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a haunting adaptation of a Japanese classic.
⚠️ this review contains spoilers, albeit sometimes vaguely worded, in terms of plot and character dynamics. read at your own risk. ⚠️"when a person loves someone too deeply..."
i don't think i can have any coherent thoughts about this special that will be worth anything to anyone more knowledgeable about the source material than i am, but uh. i will attempt to. even if i do i don't think it's ever leaving my brain bc this. God, this.
a bit of backstory—last year i was too focused on completing watchlist deadlines to really enjoy the experience of watching new things itself, and so this year i decided to take a more laid back approach, picking out things to watch at my own pace. i had forgotten about this, placed on my watchlist sometime after the end of September, and found it again when a chance read through the comments revealed that it was officially available for streaming by NHK until October 2023. despite this, i went into Yukiguni practically blind, knowing nothing about it except that it was an adaptation of Kawabata Yasunari's Snow Country (雪国), widely considered to be his finest work (although the author himself disputed that, citing Meijin [名人], or The Master of Go, as his true masterpiece—the latter was one of the only novels that he considered truly finished.) the version of the special that is streamed on NHK World seems to have catered for this, offering a short, two to three minute feature at the beginning and end of each 50 minute segment to serve as context for those who, like me, have allowed it to be their first introduction to the story, or perhaps need a review of its background. (significant time is given during the first segment for a brief biography of the English translator of Snow Country, Edward Seidensticker, whose efforts were highly regarded as a faithful rendering by Kawabata—he later invited him to be present when the author was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, becoming the first Japanese person to win the honor.)
「国境の長いトンネルを抜けると雪国であった。」"the train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country." this is how we begin, but we do not truly catch a clear glimpse of our narrator—Takahashi Issei as the writer Shimamura—until we have returned to a specific point in his memories, through the outside of the car window in which he sits. before then, it is an unfocused lens granting us his silhouette, a view of his back, the cigarettes that he puts out in his office, the project that he is working on. the others in our cast come gradually after that; first Morita Misato as Yoko, the woman across from him, on the other side of the train aisle, then Kora Kengo as Yukio, the passenger she accompanies, terribly ill, who both get off at his stop. but it is Nao as Kamako, standing at the top of the flight of stairs to his room in the inn, that simultaneously catches us off guard and captures our attention. she turns, just barely, to look at him, and we know, now, why he has said that even his finger has remembered the shape of her best. she is not something one can forget.
(it does not hurt that the soundtrack here is being used to her advantage—while i've found that all of the NHK dramas i've watched so far have been well thought out in the musical aspect, Jun Miyake uses his expertise to create a hauntingly sparse atmosphere befitting of the onsen town our story is set in.)
i make this sound captivating, but in truth all of this made almost no sense to me until the last half hour or so. Takahashi, with his way of using the constraints of the character to speak more with his hands and his eyes and his mannerisms than his words (though the latter were not lacking), was in the same boat as i was, acknowledging that Nao, his girl of the snow country, spoke more in riddles than plain words. beautiful to look at, yes, but "wasted effort" in the grand scheme of things when you could not understand them. revealed tragedy, but not the true cause of it. then, somehow, as if by a stroke of luck, everything clicked into place, like finding the last puzzle piece you knew you had been missing but couldn't quite remember where you had left it last. i had to pause and go back and watch from the beginning, savor each interaction, and in doing so i realized that Nao has achieved a rare feat. she is the dark horse of this piece, showing incredible range for such a layered and complicated character. i dare say that while i came for the story of the writer, i stayed for the geisha, and her tale—she has, perhaps, outacted him here, aided by the switch to her narration during that aforementioned half hour. but maybe outacted is not the right word to use. rather, she has come to the forefront, seeming to say that she has been the main focus, instead of our narrator's one-sided view of her.
indeed, the ending IS this half hour, and it is abrupt. there is fire, and falling, and the clever editing of Nao's narration to be bookended by the two, so much so that you forget you have been primed to wait for the sound of a body hitting the snow drifts until it comes, hard and fast, and you follow Takahashi's eyes down to the form below. (i find a parallel, albeit admittedly thin, between this and the ending of Wife of a Spy, the first feature i saw Takahashi in—it seems that he is always somewhere where it is burning, even if, like the former, he is not in frame.) still, shortly after this we are left incomplete, standing at the edge of a cliff, not sure whether we are to be pushed off or placed there permanently. it is tantalizing, expecting something to come next and getting nothing in return. it uneases you as well.
