I’ve gotten in the habit of posting every Tuesday and Thursday, but for some reason my drama-watching cycle is a bit off this week. This means I haven’t finished the show I would normally post a review for today, so out of guilt I instead give you an extremely short list of thoughts to ponder.
• I’m a huge lover of the music site 8tracks. And guess what came up this afternoon while I was innocently listening to a playlist tagged study? That would be the song “Crystal Flower” from the Goong soundtrack, buried among a huge clutch of sweeping instrumental soundtracks from random Western movies.
• Here are images outlining why I both love and hate Drama Fever.
Love: It’s sassy and sometimes snarky, as when its employees savaged Big during a recent blog podcast. See also:
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Hate: Couldn’t they have waited for the body to be cold before they started running this advertisement on Google AdWords?
• Today is To the Beautiful You day. And there was much rejoicing!
• Also exciting? The premiere of Nice Guy sounds as if it was actually pretty good.
• Would the song titles on the Coffee Prince OST show up correctly on my car’s radio display if I had bought a Hyundai instead of a Honda?
Tehehehe.. ahh, you crack me up, and make my day :) I love how my ipod sorts through all my Hangul titles, but not so much how my radio leaves a big blank, unless it's in English..
ReplyDeleteI wish I was as excited as all of you about TTBY, but I just can't stomach the show.. I've been watching it on fast-forward up to ep 5.. I'll probably finish it the same way.
Right now though I'm suffering. I finished Shut Up Flower Boy Band in 3 days, and I followed that up with a marathon run of Rich Man, Poor Girl - only the final eleventh episode doesn't come out until next week.. bollucks! At least, I thought for a few days that my Dramathon was slowing down.. not in the least! I just needed a few little shows to revive the love.
If I downloaded things from more reliable sources, maybe my iPod and the Hangul would get along better. As it is, practically all of my Kdrama OST titles read like cuss words in a comic strip: %^&@!. I'm at the point where I even recognize what song goes with what crazy combination of characters ;)
DeleteI can see why TTBY isn't beloved by a lot of people. It's Boys over Flowers-eque: a lot of pretty actors and very ugly plotting. I still look forward to it every week, though.
What did you think of Shut Up? Rich Man, Poor Girl is on my radar, but as usual I'm waiting until it's done airing to get started with it.
SUFFB made a perfect 10 and and earned a spot on my Top 5 Favorite Kdramas List. Yeah, it's love. Even in the middle of a very serious discussion on mine and my husband's future career plans, I referenced it nearly as much as the Bible. And that's not even blasphemy, lol. I've got the OST committed to memory too... I always did like punk/indie rock bands.
DeleteRich Man, Poor Girl: wow. I started watching it because of Oguri Shun (of Hana Kimi), and because Min Ho wasn't enticing me much after a few hours of TTBY, but this drama is ridiculously good! It's also the first Jdrama I've watched that was made shorter than 5 years ago. I'm just really loving it. I think it's got all the right amount of romance, drama, quirkiness, angsty business relationships, and Oguri Shun rolling around on the floor... And I don't even know how someone rolling around on the floor can be so attractive... He just is.
I can just hear it: “Jesus and Byung Hee say...” I really hope they make more of the Oh! Boy drama series—if the increase in quality we saw between Flower Boy Ramen Shop and Shut Up continues, the next show in the series should be literally without a single flaw.
DeleteI've only seen two Jdramas, and they were both older. Rich Man, Poor Woman's title is so laughably bad I had kind of scratched it off my list of things to watch (did they totally give up trying to find something better than the placeholder title on the original script?), but it sounds awesome. So clearly I'm going to have to give it a shot.
Yeah the title is not terribly unique. Maybe it sounds better when your native language is Japanese, kind of how elitist Americans use French phrases when they're trying to sound sophisticated ::coughmystepmomcough:: there's definitely more to the drama than the standard rich jerk meets sweet poor girl. If it will make you like it more, the girl is more than capable professionally, though it takes an episode for everyone to realize it.
DeleteI've heard so many wonderful things about Rich Man, Poor Woman that I think I'm going to check it out soon. I haven't watched any Jdramas so I've been kinda looking for one to start with. The title is horrible, but I've kind of gotten to the point where I expect bad titles. Something often seems to get lost in translation.
DeleteDuh. I'm so used to Kdrama titles being translated into English that it didn't occur to me that as a Jdrama, this title should have been a Japanese transliteration. I wonder if the title being English will somehow be tied into the script?
DeleteIncidentally, I noticed yesterday that mvibo.com has a current promotion of $9.99 monthly fee + one bonus month free... seems tempting. Think we could do Queen Insoo/Wife's Credentials/Cheongdam in only 2 months?? I think this is a challenge... Honestly, I think I'm going to clear out my currently watching queue in preparation.
ReplyDeleteChallenge accepted.
DeleteIt's only like 150 hours of television, after all =X According to my drama list, I've watched almost 50 days worth of kdrama in the past year, so I think I might be more than up to the task of marathoning the jTBC shows. (Assuming that the free month deal continues, I may wait to sign up until October, so my 2-week winter break from work will be available viewing time.)
