This review may contain spoilers
An awesome premise, with a heavily mediocre execution
I think this drama, is probably the definition of mid (not necessarily in a bad way) of kdramas. Let's start by saying that the premise was incredible, and I really loved the idea of the whole revenge of the fated lovers. One of the strongest aspect of this drama was definitely the past storyline, and I WISH that the drama dared to explore the past relationship in a much larger scale. I felt the modern storyline was too imbalanced when it came to quality. In the early stages of the drama, I found myself constantly waiting for the drama to show me more of the past storyline, than focus on the main one instead. I think mostly it was due to the combination of the lack of chemistry of the main leads, which is funny because I did not feel this way when I watched the past storyline, and the overall lack of meaningful interactions that they had. Now when it came to the acting, I felt like, the main leads were a bit lackluster, but most of the time it felt like because they were not comfortable with each other, however out of the two I do feel like Kim Young-dae was probably the weaker one. Whenever he was on screen, I felt like he was just not expressing any or the right emotions that were needed for the specific scenes. I have seen people share this opinion aswell, and I've also seen people defending it as "Do Ha was just that sort of a character, It's not the actors fault," but I strongly disagree, I wanted to see his burning rage that he has been keeping in for 1500 years, but I feel like we had none of that. I swear I'm not coming for the actor because I know that he can do better, because I loved him in the Forbidden Marriage, however even in this one, he was great at displaying raw emotions, so I give him credit for that. The female leads acting was pretty decent, nothing extraordinary, but I just liked it nonetheless. What I have a problem with is her character. I feel like the writers intended her to become a strong, independent character, but they just lost the plot halfway with that one aswell, and during the second half of the drama, whenever a conflict arrived, her actions always seemed out of character, just because of how she was portrayed at the early stages of the drama. Now when it came to the story, I think this one was the weakest element of the drama. I have noticed that there were even a few sort of plotholes in this one, like Do Ha using Han Jun Oh's memories to his advantage at the beginning, but during the middle, he kind of completely forgot about that, and that's why he was exposed to Han Jun Oh's brother, towards the end we kind of got a sloppy explanation, that Do Ha didn't want to look inside Han Jun Oh's memories, because it felt like he was disturbing his privacy, which was so out of character of him. Also the fact that Han Jun Oh's brother first thought that the spirit who possessed Han Jun Oh was Koo Tae Ju, but the events literally don't add up. I also didn't like how there was nothing systematic, about the spirits and their powers. Do Ha could flicker lights, and have a bit of superhuman strenghts, but that's it, while his father could do the same, AND corrupt people. I would've appreciated an explanation, or how or why the spirits were different. However despite this, I started to enjoy my time around the second half of the drama. The pace started to pick up, it felt like the actors were more comfortable with each other and not just for plot reasons, it felt like the characters started to go through developments, and I did quite enjoy it, I was also really curious about how the story was gonna fold out, even though, I knew that the ending was bittersweet, (and suprisingly I didn't really cry, but it was quite devastating), but I think that the ending was perfectly bittersweet for this one, I kind of secretly were hoping that Han Jun Oh and Kang Yeong Hwa would end up together, even though it wouldn't have made a lot of sense but oh well. Overall, despite a few problems with the writing, and a lot more with the story, I still did enjoy my time with the drama, and I don't regret watching it at all. At the end I felt like, if this drama recieved the Alchemy of Souls treatment, of having two parts (the first part being the past storyline extended, and the second would be the modern storyline) it would've been a lot more better, and meaningful. I still recommend this drama for people who find the premise interesting, and want to watch a melodramatic (but mediocre), drama, with a tragic storyline, If you like all of these, then despite the drama's faults, I don't think your time would be wasted.
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