Hwayugi

Hwayugi

6.5/10

Hwayugi

Genre:                                    Episodes: 20                                         Year: 2018

Romance

Fantasy

Synopsis:

Jin Seon Mi is a girl who can see evil spirits. As a child she released a deity, Son Oh Gong, from his prison. As a reward, Oh Gong offers to come to her aid and fight evil spirits whenever she calls his name, but also removes the memory of his name from her mind. As an adult, Seon Mi meets Oh Gong again, and uses a magical bracelet to trick Oh Gong into loving her so that he will protect her.

Cast:

Lee Seung Gi (Son Oh Gong)

Oh Yeon Seo (Jin Seon Mi)

Cha Seung Won (Woo Ma Wang)

Lee Hong Ki (PK)

Lee El (Ma Ji Young)

Lee Se Young (Bu Ja/Ah Sa Nyeo)

Yoon Bo Ra (Alice)

Jang Gwang (Yoon Dae Shik)

Sung Ji Ru (Soon Bo Ri)

Sung Hyuk (Winter General/Summer Fairy)

Song Jong Ho (Kang Dae Sung)

One (Hong Hae Ah)

General Thoughts:

I feel like this drama should have been better than it was. There were so many elements in it that were really, really good, but then there were also quite a lot of parts that were below standard.

I wish it had been just a smidge more exciting

I missed the Hong Sisters’ last drama ‘Warm and Cozy’ as I just heard so many terrible things about it, but I did catch ‘Big’. I’ve also seen a lot of their better works, and I think ‘Hwayugi’ falls somewhere in the middle. It’s not one of their best, but it’s not one of their worst either.

I don't like fantasy, I LOVE it

I’m not sure how much of the world-building they took from the original Chinese novel, but that was one of the better aspects to the show. The way these deities and demons were so naturally disguised in society was brilliant and I loved all the fantasy elements of the characters’ powers and limitations and all the various rules in place from heaven. The heavenly hierarchy was interesting, though mildly confusing at times, but it made all the interactions between our characters fun. The characters were all extremely unique and interesting, and were really the draw for this drama (because there wasn’t really a lot going on in the plot). The different demons were delightful, and each had a story of their own. Having all these personalities interacting was exciting and fun, however after a time it did get a little stagnant. ‘Hwayugi’ was a drama that needed a big plot to move it, as we had all these big characters with big powers. However, as the drama progressed and we got used to the way the characters interacted with each other (Oh Gong and Seon Mi’s push and pull, Oh Gong and Ma Wang’s bickering bromance etc) there was no big force that really pushed our characters into any sort of action- which led to a huge slow in momentum and my interest starting to fade.

I much prefer the pull over the push

The acting was pretty good all around, with the Hong sisters drawing on a lot of actors from their previous dramas. Of course, these actors were brilliant in their previous roles, and so they did well again. Cha Seung Won was hilarious as the bull demon running an entertainment agency.

He's just so hilarious

While his false bravado was slightly reminiscent of his character in ‘Greatest Love’ he managed to add an air of superiority that made Ma Wang feel like a brand new character. Cha Seung Won has such great comedic timing, and such fabulously humorous chemistry with others that sometimes I find it hard to believe that he was ever a serious actor. But then in the heavy, serious scenes he really switches over and shows you what he’s capable of- raw and rich emotion. PK’s character had quite a few similarities to Jeremy in ‘You’re Beautiful’, but similarly to Cha Seung Won, Lee Hong Ki managed to add a unique flavour in his representation of the character that prevented PK from becoming a Jeremy copy-paste. Lee Hong Ki added a bunch of arrogance and tonnes down his innocence for this role, and I really enjoyed the PK he brought out. I’ve not had good experiences with Lee Se Young in the past, after hating her character in ‘The Best Hit’. I really thought she had little to no acting talent at all after seeing her in that drama, and I was happy to be proven wrong here.

