable time. In the end, the last episode addressed the glaring problem I had with the preceding 9 – the total lack of character development in the rather thoroughly unlikeable lead. Or rather, unsympathetic. I can't recommend this Drama as none of the storylines captured my emotions, and the odd development of the "second male lead" was disjointed and pointless.
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Lion Pride
3 mensen vonden deze beoordeling nuttig
mrt 4, 2020
16 van 16
Voltooid 0
Geheel 6.5
Verhaal 5.5
Acting/Cast 7.0
Muziek 8.0
Rewatch Waarde 2.5
There was nothing particularly wrong with this Drama, and enough that was right to make finishing it worthwhile. The OTP was cute enough, though their clicking seemed a bit sudden when it happened. The mystery was also ok, I've definitely seen much worse. I give the Drama credit for what it put the male lead through in the penultimate episode, it went somewhere I wasn't expecting.

The downsides were the annoying clownish tutorial head teacher whose past caught up with him, and the show's determination to basically just say "forget the past" for some pretty industrial-level betrayal and deceit. Said betrayal was obvious early on, the big reveal was "yeah, saw that coming from episode 2" kind of material, but the journey to that point was tolerable. The second leads were a big part of the reason for that, their arc was more nuanced and more crediblw than the leads. Finally, I love the song used for the OTP, "Siren Song" by Three Laws - a keeper for sure

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Pu Kou Shan Liang Te Wo Men
2 mensen vonden deze beoordeling nuttig
jun 27, 2024
8 van 8
Voltooid 0
Geheel 10
Verhaal 10
Acting/Cast 10
Muziek 8.0
Rewatch Waarde 2.0

Imperfect Perfection

This was the 39th TW Drama I've completed since my first 10 years ago, and the first I've scored as 10/10. There was NOTHING wrong with this amazing show.

First of all, the cast: LIN YI CHEN - be still my beating heart! She's been my TW bias for a decade and she was outstanding in this role. A billion light years from any of her cute, sweet Candy style FLs of the ISWAK era, she played a terrible person, and did a brilliant job.

Tiffany Hsu Wei-ning was every bit her equal too, as was necessary for a Drama all about two 'entangled particles'. And having Mike Ho as the male lead/McGuffin was a nice nod to the past, reminding me of Love Contract.

The writing was outstanding too. Being dependent on subs, when THEY wow me, I know the original must be awesome. Building the leads' relationship around analogies and hypotheses from quantum mechanics was an inspired decision. It meant that while neither of the leads was a NICE person, and Lin Yi Chen's character was by her own admission a terrible person, they were still understandable and relatable.

I knew going in to the final episode that it was emotionally impactful. But to be bawling like a baby DESPITE the absence of any twee, maudlin 'quick fix' between the two enemies was a remaarkable testimony to the power of the writing and the performances from the actors who delivered it.

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Han River
2 mensen vonden deze beoordeling nuttig
dec 17, 2023
6 van 6
Voltooid 0
Geheel 6.5
Verhaal 7.5
Acting/Cast 6.0
Muziek 3.5
Rewatch Waarde 1.0

Not awful, but...

This was not what I expected. SO MANY reviews, and one of the tags, said "comedy" - This was a funny as DIY dentistry. THe base story was fine, and it was quite well told in 6 episodes, but a comedy it was not. OTOH, it was lovely to see Han Ji Hye back on screen. I hope this was her way of easing back into acting now her child is bit older. I actually started for this for Bae Da Bin, but her role was disappointing – for a former Marine, she was portrayed as pretty much weak and useless. Also, I was hoping to her speak English as she did in her last Drama, but no such luck with this one

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Love or Not
2 mensen vonden deze beoordeling nuttig
sep 17, 2023
10 van 10
Voltooid 0
Geheel 9.0
Verhaal 9.0
Acting/Cast 9.5
Muziek 7.5
Rewatch Waarde 7.0

A triumph of love over hate

In this case, my utter HATRED of the "kindergarten kismet" trope. When I saw that this Drama was built on exactly that trope, I assumed I would hate the Drama. But, it triumphed, and I loved it.

What I loved was that it played with the trope, mocking it, analysing it, and teasing the viewer until the final episode as to whether the trope would come true. The side couple were well done, the bar owner's arc especially lending some real emotional warmth and depth to the light frothy sweetness of the main storyline.

Another big plus was the short length. Four hours total runtime was just right, no angst or pathos padding out a longer series.

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Drama Special: Thief Sleep
2 mensen vonden deze beoordeling nuttig
jul 27, 2021
1 van 1
Voltooid 0
Geheel 8.0
Verhaal 8.0
Acting/Cast 8.0
Muziek 7.0
Rewatch Waarde 5.0

Perfectly short

This was a truly excellent example of short story telling. It lacked nothing, right down to the note perfect final scenes. The two leads were great together, Kim Bo Ra reminding me why I like her as an actor, and they had good writing to work with. When K Dramas traditionally suffer from WAY too many episodes, this was a great reminder of what can be done with a tight focus on telling the core story, without any padding just to make up a certain number of episodes. Highly recommended to all who want to see a sweet story well told and well acted, and who enjoy proof that "less is more".

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Mikaiketsu no Onna
2 mensen vonden deze beoordeling nuttig
jul 20, 2020
8 van 8
Voltooid 0
Geheel 8.0
Verhaal 8.5
Acting/Cast 9.5
Muziek 5.0
Rewatch Waarde 2.0

SUB THE SP PLEASE!

This was another delightful Japanese Drama built around strong, interesting female characters. The two female leds were the closest thing the Drama had to an OTP, and their interactions and the ensuing mutual growth of respect and affection was the heart of the show.

The Drama was not without flaws, one of which were the slightly caricatured male bosses. It may be a Japanese humour style, but I've noticed this slightly OTT shouty male incompetence in other Dramas were the sympathetic protagonists are female. The writing and performance of the two female leads in this Drama were strong enough to stand on their own, without making the male boss slightly buffoonish. He could still have been shown as less competent and more interested in politicking without the shouty histrionics.

Overall, though, that was minor niggle. Haru delivered a great role as a rookie growing into a new style of detective work after an injury, and the deep bond that formed between her character and Suzuki Kyoka's made sure that by the end of the eighth and final episode the biggest and most annoying flaw was

THERE ARE NO SUBS FOR THE SP! Waaaaah!

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