Case heavy but full of heartwarming mundane moments.

Based on the story of Father of Forensic Medicine: Song Ci, it was an amazing drama that doesn't fool around. Every case intriguing, and dealt with logically all the while showing the multitude facets of human psyche involved in crimes. And I love the show for its portrayal of women: they weren't subjected to some entry-level comparison game (oh look back then society was so backwards/I'm the pioneer on white horse who treated women well), rather it was *normalised* in the drama's universe to have a balanced and realistic depiction where there were both good men and bad men, AND good women and bad women where no one were unreasonably victimised or put on a pedestal.
It had some of the most 3D portryals of mutual respect, love and equality in historical dramas I've ever seen. A rare gem.
Give it a try. It's not a fluffy romance, it's a serious investigative drama, it could be tedious to watch in one sitting since it's one case after the other....I watched it in between other dramas. But I assure you that you won't regret it if you give it a try. Don't let the fact it's an old drama hold you back.

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Definitely not the typical "Emotionless chef rediscovers the spirit of cooking" story.

I didn't expect it to touch my heart as much as it did, the premise was a very familiar one. A cold, emotionless, perfectionist chef, sent on a culinary mission, finds the true meaning of cooking along the way.
Well at least that's how I predicted it to go.
By the midpoint, there was this almost-breaking the 4th dimension moment where our chef went, "So I'm supposed to be moved and realise food must be cooked with love? What bs!" And I realised that no, this is not going to be just another typical take on the trope.
In the end it turned out to be a realistic, heartfelt discussion about how many people care about you in the world, even the people you'd think are most unimportaht and unrelated to you, and at the moment you think you are most alone in the world, how they would all come together to help you and you don't even know it. When you realise it you might even be too late.
It was a story about love transcending generations, through family and not-family, and I was so moved.

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An unorthodox Red film, an absolute must-watch.

-SPOILERS FOR THE STORY-
An American doctor falls in love with a girl who loves a wanted revolutionist when she gets him to treat the Chinese guy for one of his ptsd attacks, where he falls into a stupor and chants his dead wife's name. Despite knowing the girl and the guy's love isn't mutual, the doctor only asks the girl's permission to date her and upon rejection, doesn't persuade her. He helps the guy get an Xray to see what causes his attacks, it's a sharpnel embedded in his brain, without removing it he will die soon but removal might result in paralysis.
Because of his entanglement in the political situation, he loses his job and the girl gets arrested, and the revolutionist tells him that he has realised he has truly moved on from his wife's death, and now he's nearing his death because of the shrapnel too and he will surrender to police in exchange for the girl.
It turns out the girl is now pregnant from an encounter in one of his attacks, and she is taken care of by the doctor while the revolutionist is executed. She dies in childbirth and the doctor adopts the baby girl, and asks the police to put the baby's parents' ashes together in a box. When the girl is older, he takes her to see the box and she opens it, and finds her dad's brain sharpnel inside.
The doctor watches his daughter smiling at a street parade with red galore all around and thinks "Seeing her smile, I understand her parents' passion now. They take joy in realising the ideals they believe in."
-END SPOILERS-

One will not be inclined to check this out because it sounds heavily political and potentially racist but damn, it was a pleasant surprise through and through.
It's a gem of a non-judgemental movie, where the story is told from an outsider pov but he doesn't whitesplain things that he has no business doing so, and despite the backdrop being that of a such chaotic and stressful time period, it focuses on the very human emotions even the revolutionists experience and the final result is utterly empathetic and charming. If this movie was made today everyone will be namecalling it propaganda and whatnot.

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I think little kids might love this movie, actually! Very little kids, like 7-8 ?

The plot and behaviors of the characters are SO lacking it's almost funny, it's like a middle school kid's creative writing essay.
BUT, for the same reason, it's actually quite adorable? If you put away your unforgiving critical lens for a bit and watch this with the lens you'd use to read a child's earnest attempt at a fantasy story, you might like it!
Oh and, go into it expecting bad CGI and all the characters being (very obviously) dubbed.
Clearly not much refinement went into making this. But it does have heart and I think they tried their best. So I think watching it with the same mindset would help.

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Why aren't there more dramas like this these days??

Two middle aged prodigies in porcelain making. Rivals and constantly at each other's throats, but having mutual caring and admiration deep down. Their families~ a beloved wife and two sons on one side, and motherless two daughters on the other side.
And every single one of them, I repeat, every single one of them, deeply love and care for everyone else and protect each other at any given crisis and would gladly take knives to save the other.
I have never seen a more nuanced and heartrending portrayal of interpersonal relationships in a drama. Who need romance when you can have a marriage between two households? It was ~chef's kiss. I even ship the brick walls of these two houses.
This drama, with its beautiful script and acting, took my heart through a wringer and I gladly allowed it to.
Highly highly recommend. Do not miss this gem when it's free and subbed on YouTube. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJPEbKQEnORO13UHtBOPHT5Oi_g7qv_Hh

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Absolutely adorbs, well paced, well written, on-point humor. A must watch.