She ended up being one of my favourite characters

Lee Se Young was delightful and extremely likeable as our zombie, Bu Ja. She was cute and funny and did an excellent job at bringing in zombie-ish characteristics- such as her slowed speech. Despite how odd these characteristics might have been, Lee Se Young was very natural and made them feel like an authentic part of her character,

Gross yet funny

and I didn’t feel her acting as much as I did in ‘Best Hit’. Her transition to Sa Nyeo was believable and she played the priestess well. However, I do find that she lacks that appeal that makes me intrigued by her whether I like her character or not (something an actress like Lee El has in spades). While there was nothing wrong with her performance as Sa Nyeo, I wasn’t nearly as interested as I was when she was playing Bu Ja- though I think a large part is simply that the character wasn’t as entertaining. I thought One was a bit of a scene stealer, and the cheeky, rebellious grandson role suit him well. The weakest link in the cast was definitely Oh Yeon Seo. She’s gained a lot of popularity recently, and I remember finding her hilarious in ‘Come Back, Ajusshi’, but I really didn't feel it here. There were so many moments when I could see her acting in the scene, and I found that she very rarely seemed natural. Seon Mi was a horrifically boring character on paper (typical useless heroine who is only there to be loved by the hero), and I feel Oh Yeon Seo really struggled trying to give her some life. Sadly, her chemistry with Lee Seung Gi was pretty flat, so I didn’t really buy the romance. She seemed to only have one sweet smiling expression and it just felt kinda fake.

This is the face you make when you can't slap someone who deserves it because it's not 'mature'. This is not an in love face.

I found myself really wishing that Seon Mi had been given more supernatural powers or given more to do in the plot so that Oh Yeon Seo had something else to do other than struggle to look like she was in love with Lee Seung Gi.

A part of me is still pretty disappointed Ma Wang never got horns

The CGI started out pretty well (ignoring the colossal f*ck-up where they aired a half finished episode because they were so far behind on editing). Son Oh Gong’s fire and disappearing and reappearing were awesome, and I adored the demons’ red eyes. The scent of Seon Mi’s blood was done well too- it can be pretty tricky to put a scent into a visual format, but I thought that ‘Hwayugi’ did a pretty convincing job. Maybe they blew their budget on the earlier stuff because after  a while it just seemed like the CGI went downhill. Fast. Ma Wang’s 100 years of suffering was brought down to a few poorly done lights and the big, bad dragon that was supposed to bring about the end of the world was pretty laughable. After how much talk had been going on about what a monstrosity this black dragon was going to be, the final result was definitely a bit lacklustre. One aspect of the show that was brilliant throughout was the soundtrack. As a non-Korean speaking viewer, OSTs that rely on lyrical ballads all end up sounding a bit the same. The soundtrack to ‘Hwayugi' was filled with interesting and easily recognisable songs.

Cue the badass soundtrack

Not only would I be able recognise these songs outside of the drama, but within the drama they served to heighten the mood and give us a hint about what was to fallow. Say if Track 1 played then I knew Oh Gong was about to unleash his powers and get reckless, or if it was Track 2 it meant his feelings for Seon Mi were growing. While some aspects of the drama were a little less exciting than the blockbuster we were promised, the soundtrack carried more than its weight and was undoubtably epic.

What Was Great:

Monkey King:

Did you think I’d forgotten to take about Son Oh Gong played by the dynamic Lee Seung Gi? No, I was just saving it for now.

♫ I don't want to, why should I? How much will you give me? ♫

While I’ve liked Lee Seung Gi in the past, I’ve never quite understood what it was about him that made people lose their minds. I get it now. This was the perfect casting for him and a brilliant way to mark his return from the army.

