What Dramas Did I Finish This Week?

Hello and welcome back! We had a few dramas come to an end this week and I thought I should talk about them! If you're interested in previous reviews, click here and if you want to see a list of my Favorite Asian OTPs and Ships, click here!

KDRAMA

FINISHED Move To Heaven (10/10): Geu Roo is a young autistic man. He works for his father’s business “Move To Heaven.” Their job is to arrange items left by deceased people. One day, Geu Roo's own father dies. Geu Roo is left alone, but his uncle Sang Koo suddenly appears in front of him. Sang Koo is a cold man. He was a martial artist who fought in underground matches. He went to prison because of what happened at his fight. Sang Koo now becomes Geu Roo’s guardian. They run “Move To Heaven” together.

So I know this is a drama that actually aired a little while ago but I finally got around to watching it so I thought I'd write down my thoughts. The thing is that though I had been super interested in this show when I first heard about it (high key I've been crushing on Lee Je Hoon recently) I kept putting it off cause I knew there wasn't going to be any romance in the show and I knew that it was totally going to make me cry. Having finished it at last it was exactly what I thought it was going to be. I cried and cried and cried especially during the back half and I definitely agree with all the hype this show has gotten. It really is a wonderful story about family and finding love and learning how to move past trauma. I liked seeing the way Sang Gu and Geu Ru learned to see each other as family and how they grew past their traumas. Their dynamic reminded me a lot of the one in It's Okay To Not Be Okay but a lot healthier cause Geu Ru was more independent than I expected. I mean yes he had his own problems but he also recognized them and had a fantastic support system. I do wonder if the show was setting up a second season at the end and if it was I wouldn't be against that. As a sidebar I loved Choi Soo Young's cameos and the way she made Sang Gu so flustered but also Lee Jae Wook for being the first in this show to tear my goddamn heart out of my chest. On the whole this show was a 9.5 / 10!

FINISHED The Witch's Diner (8/8): This series tells the stories of desperate people who come by to eat a magical dish with the hopes of having their personal wishes granted, even at the expense of their own souls.Jo Hee Ra has already lost count of the years that she has spent alive. She has a feeling, though, that she has already become older than any known human in history. She chose to turn into a sorceress after suffering a tragic fate in her twenties and is now co-running a mysterious restaurant with a woman named Jin.

This miniseries came to an end this week and truly guys I was surprised cause I didn't realize how short it really was. Like yeah I knew that it eight episodes from the start but I think I expected it to air like most web dramas once a week so I'd have it for about two months rather than the month that I did given that it realized two episodes a week. On the whole I started out really into this show and it's killer cast but I think as it went on it suffered from it's short length and writing issues. It clearly wanted to be Mystic Pop Up Bar and Hotel Del Luna but darker and though on the surface it did work, when you look closer you see that though it was fun to see the weekly cases they also took screen time away from Jin's backstory which was supposed the main meat of the story. Having said that I really liked the idea that these people would make a wish and get what they wanted the most only to lose something precious as well but I was disappointed in the fact that this was only the case cause Hee Ra was bitter cause when Jin took over she took the silliest little things from her customers and that kinda defeats the point for me cause I am pretty sure that if you make a selfish wish then you should actually suffer a bit too! I was also disappointed in the fact that there was no romance between Jin and Gil Yong either but I guess this isn't a jdrama so there wouldn't be a huge age gap romance. 8 / 10!

CDRAMA

FINISHED Crush (24/24): Sang Wu Yan, a college senior, dreams of becoming a broadcaster. She works as an assistant at a radio station and likes a mysterious songwriter with the name "Yi Jin". She fell in love at first sight after a chance meeting with Su Nian Qin and later discovers that he is visually impaired. Layer by layer, Sang Wu Yan peels off Su Nian Qin's elusive, arrogant and indifferent shell due to his broken family. She then learns that he was in fact the talented 'Yi Jin'. Their interactions lead to a sweeping romance but the couple finds themselves in a tug of war between their hard-earned happiness and a fear of loss. Mounting pressure eventually leads to a breakup. Three years later, the two people who have gone down different paths meet again.

Truly guys I'm such a sucker for the broody blind person falls in love with the sunshine person in their life trope so much so that whenever there's a new story with this trope I jump right on board to watch! The first half was pretty amazing and practically jumped to the top of my favorite thing I was currently watching only to low key fall apart once Wu Yan and Nian Qin broke up. I didn't like how the whole thing went down and I didn't particularly like how they reconciled either but I mostly just brushed it aside as the type of drama cdramas enjoy. What sold this show was the chemistry between our leads cause even if the story followed all the milestones stories like these did I believed that the two were head over heels for one another. This was the first thing that Wu Yan's actor acted in and I have to say that I was totally stunned and fell hardcore in love with him and his acting and I'm saddened by the fact that he has nothing else in his filmography that I can watch. On the whole I'd give this show a 7.5 / 10!

