camelliabuzz
This review may contain spoilers
Big mess with room for potential
First half of this review will be spoiler free, other half will contain spoilers.
I was so frustrated by this that it was the first drama that gave me the motivation to start writing a review. I seriously have no idea why this is the kind of drama that is being hyped and loved around the internet when there really is nothing good that comes out, except for Lee Rang, the second male lead played by Kim Bum.
To give it initial praise, Tale of the Nine Tailed managed to create the very complex and 3 dimensional character Rang who has a solid storyline and character development arc. Maybe if this drama was solely about him I would've given it at least a 7. But it's not like I'm saying Rang was an extraordinarily written character, it's just that he was the best out of everyone else here with some questionable personalities.
Starting with the male lead Lee Yeon, I just dislike him. I don't know what they're trying to make out of him, but he's just a cheesy narcissistic douchebag who cares more about his half orange parted hair than his own brother. Not only does that look on Lee Dongwook a turnoff, his personality is just as turnoff, reminding me of the next door "Kdramas to Avoid" aka Lee Gon from TKEM. To me, Yeon is just a selfish jerk who acts like he has too much on his plate atm with lack of development because the drama makes it out that he's been perfect from the beginning. LDW's acting was decent, but Yeon isn't.
Next is the absolute worst female character of 2020, Nam Jiah. There's an obvious fine line between being brave or recklessly stupid and she's definitely the latter. Okay fair she's trying to research more on urban legends because it's her job, okay she has a strong driving force which is to find her parents, bUT ITS DEFINITELY NOT OKAY TO COME IN A SUS LOOKIN PLACE THT OBV HAS MONSTERS IN IT WHILE UR EMPTY HANDED JUST CUZ UR FORSAKENLY CURIOUS. Please ma'am use your braincells and stay out. U. R . A. MORTAL. The ending of the first episode did not just went all impactful for it to be destroyed the next ep by some damsel in distress who never learns her goddamn lesson and does the same thing again to the point Yeon has to save her over and over again at like every other ep.
Jo Boah's acting was also ehh. This is my first time watching her so I may not be too sure, maybe this role doesn't suit her, but here she's a prime example of actors not knowing how to make use of their huge eyes and just stare out wide-eyed with no change in their facial expressions everytime they act. To add to her badly written character, the scriptwriter does a bad job at giving her lines. She talks like an old-timed philosopher using allusions in the same tone to evoke for pity effect from the male lead.
The chemistry is almost non-existent, and I seriously just don't know what they see in each other; it's just love that comes from the multiple savings needed. The second lead couple Yuri and Shinju was also not that interesting eventhough they still did better than the leads. It's one of those instances where two people just randomly decides they want to date each other. Yuri seems like she has potential to be a pretty interesting character, but Shinju was kind of plain. More like, every other side characters are just basic, useless, and only contribute as fillers.
The story is just everywhere. Well, plus point for spooky factors that actually scared me. But several scenes are just irrelevant. There was one arc in the beginnings about an imoogi island which purpose other than for leads to get closer was never really explained thus another loophole is formed. Some other events could've posed for more potential, but they dragged a lot of other things. Even the main imoogi conflict was the most boring.
Acting from villains are also quite cringe. Can't say Lee Taeri wasn't that convincing as imoogi, and they did tried their best to do whatever the script was telling them to, but again, the scriptwriter is horrible since there is really no need for them to talk so dramatically and cheesily that the dialogues just make me want to mute the audio. Say you want to say "I killed that man." The characters of TONT will say it like, "The blood of the wanderer has perished upon my hands." ...The world doesn't speak like that.
Petty complains: It was also hella laughable when they added random not that intense action scenes at the most absurd moments, and the way Yeon fights was so cheesy. The drama seems to want to go for that vampire vibes with the quick speed teleportation fighting and overall just makes it more cringe. Personally felt that color gradient was also quite disappointing, they relied on a lot of random light vibe-unmatching sky colors that made it cheesy. Tbh this drama is just full of unnecessary cheese.