there is an interesting tidbit of information mentioned in the first five minute feature of the second segment that says that perhaps we are not alone in this feeling—a notebook, found in April of 2022, is said to reveal that even up until shortly before his death in 1972 Kawabata was revising the ending for Yukiguni, constantly searching for the perfect solution to the story that he had begun. yet for all of his searching it did not come to pass; the rest of us remain outside, now, at the theater in the snow where he left us, all ablaze, Komako rushing past. Shimamura staggers. he acts fear remarkably well, here, and he is the last thing we see, but she is the one that has her claws in us, urging us, forcing us to look, to understand. "this girl is mad," she says before she leaves, held back at first by the arms of several men, "she's mad." we are not quite sure who, in the end, she is really speaking of.
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a beautifully done character study about the lives of aroace individuals.
⚠️ this review contains spoilers, albeit brief and sometimes vaguely worded, in terms of plot and character dynamics. the author does not identify as aroace, and is therefore approaching this from an outsider's view, despite being queer. read at your own risk. ⚠️"i believe that there are. people who can't fall in love."
KF has been on my ptw list ever since it first aired, but for one reason or another i was always putting it off, despite the amount of mutuals flooding my Tumblr dashboard with praise to high heaven—i chose to watch this show during Asexual Awareness Week, was introduced to the two aroace leads, and have fallen desperately in love with this show (ha!) as a result after being a procrastinating bitch. (serves me right, whenever i put off watching something it's usually what ends up being my obsession for the weeks following sksksksk) there's something so unique about the subject matter, as well as the way they chose to tackle it, and nothing felt forced.
Kodama Sakuko, the main focus of this show, has lived a relatively normal life according to the general population's expectations, but she is not happy—once she puts a name to what she has been for her entire life in episode 1, she resolves to live in such a way that she is the only person who can determine her happiness. her navigation through the new relationships she forges, including with her housemate and ex-boyfriend (but more on that below!) is truly a privilege to watch. i especially loved the decision of the editing team when it came to the audio if people around her were talking about love—we are inside her head, and she filters everything out so that what we are hearing is static, slowly increasing to be just overpowering enough that we rely on what we see; the way that she does not relate to them, but tries her best to fit in. in the end, she has reached the point where her best is no longer fitting in but speaking out, standing up for herself and the things that she believes in, and the feeling that Kishii Yukino's smile gives me in the end is nothing i can explain with words.
Takahashi Satoru is one of the sweetest people i have seen in my life and i would be lying if i said that i did not want to put him in my pocket and kidnap him. touch averse-ness considered, however, since i do not want to make him feel uncomfortable (bc i myself do not like feeling uncomfortable) i will settle for telling him nice things and buying him crab (!!!) even tho i do not eat it and finding flour for his udon and going to his vegetable farm regularly and making sure he visits all of his favorite shops and cafes before his customer reward points expire on the rare occasion he ends up back in town XD he is also, however, deliberately coded in such a way as to come across as not only canon aroace, but as autistic as well—his quirks, endearing as they are, were one of the most relatable parts of this series to me, and his small insistence on living his life according to his values, and no one else's, much like Sakuko, also struck a cord. Takahashi Issei is a master in his field, something i discovered earlier this year while watching Wife of a Spy (i have a review about that as well!!!), and i'm starting to think it's either he never picks a bad project or a bad project never picks him, whichever one it is.
Matsuoka Kazu. what to say about him? he and the FL have a very interesting relationship that contains some of the more uncomfortable memories for her, including a moment of intimacy that sits firmly in the gray area of consent—she doesn't say no, per say, but there's nothing to suggest that she explicitly said yes either. it is handled in such a sensitive way that you are allowed to know that they were together, albeit briefly, and by extension the way that he does struggle, at the beginning, to understand why they can't be again. one of my favorite moments with him (after somewhat of an unexpected development) is when the three housemates head out to Odawara on a trip and he and Sakuko have a heart-to-heart in episode 5; "it must have been so hard on you," he says after she explains that she does not want to force him into what is her closest approximation of a romantic relationship, and he is crying. it is an apology of sorts, for not realizing exactly how unhappy she was. still, he does not regret falling in love with her—her presence in his life, it seems, serves as a catalyst for a well-deserved (and appreciated) character arc, portrayed perfectly by Hama Shogo.
