Lee Jun-Ki. Shin Mina. What more can you ask for from the perfect face value cast?
Oh yes... the consistency of the story. Hence my self discussion of like and dislike from this drama.
First, why I like it is the mention from above. Eye candy couple always help bring in more viewers anyways. Then there's the team of solid characters. I believe these individual characters where built up in a really good way, even the flashbacks (which I personally dislike) were essential as a foreground. Not annoying but instead, needed. So I'm letting that one slide.
I love Arang. She's such a feisty ghost/woman. She talks brash, she's persistently cute and most of all she knows how to care. What I hated about her character is the inconsistency of her self-defense behavior. She's supposed to know how to defend herself by kicking ass of both human and ghost alike, but there were slips along the way which makes her such a damsel in distress and THAT is what I dislike about her character.
Sato Kim Eun Oh. *sigh* I want to look on forever at that face. I totally feel how Arang feels. *shakes head to come back to reality* Okay, back to what I like about him - it's the way how he progressed as a person. I love the fact that his personality evolved gradually after meeting Arang, PLUS the fact that he knows how to fight. (I am an action fan so learn to deal with it.) As a wishy-washy character, Sato is still influential and yes… yes… yes… we already know that he is good looking, but besides that he is a man with integrity. What I hate about his character is the fact that he gets all mopey when it comes to his mother. That part irritates me the most. If Arang feels annoyed by it, so do I, in triple folds.
As for the other characters like Dol Soe and the Shaman, the three other officers whom I get to call the three stooges because of the multiple mischief they try to conjure within Miryang and the Great King Jade (Oh man, oh man! My dear Seung Ho, how I adore thee!!!)is also one of the characters that's a dessert to look at. There's also the constant bickering of the King of the Underworld which by the way is cute, but let's not forget the insightful conversations regarding the humans and their hearts. The grim reaper has a good role in all of this as well, I like the fact that he's supposed to be a bad-guy-but-not-really-bad kind of character. The idea that he's also a confused soul but still has to harvest other confused souls feels rather eccentric yet interesting.
Then finally, we also have the REAL bad guys. Not much to say about them but they are very much helpful in building up the story to what it should be. Basically all in all - the mix of all these characters were simply great.
So what went wrong?
The characters were great, the MUSIC was a lovely mix of eeriness and sometimes soulful, the cinematography was love and then… the story line went bland. It was a Sageuk Fantasy fusion with a mix of Rom-Com Horror, it had a good premise but there was that feeling after episode 8 that the story began to drag on. Maybe it's just me, but it felt like there were moments in the series which could have been cut short to emphasize more on the main story and the fun sort of died out and became too serious for my liking. The ending wasn't my cup of tea as well, there was so much that could have been done with that. That's why I would give it an over all rating of 8.
I may not re-watch this drama, but I would recommend it to those who love the actors, good set of acting and well… a ghost filled episode per episode.
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