Anerneq
From France with love
Someone else might like it, I didn't
I watched the first episode and I was about to drop it. The only reason I kept watching was because of Talay and because I enjoyed the opening theme.Most actors are really good, others don't appear as often for me to judge. As I was watching it, I felt mixed emotions. There are four kinds of scenes: romantic and funny ones, that I enjoyed, and cringy and shocking ones, that I didn't like at all. The whole series alternates between these four in such a way that everytime I felt like I was liking the show, it ended up disappointing, or even disgusting, me.
The storyline is also too weird and absurd for my tastes. The characters seem to fall in love with each other for absolutely no reason, they get in trouble for absurd things and in their clueless and quirky behaviour they don't understand what is going on. Even if most actors were good, many characters didn't seem to even have a personality at all. They looked more like disposable characters that were used only when they were needed.
I don't like to write bad reviews and I hesitated to write this one. Luckily the show is short enough for me not to feel like I wasted my time. As I said, the only thing I enjoyed about the show is the opening theme and even that one is extremely weird. If you want to watch it, just know that you may not like it, so don't expect too much.
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Expected better
I came across this show, because it's listed as "horror". It isn't a horror, but I didn't mind it too much.The initial concept is interesting: a shop is selling gifts to harm the people you hate. This opens a lot of doors to how the story might develop and for this reason the show was always unpredictable. There was a plot twist at every corner, which made things very interesting.
At first, I was really surprised by this as it exceeded my expectations. Every character was full of anger and hatred and misunderstandings were making things even more complicated. Then people starting buying too many gifts for too many people and at a point I just lost track of what was happening. The middle episodes got just too confusing, I thought I was watching a different series. Then everything slowed down and I appreciated the last episodes. The ending wasn't bad, but could have been better.
I loved how they touched so many topics. In each episode a gift was bought for a different reason, giving each character more depth and showcasing different emotions: guilt, unrequited love, broken friendship, broken morals and so on. Problem is that this gave birth to too many subplots and it just confused me. You might consider a rewatch just to link the dots, because it was a little bit messy. You really have to pay close attention to it.
Overall it wasn't bad, but I think it could have been executed better. At some point I thought of dropping it and to be honest I wouldn't recommend it, unless you are bored. The ost was enjoyable though.
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Surprisingly good
I didn't expect much from this. I wasn't convinced by the plot, but still decided to give it a chance and it didn't disappoint me.I don't think I can say anything bad about this. The only reason I'm not giving it top scores is that the story was really nice, but not so much as to deserve a higher score.
That said, everything else was perfect. The ending was a little bit disappointing, but not bad. I just expected a little bit more. I loved all the plot twists this has. They never give you any hint as to how the story might develop, it feels like a puzzle game were you need to wait for every piece to come together to understand how things really are.
The concept of the voice in the rain is weird, but at the end of the day is not as important as it may sound at first. It's really about love being the most powerful energy that can make two people get close or push them away. It's all up to how the characters behave.
I also appreciated how the show dared to talk about some controversial topics.
It's a really good show I highly recommend. Might not be the best out there, but it's still enjoyable.
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This review may contain spoilers
Enjoyable, despite some big flaws
I'll start by saying that the show is unbingewatchable. An hour and a half for an episode was really a lot to handle for me, so be patient and take your time.The story itself is really interesting. Nothing new or original, but still good. The storytelling technique was really articulated and helped making the show interesting. In particular I loved those scenes were two characters were about to meet, but missed each other for only a handful of seconds. It made me pay attention to what was happening without giving me any clue where the story was heading to.
The actors were all really talented. A special mention goes to the female lead who managed not only to play two characters at once, but also to keep them consistent when the two leads switched roles. Interpreting a character is hard, interpreting a second character on top of that is extremely hard, but playing a character who is pretending to be the second character you're playing and viceversa is pure talent. That said, there were some actors that probably could have played their characters better (*cough cough* Suea *cough cough*), but they were secondary characters.
Now there were a few very important things I didn't like. Some characters really seemed immortal (*cough cough* Diew *cough cough*) and that was just boring. I understand some characters need to stay alive, but don't put them in life-threatening situations so often. They may survive once or twice, but at the millionth time it gets absurd.
Also, Nok is supposed to have been raised her whole life in France and yet I cringed so hard the few times she spoke French. I understand the actress is not required to know French, but if that's the case, don't make her speak French. Nok sounded like someone who's never even set foot in France.