on that note, imo, there has always been an underlying thread of QPRs, or queerplatonic relationships, in this series—someone mentioned that Sakuko's approach to connections with others lean heavily towards the cupioromantic, in addition to her aroace identity, and even when Kazu stayed over for a few weeks to take care of Satoru and his broken arm one would normally think the atmosphere would be a bit awkward. (we are talking, after all, about two aroace people sharing a space with a heterosexual man who is the ex-boyfriend of the FL [and is still madly in love with her], initial rude comments and all.) surprisingly, that awkwardness disappeared, with the dynamic between the three quickly settling into a sort of domestic relationship that extends far beyond Kazu and Satoru's departure; they apparently are all part of the same group chat, communicating regularly, and Satoru even asks Sakuko to give his regards to "Kazu-kun-san," a form of address that earned a laugh out of Sakuko earlier in the series. i choose to believe that she extended the same kind of understanding she has with Satoru in the last episode (read: the conversation in the living room that cemented this series' 10/10 rating) to Kazu, even though it was not shown, and that he did get his wish after all in being part of the "kazoku." (bc look, he is literally the only straight man who also serves as a major supporting character who deserves rights in this show. the other one is a d*ck and deserved everything he got, tyvm)
of course, that's not to leave out the rest of this extremely nuanced cast—Sakuko's blood family did an absolutely stunning job in this, with her father being the standout star for me, as did Kojima Fujiko as her best friend Chizuru, standing to the side as she too falls in love with someone who cannot love her back in the same way. (if you're going to ask whether i cried during the conversation at the beach, pls know that if you watch it the answer will be self-evident. i have a headache coming on, if that helps) Satoru's grandmother was a continual presence as well, even though she was never actually shown on screen—something something "still hovering inside the narrative/there is always a hole where they have been," if you ask me.
tl;dr: Koisenu Futari, in the hands of screenwriter Yoshida Erika and the three directors tasked with bringing her script to the screen, took on the challenge of portraying aroace people in the most respectful way possible, despite the network's original skepticism. fittingly, this was the last drama to air in NHK's 2018 - 2022 "Yorudora" slot, one that was reserved for dramas specifically geared towards young people. i highly recommend watching this show, and i doubt i'll make it into the coming new year before watching it again.
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find somewhere to watch this film because this is an experience none of you should miss out on.
(*vague spoilers ahead. see below.)TL;DR: Wife of a Spy is a masterpiece of a film that must be savored to be understood. it will wreck you emotionally, however, as the subject matter is heavy (though somewhat sanitized), so start this only when you're ready.
"(...) i will be insulted as the wife of a spy. is that your justice? what about our happiness?"
"happiness built upon injustice?"
"i'll still choose happiness."
"don't act like you know. you didn't see what i saw... i saw it. if i was chosen by fate, i must do something about it."
finished this film last night, had to take a moment to soak it all in and ended up rewatching the last 5 minutes at 3:00 am and sobbing bc of it. this had the honor of being one of several firsts—the first film of the year, the first title on MDL that i've given a review, the first Japanese film i've ever watched, and the first piece of Japanese media that i've watched in a long, long time (three years, to be exact, if you count the handful of anime that i attempted to complete but never did). if i ever get my hands on a dubbed version of this in Korean, despite my hatred of dubs in foreign media (i know they released this in Korea during a film festival but idk if it's subtitles only or if it's fully dubbed), i would watch it all over again bc there is something about this that i can't put my finger on but that lingers all the same, even now. hell, tbh once i've gotten confident in Japanese i'd watch it without any subtitles at all
this was,,,, a ride? i know i sh*tpost a lot on the feeds and this turn of phrase generally has a more crackhead vibe to it but this in particular is one of my more serious reviews and as such i felt this needed to be shared. it was filmed almost like a theater performance, very intimate, very bare-boned and reduced to the important details, and that served to be one of its strengths. at its core, WOAS is a story about human beings and the choices that they make when faced with something that could quite literally mean life or death, whether for them or for others like them. for Satoko, it means staying by her husband's side, even when she doesn't exactly understand his motives and it seems he has abandoned her, as poignantly seen in the last 15 minutes or so of the film. for Yusaku, it means pursuing what he believes to be justice—when the war is lost, Japan has lost, and that is best for the rest of the world, despite the deaths of his own people. for Yasuharu, it means to stay with what he finds familiar, but familiar is not always right. whether he realizes that eventually, however, we are not told. this ending, in all its vagueness, fits him, and as a result draws parallels between him and another of what i consider to be one of the most interesting (albeit non-Asian) characters i've come across to date, Rolf from The Sound of Music. the two, in both worlds, will always lose more than they have gained.