I am 100 times more into Lee Seung Gi after this drama

Oh Gong’s childish and arrogant ways suited Lee Seung Gi ridiculously well (in a good way), and he gave the character an amazingly endearing vibe for someone who was so…well…so annoying. By all rights Oh Gong should be unlikeable- he’s selfish, rebellious, self-centred- and yet Lee Seung Gi makes all these totally negative traits seem fun and sexy. It’s the perfect example of the bad-boy. You know he’s no good, but you just can’t help loving him. The geumganggo was a nice plot device to tie Oh Gong to the heroine, but Oh Gong was still well aware that he didn’t really love Seon Mi. Lee Seung Gi was brilliant at portraying these totally conflicting feelings of wanting to be near Seon Mi but also wanting nothing to do with her. Having him whine endlessly while he followed her around was just delightful, and of course it was extra fun to watch him slowly start to fall in love for real. Lee Seung Gi matched every emotion of Oh Gong’s perfectly, and we could easily see all his desires and fears that came about due to the geumganggo. His bickering relationship with Ma Wang was always fun, and the two actors had great chemistry (more so than the actual romance).

May bromance never die

While I wasn’t always on board with the main love-line, I was at least convinced that Oh Gong was in love with Seon Mi. All in all, I think a large part of what made this drama watchable was the mischievous nature of our Monkey King hero, and his perfect portrayal by Lee Seung Gi.

What Wasn’t:

Lame Conflicts:

The biggest issue this drama had is that all its problems were so easy to solve. And often had loopholes. The first time I really felt this was during Ma Wang’s 1000 years of suffering.

It started out legitimately sad

This was Ma Wang’s whole story. He loves this girl, sh*t happens in heaven and she’s getting however many reincarnations of suffering. Ma Wang finally finds her and offers to take her punishment (like why didn’t he just do that to begin with?) and we get a lame light-show,

That...that's it?

a couple of minutes pain for Ma Wang paired with short-lived blindness and…that’s it. For what a big windup the show had to Ma Wang’s big sacrifice, he didn’t actually have to sacrifice all that much. From what I can tell, apart from a brief discomfort Ma Wang’s life really wasn’t altered that much after taking one thousand years of pain. It just didn’t seem all that painful is all I’m sayin’. Then we had this to-ing and fro-ing with taking off the geumganggo and we had so many close calls and spent SO MUCH TIME with Seon Mi and Oh Gong deliberating if they were going to take it off that I really stopped caring if they would or not. If you tease something that many times, you’re going to wear out my patience. And I don’t have a lot of it to begin with. By the time the geumganggo finally came off I really didn’t care. We all knew that Oh Gong loved Seon Mi for real- even Seon Mi knew and she’s pretty bloody dense. The biggest and stupidest and most annoying conflict in this drama was actually the main one. All series long we’ve been told that Oh Gong has to kill Seon Mi, and all drama long I’ve been (sort of) interested to see how/if they’d get around this rather large stumbling block in their relationship.

The bell is a lie

Where the drama really started to lose my interest was after it introduced Sa Nyeo. She came right after some other spirit that tried stealing the geumganggo and thus Oh Gong’s love,

Bring back Bu Ja

so I was super underwhelmed when Sa Nyeo seemed to be going for Oh Gong’s love too. Like, we’ve just seen that- give us something new. Sa Nyeo’s arrival of course meant there was no more Bu Ja, and it turns out that PK and Octopus Prince are kinda boring when Bu Ja’s not around- so not only did we lose Bu Ja, we pretty much lost the others too. Things happen and Sa Nyeo decides to call a dragon for Dae Sung, and turns out it’s going to be this giant black dragon that ends the world. So far I can roll with it. But then the characters all start discussing the end of the world (which we’ve been hearing about for around 7 or 8 episodes now) and it's mentioned that only Sa Nyeo can call the world-destroying dragon. Um, hello? Just kill Sa Nyeo while she’s in the body of a weak zombie then. Problemo solved. But no. No one does this. No one really entertains this notion at all. These super wise godly beings who have lived for thousands of years decide that the best course of action is to wait until the dragon is summoned and then try and fight it. Like what the actual f*ck people.

You should have done this AGES AGO

I just couldn’t take the situation seriously from that point on because all I could think about while the characters were discussing how tragic and awful this situation was was that they could literally just kill the only person capable of summoning the dragon and be done with it.

It doesn't even do anything! Just kinda floats around menacingly.

