This review may contain spoilers
I came to this series off the back of watching Jung Il Woo in Nightwatchman's Journal and his performance here was definitely one of the highlights of the show, transitioning well from the seemingly thoughtless prince of the first few episodes into gathering a group of like-minded individuals around him solely by sheer force of character. However, I have to say his performance was a little overshadowed by the scenery chewing of Jung Moon Sung as the repulsive Prince Milpung, which was a complete turnaround from the previous series I'd seen him in (Prison Playbook), to the point where I had to check it was the same actor.
Overall, the series looks great and pretty much maintains pace all the way through, though the writers seemed to run out of ideas for what to do with Go Ah Ra's character towards the end and the ending itself kind of fizzled out. Having said that, there were some tremendous set-piece scenes and although I had a rough idea how it was all going to play out, there were a few twists and turns I didn't anticipate. There are a couple of actors whose other work I will definitely be checking out now (Park Hoon being one of them).
One thing that disappointed me was a particular scene where everyone makes fun of Kwon Yool's character in a way that was more than a little homophobic. That seemed completely out of place given the character development up to that point and stuck out as a bit of a glaring 'no homo' moment, especially given the close relationships being fostered within the show itself by the male characters towards one another.
Overall, the series looks great and pretty much maintains pace all the way through, though the writers seemed to run out of ideas for what to do with Go Ah Ra's character towards the end and the ending itself kind of fizzled out. Having said that, there were some tremendous set-piece scenes and although I had a rough idea how it was all going to play out, there were a few twists and turns I didn't anticipate. There are a couple of actors whose other work I will definitely be checking out now (Park Hoon being one of them).
One thing that disappointed me was a particular scene where everyone makes fun of Kwon Yool's character in a way that was more than a little homophobic. That seemed completely out of place given the character development up to that point and stuck out as a bit of a glaring 'no homo' moment, especially given the close relationships being fostered within the show itself by the male characters towards one another.
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