FINISHED Futmalls.com (8/8): Investigation into a series of strange cases leads police Zhao Xu Zhen to a mysterious website called "Futmalls.com," which claims to be from the future. Customers can buy anything from the site, including future love, fame, or beauty. The product is non-refundable. And the price is unimaginable.

I'm not entirely sure why I decided to check this drama out other than the fact that I was in the mood to binge something and this one popped up on my recommended list and I'm so glad that I decided to check it out! This whole show is basically the Chinese version of Black Mirror with the concept of hey what if these people could access a website that allowed them to buy things from the future that would be exactly what they want while also giving them severe consequences to face. I really liked the horror and tragedy of this show and the way it balanced it with the police investigation that we're following. I enjoyed all the leads and I found it interesting the way every person was connected to Yong Xin which I suppose was a given in order to keep her around the other characters. I do wonder if this show plans to do a second season cause the season ended on a cliffhanger having given us no answers and many more questions. I feel like if anything this show did the Love Alarm and Arthdal Chronicles thing where Netflix chopped up one season into multiple cause what cdrama has ever released a show with less than at least 20 episodes?? Having said all that if there is a season two I will be super on board! I'd give this show a 10 / 10!

FINISHED Iron Ladies (13/13): On the surface, the three successful professional women in their 30's have everything you can desire, love, career, money, family. Look behind the facades and you will see many personal challenges. Fear not, our three protagonists is a band of sisters who will fight for and protect each other. Will our Iron Ladies overcome the many challenges and find happiness or will they succumb to societal pressures?

As you can see this week I really was super motivated to watch a bunch of new shows and I ended up picking this one to binge as well mostly cause you all know that I'm a sucker for shows centered around a female group of friends and the romances in their lives. This one was actually one of the better ones that I've watched recently and I think that's cause I was just so into the main couple. I'm not usually that into noona romances cause personally I prefer my men to be older than me but I kinda loved that the show really gave us a romance with the tropes switched. Here it's Kaiting that's a badass in a company and who falls in love with someone who's still finding their way and it's her that does all the overpowering stuff like secretly spending money to make the life of their loved one easier even though their loved one doesn't want that. I thought the two had amazing chemistry and I loved the way that Su Can was literally a puppy! I do think that the problems that appeared with their relationship towards the end were solved way too quickly offscreen but I guess since this is a drama then I just have to trust that they really did live happily ever after. Lisha and David were super cute too and I'm always such a sucker for the playboy turns into an one-girl kind of man trope though I kinda wish that the two had fooled around with each other a little more before they became serious. I also loved the relationship between Lisha and her son and the bromance between David and Su Can! In terms of Qingqing though I do wish that she had left her husband earlier and found her own love but I'd like to headcanon that cute guy she met at the end will be who she ends up with. 9 / 10!

FINISHED Litter To Glitter (30/30): Fang Tian Yi, the owner of the inn who loves to dream about making movies, Hu Yan Zu, a little known actor, and Yuan Zhi Jie, a freelance screenwriter with a strange brain, are three college roommates who dreams of making movies and open an inn next to the filming set, raising their own movie fund while working for the crew to hone their skills. However, both the operation of the inn and their film-making dreams are facing challenges. Meanwhile, Ye Xiao Xi, Fang Tian Zi and Lin An Qi, who also live in the inn, are struggling in pursuing their dreams too.

In case you didn't realize this show is actually a remake of the kdrama Eulachacha Waikiki which is a kdrama I've held close to my heart for how funny it is. I wanted to check out this cdrama adaptation cause though I was almost completely sure that I wouldn't enjoy the cdrama as much as the kdrama cause literally nothing in the kdrama needed to be changed to "fix it," I was still curious enough to see what changes it would make and how it would hold up. After having watched the whole show I'm exactly where I thought I would be. This was a fun show but I still prefer the kdrama. The charm of the original was in the fact of how zany it was without apology but the toned down mischief in the cdrama kinda took away from that. In every story I preferred the way the kdrama told it and all the cdrama original stories didn't work for me except for two which were the murder mystery party story and the one where Xiao Xi returned to her rich friends with Zhi Jie and An Qi. I guess this was the other change I liked in that Xiao Xi unlike Yoon Ah wasn't a bumbling idiot but a complete badass in everything she did. I do have to say though that even if I really liked the two actors playing Yan Zu and Tian Zi, the actors didn't have much chemistry so once again I preferred my original Joon Ki and Seo Jin who were my couple of the show. I guess I'd give this show a 8.5 / 10 and say if you did really like this show or if was the first time you experienced this story I'd recommend checking out the original kdrama!

xoxo Allie