1
greenteaberry
A riveting, gripping folklore-inspired love story
The Grim Reaper in "Goblin" strikes again with another non-human character... this time he plays a gumiho, which is a nine-tailed fox commonly seen in East Asian folklore.
Like Goblin, this is a love story between a non-human and a human; and like Goblin, there are past lives and many twists and turns of fate involved.
But unlike Goblin, I'd say the support characters are even *more* true to the folklores they are based off of, hence making watching "Tale of the Nine Tailed" a really cool cultural activity as well for those who are interested.
(There are some YouTubers who actually do a folklore analysis of the episodes, but the channel I watch is in Taiwanese--
I'm very impressed with the storytelling. With fantasy there's always the risk that multiple lines get opened up and then the scriptwriter contradicts their own storyverse logic / fails to tie up the loose ends at the end
but Tale of the Nine Tailed was interesting from start to finish, and the end really did feel like the end of a story.
(of course, you'll see why they needed to do a spinoff for Lee Rang, but that's something for another day--
The reason it's not 9/10 or higher is I usually reserve those points for very thought-provoking or tight scripts with heavy use of literary devices, and Tale of the Nine Tailed is... a regular "good plot-heavy drama" in my books.
The casting was superb. All the major characters held up their end, and I'm especially impressed by the growth of the female lead Cho Bo-ah, who, as you'll see in the drama, played a very complex character.
Lee Dong-wook's microexpressions are always A+ and add not only depth to his character but also the occasionally-necessary comedic relief.
Long story short, I would recommend this to anyone looking for a consistently-good-throughout fantasy drama without the stupid "male lead gets cancer," or "leads have a misunderstanding" sort of draggy drama tropes.
The story was tight from start to finish and it would make for a wonderful binge watch (though I had to suffer waiting every week for 2 episodes haha...)
Like Goblin, this is a love story between a non-human and a human; and like Goblin, there are past lives and many twists and turns of fate involved.
But unlike Goblin, I'd say the support characters are even *more* true to the folklores they are based off of, hence making watching "Tale of the Nine Tailed" a really cool cultural activity as well for those who are interested.
(There are some YouTubers who actually do a folklore analysis of the episodes, but the channel I watch is in Taiwanese--
I'm very impressed with the storytelling. With fantasy there's always the risk that multiple lines get opened up and then the scriptwriter contradicts their own storyverse logic / fails to tie up the loose ends at the end
but Tale of the Nine Tailed was interesting from start to finish, and the end really did feel like the end of a story.
(of course, you'll see why they needed to do a spinoff for Lee Rang, but that's something for another day--
The reason it's not 9/10 or higher is I usually reserve those points for very thought-provoking or tight scripts with heavy use of literary devices, and Tale of the Nine Tailed is... a regular "good plot-heavy drama" in my books.
The casting was superb. All the major characters held up their end, and I'm especially impressed by the growth of the female lead Cho Bo-ah, who, as you'll see in the drama, played a very complex character.
Lee Dong-wook's microexpressions are always A+ and add not only depth to his character but also the occasionally-necessary comedic relief.
Long story short, I would recommend this to anyone looking for a consistently-good-throughout fantasy drama without the stupid "male lead gets cancer," or "leads have a misunderstanding" sort of draggy drama tropes.
The story was tight from start to finish and it would make for a wonderful binge watch (though I had to suffer waiting every week for 2 episodes haha...)
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