I definitely have to watch A Wife's Credentials soon, so I can read Ladida's post about it at Idle Revelry.
Note that subs for the three jTBC shows on Mvibo are not complete. And there are no subs yet for Cheongdam.
DeleteChallenge not accepted! ::kicks the internet::
DeleteThanks for the update. I didn't even notice the "subtitle" column on their website, and would have been incredibly annoyed if I'd signed up and then couldn't even watch the shows I was paying for :b
Maybe someday...
Today's episode of To the Beautiful You pissed me off greatly, lol. Yesterday's was brilliant, but today's completely doused that excitement for me. The recap will probably be up for it tomorrow, and I did plenty of ranting about it. That show frustrates me so much! And what's more frustrating is that I still like it!
ReplyDeleteNice Guy actually was pretty good, but I've only seen the first episode. I don't really do melos so I'm kind of frightened going into it. Still, the premiere was understated enough that I didn't mind that it was a melodrama at all. That might be because of all the awesome acting, but who knows?
Thanks to a late upload at Dramafever, I haven't seen either of this week's episodes yet. Grr. I look forward to reading your recaps of the eps when I'm done. Like Boys over Flowers, this drama seems to have found its way into the one, teeny-tiny, cynicism-free, anti-hyper-critical portion of my brain, so it can abuse me any way it wants and I'll still love it =X
DeleteHaha, I tried to do that--be less critical and try to go with the flow, but there are aspects of the series that frustrate me to no end. Even so, I like it (a lot) against my better judgement, and it's been a fun watch, despite the shortcomings.
DeleteOh God the end of 10 was so frustrating!! I mean I was expecting it, but I still wanted to slap a bitch in the face!! But I understand why it was a necessary episode. It wouldn't be a teen kdrama without something like that happening towards the end. I think all the added drama is going to make for something awesome to happen in the next episode, so I am eagerly waiting 11!!
DeleteOh and Amanda I just posted something on my blog about YEH you'd be very interested in. I'm super excited!!
::takes pulse::
DeleteIs something wrong with me? I didn't find episode 10 frustrating at all. (Well, other than the fact that the video and subs refuse to sync on Drama Fever's new player, so I actually had to watch most of the episode on my laptop, not my TV. Oh hardship of hardships.)
Guess I'll just have to wait for the Adverse Effects recap to see what was so crazy. I think that this drama is turning out to be so much better than I expected that I'm thankful for what I get—no matter how middling it may be.
Now I'm scared.. I'm still plodding may way through episode 8. I planned to catch up overnight, but instead I had a glass of wine and watched G-Dragon videos all night.. >_<
DeleteIt was mostly frustrating for me because they were both so close to confessing and then the horrid bitch ruined it, but that is her part on the show so I was totally expecting it at some point. But the silver lining in situations like this is that this kind of adversity created by evil stank bitches always drives other characters closer together, now whether that will be the two lead characters or her and Eun Gyul (which I know a lot of people are hoping for) I don't know for sure. But either way I am still completely and utterly in love with the show.
DeleteOn a side note, I bought the combined 1-3 volumes of the Hana Kimi manga yesterday!! I am planning on starting on it tonight before I got to bed. Super excited!!
I get that the relentless cliff-hanger episodes with no real progress are obnoxious and frustrating, but I'm still on board with them. To me it feels as if this show's writers are having playful fun teasing the viewers and milking the over-the-top storyline for all it's worth. Which is funny, because I imagine some people felt that way about Big, while that show's wheel-spinning made me want to scratch my eyes out rather than watch another minute. But TTBY's never ending...erm....cock-blocking (for lack of a more appropriate expression) seems like it's just making good use of its toys.
DeleteOh! And about Hana Kimi...I hope you'll post a review of them when you're done. I never really read manga because buying them doesn't feel worth the money--they take two seconds to read :b I need a manwha bang or whatever on my block ;)
DeleteIt's definitely true that the end of 10 was nothing too terribly surprising, but it's always something I wish for--that the second female lead won't be a bitch, and it's always something I get unnecessarily disappointed about, haha. I mostly get disappointed because I've seen shows where the second female lead CAN be well-fleshed out and interesting (see: Coffee Prince, Shining Inheritance, Dream High, etc.), so I just don't understand when one is written so two-dimensionally. Bleh.
DeleteThe rest of the show has wormed its way into my heart, though, and I'm loving it to bits. It took me until Episode 9 to figure that out, but I really do like it.
@wishiwasasian, like you, I'm just hoping that Han-na's pushiness pushes our leads together, or at least gives Eun-gyul some more time with Jae-hee before the shit hits the fan. I guess we'll just have to see this week!
Amanda-No, I totally agree the cliffhangers are necessary and this one was well place. It's just a slow burn waiting for the next episode for me, but in a good frustrating way lol.
DeleteI am definitely going to review Hana Kimi the manga. I was also going to watch the Japanese version of the show after I finish TTBY and then write a post comparing the three. I am interested to see how they all differ.
Adverseffects-I hope Eun Gyul confesses. I really want to see how he'll do it because he's so cute and wacky.