Forcing out compliments, OSTs were good and hardcore to make up for the lack of intensity, especially "Blue Moon".
*****SPOILER ALERTS*****
I previously mentioned Jiah's driving force was to find her parents. That caused the biggest loophole. First of all they never explained why the villains even want to cause that accident. And then the whole drama's purpose to find the parents is suddenly lost after they were found cause right after that they only had the world's most awkward 10min reunion and then done they don't talk about it anymore. And that leaves a lot of questions. How are you going to adjust after 15 years missing? How are they going to get a job? What's going to happen? But no, they just decided to use the parents opportunity for Yeon to visit them and cause even more filler couple moments.
My biggest pet peeve with this drama is THE SELFISHNESS. Basically imoogi has the power to control people around him to be suicidal or just instantly kill whoever crosses paths with him and the only solution is to kill his other half in Jiah's body. What they could do is create a scenario where they're investigating on the mysterious deaths cause yes it's strange, but no. Every other human there acts like pawns who are just REPORTING 900 DEATHS A DAY and the rest of the main chars are calmmm. Am I seeing this correctly? If the leads even have the least amount of conscience, I know this sounds mean to say, but Jiah should just sacrifice herself. That's actually a solution mentioned by a side char, but the drama just made her out to be heartless and cruel. I mean she ain't wrong. Even if it's fiction, imagine if it occurs to you where you suddenly see people around you dying at once and there's a definitive solution but the only people who can stop this aren't doing their frikin job cause they wanna pROteCt tHeiR lOVe. Bruh at the least if you have figured out another method with no tragedy, just hurry up and get it done with already instead of just dating everyday like it's nobody's business. The drama doesn't even bother addressing that to depth cause apparently it's normal and sympathizeable for the leads.
Lastly, the ending was just stupid and unreasonable and beats the entire purpose of the messy conflict. They even tried to insert a samsung PPL. The entire scene was just too dramatized and cringe, and moreover lacked explanations.
Conclusion: Ew.
I was so frustrated by this that it was the first drama that gave me the motivation to start writing a review. I seriously have no idea why this is the kind of drama that is being hyped and loved around the internet when there really is nothing good that comes out, except for Lee Rang, the second male lead played by Kim Bum.
To give it initial praise, Tale of the Nine Tailed managed to create the very complex and 3 dimensional character Rang who has a solid storyline and character development arc. Maybe if this drama was solely about him I would've given it at least a 7. But it's not like I'm saying Rang was an extraordinarily written character, it's just that he was the best out of everyone else here with some questionable personalities.
Starting with the male lead Lee Yeon, I just dislike him. I don't know what they're trying to make out of him, but he's just a cheesy narcissistic douchebag who cares more about his half orange parted hair than his own brother. Not only does that look on Lee Dongwook a turnoff, his personality is just as turnoff, reminding me of the next door "Kdramas to Avoid" aka Lee Gon from TKEM. To me, Yeon is just a selfish jerk who acts like he has too much on his plate atm with lack of development because the drama makes it out that he's been perfect from the beginning. LDW's acting was decent, but Yeon isn't.
Next is the absolute worst female character of 2020, Nam Jiah. There's an obvious fine line between being brave or recklessly stupid and she's definitely the latter. Okay fair she's trying to research more on urban legends because it's her job, okay she has a strong driving force which is to find her parents, bUT ITS DEFINITELY NOT OKAY TO COME IN A SUS LOOKIN PLACE THT OBV HAS MONSTERS IN IT WHILE UR EMPTY HANDED JUST CUZ UR FORSAKENLY CURIOUS. Please ma'am use your braincells and stay out. U. R . A. MORTAL. The ending of the first episode did not just went all impactful for it to be destroyed the next ep by some damsel in distress who never learns her goddamn lesson and does the same thing again to the point Yeon has to save her over and over again at like every other ep.
