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burhaa aadmi
Hic Sunt Dracones
Several reviewers have complained that it was too short, I could not disagree more strongly. Far too many K Dramas are far too long, even at 16 episodes, this one was a great example that "less is more" I really wish more K Dramas would be made in shorter formats. Eight episodes means no pointless filler, no draggy go-nowhere side stories. AND, being short makes it very rewatchable.
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The core storyline had potential but the execution was a muddled mess. Nothing of real import to the core plot happened until partway through episode 7 of 9, by which point resistance WAS futile :)
I stayed for some ofg the characters, especially Akitsu and his wife and daughter. His compliance office colleague seemed implausibly naive and fragile for such a role. Which was a major disappointment, as Hirose Alice was the reason I started the Drama. Overall, an unsatisfying experience, except for the delightful Akitsu family
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Aka no Shou - Keishicho Shomugakari Hitomi no Jikenbo
1 mensen vonden deze beoordeling nuttig
The female lead is an interesting character, bright and motivated, and also discreetly conflicted. By that I mean her inner angst remains largely inner. That inner conflict was brought into VERY sharp relief at the very end of the final episode and was responsible for me upgrading my score from 6.5 to 7.
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Sweet, but too weak
This show started brightly, but started to run out of steam by the halfway mark. The interactions between the leads were sweet, but in the end too anemic and often to frequently interrupted. The school section of the show was too long, and the university section felt like the high school section minus uniforms. Throw in the fact that the "social phobic" ML was still comfortable being borderline patronising and controlling at times, and I realised by the end of episodes 21 that I couldn't drink any more of its insipid brewVond je deze recentie nuttig?
Meh-diocre and predictable
I started this for only one reason, Wang Ji Won, and I finished it for her. Sadly, her role was utterly pointless - made to be kinda sorta a villain but in reality an irrelevance. Her role was so small it could have been excised, especially as it went nowhere. Which is a nice summary of the show as a whole Han Go Eun has been a favourite since Capital Scandal, but even she was stuck with a clichéd character here.The only good thing about watching this right through is that I can once again say that I have seen literally everything Wang Ji Won has done, and that her acting fee for this show would have helped finance her real passion, the ballet academy she owns and runs
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Deze recentie kan spoilers bevatten
What a tragedy that the 50th J dorama I completed was one of the worst of the 300+ Asian Dramas I've finished. I gave this Drama 2 stars for the only two likeable characters, the two leads. Their growth was the reason I got though it, with MASSIVE amounts of fast-forwarding. That and Takahata Mitsuki's very convincing portrayal of an unusual character were there only reasons I stuck it out to the end, rushing through to check out the SP. This Drama also distinguished itself by having one of the most loathsome, vile, criminally insane characters I've ever had ot choke back a vomit reflex watching - Kahoko's indescribably appalling MOTHER. The woman was utterly and irredeemably horrid, and stark raving mad. All I can do is hope that the trauma of watching this ghastly trash will fade soon, while I look for more of the indubitably talented Ms Takahat's work.
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The storyline has zero originality, the male lead's "stern, gruff" act makes wooden acting seem like an insult to trees, and the morality tale lessons are preached with all the subtlety of a megaphone.
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The Brightest Star in the Sky
4 mensen vonden deze beoordeling nuttig
Deze recentie kan spoilers bevatten
Sometimes, Bad is Bad
I tried this Drama once, made it to 10 before rage-quitting at how unspeakably AWFUL, really VILE the ML was. After a few months, I tried it again because so many Wu Qian fans said it was a great role for her and that she shone. After reaching 30/44 with ZERO improvement in the utter dchebag ML, I gave up for the second and final time. I kept hoping for improvement, but there was NONE. And I do mean NONE, ZERO, NADA, ZILCH.The final straw for me came in episode 26/44. That's SIXTY PERCENT done, by which point most tsundere MLs are starting to show signs of being vaguely human, giving SOME reason to accept that the FL might fall for them. NOT THIS ONE. In episode 26, after she was doing her job as his agent by giving him sensible advice related to his career, he stopped the car in the middle of nowhere and ordered her out, leaving her to find her own way back to the city. When she was picked up by a creep who tried to rape her, the ML blamed HER, and refused to accept that it was all his fault.
As awful as that was, it's actually fairly standard tsundere behaviour, but what made it even worse, besides being so late in the Drama, was her reaction. After having been almost raped because of his childish petty rage and utter selfishness, she "fell in love" with him because she discovered that he's bought a stupidly expensive t-shirt for her. ACTUAL HEADDESK MOMENT!
After 26 episodes of being her own woman and putting up with all his ENDLESS cr*p, verbal and physical abuse, being treated like a slave, and his infantile possessiveness, she falls for him because he bought an expensive shirt? Sigh! Also, GOODBYE.
The moral of this story? When you drop, trust your gut and LEAVE IT DROPPED.
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Separate Lives at Hyosim's
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RUN AWAY, SAVE YOURSELF
This show is REALLY old in its whole ethos - glorifying suffering and misery as a sign of inner purity and espousing the virtues of unquestioning filial devotion (to one's actual biological parents).At one point, I was thinking about how Confucian the show's message seemed as the FL's awful mother continued to suck her dry and she continued to bear it heorically (with PLENTY of tears, ofc) when the mother ACTUALLY SAID "Like Confucius and Mencius said, support your parents"
The focus on enduring extreme, endless misery being proof of a person's good character was also very wearing. The non-stop shouting in the first 20-25 episodes was also incredibly hard to take, and another sign of the old school feel of the Drama. That kind of high decibel screaming and shouting was clearly intended at times to be comical, as it was/is in daily dramas.
