A tragic fall from grace.....

Yes, the title is dramatic. Anyways, I was gonna type out a long rant but I’ll keep it short for everyone’s sake. I agree with a lot of the comments from Koreans, the show runners are are simply relying on the reputation of the cast to carry the positive opinions on this show. I don't think I need to delve into the writing again but as a byproduct of the last few episodes they were essentially forcing themselves to spend a tremendous amount of time wrapping up every storyline which should have happened several episodes before the finale. Some of them were written in an okayish manner but the amount of plot holes, inconsistencies, and straight-up illogical moments were mind-boggling.

Overall, the ending was super anticlimactic. We didn't see any real emotional scenes, romance, kiss or the wedding. The two people carrying this show on their backs got virtually zero screen time in which they were together romantically or in a heart touching manner. They speedran rebuilding their marriage from scratch, getting married, having kids, growing old, and dying after that promise he made on their honeymoon in Germany. This part should have been the focus of the last two episodes and the show would have salvaged most of its writing issues and ended on a positive note. But instead, it was done in 5 minutes, and poof, the show is over.

Moving to the main villain(s) Eunseong is some cartoonish, god damn Plankton from Spongebob. The whole plot around him and his mom slowly becomes crazier and just ridiculous as the show goes on. I was making fun of him with my friend saying he was the Joker from Batman with how obsessed and deranged he was becoming so when Bomi broke the 4th wall and said this show was like The Dark Knight I started crying of laughter. They introduced the most generic and mundane tropes throughout this show and it impacts the villains the most, why does everybody in K-Dramas need to have secretly known eachother since childhood?

The cinematography and directing took a very harsh fall near the end. The camera work was so odd, and the cuts were jarring, a massive difference from the amazing shots they had in the first half. Not to mention if someone went through and calculated how much of this episode (and the last few) were flashbacks I wouldn't be surprised at how large of a % they would be. It almost feels insulting we need to be constantly shown these scenes every 5 seconds like the audience is the one with a brain tumor causing amnesia.

Overall the show is a 6/10 for me. It started off so well, funny but also sentimental. We as viewers truly started to become attached to the characters and share the same emotions as them. I’m sure everyone was tapping their feet out of nervousness to see how Haein and Hyunwoos relationship would develop. Unfortunately that’s as far as it went, because the writers became the main villains and completely lost the plot. Kim Soo Hyun and Kim Jiwon carried this show but had almost no screen time together in meaningful ways to help the horrific writing.

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The rating of this show tells you everything you need to know about the people who use this website

If this show wasn’t Japanese and also Western audience targeted it would be rated MUCH higher here. Unfortunately it’s not Koreaboo bait or the same murder, chaebol, romance storylines recycled for the 100th time (which aren’t apparently held to the same standard as this, so weird right?). It’s a shame that people are making bigoted or simply downright ignorant comments because they are very upset at the success of Shogun.

This shows sitting at insanely high critic and fan review score, it’s widely regarded as one of the best shows of the past year (if not of all time) and will be nominated for Emmys in EVERY single category it is eligible. Such a shame it’s not good enough for the people of MyDramaList :(

Is Shogun perfect? No certainly not, it has its faults and I could see why some people may take more issue on those than others. There’s criticism to be made around the development of characters like Toranaga not being flushed out or the performance of the Anjin by Cosmo Jarvis, but from start to finish it delivers a fantastic story filled with surprising twists and unexpected turns.

Shogun tries its best to remain as authentically Japanese as it can with the dialog, customs and acting. The latter of which is the standout, I’m not to big of a fan of Cosmo but besides that every single performance was stunning. Toranaga, Yabushige, Fuji, Ochiba, Mariko the list goes on and on. These are award winning, critically acclaimed level performances. The setting, tone and shooting locations absolutely nail not only what the book portrayed but also what Japan may have been like during this period.

The most iconic part simply remains the ending. Most (and that’s not an exaggeration), Asian dramas I’ve seen start falling apart near the end. They take a fantastic show and drag it on for a lifetime while making stupid writing decisions leading up to the end (COUGH QUEEN OF TEARS COUGH). Shoguns ending is so perfect. The acting is so subtle but emotionally powerful, the choice to not show the battle but leave with a somber tone is an amazing decision from the show runners. The finale leaves you satisfied but also wanting to know so much more.

Shogun will go down as an all time great show and take home several awards which it fully deserves.

