This review may contain spoilers
This is just one of those dramas you have to watch. It's that good.It's the heart aching poetry of how history repeats itself, and falling to one's fate.
Gu Family Book has a depth you rarely see; there are so many levels to the plot, each enhanced by a spectrum of emotions and feelings.
As a warning, this series takes a hatchet to your feelings. While the feels are proof of a phenomenal drama, you may need to do something like hold kittens or let puppies lick you to make everything okay again.
While some scenes are arguably dragged out too long, I was amazed about how much happens in every episode. I'd get to the end of one and be shocked at how much actually took place in just that one hour. These are not a boring 24 episodes.
Despite how much I adored this drama, the ending has the potential to ruin the entire series. I really had to sit down and think about if the final twenty minutes really lowered my entire opinion of this series (the other 23 and a half hours of it).
Avoiding spoilers, I believe Gu Family Book would have had a much, much stronger ending if it had ended thirty minutes into the final episode. While it would have been much sadder, by ending on a promise it would have been more beautiful. The ending almost mocked the rest of the series with it's casual atmosphere.
Among my issues with the ending was the fact that there was a significant lack of closure for the vast majority of the characters. Gu Family Book focuses so much on the characters' interactions with one another and their growth as a whole that to not know what happens to them gives you a very incomplete feeling.
On the more technical aspects, my only complaint was the supernatural effects (this includes the design of the gumiho's divine creature appearances).
They were... somewhat cheesy and contrastingly cheap in comparison to the effort put into the costumes and sets.
What I considered the worst part was that they threatened to ruin many serious and emotional scenes.
While I can't speak to the historical accuracy of the setting and costumes, they were beautifully done and obviously had a great deal of effort put into them.
The music beautifully accented the scenes-- moments where I was close to tears, the music often pushed me over the edge.
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The Fact that this drama plays in Historical setting makes it perfect,The music is very rememberable and at some point you are kinda obsessed with all the characters and also will hate a few xD.
If i had to put a few negative comments it would be the ending which leave you with so many thoughts and a unsatisfying factor that you almost keep thinking,Damn maybe there must be a 2nd season to cover it up.Offcourse even with a bit weaker ending the drama is really good and worth a watch.Also some people tend to scream allot! xD.All by all a very good drama with allot of things that makes you Laugh,Cry and hate.
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I think the story is good, and the characters extremely well depicted. You could relate to the characters, and at the same time they were also very humane (the good ones, of course. Cuz the bad guy is really really bad. you can't like him it's impossible.)
I also loved it because I love Lee Seung Gi and I think he acted well. I know some people think Suzy doesn't act well but I think she did a good job here, and all the cast was great in my opinion.
I also loved the Ost, I have all the songs on my ipod and play them over and over again. The songs as well as the instrumentals are absolutely beautiful. It's worth watching only for the amazing ost!
Okay there may be one little bad point, which would be that you have to be patient because the story is very slow in some episodes, but apart from that I recommend it for Seung Gi fans, and historical dramas fans, as well as curious people :)
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This review may contain spoilers
Well.. It's finally over. I don't really know where to begin with this review, since the ending left me utterly speechless.. The plot and ending (I'm not sure if this is a spoiler so read at your own caution) reminded me a lot of My Girlfriend is a Gumiho, which is ironic cause Lee Seung Gi is in both, but seeing how both of them played out in such similar manners was quite funny to me. This drama had pretty much everything. Romance, even a little love triangle, comedy, kick-ass action, and that ONE character you just cringe at the sight of them. I liked how viewers got to see a lot of character development, and I must admit the writers did exceptionally well these past 24 episodes to keep enough people on the edge of their seat the entire time.. So kudos to you guys.The acting was great as well. I knew Lee Seung Gi could pull of his character well, so I went in with high expectations, and left feeling very pleased with his performance. As for Suzy, I actually liked her in this. Seeing she's a beginner actress she actually portrayed her character well then of what I've seen her in previously. She was a little stiff in the beginning, and I could never really take her crying scenes seriously, but other than that she did really well. I hope to see more dramas/films from her, and hopefully she'll even gain more skills and give off better performances in the future. And, once again, I must give credit to the most badass actor of them all.. Lee Sung Jae. I know, some of you may be like "um what?" but by god could he act. I don't know what it is about the antagonist actors that I always feel outshine everyone (with the exception of Lee Seung Gi cause he's my baby), but he did an EXCEPTIONAL job in portraying his character. I mean if you can portray someone who was as selfless, greedy and just down right evil as his character was while doing well enough to make it believable, I feel you have some serious talent. But I think now I'd like to see him portray a happy character, just so I can compare the 2 and laugh. But besides them everyone did well too... And Choi Jin Hyuk as Wol Ryung.... UGH THAT VOICE. I PRACTICALLY MELTED AT THE SOUND OF HIM.
The OST was perfect! Really great and fitting songs for the drama that I honestly just fell in love with.