It's worth stressing that this show was not very makjang in its story elements. Only light touches of makjang, but a whole lot of misery for our super-suffering FL. There have been wekenders in the past few years that shun this archaic formula, but this one embraced it enthusiasticall. The final irony is that in a Drama called "Live Your Own Life", everyone EXCEPT the FL got to do that for most of the show, while she finally did so only in the last 20-30 minutes of the final episode.
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Sometimes, slow is slow
The first half of this Drama was 'artfully slow'. I enjoyed its unhurried contemplative approach, a difference from the usual style of revenge Dramas. But somewhere around the halfway mark, the writer obviously decided that if "revenge is a dish best served cold", this Drama should climax just after the heat death of the Universe.From being unhurried, it dropped to a crawl, painful and tedious and pointless. In my personal watchlist, the vast majority of slower Dramas that I've scored highly are JDramas, but there are some slower K Drama gems too, like One Day Off. This one was just EXCRUCIATING. So much of nothing happening and happening at a pace that makes tectonic shift seem dizzylingly fast.
For a truly outstanding summary of what went wrong with this Drama I recommend MinJi's review
https://mydramalist.com/profile/MinJi23/review/269917
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Kaettekitazoyo! Kotaro wa Hitori Gurashi
1 mensen vonden deze beoordeling nuttig
Wobbly start, stunning finish
After watching Season One yesterday, we watched Season 2 today. The first couple of episodes were a bit meandering, lacking the tightness of Season 1. The final two episodes were very powerful, and for most of the final episode I was fighting back tears. Kawahara Eito delivered stunning lead performances across both series, but the final episode took his character to new emotional depths and he rose to the challenge magnificently. The first season had the edge in cohesion, and was much lighter viewing overall, but the emotional punch of the final 2 episodes of this series redeemed its wobbly start.Vond je deze recentie nuttig?
Less really is more
"Kotaro Lives Alone is an excellent example of all the reasons why #JDramas long ago became my favourites. Emotionally moving without sentimentality, addressing a difficult subject with unflinching directness and sensitivity, a lot of laughs and doing so in ten 23-minute episodes. Imagining a KDrama version is a frightening thought. The episodes, despite being short NEVER felt rushed, just complete and dvoid of bloat. The emotioal impact was real, but unlike so many K Dramas, it was delivered with subtlety and understatement - often greatly increasing it's impact. All the actors delivered, but Kawahara Eito was AMAZING.Vond je deze recentie nuttig?
"USE YOUR WORDS" - or else
This short drama was a stunner. I have completed 412 dramas, this was the 16th that I scored at least 10/10. That means fewer than 1 drama out of every 25 I finish scores as highly as this one did. There was effectively nothing wrong with it.I started it for Bang Minah, and expected a lightweight romcom-ish kind of short. Ms Bang did not disappoint, she's come a long way since the goofy cute of Beautiful Gong Shim. But this was not a romcom. It was a really thoughtful, really intelligently written short drama about relationships and the importance of communication. Part way through episode three reference was made to "Before Sunrise", the Delpy/Hawke classic which is part of a talking trilogy. All three of those movies focus on the leads talking, with very little else happening. Where this drama excelled was in showing what happens when the characters don't "use their words".
At one point, I was angry with this drama because it looked like a central character who was NOT "using their words" would get away with it. They did not. No one did, and that's why this drama gets a 10. The emotional weight and impact in the final part of episode three and much of episode four particularly comes from the middle-aged couple, who turned out to have very significant communication issues of their own. Their story arc left my eyes damp and left me convinced that the Drama I had been about score 9 deserved 10.
Whenever I am blown away by the intelligence and thoughtfulness of the dialogue that I read as subtitles, I am left wondering just how good the actual dialogue is. From my experience of watching films in languages that I know enough of not to need subtitles, I know how very much is lost in translation. That's one of the reasons why I scored this drama a 10, because the dialogue I did see was THAT good, which leads me to think the dialogue I couldn't follow must've been so much better.
This drama also shows how really really good K dramas can be when they are short. The core elements of this four-episode drama have been used as the core elements of dramas 4 to 5 times as long. Those dramas are bloated and suffer from huge excesses of padding which serve no purpose except to fill up the specified time. Check out the event is like the distilled essence of those K dramas served without any excess baggage. It really is very worthwhile to check out the event.
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In love with work
Watching this Drama was a conflicting experience for me. It was very well-written and well-acted, but I just couldn't like or sympathise with the lead character, the eponymous "Hataraki Man".The reason I didn't like her or sympathise with her was not because the only two things she loved were work and herself, in that very specific order. I have no problem with characters who absolutely LIVE for their work, making it not just the central element of their lives but the ONLY element, as she did.
My problem was that she spent 8 of the 11 episodes trying to have it both ways. She had a long-term boyfriend of four years but EVERY SINGLE TIME there was a choice between him and work, work won - every time, no matter the time of day or night. Then when the inevitable happened, she felt aggrieved. Copious tears and emotional anguish but to me it was simple the inevitable reality that actions have consequences. Had she been more honest about her priorities, she might not have suffered as much.
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PARFAIT
The word "parfait" means "perfect" in French, and refers to a sweet dessert in English. This means it fits this very short, VERY sweet Drama "perfectly"There was really NOTHING wrong with this Drama. Even the length was right. Seven super short episodes was just right for such a frothy, sweet, cute Drama, one with no "drama" in it. No angst, no bitterness, no clouds of darkness, just a sweet cute couple being sweet and cute together. I was originally going to rate it around 8/10 but upgraded it to 9.5 because it is a basically perfect example of a "dessert Drama". If you need a sugar hit, and want one free of toxic chauvinist tropes like tsundere ML gods, this one is just what the doctor ordered
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