Jo Boah's acting was also ehh. This is my first time watching her so I may not be too sure, maybe this role doesn't suit her, but here she's a prime example of actors not knowing how to make use of their huge eyes and just stare out wide-eyed with no change in their facial expressions everytime they act. To add to her badly written character, the scriptwriter does a bad job at giving her lines. She talks like an old-timed philosopher using allusions in the same tone to evoke for pity effect from the male lead.
The chemistry is almost non-existent, and I seriously just don't know what they see in each other; it's just love that comes from the multiple savings needed. The second lead couple Yuri and Shinju was also not that interesting eventhough they still did better than the leads. It's one of those instances where two people just randomly decides they want to date each other. Yuri seems like she has potential to be a pretty interesting character, but Shinju was kind of plain. More like, every other side characters are just basic, useless, and only contribute as fillers.
The story is just everywhere. Well, plus point for spooky factors that actually scared me. But several scenes are just irrelevant. There was one arc in the beginnings about an imoogi island which purpose other than for leads to get closer was never really explained thus another loophole is formed. Some other events could've posed for more potential, but they dragged a lot of other things. Even the main imoogi conflict was the most boring.
Acting from villains are also quite cringe. Can't say Lee Taeri wasn't that convincing as imoogi, and they did tried their best to do whatever the script was telling them to, but again, the scriptwriter is horrible since there is really no need for them to talk so dramatically and cheesily that the dialogues just make me want to mute the audio. Say you want to say "I killed that man." The characters of TONT will say it like, "The blood of the wanderer has perished upon my hands." ...The world doesn't speak like that.
Petty complains: It was also hella laughable when they added random not that intense action scenes at the most absurd moments, and the way Yeon fights was so cheesy. The drama seems to want to go for that vampire vibes with the quick speed teleportation fighting and overall just makes it more cringe. Personally felt that color gradient was also quite disappointing, they relied on a lot of random light vibe-unmatching sky colors that made it cheesy. Tbh this drama is just full of unnecessary cheese.
Forcing out compliments, OSTs were good and hardcore to make up for the lack of intensity, especially "Blue Moon".
*****SPOILER ALERTS*****
I previously mentioned Jiah's driving force was to find her parents. That caused the biggest loophole. First of all they never explained why the villains even want to cause that accident. And then the whole drama's purpose to find the parents is suddenly lost after they were found cause right after that they only had the world's most awkward 10min reunion and then done they don't talk about it anymore. And that leaves a lot of questions. How are you going to adjust after 15 years missing? How are they going to get a job? What's going to happen? But no, they just decided to use the parents opportunity for Yeon to visit them and cause even more filler couple moments.
My biggest pet peeve with this drama is THE SELFISHNESS. Basically imoogi has the power to control people around him to be suicidal or just instantly kill whoever crosses paths with him and the only solution is to kill his other half in Jiah's body. What they could do is create a scenario where they're investigating on the mysterious deaths cause yes it's strange, but no. Every other human there acts like pawns who are just REPORTING 900 DEATHS A DAY and the rest of the main chars are calmmm. Am I seeing this correctly? If the leads even have the least amount of conscience, I know this sounds mean to say, but Jiah should just sacrifice herself. That's actually a solution mentioned by a side char, but the drama just made her out to be heartless and cruel. I mean she ain't wrong. Even if it's fiction, imagine if it occurs to you where you suddenly see people around you dying at once and there's a definitive solution but the only people who can stop this aren't doing their frikin job cause they wanna pROteCt tHeiR lOVe. Bruh at the least if you have figured out another method with no tragedy, just hurry up and get it done with already instead of just dating everyday like it's nobody's business. The drama doesn't even bother addressing that to depth cause apparently it's normal and sympathizeable for the leads.
Lastly, the ending was just stupid and unreasonable and beats the entire purpose of the messy conflict. They even tried to insert a samsung PPL. The entire scene was just too dramatized and cringe, and moreover lacked explanations.
Conclusion: Ew.
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