i'll be honest here and say that the first half of this film was good. not extraordinary, imo, just good. the second half, tho? sucker punch to the gut that just kept on giving, and i feel like it was bc of the actors' performance that somehow stopped being a performance and started to be LIVED. Takahashi Issei and Aoi Yū each lent their own power to this film that made it what it was—Takahashi with his portrayal of a man who lives in the blurred lines between black and white, and Aoi with her portrayal of a woman who stands in his shadow before stepping out to create her own. i can't help but feel that this film was more about her than about Takahashi, in a sense, bc even though his discovery becomes the catalyst for what follows it is her that we see when the world as we have come to know it finally crumbles, it is her grief (anger?) that we feel in its closing scenes. (also never thought hearing Aoi Yū say "i'm scared" in the smallest voice ever would break me in the beginning of the year of our Lord 2022 but congratulations, it did!) as such, it feels like a fever dream once the credits begin to roll (one that reminds me personally of the effect Mitski's music has as well), but it is one that is all too real—this, we are reminded, is based off of historical events.
eventually, this film comes full circle—whereas in the beginning Satoko is reluctant, unwilling, even, to give up what she has known for the cause that the man she loves believes to be right, the turning point occurs just before the two part ways. "if you're a spy," she says, "then i'll be the wife of a spy." even in the end, it seems at first, without a husband, a home, or a homeland, she remains one, but Yusaku is quick to remind us that she is not a spy. nor is she the wife of one. she is someone standing up for what she believes in, just like the countless others before her, and there is no need for her to hide. the only ones that consider her a spy are the ones who do not want her to speak.
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a hit or a miss, but mostly a miss.
⚠️ this review has been edited, but contains spoilers in terms of plot and character dynamics. read at your own risk. originally posted in April of 2023. ⚠️i was going to write out a whole long ass, terribly formal review of this (complete with quoting OST lyrics and all) and then stopped halfway, bc with the things this show put me through it deserves nothing less than a review that is as chaotic as possible. (in case you're wondering, the original draft is still sitting in my notes never to see the light of day sksksksk)
so let's get this out here: the plot, for 3/4ths of its run, imo, was sh*t. and then it wasn't, but that was during the last four or so episodes when they made some questionable choices and left me trying to figure out how on earth things could have wrapped up so well and yet so wrong at the same time. like killing off Oh Man Ok, for instance, someone who could be considered the most interesting character after Doo Hak himself (and who i consider, courtesy of Jin Yi Han, as the dark horse of the cast in terms of powerhouse acting—give me back my morally ambiguous team leader with little backstory, a f*ckable voice and fierce loyalty to the man who chose the kid that wasn't even his f*cking son to act as an umbrella for [iykyk]), or separating our favorite "good girl/bad boy" couple after the main ship for no reason other than "a special wedding and a special divorce" (Hyung Joo and Yeon Joo—the JooJoo couple my beloveds ?).
