cryswash
USA
Another Hidden Gem
This show definitely wasn’t what I expected. It’s definitely a hidden gem and I binged it within a couple of days. It’s not your typical cute fluffy fantasy idol drama and will be for an older mature audience.
The Good
The story was well written and I appreciated the lovers to enemies storyline. It reminded me of Romeo and Juliet. Star crossed lovers who were doomed because of their families/identities. In this story, the main theme was about the demon race vs the human race. It had a deeper story than just love. I enjoyed the fact that the FL didn’t blindly love the ML but also hated him as well. The portrayal of love and hate was done well. I liked how it didn’t suffer from most of the major tropes we see in Fantasy dramas like amnesia, childhood friends, I’m doing this for your own good, etc. The two main leads also had really good on screen chemistry that made their love feel natural. I also loved that they were smart of enough to tell this story within 24 episodes and not drag it out to a 40 episode drama. It would have suffered from a lot of filler episodes which wasn’t the case in this drama. The pacing was steady throughout. The acting here was good from everyone. Everyone played their role well for the character type they were assigned. I liked how it did not have constant loud soundtracks or odd sound effects constantly playing in the background as most fantasy dramas do. The music was more subtle and tolerable, even had lots of scenes without music. The OST was also pretty decent.
The Bad
Of course it wasn’t without its issues. For one, this is a lower production. The CGI wasn’t that great but wasn’t the worst either. The makeup was cakey at times. They didn’t do a lot of skin smoothing and over harsh lighting which was a positive but also a negative because we could see the bad makeup jobs. This drama still wasn’t without some tropes but that’s just inevitable with dramas, whether they are CDramas, Kdramas, JDramas, Hollywood Dramas, etc. The tropes play on the predictability factor unfortunately. Next, because this was a shorter drama, there was less character development for some of our villains. This made them fall a little flat and one dimensional.
This type of drama definitely suffers from lower ratings because there are no big name traffic stars or extremely pretty people. I’d say judge the drama for yourself. I found it to be better than most of the Fantasy dramas that aired this year with high ratings.
The Good
The story was well written and I appreciated the lovers to enemies storyline. It reminded me of Romeo and Juliet. Star crossed lovers who were doomed because of their families/identities. In this story, the main theme was about the demon race vs the human race. It had a deeper story than just love. I enjoyed the fact that the FL didn’t blindly love the ML but also hated him as well. The portrayal of love and hate was done well. I liked how it didn’t suffer from most of the major tropes we see in Fantasy dramas like amnesia, childhood friends, I’m doing this for your own good, etc. The two main leads also had really good on screen chemistry that made their love feel natural. I also loved that they were smart of enough to tell this story within 24 episodes and not drag it out to a 40 episode drama. It would have suffered from a lot of filler episodes which wasn’t the case in this drama. The pacing was steady throughout. The acting here was good from everyone. Everyone played their role well for the character type they were assigned. I liked how it did not have constant loud soundtracks or odd sound effects constantly playing in the background as most fantasy dramas do. The music was more subtle and tolerable, even had lots of scenes without music. The OST was also pretty decent.
The Bad
Of course it wasn’t without its issues. For one, this is a lower production. The CGI wasn’t that great but wasn’t the worst either. The makeup was cakey at times. They didn’t do a lot of skin smoothing and over harsh lighting which was a positive but also a negative because we could see the bad makeup jobs. This drama still wasn’t without some tropes but that’s just inevitable with dramas, whether they are CDramas, Kdramas, JDramas, Hollywood Dramas, etc. The tropes play on the predictability factor unfortunately. Next, because this was a shorter drama, there was less character development for some of our villains. This made them fall a little flat and one dimensional.
This type of drama definitely suffers from lower ratings because there are no big name traffic stars or extremely pretty people. I’d say judge the drama for yourself. I found it to be better than most of the Fantasy dramas that aired this year with high ratings.
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