Overall, I really enjoyed watching this. It was sweet, at times hilarious, even had moments of ultimate bad-assery, and I really wouldn't mind watching it again... Although I probably won't since I think seeing it once was enough. Although, *spoiler* I really don't think I liked the ending all that much. Don't get me wrong, it was really sweet, but they should have just let it finish without the open ending. Cause now I'm worried that if they make a 2nd season it may not compare to how great the 1st season was. And if they happen to not make a 2nd season, I damn well better get an explanation as to what this ending was all about. I mean someone could have said something instead of standing there just looking at each other. So many questions left to be unanswered, guess we'll have to wait and see.
Well.. I recommend watching this if you're looking for something sweet to watch with a lot of action placed in as well. (And sorry this was long, I just had a lot to say for this drama ^^)
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It's not because of Suzy, I think Suzy is beautiful and fit this role pretty well. Her character was one of the best female leads in an action drama. She was kick ass and yet feminine. Good job on that writers.
And though historicals aren't my favorite,that's not why either...Fantasy is my favorite genre and this had adequate special effects to meet my expectations.
The action...was not a 9 or a 10...it was just okay.
After the first few amazing episodes the story bogged down with the sister and the bad guy for the whole middle of the drama. Things picked back up nearer the end..but you can't make up for 12 episodes of boring.
The main reason I am scoring this lower than others is because I never laughed once...where is the comic relief? There wasn't any. They never once pulled any kind of emotion out of me.(except for lust; Daddy Wol Ryung is hot!) So it gets a 6.
But if there is a second season I will watch it:)
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I highly recommend this drama.
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Let me just say that Gu Family Book is AMAZING! The story was interesting and had me instantly hooked and the OST is beautiful. The romance was adorable and made me happy.
I understand that people didn't really like it, but to each his own. I personally loved it and I definitely will want to see it again.
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So how could this drama possibly fail when you have an actor like Lee Seung Gi and a gumiho character? When we have in our hands a wishy washy writing such as this.
You'd think that –at least, from the title- getting the Gu Family book would be the most important objective of our hero, but this plotline is tossed and picked up several times whenever the matter of becoming a human is convenient. And still, Kang Chi does nothing to get the book because he's too busy with other things that the writer throws at him. The same happens with the other plotlines; the writer would introduce a certain plot that would then take a backseat to another subplot before finally being continued once we've already forgotten about it.
"Oh, that issue is not resolved yet? I thought it was over two episodes back."
The writing is not sturdy or pulled together; it's confusing and annoying how events simply crop up and how they go down without a proper conclusion, how the rules of this world (which are, in this drama, equivalent to fine print on a contract) are not clear from the beginning and just pop up whenever it's convenient or complementary to the plot to mention, how blatant and forced (and illogical at times) the events that would lead us to major events are. The writing completely lacks the subtility needed for such a plot to be exciting.
One thing I need to concede is that the female leads were amazing; Yeo Wool and Chung Jo are both strong characters that never failed to surprise me—they are so unlike the rest of typical k-drama female leads and I wish to see more of those, but preferably not from the same writer.
The last episode was so messed up I wanted to cry for all the time that I spent watching this show—I felt like the writer was like, "Let it all go to hell! Woohoo!". The only reason I watched all 24 episodes was because of Seung Gi and Suzy, but even if I love those two to bits, I should've quit when it was apparent that the screenwriter hasn't the slightest clue about what she's doing.
(Only when I was writing this review did I find out that the screenwriter is the same person who wrote King of Baking and Man of Honor, both of which I was not able to finish because I couldn't stand the plot and characters.
Now that is pretty interesting.)
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Story: My main issue with the story was that this drama was marketed as Kang Chi's journey to become human. I wanted to see a drama with that sort of adventure and life-changing journey. I didn't want to watch a drama where the writer became lazy towards the end and wasted a bunch of episodes on useless plot machinations and filler episodes where the villain just twirls his mustache at his evil schemes that serve no purpose to advance the plot. Not to mentions the plotlines that were just shoved aside without a legitimate ending. In the beginning, the story was actually interesting and fun, but the writers bit off more than they could chew here and really had no idea how to give us the story they were marketing and instead gave us the story they could. While I do wish I had gotten what I wanted, I actually won't complain with the story we received because it honestly wasn't that bad- just too stretched out for the 24 episodes. I feel like 16 or 20 episodes would have been enough here.
Acting: Lee Seung Gi was great, as always. Yoo Yeon Sook was good in his role even though his character went nowhere and I'll definitely keep an eye out for Lee Yoo Bi. I'm glad Choi Jin Hyuk is getting the attention he deserves from his role here, and I'll definitely watch "Heirs" for him. He and Lee Yeon Hee had really good chemistry and have since joined my actor OTPs. Sung Joon is one of my favorite actors, so I might be a bit biased in saying this but he felt utterly wasted here. Not that his character was bad, it's just that any other actor could have played Gon. "Gu Family Book" wasn't very good as far as subtle characterization went, so there really wasn't much Sung Joon could put into Gon. However, I will always rewatch this drama for his facial expressions. What I really want to talk about here is Suzy. It's been really gratifying to watch her acting become better since her "Dream High" days, but I feel like she'll never be an amazing actress. Suzy is a really likable person and can be very versatile, but she;ll never break that emotional wall that'll make me believe she's *actually* her character and not just acting her. Dam Yeo-wool was a good character for Suzy to play because they both have that likable feel to them, but at the same time Yeo-wool wasn't as badass as she was on paper simply because Suzy couldn't make me believe in her. Plus, her chemistry with Lee Seung Gi wasn't of the romantic sort, more like your comfortable oppa-dongsaeng sort. I still give props to Suzy for trying, though. You could tell she really was giving her all into this drama.
