maritagp
This review may contain spoilers
This drama is okay. But I'm not going to lie, I had to force myself through a lot of frustrating scenes.
The drama has 2 modes. It's either this lighthearted comedy with silly gags or darker than night horrific violence, death and torture time. They switch so suddenly from one mode to another, it's jarring. It starts out as this cute rom com with crossdressing and a solid mystery that I actually found myself intrigued by.
I wish this part of the drama had less filler though, there's just quite a lot of unnecessary scenes that become repetitive very quickly at the widow village and I was very disappointed that most of them involved the FL. She's a good actress but her character is incredibly unlikeable during this first half. She's rude, entitled, selffish and let's be honest she's not very smart. Her plans to kill the king are ridiculous and not well thoughtout. She has been planning her revenge for years and shooting the guy with an arrow is the best that she could come up with? My boy Nokdu decided to kill him in an afternoon and had a better, more solid, plausible plan within the hour.
Once we reach the midpoint, we get a wonderful villain in 2ML and the king. They're both very complex characters and I wish they had shown more of their backstory rather than their relationships with both FL and ML. SML is deliciously evil, but I wish we could have seen what drove him to that point. He does a complete 180 from good boy during the first half to it's murder time in the second.
FL becomes even more dumb and annoying during the second half. She goes on her own with her same bow and arrow strat - spoiler it doesn't work - and is also rude to ML and 2ML (granted he is a murderer but he's competent girl, the man gets the job done and what do you do besides falling into a hole?). She manages to get a job at the palace but this goes knowhere because she achieves literally nothing from it... in the end she goes back to dressing up as a man and trying to shoot the king undercover.
She also doesn't TALK to ML whenever they obviously need to have a converstaion, instead she goes on her own and messes things up even more. The amount of miscomunication or lack of comunication got pretty frustrating and old by the middle of the drama. And by the end when FL finally does things right it feels like a redemption rather than the moment of audience rooting for her. It felt more like at least you didn't screw up this. All in all she is not the worst FL I've watched but she was incredibly frustrating to root for. As a consequence of this I did not enjoy her romantic moments with ML that much. I wasn't against the couple... but if FL died I'd be ok with it.
The side characters are hit and miss for me. I actually loved the widows and the sword master and that Lord that helped them. As well as the dad. But the little girl got on my nerves more than once. Her character had some funny moments but a lot danced the line of annoyance at times. The brother is the worst and I wanted him to die.
I wish we could have gotten more interactions between ML and the queen. I loved the few instances when they talked but ML couldn't tell her who he was. I needed more of that. Also more interactions between Kind and Queen. Overall I would have loved to see more of the royal family lore rather than the annoying FL shooting arrows at a tree.
ML is incredibly likeable, kind and smart. I love his problemsolving skills. He's one of those MLs that think outside the box and even if he's not a genius he manages to outsmart his opponent. He's also humble and just a joy to watch. He had chemistry with everyone on screen and he's the reason to watch this show. I loved his interactions with the king and could feel the personal stakes at every single moment of screen they shared. It was painful and wonderful to watch. I wish the drama was about their story instead of this romance with FL that feels less pressing or important.
Overall I felt like this drama was a bit too long and the FL was unnecessarily frustrating, this is not because of the actress but the writing. But it was still enjoyable at times.
The drama has 2 modes. It's either this lighthearted comedy with silly gags or darker than night horrific violence, death and torture time. They switch so suddenly from one mode to another, it's jarring. It starts out as this cute rom com with crossdressing and a solid mystery that I actually found myself intrigued by.
I wish this part of the drama had less filler though, there's just quite a lot of unnecessary scenes that become repetitive very quickly at the widow village and I was very disappointed that most of them involved the FL. She's a good actress but her character is incredibly unlikeable during this first half. She's rude, entitled, selffish and let's be honest she's not very smart. Her plans to kill the king are ridiculous and not well thoughtout. She has been planning her revenge for years and shooting the guy with an arrow is the best that she could come up with? My boy Nokdu decided to kill him in an afternoon and had a better, more solid, plausible plan within the hour.
Once we reach the midpoint, we get a wonderful villain in 2ML and the king. They're both very complex characters and I wish they had shown more of their backstory rather than their relationships with both FL and ML. SML is deliciously evil, but I wish we could have seen what drove him to that point. He does a complete 180 from good boy during the first half to it's murder time in the second.
FL becomes even more dumb and annoying during the second half. She goes on her own with her same bow and arrow strat - spoiler it doesn't work - and is also rude to ML and 2ML (granted he is a murderer but he's competent girl, the man gets the job done and what do you do besides falling into a hole?). She manages to get a job at the palace but this goes knowhere because she achieves literally nothing from it... in the end she goes back to dressing up as a man and trying to shoot the king undercover.
She also doesn't TALK to ML whenever they obviously need to have a converstaion, instead she goes on her own and messes things up even more. The amount of miscomunication or lack of comunication got pretty frustrating and old by the middle of the drama. And by the end when FL finally does things right it feels like a redemption rather than the moment of audience rooting for her. It felt more like at least you didn't screw up this. All in all she is not the worst FL I've watched but she was incredibly frustrating to root for. As a consequence of this I did not enjoy her romantic moments with ML that much. I wasn't against the couple... but if FL died I'd be ok with it.
The side characters are hit and miss for me. I actually loved the widows and the sword master and that Lord that helped them. As well as the dad. But the little girl got on my nerves more than once. Her character had some funny moments but a lot danced the line of annoyance at times. The brother is the worst and I wanted him to die.
I wish we could have gotten more interactions between ML and the queen. I loved the few instances when they talked but ML couldn't tell her who he was. I needed more of that. Also more interactions between Kind and Queen. Overall I would have loved to see more of the royal family lore rather than the annoying FL shooting arrows at a tree.
ML is incredibly likeable, kind and smart. I love his problemsolving skills. He's one of those MLs that think outside the box and even if he's not a genius he manages to outsmart his opponent. He's also humble and just a joy to watch. He had chemistry with everyone on screen and he's the reason to watch this show. I loved his interactions with the king and could feel the personal stakes at every single moment of screen they shared. It was painful and wonderful to watch. I wish the drama was about their story instead of this romance with FL that feels less pressing or important.
Overall I felt like this drama was a bit too long and the FL was unnecessarily frustrating, this is not because of the actress but the writing. But it was still enjoyable at times.
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