 Sure the dragon is still technically there, but if you just keep getting rid of the people able to summon it (who are way weaker then the dragon itself) isn’t that the easier option? Anyway after a lot of mumbo jumbo bullsh*t the dragon gets summoned and Seon Min is stabbed by Dae Sung. Like really, if you’re going to kill a main character at least put some effort into it. It was like they forgot they were killing Seon Mi off and just squished it in there in the most random way possible. Maybe I would have felt some emotion over Seon Mi’s demise had Oh Gong somehow been cornered into killing her, but no. Also, Dae Sung killing Seon Mi also means that the whole death bell fate scenario was just blatantly wrong. In my not so humble opinion, this drama could have been way more interesting if a lot less time had been spent on the dragon summoning (which was super underwhelming with terrible CGI).

A journey through the underworld to save her soul sounds way more interesting than what I just sat through

Maybe instead of having Seon Mi die at the end and not even seeing Oh Gong's search to find her the show could have condensed the whole series into the first half or two-thirds and then ended with Oh Gong’s journey to the underworld to rescue the girl he loves. That would have been cool. 

Recommend?

If you want to know what the fuss is with Lee Seung Gi then I totally recommend this drama. Otherwise, no.

At least the cast was good

Bride of the Century

Bride of the Century

5/10

Bride of the Century

Genre:                                   Episodes: 16                                   Year: 2014

Romance

Comedy

Supernatural

Synopsis:

Choi Kang Joo is the eldest son of Taeyang Group, a large conglomerate. His family is rumoured to have been cursed hundreds of years ago, and as a result of the curse, the first wife of the eldest son will die on the wedding night. Due to this rumour, Kang Joo’s family is unable to set him up with an advantageous business marriage. Jang Yi Kyung is the daughter of a failing company, and her mother agrees that she will marry Choi Kang Joo for his family’s support, even though Yi Kyung has no desire to marry Kang Joo. When Yi Kyung runs away in the middle of marriage negotiations, her mother discovers a girl named Na Doo Rim, who happens to look exactly like Yi Kyung. Yi Kyung’s mother pays Doo Rim to pretend to be Kang Joo’s fiancé until Yi Kyung is found. 

Cast:

Lee Hong Ki (Choi Jang Joo)

Yang Jin Sung (Na Doo Rim/Jang Yi Kyung)

Sung Hyuk (Jang Yi Hyun)

Jang Ah Young (Lee Roo Mi)

Kim Seo Ra (Kim Myeong Hee)

Shin Eun Jung (Ma Jae Ran)

Kim Ah Young (God of House)

General Thoughts:

I really, really, really wanted this to be a good drama. The first half was amazing, starting off at a strapping pace. We get an instant idea of who our main characters are, and what situations they are in. The plot moves fairly quickly, with the characters making bold moves right from the start. We are set up to feel pity for Jang Yi Kyung when we see Choi Kang Joo treating her badly, which predisposes us to feel positively towards Na Doo Rim, her doppelganger. Na Doo Rim completely steals the show, not taking a backseat to Kang Joo, and her fiery rebellion is a great contrast to Yi Kyung’s simmering dissent. Yang Jin Sung does an excellent job expressing her two different roles, capturing both Doo Rim’s cheerful innocence and Yi Kyung’s festering anger. Lee Hong Ki is perfection (when isn't he) and gives a wonderful performance- perfectly capturing the very gradual softening of Kang Joo’s heart.

The beginning was ripe with hilarity

However, no amount of great acting can cover up for poor script writing. At exactly the halfway point, the plot takes a dive, and our characters suffer for it. The plot slows right down and we are privy once more (as is so common in K-Dramaland) to characters making stupid decisions. At this point in the drama they start to introduce the idea that longing and letting go is also a form of love.

"Why yes, I will lose my sh*t halfway through."