even Jung Shin and Doo Hak, the two we have been rooting for for so long, can never seem to get to the altar, unlike their on again/off again counterparts. and then, ofc, do not get me started on how the Big Bad never got the justice that was coming for him bc SOMEONE decided it was a good idea to close the f*cking door of the hospital room , or how we thought we should all gather around one man (name redacted) to hear his (supposed) last words and then freak out when he passes out from blood loss when we should have been getting him to a F*CKING DOCTOR IN THE FIRST PLACE. *exhales* but this is k-drama land, and logic sometimes is not in the equation. i am used to this by now
(i will take this opportunity to say that this is not a show that you binge watch. this is a show of makjang-like proportions, where there is one more person to hate every week and you must seethe in your chair for the next six days while awaiting the next episode. as someone who was lucky enough to be able to volunteer on the segmenting and editing team for Viki [the uh *cough* official streamers of the show after Wavve], the upside to this was finishing my assigned portion, watching the rest of the episode, and then heading to the team chat to see the rest of us having mostly the same view of things asfjhslkmkcsncnsq)
the acting was..... ok. Jung Shin, through no fault of her own, might have had the weakest writing here, imo—compared to In Ah's role in Mr. Queen i thought the performance was lacking. Dong Yoon as Doo Hak knocked it out of the f*cking ballpark (no surprise there) but even in this he is neck and neck with Young Woo: the ability to play such an unstable and emotionally damaged character at the age of 23 in what is his first real major, gritty role (after debuting in BL's You Make Me Dance and sticking to mostly light-hearted and slice-of-life offers since then) is something to be acknowledged, and despite my qualms about the final showdown in ep 16 you will have to burn the sight of him screaming that he is sick and tired of things at the woman he thought was his mother out of my braincells bc it's staying there. for a while. (like uh. he's turning 24 this year. the man is five years older than me and he is eating this sh*t up f*cked up script and all) the gang, as i affectionately like to call them, also did an amazing job, and even several members who i was prepared to write off as mortal enemies settled into a "scratch my back i scratch yours" arrangement with Doo Hak by the end.
the ending itself, tho—that was also very vague, but i think that might have been intentional? like we're told there's a warrant to be served but we're not told who it's for. even when Am-daek says that "she's his mother" and that her son is inside the Yeosu theater watching one last film, we have no idea which son she's talking about. for all we know, it could be the system, failing Lee Doo Hak once again. it could be the prosecution, come to take in one of their own. Cheol Woong, for his part once sh*t has hit the fan, wants to spend the rest of his life atoning, but his hyung stops him. "don't," he says. "it's all in the past." is this a quasi-redemption arc, something the writers decided on to tide those of us who hate tragic endings over? idk, but i will not accept it. something in me wants to see Cheol Woong go to therapy but also suffer, have just one more taste of the medicine that Doo Hak has been forced to swallow until now. but then again, maybe i'm being more like Doo Hak throughout the first half of this, and not like the Doo Hak we see when all is said and done.
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if you haven't watched this what are you doing with your life, exactly?
⚠️ this review contains vague spoilers in terms of plot and heavy spoilers in quotes and character dynamics. read at your own risk. ⚠️(those on my friends feed will know that i watched the last three episodes twice the day i finished it and cried like a bitch. i rewatched them this morning again, bc they contain some of the best moments in this show, and still cried like a bitch. i have no excuse)
i said i would take some time to collect my thoughts after finishing this, but i still don't know exactly how collected i am rn? @Shiro and @AnQuat put out their most recent editorial on screenwriter Park Hae Young (the mastermind behind this masterpiece) and i looked at my notes and decided that if i didn't post this i would be 1. missing out on the opportunity and 2. this might never see the light of day bc i just like to procrastinate
should probably preface the actual word dump by saying that i have a ptw list that is suffering atm and before this ran me over like a train wreck, last week Sunday i was THIS close to starting Stranger. was literally on Dramacool about to click on the first episode when i got a YouTube notification, went to check it, saw a FMV for this drama in my recommended, suddenly recalled that the Lee Sun Kyun was in it, and abandoned all plans with Cho Seung Woo and Bae Doo Na for the weekend. i will make it up to the both of you, somehow, after i explain how my heart was ripped out of my chest with this
Lee Sun Kyun. (i watched Coffee Prince recently and was slapped with the SLS so hard i think something broke inside of me—this show aired almost exactly nine years after that and the fact that his voice is still as,,,,,, how should i put this without sounding jealous of his wife,,,,,,,, f*ckable as it was back then? is illegal, should be illegal, constitutes grounds for a legal suit—this is why they call him The Voice ™ in Korea and that is entirely valid, imo, so why tf do on-screen women keep cheating on him ? no one in this cinematic universe appreciates the blessing that is having this man as a committed life partner with a stable job and that's a crime) IU. (i have yet to watch Scarlet Heart which, in the drama community, is akin to murder so idk about her previous skills but here? she acted her ass off with this role and we have no choice but to stan. immediately added to the list of artists/idols who actually know wtf they're doing when they crossover to the film industry) Park Ho San. Song Sae Byuk. Lee Ji Ah. Kim Young Min. (kind of an assh*le here but he's hot! and apparently older than LSK which sent me for a f*cking loop bc he does not look like it) i was going to wait until Viki stopped being homophobic and gave me back my QC benefits to support my fellow subbers but the call of 750p and no ads was too strong—watch me rewatching this in December in HD just to see how different the subs are so i can get away with a trip to therapy
“some girl told me the other day that she's 30,000 years old. she says that if she counts up all the times she's been reincarnated and all the birthdays she's had, it will probably add up to that. and she says she doesn't know why she keeps being born. but i know. it's because this world, here, isn't her home, but she keeps making a mistake and thinking it is. so she keeps coming back. and then she keeps thinking of how to return to her home, and just keeps being reborn.”