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This show has no idea what it’s trying to be

Honestly this is one of the worst shows I’ve seen. Is this a romcom, serious romance, medical drama or war drama? Was honestly waiting for aliens to show up at one point. I have no idea what direction they’re trying to take. There will be a serious scene involving human trafficking, sexual violence, natural disasters, human loss etc and then 10 minutes later they’re walking through an active minefield and smiling with happy music in the background??

Speaking first of the cinematography, it’s awful, every scene has the brightness cranked to 100. The entire show is so washed out because of it, each shooting location looks the same; lifeless, empty and bland. I have honestly never seen something this bad in my memory. The sets themselves don’t help the case because it just looks like a random hill where soldiers are stationed for fun with a couple generic broken ruins around. I’ll talk about my major issues with Uruk in general in a bit.

In terms of the writing it’s truly horrific and chock full of really cringe English dialogue that’s tough to listen to. The main leads have negative chemistry, the show spends 10 episodes going nowhere with their romance and then they slowly start heading….absolutely nowhere only to wrap it up in the last 1-2 episodes. Legitimately 80% of this show is just repeating the same “can I date a soldier” and “idk what my feelings are” for every episode sprinkled in with the stupid side plots. I also think that probably about 20 hours of this show was a gun standoff because that’s totally realistic.

The second love interests are equally as bad but Kim Jiwon was the stole charismatic actor in this show. The medical stuff let’s not get into because I don’t wanna roast this 11 year old looking supposed doctor whimpering away.

Moving onto Uruk, what in gods name was this racist caricature of a country? It’s supposed to be modeled after Iraq but looks nothing remotely like it. I don’t expect them to fly over there and film but zero effort in staging was put in, just change the setting if you can’t be bothered to make something believable. 35% of the city are Korean expats and the rest are a mix of every culture in existence. Let’s add some Russians, some people with dark skin, some white kids, some ladies with hijabs, alright let’s wrap it up! Not to mention the constant racist tropes of Arabs just scattered around like the casual oil barons pulling up and how these “Arabs” don’t want foreign doctors touching their leader and would rather him die as if that would ever happen.

In terms of acting I’m genuinely shocked at some of the high reviews. Not a massive Song Joon Ki fan anyway but this is one of his worst if not worst performance. He was horribly cast, he does not give off a strong special forces vibe at all and his acting is just so unbelievable I couldn’t help laughing at serious scenes when he’d start speaking English. Song Hye Kyo was equally as rough, her dialogue, body language and delivery were so off it looked like a complete rookie. There was zero chemistry between the two. Like I mentioned earlier Kim Jiwon is the only who put up a great performance.

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A rare K-Drama Sci-Fi that hits it out of the park

It's not too often we get to see a sci-fi K-Drama, especially one with a high budget but this is exactly what Disney delivered here. This show has very similar vibes to the "Bodyguard" from Netflix, revolving around a Bodyguard who applies to a company in order to find out if its CEO was responsible for a terrorist attack at his old military base.

Through these 10 episodes, we get to be a part of a thrilling political drama with amazing action sequences, the final episode felt like something I'd see in John Wick and it honestly wouldn't surprise me if that was an inspiration. Firstly I'll go into the acting which overall was amazing, Ju Ji Hoon and Han Hyo Joo were amazing in their roles and honestly I very heavily disagree with another review I read where they claim both of these characters are robots. Not every K-Drama needs to have overdramatic soap opera-style acting, these roles were incredibly realistic, and both characters are written as determined and calculated; they're not going to burst out in emotion like a Shakespeare tragedy. The subtle tension created through our lead's acting was amazing, it made me yearn for more interactions.

Outside of the leads, I thought everyone else also acted quite well with the exception of Woo Geun who was the Chairman of the rival company to BF. Dear god his acting was so so so so so bad, I've seen this actor in a few other shows and it wasn't anything to speak either way about but this performance was just so bad I need to look at the director because it honestly largely falls to them. I can't even describe what was wrong with this performance because it was so awful from top to bottom. The last scene with him and his son I had to rewatch out of hate.

The story is quite good, the beginning creates a lot of immediate tension and each episode pushes the plot along at a good pace while mixing in a good amount of corporate/political drama with investigative work and action sequences. I have a problem with how quickly the dialogue seems to move because there were many times I rewound to understand what exactly was going on. There were a lot of moving parts and this show never paused to let the people-watching process exactly what was being said. I loved the ending as well, there was an insane amount of suspense, and the fight scene was one of the best EVER in a K-Drama, it honestly shocked me that he was straight-up killing people because so often we just see dudes getting knocked out, it really had me giggling at the sight.