I found it when I first went down the food dramas/movies/documentaries spiral. Predictably the first thing I did was looking up "Chinese dramas about food" and this one was suggested multiple times as an iconic movie. I added it to my list among many others, and this was the only one I couldn't find subs for~ until today.
And I'm very glad I kept looking for it.
It was a pleasant surprise that in addition to food (to be precise, Hainanese Chicken Rice) it was about a family with three queer boys. And their mom's acceptance-but-not-really situation, which was addressed in a very sweet and humane way without degrading any party involved. It was heartwarming to see.

Perfection from the start to the end. There was not a single second I was bored, dissapointed or wasn't smiling. Highly recommend.

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Had the potential to be an interesting story with a unique approach, but failed.

The movie follows 3 couples in 3 consecutive eras, and the "premarital examination" that was apparently a thing back then to check physical compatibility. But the thing is, except the last arc, the previous two had largely half-baked, one dimensional plotlines. And the premarital examination itself didn't really play a huge role in any of them nor the arcs were really woven around it and the people's thoughts about it(despite it being the title of the movie), more like it was added in last moment for each arc for some additional drama and to remind the viewer this is (supposedly) what the story is about. It was quite unsatisfying to watch. Therefore I don't necessarily rec this movie.

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Masterful storytelling that doesn't fool around and delivers the punch straight to your face.

I don't usually write reviews until I've finished the entire thing, but with this one I'm only 4 eps in but I'm thoroughly impressed and couldn't stop myself from saying something.

Incredibly realistic and relatable. Characters behave exactly how a real person would, if they encounter a situation like this, and the show doesn't shy away from showing us each an every thought process they go through which is very organic instead of having leads who are either super smart or super stupid.
However, this is exactly what makes the show difficult to watch, at least for me. Not because it's particularly gory or thriller-y but because IT'S TOO REAL! It made me feel second hand stress and panic because the characters were doing exactly what I would do and.... holy moly the impact it causes.
Therefore I would say you'll need some guts to watch this, unless you aren't particularly sensitive to that sort of thing. Me? I had to pause like every 15 mins because I was anxious watching the characters' desperation. Also the police being strict and serious with their job... and there can be very few nightmarish things to a civilian than finding yourself on the wrong side of the Police, and them not believing a word you are saying. It's no joke.
Shudders.

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3D, realistic but at the same time heartwarming drama about Army. A pleasant surprise.

Watching the 1st 5 eps of Ace Troops, I fast forward or skipped a lot. I couldn't really grasp what the drama was trying to do, the background military details or scenes with Seniors etc didn't intrigue me, I was there for the coming of age story of the kids which I thought was the strong point of the show. The shenanigans they got into were realistic, relatable and I loved how it gave a mundane, "Even the soldiers are humans, not killing machines" approach to the show.
Also while I'm not Chinese I think I can safely say the drama doesn't have in-your-face patriotism or propaganda (which seems to be something that puts out lot of viewers unfamiliar with/dislike patriotic themes) , only a reasonable amount that you'd expect to come with any military drama (expecting a military drama to have zero patriotism is pointless).
Anyway that was about the good things I had to say about Ace Troops, and I stuck through mostly for Xiao Zhan or so I thought. And I'm glad I did.
Because I started seeing more and more positive things about it. It started with noticing how "non-glamourous" XZ was here. Usually he stands out with his looks, but here, he's just another normal soldier. A fairly good looking one but that's about it. The drama's goal wasn't to promote or hide under a single character or actor, but to create a collective story where every single person equally contributes.

By extension, the entire drama was grounded and humble, and never glorified military and instead discussed it from multiple viewpoints. It was so nice and such an unexpected, refreshing surprise, I started caring more. I stopped skipping scenes and started paying complete attention.
Absolutely none of the characters were perfect. They had lots of flaws. But this wasn't due to lazy writing or because the scriptwriter thought it was right for the characters to behave in ways they did, because each time a character did or had a questionable opinion/attitude/action, there was always, always another character to counter and question what they were doing. Therefore these flaws were intentionally done, do emphasis how human the characters were and how everyone makes terrible decisions in life.
It made them feel like people you encounter in day to day in real life. I always love myself a non-judgemental, empathetic and nuanced storytelling like this.
Never did I imagine I'd binge a hard-core 40 ep military drama in less than a week, and thoroughly enjoy it. It made me root hard for almost all the characters and made me cry multiple times.