no one in this show had the right to be this talented. no one, not the screenwriter, not the director, not Lee Sun Kyun, not IU, not the supporting cast, i'm going to lay that out on the table rn. the delivery of the lines in here have destroyed my storage bc i kept pausing every five minutes to write it down,,,,,, and the body language? (every time a man's hands shake i simultaneously gain and lose fifteen years off of my life. when they throw up i tack five more years onto that total. Dong Hoon did both in the last episode and idk what to do with myself after this) the way things are said without being said, partially utilized in the impeccable addition of sign language? the parallels? the subtle references to previous scenes, previous dynamics, previous dramas, even?
it's “she's here. the girl with the pretty face.” / “he's here.” and “just say sorry. say ‘i was wrong’ ten times. say it. hurry up and say it.” / “i was wrong. i was wrong. i was wrong.” and “you think it's because of my willpower that i haven't had anything happen? ani. there's been no temptation. there's nothing to be wary of, so i'm not sure if i have any willpower at all.” / “don't do it. don't do it, are you listening to me?” (ft. the Coffee Prince vibes almost immediately after This Scene ™, bc Park Dong Hoon brushing back his hair from his forehead looking like he's just fought a war is the 2010s equivalent of “i was just shaken, that's all. i don't feel anything for her, truly, i don't—” “how would you know? you've never been shaken before. i have.”) and (Dong Hoon to Ji Ahn) “live by the name that you were given” / (Gyum Deok to Dong Hoon) “be selfish and take care of yourself. be happy. you're allowed to do that” = “i do not want you to suffer bc of the things you have had to do to survive,” along with my personal favorite, which is so good it needs its own line in this block of text despite the fact that Ji Ahn is blatantly lying in the first half,
“... why do you like him? tell me. i'm curious.” “i don't like him. i want to ruin him.” ... “you must have come to this neighborhood just to save me. i was on the verge of dying, but you were the one who saved me.” = “my savior Han Joo Won, who came to destroy my life.” = “the savior who came to destroy me. my Tamako. my Sookee.” (ignore the fact that i have not watched The Handmaiden. focus on the vibes) *screeches*
on that point (and building off of the Handmaiden quote) i have seen some people say that Dong Hoon and Ji Ann's relationship is purely platonic and i'm sorry but i have to disagree, i really do, bc i literally saw a comment on Dramacool that said “imagine loving someone so much you love to hear him breathe” in reference to this quote (“i liked hearing all of the sounds you made, ahjeossi. and all of your words, and thoughts, and the sound of your footsteps… all of it. it felt as if i saw what a human being was for the first time.”) and this,,,,,,, coupled with the way she knows him better than his own wife,,,,,,, with the way she eventually leaves bc she does not want him to have to understand that,,,,,, with the way he still goes looking for her, bc it is too late for him not to understand (“if you get to know a person… nothing they do bothers you. and i know you.”) ,,,,,,, all of this,,,,,,,, i cannot NOT see this as a love story
and bc of that, My Mister is very forgettable but then it isn't, in a way? there's a specifically rewatchable aspect to it that allows for the opportunity to never get tired of the plot and that imo is its strength, but i can guarantee that three months from now i will be minding my own business and then my brain will choose to pull the almost-kiss scene side-by-side with thoughts like “how far can you go before love is not just love but ferality, all teeth, all claws, all hunger, all untouchable with longing, an i-did-not-expect-you-but-you-are-here-and-i-am-learning-to-understand-that type ache” and “he is a deer caught in the headlights and still he tries to understand why he will not move in the face of it, why there is so much death he is willing to court for one girl” and “they are human, they are human, they are human, and they starve,” bc they do, they do—
in a nutshell this show is basically just *motions* a bunch of literary excerpts and feelings! i can quote so many from both in show (like i have already) and outside, like that one excerpt from Ilya Kaminsky's poem "After Bombardment, Sonya" that goes “you can f*ck anyone / but with whom can you sit in the water?” but without the actual, physical f*ckery, and Mary Shelley and Mary Oliver (and the latter's lesbian soul) coming out here and saying that they would invent the foundation of the second half of this show on the basis that every good plot needs some kind of genuine sorrow and despair bc “you must not permit sorrow to destroy you” and “you do not have to be good. / you do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. / you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. / tell me about despair, yours, and i will tell you mine. / meanwhile the world goes on,” and Hanif Abdurraqib going off on the one-sided Kwang Il/Ji Ahn dynamic and saying “there is intimacy in the moment where the eyes of two enemies meet. there is a tenderness in knowing what desire ties you to a person, even if you spent your dreaming hours cutting them a casket from the tree in their mother's front yard. it is a blessing to know someone wants a funeral for you,” and—