The OST was bad, but that's nothing too serious. What I think is the biggest problem of this show is the production value. I can't believe this was produced recently, it looked like a late 90's/ early 00's series. The audio was also quite poor for 2021 standards. And I don't even want to talk about special effects: every fight looked pitiful with those fake shot wounds and blood spills. I don't enjoy action scenes too much, but these were seriously bad.
All in all, the show itself has a really big potential, it's just a shame the production is so poor. I'd still recommend it, just ignore all the pitiful killings and fightings.
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This review may contain spoilers
Ups and downs
The story is really good. It's very articulated and it's very clever how they could give so much information and yet making things so unpredictable. Everytime a secret is uncovered, a new one is around the corner.I don't know if it makes sense to judge the story though, since this is a remake. I didn't watch the original, but I've got the impression all the flaws are related to the Thai version.
The acting was stellar, the story excellent, but what I didn't like was the storytelling technique. One example is how the last part of an episode and the first part of the following episode are the same scene, except the one in the previous episode has been edited to include fewer details. This would be clever if done properly: it builds anticipation for the next episode and serves as an introduction to the following episode to remember what has happened so far. What they did was to edit the episode so much that in some instances they looked like different scenes. I don't remember when it happened, but at the end of an episode, Plaifon was at Boon's, but Tawan and Pibop (RIP?) suddenly broke in. It looked like Tawan had caught Plaifon in the house, but in the following episode, Plaifon actually managed to escape before Tawan could get in the room she was in.
Also can we talk about Plaifon's secret? We know since the second episode that Plaifon is actually Bua, she manages to keep it a secret and then at the end of episode 11, the only thing she can say is "I surrender, I'm actually Bua". Like, seriously? I was expecting an emotional speech where Plaifon confessed, explained everything she went through in those 10 years, then Tawan got a little bit angry and disappointed in her and then calmed down and realised he loved her too much to hate her. What happened was an edulcorated version of what I said. That part definitely let me down.
I also didn't understand Ploy's character. By the way they introduced her, it looked like she was there because she knew Petch had killed Thip's father. In reality she's there for no reason. She was in England and then got back to Thailand for fun. She messed a little bit with her brother and that's it. That's all she was useful for. It's a shame because I really liked her character, but it wasn't exploited as much as they could.
Anyway, I don't think the flaws outweigh too much the good things. I still enjoyed this and got pretty involved in it. I just expected more.
Btw, the opening OST is a nice tribute to the early 2000's rock.
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Started bad, ended up decent
The start left me quite frustrated. The first episode in horribly confusing. The main characters don't get a proper introduction, they're just thrown there doing their things as if we already knew them. The fact that they're twins makes things even more confusing, because you also have to differentiate Meen's scenes and Mind's.After a pitiful beginning, we get two or three episodes dedicated solely to explain what the heck happened in the first episode. This not only slowed down the pace, but left me horribly underwhelmed.
Also, can we please speak about the suicide scene? It was the worst I've probably ever seen. A broken person would never jump to a river with deep and calm waters. How could she even think she could die that way? I find it unrealistic that she even got amnesia from it, but I just pretended that never happened, since she quickly gets her memory back.
Luckily from this point on the actual story takes off and things get more interesting.
Speaking of the story, it's crazy how articulated it was. At the beginning everything revolves around Mind, but then different characters start taking the spotlight, revealing more sides to the story that we could ever think.
If I had to mention a character, I have to say I could kinda relate to Gun. He's a broken guy that puts up a childish façade to handle his pain. It's a good representation of a typical teenage boy and brought me back to my teenage years (in a good way).
Even though the story is excellent, I think the downsides were too big to be ignored. I say you could watch this if you're bored, but don't expect much.
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A cleverly surprising story
The show is cleverly produced with plot twists at every corner. It starts out quite modestly with Iya who wants to understand what happened to her parents, but she ends up uncovering the secrets of everyone on the island. Although some details were predictable, the overall scheme was absolutely unimagineable.While watching this, I had the impression some characters were really unnecessary, but at the end it turned out that each and every character had a reason and a purpose. This is really clever and helped tying everything together.
Besides the articulated story, I really appreciated how they tried to convey some moral messages and touch on delicate topics. On this last point, I loved Faye's subplot in particular.
The actors were all really good, especially the protagonist who portrayed flawlessly her experience with the trauma that led her to develop her insomnia.
I really don't have any kind of criticism, I think this was absolutely flawless.
Highly recommend it.
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