Sweet baby Jesus, we’ve seen so much bloody longing and letting go in K-Dramas. Please no more. When done well, and for good reasons, a main lead stepping back from their desires for the happiness of their significant other is heart-wrenching and bittersweet. However, in this case, it’s just a display of pure stupidity. If abandoning your loved one changes nothing in their situation, why abandon them at all? And the lame, played-out excuse of ‘saving them from suffering’ doesn’t cut it anymore. Haven’t we all gathered by know that being heartbroken at the departure of their lover is a form of suffering? Seriously. The writers also try to over-complicate a rather simple plot. Most of our characters’ major cards had already been played, and they’re all doing a lot of darting around in the shadows to try and get the upper hand, while not a lot is changing on the surface. The series also started out with a fair amount of quality humour, but that starts to flat-line as the drama has an identity crisis and tries (and fails) to become a melodrama.

We all know, but no one cares

The show gets back a bit of its old spark towards the end, bringing the humour back in and starting to round the rather haggard plot into its climax. And then we have some more uncalled for ‘I’m going to leave you because I love you’, with no real consequence except to make our characters (and viewers) miserable again.

What Was Great:

Ghostie Girl:

Most adorable ghost ever

The ghost was a nice twist on the classic rich-man, poor-girl scenario. I really enjoy characters with hidden motives, as it prevents the drama from becoming too predictable, and frankly it can get a little boring when you know what everybody wants. Right until the end, it was unclear what the intention of our ghost was- did she want to kill Doo Rim or not? I must admit, towards the end there I was hoping she would. What I was most worried about was that the drama would fail to address why this ghost was bothering this family, but thankfully, we got an episode that explained quite nicely what our ghost’s deal was. It was a pity the rest of our characters weren’t mapped out this nicely.

Flashback:

I’m not usually a fan of flashbacks at all- particularly when they are used to explain the current actions of the characters. However, surprisingly enough, this drama showed a nice little example of how effective flashback can be when pulled off well. It gave us insight into both our living character’s intentions, and also perfectly explained why ghostie was harassing this family. The key point was that the drama didn’t focus on the past characters for too long, only giving us a little snapshot of what had happened, while managing to include all relevant information.

Oppa:

Okay, Jang Yi Hyun was a great (if unrealistic) character. He was essentially perfect- with a kind heart, gentle nature, and strong sense of responsibility. The way he protected Doo Rim from the Choi family, and eventually even his own family, was massively endearing. He had so much cute going on with Doo Rim, and it was so easy to love him as an audience. Running away to live a happy life with this man does not sound like a horrible plan at all.

He's basically just wonderful. All the time. Forever.

Initial Setup:

The beginning of this drama was so, so, so, so good. All our characters had reasons behind their actions, and we even had some pretty surprising character reveals- with some people in our main cast not being who we thought they were. The idea of the curse was set up strongly, and our characters were slowly beginning to circle each other in preparation for the big climax- which sadly fell a bit flat after a drag in the build-up. We were also given little hints to side problems that may arise later in the drama: daddy Choi’s first love, discovery of Doo Rim, and Oppa’s half-brotheriness.

Back before the drama lost the plot (quite literally)

Roo Mi:

Oh, how rarely do we see a well executed turn-around for our female jilted ex-lover. Originally Roo Mi was set up as dislikable- antagonising Yi Kyung and doing everything in her power to keep Kang Joo for herself.

Omg, a successful side-woman character switch-up

She is the perfect opposite force for Doo Rim, giving Doo Rim opportunities to buck up, display some delightful sass (without coming off b*tchy), and stick close to Kang Joo. Unlike SO many girls in K-Dramas- Roo Mi when to back off. Instead of making an ass of herself when she realised Kang Joo was really in love with Doo Rim, she backed away from the situation. Hooray! It was totally believable that she didn’t like Doo Rim for a patch in the middle- who likes the girl that captures the heart of the man you love? Then, as the story progresses, and Doo Rim makes stupid, incomprehensible decisions, Roo Mi works really hard to help Kang Joo and Doo Rim’s relationship work, because she’s a smart lil’ cookie, and figures out that she can’t be happy and move on if the man she loves is miserable. The discovery of Yi Kyung’s true character also makes it much easier to accept Roo Mi’s apparent character change. It was a wonderful, well-executed character 180°.

