JustCruisin
This review may contain spoilers
Supernatural clickbait. Consent has left the room with this problematic kdrama.
Consent seems to be a concept that is giving issues for some kdramas. This is the case for Destined with You.
The series promotes a supernatural themed experience replete with Joseon flashbacks. It starts strong with a visceral curse of a bloody, red hand haunting the male protag and also a haunted shrine to start the ball rolling on events. A couple of episodes later, however, that enticing premise is nowhere to be found.
Lee Hong Jo's character is unlikeable and unrelatable. She is insecure at work because she is not invited to the collegial team luncheons. There are suggestions that she is bullied as well. At first, I thought she might be a low ranking public servant. The synopsis itself says she is a "low grade public servant" however, at one stage we discover that she is in fact an assistant manager, ie the second in charge. At that point, all sympathies for her work problems evaporate. If she's skilled enough to get to that point she should be skilled enough to handle the politics.
Furthermore, we discover that she stole Na Yeon's bf in high school. For some reason Na Yeon chooses to apologise to her for the incident and Hong Jo has the gall to refuse to forgive her. This was quite early on in the series already and had cemented my dislike for this character. But I decided to keep on with the show by switching focus onto the male protag instead. That, unfortunately, also sank like another cement block in the river.
The premise of this show is that LHJ decides to cast a love spell on a crush at work. This distastefully amoral deed, which smacks of psychopathy, backfires and instead (and quite predictably) Shin Yu gets lumped with the spell on top of his curse. I dropped the series at the start of episode 5 when it was revealed that there was no way to break the spell. Shin Yu is stuck with having to feel feelings that he does not have for a woman he had no inkling of having those types of feelings for in the first place. This show became as romantic as watching a guy try to woo a woman he roofied. It's not cool for it to happen to a woman. It's not cool for it to happen to a man too and it was tragically sad watching Shin Yu struggle against being physically gravitated towards Hong Jo and saying things he doesn't want to towards her while the vacuous, insensitive Hong Jo just keeps asking, "why are you here? Why are you staring at me like that? Why did you say that?" etc when he has said, time and again already, exactly why he was behaving like that and has literally begged her to help break this spell just as multiple times.
For the fact that it also became obvious the supernatural themes were just used as clickbait and there's no substance to the characters or the story, it was not worth even a first watch.
The series promotes a supernatural themed experience replete with Joseon flashbacks. It starts strong with a visceral curse of a bloody, red hand haunting the male protag and also a haunted shrine to start the ball rolling on events. A couple of episodes later, however, that enticing premise is nowhere to be found.
Lee Hong Jo's character is unlikeable and unrelatable. She is insecure at work because she is not invited to the collegial team luncheons. There are suggestions that she is bullied as well. At first, I thought she might be a low ranking public servant. The synopsis itself says she is a "low grade public servant" however, at one stage we discover that she is in fact an assistant manager, ie the second in charge. At that point, all sympathies for her work problems evaporate. If she's skilled enough to get to that point she should be skilled enough to handle the politics.
Furthermore, we discover that she stole Na Yeon's bf in high school. For some reason Na Yeon chooses to apologise to her for the incident and Hong Jo has the gall to refuse to forgive her. This was quite early on in the series already and had cemented my dislike for this character. But I decided to keep on with the show by switching focus onto the male protag instead. That, unfortunately, also sank like another cement block in the river.
The premise of this show is that LHJ decides to cast a love spell on a crush at work. This distastefully amoral deed, which smacks of psychopathy, backfires and instead (and quite predictably) Shin Yu gets lumped with the spell on top of his curse. I dropped the series at the start of episode 5 when it was revealed that there was no way to break the spell. Shin Yu is stuck with having to feel feelings that he does not have for a woman he had no inkling of having those types of feelings for in the first place. This show became as romantic as watching a guy try to woo a woman he roofied. It's not cool for it to happen to a woman. It's not cool for it to happen to a man too and it was tragically sad watching Shin Yu struggle against being physically gravitated towards Hong Jo and saying things he doesn't want to towards her while the vacuous, insensitive Hong Jo just keeps asking, "why are you here? Why are you staring at me like that? Why did you say that?" etc when he has said, time and again already, exactly why he was behaving like that and has literally begged her to help break this spell just as multiple times.
For the fact that it also became obvious the supernatural themes were just used as clickbait and there's no substance to the characters or the story, it was not worth even a first watch.
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