*inhales* it was consistently “six feet under the f*cking floorboards” time for the entirety of this series but it's a 10/10, pry that good sh*t out of my cold dead hands
(something that another person in the Dramacool comments pointed out in the last episode and that eventually wrecked me as a result of being more good sh*t is that the meaning of the hanja for “Ji,” “之” (or alternately “至”), is to “arrive, to reach, to get.” the meaning of the hanja for “Ahn,” “安,” is to “comfort, to live comfortably, to be at peace.” Dong Hoon's last line, then, is this—“have you reached comfort, Ji Ahn?”)
but all of this—all of this—would not have been possible without the OST, and the OST will live rent-free with me for the rest of my life. what i initially thought was Sun Kyun's voice as a surprise (and possibly unreleased?) OST in the middle of episode 8—but what eventually turned out to be One Million Roses sung by Ko Woo Rim of Forestella (who was only 22 at the time [!!!] and is also getting married to figure skating legend Kim Yuna this year in October)—is a blessing to my eardrums either way while managing to sound almost exactly like Sun Kyun in terms of enunciation and i need more of it. Adults by Sondia puts me on the operating table, flatlines me and sends me to the autopsy department.
this sh*t has obtained “Pavlovs me into crying every f*cking time the OST comes on” status and the only other things i can think of that rank the same are Goblin, The Red Sleeve, a very specific section of The Devil Judge, Goodbye, My Princess, The Untamed and Sado. Love Me by Nafla is also the unofficial theme song for Dong Hoon and Yoon Hee and Hello, Stranger by KAI is the theme song for Dong Hoon and Ji Ahn, am not taking questions at this time
the length of this review is scaring me but TL;DR: get your ass over to Netflix, Viki, Dramacool, whatever tf people use to watch dramas these days, and if you're like me and are 4 years late to the phenomenon, watch this. watch it, and cry, and then suffer through a drama slump for the foreseeable future bc there is nothing—nothing—in this particular genre that can top this.
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it could have been so much more.
⚠️ contains heavy, albeit vaguely worded, spoilers for both SFH and Mouse, and minor spoilers for The Bad Kids. ⚠️it seems that everywhere i turn there are more and more plotholes to grab my attention when i am attempting to process all of this like a normal human being. i am failing, miserably, but i will continue to try anyway
i came into this show looking for the Hannibal-esque content, i will admit—i have mutuals that have been recommending this show to me bc they know how whipped i am for Hannigram (despite not having watched anything from the series. am i really gay if i haven't watched Hannibal, tho, can someone answer that question for me), and i was excited to see some of that here. it,,,,,, it fell flat, in a way? i wanted to enjoy this far more than i did but it refused to let me do so and that sucks, tbh
part of the reason, i think, is that Lee Dong Wook is simply not scary. maybe it's bc i've watched 20 episodes of Mouse and therefore have known a glimpse of true terror (despite the fact that it started to go careening downhill in the last 3 to 4 episodes—y'all know that OZ storyline was not necessary to the plot, own it) or maybe it's bc his role as the multi-layered Grim Reaper has embedded itself into my eyelids, idk, but Lee Dong Wook waving knifes and doing what appeared to be an attempt at a creepy smile just did not cut it for me (pun not intended). what he is, tho, is hot, and gay, and slightly unstable, and obsessed with the writer in Room #303. (throat-touching. throat-touching is gay af, ik what i'm talking about bc necks are the most attractive part of a human body after the hands. if you don't agree then fight me bitch) could have possibly f*cked me over/induced a fear of dentists in general by the time all of this was said and done (if it had been executed properly *cough*) but do we give a f*ck? we do not give a f*ck. would we like to be f*cked, tho? no comment
i don't want to say that i'd let Lee Dong Wook pull out my teeth and tie me to a chair for 5 minutes of ASMR reading material,,,,, but that is exactly what i'm saying in a way
on that subject of f*ckery (the act, not the behavior): personal headcanon that Seo Moon Jo and Yoo Ki Hyuk have hate-f*cked at least once pre-canon (bc, yk. apparent Frankenstein kink and all that? idk, it's just the vibes the two of them give off sitting in the back of a detective's vehicle with a needle stuck in someone's neck while the homoeroticism has just started to make itself known here) and both of them could really have cared less about the sex itself. rip Ki Hyuk, for such a hot man you could have had some good sex once in a while if you had held off on the garotting of a public figure for a sec—truly gone too soon ?