Also I think I have never ever been this impressed with a Cdrama production before. I know I know, there have been lots more big dramas with obvious "big production values" right? So what caught me by surprise here?
I was already impressed from since the initial episodes with how they had full on regiments of extras- all trained and disciplined etc which must be like 100x difficult than handling regular extras for a drama.
And now I see the war scenes and explosions and floods..... like omg???
Did they get footage from real army or did they really recreate all these.... anyway I'm mindblown.

I've been complaining for a while about how C Cinema etc productions from about 20 yrs ago were not afraid to be full on grimy, gritty but rarely we see such content anymore, everyone too focused on glorified, rose-tinted approaches.
And then Ace Troops happened and took it up like 5 notches.

I'm left wondering about how the hell was this drama made? How did they plan it even, to look so believable and real? How much was the budget? How much time did it take?

In conclusion, I'm glad to see the drama took its job seriously. It's glamorizes very little and keeps things realistic at the same time making it a show about people behind the guns which makes it so watchable despite what it looks like on paper, even for people who thought they wouldn't like a show of this theme (like me).
I think it's very important for a country with military history and so much war and pain to depict it in dynamic ways like this (not overtly rose-tinted, not overtly patriotic/propagandaic) so viewers could learn about the sacrifices that were made so they could enjoy peace.
Ace Troops isn't a perfect show, it does have issues here and there (I had quite a bit of issues with last few eps) and I'm sure it also has inaccuracies on military plotlines too which are not visible to a common viewer like me, but I think I can safely say this is comparatively a really well made military drama.

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Based on a true story, a puzzling but a decent watch

This drama special was based on https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deposed_Crown_Princess_Bong , who supposedly forced herself on her maids, was found, and was deposed for that reason. Now, I know that this does not paint a very appealing picture for a mainstream drama. In a country that still has conservative views towards LGBTQIA+, portraying such a story as-is could be disastrous, even. Stories get retold/reimagined all the time.
I do get the appeal of reframing this story as "Crown Princess and her girlfriend intentionally out themselves so they can be kicked out of the prison-like-palace so they can live their own story".
This is where my mixed feelings about this drama and the choices it made, kicks in.
Important: Whitewashing queer stories so they become more "palatable" for certain demographics is not something I condone. It is just another, disguised form of censorship. But like I already said, I do see why this can be the only option left in certain countries, so I would've grudgingly accepted the fairytale-fied plot I mentioned above.
But is that truly what this drama did? From what I felt like, it completely removed the queer part and reduced them to just "best friends". I would never complain about implicitness born out of necessity/circumstances (which many dramas made in conservative countries have already done and BEAUTIFULLY so, included SK), but I felt like there was even that, here. Nothing. It felt like the dramamakers truly believed that "being gay is bad, the two main characters themselves think so!" and not "they loved each other but the society they lived in made them feel terrible about it".

In simpler, harsher words: this is queer erasure. This was no delicate, heartfelt attempt at portraying a subtextual feel-good queer romance.
And this short got awards for it, and I don't know what to feel about it.
Sure, you can say "but you don't know what exactly happened in history, maybe she wasn't really gay and it was just a rumor!". Maybe. But imagine what would happen if you go around invalidating every historical queer story with "No solid proofs! Therefore can be discarded as a rumor!"?
No thank you.
I came here after reading the historical anecdote, all excited to see what the drama would do with that premise, and left quite dissapointed.

But I will allow that if you take it as an independent story, with no knowledge about the background, it's a cute watch? So there's something at least.

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I'd say while this movie must have been praised back then, it's definitely dated now.

The vignette style was choppy and distractingly done. I like vignette style when it's done in a cohesive way- they do not necessarily have to be connected to each other or the main plot arc but each arc must be dealt with equal weight/attention and brought to full closure by the end. Like they should go round and round throughout the movie; 1,2,3,4-1,2,3,4, 1,2,3,4.
In Tampopo, you get random arcs thrown in from here and there, and even after the movie had run half its course, it was STILL introducing new characters and I gave up. It went like this; 1,2,3,4- 2,5,4- 1,4,3,6

Also there were some scenes that would def not be palatable to average modern audience/would be censored or come with a warning: the gross egg yolk and oyster scene... also they killed an actual live softbelly turtle onscreen.
On top of that, the storytelling was simply too overdramatic at times.

Overall not an experience I enjoyed. If you want to explore Japan's food culture through a golden oldie movie... well, this is not it. I'd suggest finding another one. I'm sure there are plenty.

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