Posts
Cons: some disturbing content (suicide, torture)
Oh Yeon-joo is pulled into her father’s bestselling comic book series, “W”, and saves the hero, Kang Cheol’s life. Pulled between the two worlds, she falls in love with Kang and tries to shift the comic from being an action adventure to a romance story.
This is a Korean drama that aired in 2016, starring Lee Jong-Suk and Han Hyo-joo. IMDb listing.
Hard to find in North America as it’s no longer on Netflix here, I was lucky to find it in Europe on my recent trip to France.
The story is fun and quirky, with rules that get explained as the characters slowly figure out what’s happening. There are a few moments in the first two episodes where I felt embarrassed for Oh Yeon-joo, but the tense cliffhanger endings kept me watching. There are some heavy emotional moments and times when the story took a turn I wasn’t expecting.
The romance between the protagonists progressed at a good pace, though there was one moment where it seemed Kang had an unrealistic mood swing in Oh’s direction.
The special effects of going between worlds were really well done.
The show deals with free will, as the story begins with Kang just becoming aware that something is strange with his life. Learning he’s a comic book character, created to tell an entertaining story, creates turmoil in his life.
My only complaint with the show is that the writers (and characters who can effect reality in the comic book world) keep doing the same actions: providing a weapon and a getaway car. It seems that as they realized the potential of their ‘magic’, they could have done more interesting things to evade and outsmart the bad guys. Also, the English subtitles translated the web comic as 'cartoon', which I found inaccurate and distracting.
While it’s predominately a romance, this won’t be for everyone as the series also involves suicide and scenes of torture.
The show deals with free will, as the story begins with Kang just becoming aware that something is strange with his life. Learning he’s a comic book character, created to tell an entertaining story, creates turmoil in his life.
My only complaint with the show is that the writers (and characters who can effect reality in the comic book world) keep doing the same actions: providing a weapon and a getaway car. It seems that as they realized the potential of their ‘magic’, they could have done more interesting things to evade and outsmart the bad guys. Also, the English subtitles translated the web comic as 'cartoon', which I found inaccurate and distracting.
While it’s predominately a romance, this won’t be for everyone as the series also involves suicide and scenes of torture.
(Unfortunately this trailer I found for the show does not have English subtitles, but gives you an idea of the style & content of the show.)
No comments:
Post a Comment