but Im Si Wan, tho. i am going to be honest here and say that i knew him from his musical career with ZE:A but once again made the same mistake that i did with Junho and did not bother to check out his acting career. like with Junho, i am now attempting to rectify that bc i refuse to believe that this man filmed this almost immediately after being discharged from the military. i refuse. the casual disassembling of a man's morals contained in the pretty little tooth bracelet he carries around on his wrist that was given to him (with some kind of tenderness!!!) by his toxic ex-boyfriend is not something to be taken lightly and he,,,,,, he didn't. he put his entire soul into this sh*t, f*ck
the other inhabitants of Eden Gosiwon are not to be forgotten, however—Park Jong Hwan and Lee Jung Eun as the Byeon twins and Eom Bok Soon, respectively, stole the show almost as much as Siwan. (we need more women serial killers from the latter, pls and ty) Noh Jong Hyun as Kang Seok Yoon made me cry a bit bc he was soft and precious and made his entrance during the last three to four episodes and did not deserve what he received at the end of that
the OST was good as well! i can't say that it added anything to the show per say but it certainly didn't subtract from it—my personal favorites are Blow Off by Yoari and Strangers by The Rose.
but y'all. y'all. what the last 45 minutes of SFH did to me had me, to put it plainly, f*cking shook. who killed who? who was killing who from the moment this all began? whose voice were we hearing? once we entered the fourth floor,,,,,,, who was the "victim" in the end? is the psychopath dentist with a penchant for f*cking (or otherwise propositioning) his creations still alive or are we are all on a canon acid trip rn
when i sat on that for a few days, however, i realized what it reminded me of, and as it did the weaknesses of SFH became glaringly clear.
The Bad Kids employed a similar ending as SFH, except there was a sense of unease from the beginning with the former. the gaslighting was so subtle that you only realized it in the latter half of the show, and even then you were tempted to think that that's not really what they meant. i didn't really pick up anything that made me necessarily uncomfortable in SFH—even the "human meat" jokes felt typical and very trope-like—and the screenwriter's attempt to gaslight us in the final episode (again, pun not intended) worked for all of 24 hours. after that, it doesn't hold up too well. the mindf*ck in TBK is unparalleled bc of that, and serves as just one of the reasons i consider it to be a masterpiece.
SFH also, imo, could have done with some more backstory. from my research, Moon Jo was a character unique to the television series—he was billed as this serial killer with sinister motives, but we never really got to find out what those motives were. "we're making art. it's not just murder," he said, but where was the art? Mouse played into this aspect as well bc (iirc) Jung Ba Reum used to take pictures of his victim's bodies and had it up on his wall—there was a meticulousity to it that i can't get into at the moment, but it was tangible. he had something that he considered to be worth killing for, and all we got from Moon Jo was a barely utilized tooth collection and no proper explanation behind that sh*t, sksksksk
to make a long story short, it could have been more. and i hate saying that, bc ik how good of an actor LDW is, and ik how much effort Siwan put into this, but it wasn't enough. at its core, the plot was stretched too thin—as an adaptation of a webtoon that (i assume) had far more content, it did very little to convince me to read the source material.
do i regret watching this? no. will i watch it again? that's also a no.
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