There is one caveat though, there needs to be a season 2. I don't mind open-ended finishes to shows, in fact, if done well they're amazing. But the way this show finished, it truly needs a second season, there are a lot of stories or plots still to explore and despite reading some 'theories' on what exactly happened at the end I don't like the fact the show did almost nothing to set or backup those ideas with more hints if that was what the writers are going for.

Overall I gave it an 8 but that's assuming we get more of this show, if not I'd probably lower it down to a 7 just because the ending is unfulfilling.

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Heartwarming but also confusing

I’ll keep this review shortish but I just finished this show after dropping it midway through when it was airing.

Overall the first 60% of this show (8 episodes) is incredibly weak to the point you could literally watch episodes 1 and 2 then skip everything else until episode 9 and it would honestly improve the show. It starts of with one of the best first episodes I’ve seen in a K-Drama, pulling at your heartstrings and setting the tone for the show but then soon after the vibe completely switches and it feels like it’s a comedy all of a sudden.

There’s no meaningful plot or character development in the first half and while the plot finally gets going after episode 9 the character development does not. They did a good job showing how Kang Ho’s mom abused him growing up, something I’m sure a lot of kids can relate to, but then she does the same when he’s disabled which okay, fair enough maybe there will be a redemp….nevermind there isn’t. Both Young Soon and Kang Ho never truly have a heart to heart to reconcile the abuse which he was receiving pretty much until the end, the show even attempts to justify it as if throwing a disabled person into water every day isn’t horrifying. The trauma and mental health issues don’t get resolved and instead they move onto the “she’s terminally ill” plot to garner sympathy.

As the show went on the villagers grew on me but they were so bad the first half, random plots where they “turn” against her and some side conflicts which were so unnecessary to the actual story. This is a large part of why the first half sucked.

I think the tough part for me with this show is the title likes to imply that the mom is deeply flawed, and while they do show these flaws they try to justify them or downplay them which is where the huge issue arises. The more interesting part for me was the criminal aspect of the drama as well as Mijoo and Kang Ho’s interactions and relationship. Up until the horrible court scene at the end they actually wrote a better crime plot than 99% of crime dramas.

I gave this show a 7.5 for picking up strong in the last several episodes which is honestly the opposite of your average K-Drama. It could have been greatly improved by taking a more serious tone, similar to My Mister perhaps, and having more character development for the mother.

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A decent thriller that completely falls off a cliff

Flower of Evil starts off great, the story grabs your attention right off the bat because it’s “different” and certainly more unique than the stereotypical K-Drama. A husband who’s secretly been living a fake life and has a past marred in murder and mystery? Sign me up. But what starts off as 11 pretty good, even great, episodes ends up falling off a cliff at terminal velocity as the plot becomes marred with inconsistencies, holes, tropes, and poor characterization. The last episode was one of the most mind bogglingly bad endings I’ve ever seen.

The acting from the ML is expectedly very good, Lee Joon Gi always delivers. The FL lead I found to be quite weak, she really only had a few expressions and her acting felt stiff, honestly the weakest among the cast. I keep reading about the chemistry and wonder do people praise the chemistry for every pair cause…can we be honest it was non existent here. They spend the last entire half of the drama just crying every scene or having the most repetitive conversations. I can’t recall being moved a single time and I’ll cry to paint drying. Everyone else is okay but forgettable, largely attributed to the fact that the writing in this show as mentioned previously, completely gets shot, stabbed, burned and then reincarnated only to be shot again.

They spend the entire first 60-70 % of the show building up the story of how his wife knows about him but she’s madly in love and also trusts that he didn’t commit the murder so she works behind the scenes to figure stuff out. Then suddenly in episode 12 (?) after the couple reconcile and it feels like the drama is wrapping up they completely flip and now she wants to turn him in for murder???

Outside of this, there’s so many inconsistencies, plot holes, lack of consequences and constant convenient events. Why is the police so incompetent? Why do the ML and FL escape all consequences despite committing countless crimes? …. the FL literally lies to her coworkers the entire show puts them in dangerous positions and probably even got someone killed. Why doesn’t Baek Hee Sung know what Jiwon looks like?

I can tolerate suspending reality to a certain degree but this got ridiculous and completely lacked rationale. The ending created several different storylines instead of wrapping up those that existed. Overall the show is mediocre, it starts off strong and develops the mystery very well but then develops outlandish and ridiculous plots that make no sense, this is one of those dramas that desperately needed to only be 12 episodes and it would have been great.

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