Music: This OST was just your standard drama OST. Full of angsty sad songs with wonderful voices that I like listening to but I just can't bring myself to put them on my iPod. It was, however, used brilliantly and in all the right places.
Rewatch Value: As stated earlier, I will forever rewatch just for Gon's scenes. And the first two episodes with Choi Jin Hyuk and Lee Yeon Hee. Plus, the cinematography was gorgeous here. I love it when directors know exactly how to milk a scene for the full impact, so I'll be rewatching not for the storyline, but for the beautiful shots and directing.
Overall: Hmm... I might recommend this drama to someone if they seem like they'll like it. But otherwise I'll probably just mention it in passing. I feel like "Gu Family Book" will ultimately just fade from my memory, simply because while it was good, it wasn't GREAT to me.
(Just because it annoys me when people do this, by "Is this review helpful to you?" it means, "did this review provide you with a detailed opinion?" NOT "did this review agree with YOUR opinion?" I'm not trying to be mean or anything, but seriously. Can you guys just put aside your personal opinions on this drama and see if I provided something detailed an well writing and not something like "OMG THIS DRAMA WAS AMAZING!!!111".)
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This review may contain spoilers
Before picking this up I saw many reviewers mention how they preferred this over Goblin, but unfortunately that comparison does not make any sense. At first I thought that it could be the nostalgia, but GFB is not that old. This drama came out in 2013, 3 years after Secret Garden.. Maybe it could be popular because of Seunggi's fangirls? I like Suzy, she seems to be always typecast to act as the same character she is portraying here. At the time of filming this, she's been 19 years old and to me her acting seemed pretty amateurish compared to her later works, but she is still probably the best thing about this drama. She was pretty cute & had some funny moments. I never liked Seunggi and I especially did not like his character here, nor did he have great chemistry with Suzy. (that could be hugely different in Vagaband, I don't know, yet)
Despite all their issues I guess they had their moments, their romance is the reason why I managed to somehow suffer through these 24 episodes. That's right this is one of the longest kdramas ever.
The main problem here is the absolutely terrible writing. In a cheesy a romcom the terrible writing is excusable, but I have the impression, that this was meant to be some sort of epic Sageuk saga and considering how much effort/cost was spent on the sets & the costumes, calling this an ambitious production should be fair, right?! Frankly the romcom parts are just too infrequent and flawed to carry the rest of the drama along. So yeah the terrible writing, it's just difficult to put into words how many problems the writing has and it's not even just the ubiquitous eyeroll inducing scenes. The pacing is off, it takes far to long for the actual plot to start rolling, considering that the first 2 episodes were the best part of the story, while only being a sort of a prequel is saying something. It's often praiseworthy when writers deviate from the typical kdrama plot progression. (kiss in ep6-8>>happiness till ep13-14>> conflict >>finale) However what we had here is far worse, it took absolutely forever for the romance to get anywhere, but forget happiness, they never even had a shred of hope really.
So much time is spent on the gisaeng house and yes initially I thought those gisaeng related happenings were rather interesting, but ultimately what did those women amount to in this show? It feels like a plot device that was nicely set up, but never used in a meaningful way. Let's not even get me started on Yubi's character, sister crazyeyes. All the scheming & war related subplots were really poorly executed. The fighting scenes are badly choreographed, but that hardly put a dent in my impression of this drama. (hypnosis, illusions, ninjas)
I don't like it, when the main force driving the plot is the main characters wanting to lose their cool magical powers. I also strongly dislike it, when the mundane wins over the magical in general. I really shouldn't have started this..
I could go on and on about the aimless writing, one big thing I noticed is that one moment the drama takes itself very seriously and in another it devolves into some sort of slapstick comedy show. Comedic relief is fine after some tearjerking melo, but this just doesn't work here all that well..
TLDR: Don't bother watching this, it's a mess.
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Watch Goblin if you haven't watched it yet.
If you want a cheesy historical drama that's actually good, I can recommend Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms, Eternal Love instead. That cdrama is nearly as cheesy as this one, but EVERYTHING about it is hugely better.
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what saved it for me was the acting. most of the cast played thier parts really well. i found LSG (who failed to impress me in MGIAG) to be delightful. from top to bottom, excluding Suzy, i really enjoyed the acting (and a near insane need to know what happened b/w WR AND SH.) at the beginning i defended Suzy's performance, but once it got to a point where i was wathcing more for the actors and less for the story her less than stellar acting skills really began to drag the thing down.
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