Grandma’s Role:

Okay, this whole tie-in with Doo Rim’s family was actually pretty cool. It was nice that they revealed all these hidden connections, even if it was mildly incestuous.

What an unexpected gem

What Wasn’t:

Letting Go is Love Too:

Oh. This whole concept is just….blegh. We are actually given a nice, hidden, accurate representation of what this means. Roo Mi. Even though she loves Kang Joo, she lets go of her feelings for him so they can both be happier.

If you run off I'm going to dislike your character instantly. 

I cannot stress enough- THIS CONCEPT DOESN’T REALLY WORK ON TWO PEOPLE WHO ARE TOTALLY IN LOVE. It just doesn’t, K-Drama. Stop trying to make this a logical move. It is never, ever going to be a logical move between our main couple. Sure, Doo Rim’s backing out made sense when Kang Joo didn’t even know she existed. He really might have been happier not knowing that the fiancé he fell for was a different chick. Maybe. But then the second running away is just ridiculous. Not only does Kang Joo specifically ask her to wait until the commotion dies down so they can be together, but nothing actually changes with Doo Rim’s disappearance. Except that now both she and Kang Joo are sad little heartbroken babies. Not even kidding, the situation would have played out the same regardless of Doo Rim’s presence- the only difference being that everyone would have felt a little less like shooting someone if Doo Rim had even tried to stick it out. It’s just salt in the wound that Kang Joo has potentially ruined his whole life for this girl, and she just buggers off. I swear, if another K-Drama does this (which it inevitably will), I’m going to lose my noodle.

Not my tears.

Ethical Queries:

Okay, was I the only one that was massively uncomfortable when this girl married Kang Joo while still pretending to be someone else? It was dead creepy. The whole scene was given this super dreamy, golden light and music vibe, and I’m just sitting here like ‘dude, he doesn’t even know who that is’. Was it supposed to be sadly romantic when in her vows she thinks her own name, but says someone else’s’? Because it wasn’t. It was weird. And wrong.

Wrong on so many levels

Doo Rim was given so many perfect opportunities to tell Kang Joo who she really was, and she passed them all up. That whole episode was just waiting for her to let the secret out, but no. She chooses to secretly marry this poor, unsuspecting man while continuing the lie. Understandably, Kang Joo’s not pleased when he finds out.

What. What are you even. You crazy.

And then, THEN, ohmygodguys, THEN she has a secret baby. I mean, the whole marriage thing can sort of, maybe be given a pass if you kind of squint your eyes. It was her he loved and not Yi Kyung after all. But on what planet is it okay to give birth to your sort-of-husband’s baby and raise it for two years- all while he’s running himself ragged to find you? Not this one, I can tell you. In this moment, Doo Rim’s character lost any feelings I still had left for her (which was minimal after the uncalled for disappearance). I was really hoping Kang Joo would find her, blow his top, take the kid, and arrest her for impersonation and identity theft. But no, he’s not even mad. He’s mad that she lied to him for a couple of months about her name, but it’s totally cool that she lied to him for two years about his own fatherhood. Drama, what are you even doing. Stop. Stop it now. Stop it forever.

Oppa’s Family:

I didn’t really get this whole plot-point. Is Yi Hyun actually related to Yi Kyung? I thought so, but then everyone’s talking about how he wouldn’t act this way if Yi Kyung was his real sister. Isn’t a half-sister still a sister? Don’t these kids have the same baby-daddy? I thought they did.

Sooooo is it borderline incest or not?

Really, I don’t know why they bothered bringing this up at all because it had no impact on anything relevant. Maybe the writers were hoping it would just make it a little less weird that Oppa fell for a girl with the same face as his sister.

Re-watch?

Absolutely not. This drama made me so mad. It was most likely the excellent start that made the low points seem so very, very low. I don’t think I’ve ever been so angry at the writers before now. Why did you kill this drama half-way through? Jerks.

There was so much right, but so much wrong