total flyby, what the hell

[kaigou]

currently watching:

• Hong Gil Dong
  When a story throws an unexpected twist, okay, plot twist. What about when the story takes the entire premise and overturns it completely? Plot upheaval? This one deserves a post of its own. On the other hand, I may spend the entire post doing my best impersonation of a broken *cough*Kang*cough* record...
  
• Delightful Girl Choon Hyang
  There are some parts where I can see conservative gender roles trying to weasel into the frame, but for the most part, the protagonist has every bit of agency I'd want her to have, with heaping doses of angst because you can't have the sweet without the bitter.
  
• Sungkyunkwan Scandal
  This one has me hooked. It also has me bemoaning how spoiled I've been by anime fansub groups... kdrama fansubs seem to take forever to come out. Oh, a whole week! The agony! The suffering! ...and a cast that doesn't seem to have a bad note in there. No, really. Overall, some of the best casting not just for main parts but the entire range of secondary (and tertiary) characters. So far, only Hong Gil Dong comes close -- I love DGCH, but the tertiary cast is cardboard. Enthusiastic cardboard, but still. SKKS' entire cast is damn near as pitch-perfect as you could want.
  
• The Legend of Hyang Dan
  It's the shrekification of k-folklore. Of course, about 90% of it misses me, but I give myself a pat everytime I do get a reference. However paltry. Not too much over-acting, but then again, it's not a miniseries that takes itself seriously. Or anything else, from what I can tell. Except maybe its random Bruce Lee references.

up next to watch:

• Coffee House
  Only because of Kang Ji-hwan. Me, shallow? Hell freaking yeah.
  
• What's Up Fox
  A protagonist in her mid-thirties. Joy!
  
• Assorted Gems
  Family drama, but I hear the two grannies are the best reason to watch.
  
• Exhibition of Fireworks
  Again, Kang Ji-hwan. Shallow, shallow, shallow, and damn proud of it.
  
• Empress Chun Chu
  Anything where the protagonist is known as "the Iron Empress" sounds like a good time to me.

couldn't finish:

• Return of Iljimae
  The lead is pretty, but I like just a tad more liveliness in a protagonist. That, and I can only take so much back-story before I start to feel like the front-story's been lost... and the narration was fine until it started getting really anvilicious.
  
• Secret Investigation Record
  The production values are excellent, the mix of CSI-style and saeguk-cred is awesome... but I wasn't that big on the X-files, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that only two episodes in and I was already bored with a series nicknamed The Joseon X-Files.
  
• Queen Seodek
  Oh. A bitch-evil-prostitute as the bad guy. Hmmm. Actually, once I realized the character is supposed to be the bad guy -- and I'd been rooting for her, for the previous two episodes -- it was a sign that me and this saeguk were probably not meant to last.
  
• The Immortal Lee Soon-Shin
  Every version I could find keeps throwing errors. I stopped looking after learning this kdrama scores pretty low on the "histori" part of "historical". Sigh.

Comments

[fromastudio]

hmm, yeah, what little I've seen of the Hong sisters suggests that there's also going to be healthy chunks of Annoying regardless of their strengths (admittedly You're Beautiful is the only one I've actually finished, and I wouldn't have made it to the end without Jang Geun-seok - who actually is remarkably good in that one). Honestly, though, the Hong sisters are not usually guilty of misogyny fail - I think YAB is more a case of Generalised Character Fail - srsly, Shinwoo and Jeremy are just about as pathetic as the females.

...still worth watching as candyfluff, though, if only for that scene where Jeremy reads online RPS of A.N.J.E.L.L

Honestly I keep losing interest in kdramas during the last few episodes, mostly because their denouements are So Damn Slow, so I think I've only honestly finished like, two kdramas. Other good ones, like Dae Jang Geum and Kim Samsoon, I just keep losing interest in the last two episodes and wandering off somewhere.

....I still think that one day I need to conduct some sort of Hana Yori/Meteor Garden/BBF watching marathon. As some sort of honorary induction into Asiapop culture. (It might take a lot of soju to make that weekend palatable, though)

[troisroyaumes]

You're Beautiful is the weakest of the Hong Sisters oeuvre in terms of the writing, in my opinion. --; On that note, Boys Over Flowers is not worth your time. I have no idea why I forced myself to finish that series. Much better to rewatch the J-drama version instead.

Agreed on the Slow Ending Syndrome (related to the Middle Episodes Syndrome), but there are plenty of K-dramas that break the rule. Hong Gil Dong has a pretty fast-paced ending, in my opinion. So does Hwang Jin-yi. (My not-so-subtle campaign to get you to watch both of these so I can make you write me fic. ^^)

To kaigou, I'm surprised you were thrown out of Queen Seondeok. Yes, Mishil is the antagonist, but she's a pretty awesome antagonist, and Go Hyeon Jeong is easily the best actor in the cast. In many ways, the story is set up to encourage you to root for her. Her plots and maneuvering get increasingly devious, and a large part of the protagonist's development is learning that she has to, in some ways, become like Mishil to be a good ruler. (Admittedly, the first 11 episodes kind of drag, but the strategizing/politicking picks up a lot after that.)

Also, from what I can tell of your tastes, I think you would do better off to avoid K-dramas that are targeted towards teenagers, which tend to not only have horrible dialogue and bad acting but also a lot of gender role issues. (Of which You're Beautiful and Boys Over Flowers are both obvious examples.) Unfortunately, the large bulk of K-dramas that get subtitled and then watched in English-language fandom are teenager-oriented, but the range of available subtitles has gotten a lot better over the years. (Heh, it is actually not rare to get K-dramas about women in their 30s or even 40s! There's a whole genre for them. I have to admit that my eyebrow twitches whenever people make generalizations about K-dramas based on the teenybopper shows; it's like trying to generalize about U.S. primetime TV after just watching Gossip Girl and Smallville.) Gender role issues are present in the shows that are oriented towards older women too, but they are usually much more self-aware, and the plot explicitly explores how those roles can negatively affect women and their relationships with one another. (E.g. Queen of Housewives, Dandelion Family, Life Is Beautiful, Be Strong, Geum-soon, Bad Couple, etc. Basically, the best way to find good K-dramas is to see what the ajumma are watching; they have good taste.)

On that note, please do avoid Goong at all costs; it has some of the worst acting I've seen, not to mention dialogue that is incredibly inane. --;

[kaigou]

HGD's ending was... well, it dragged for several episodes, and then the ending felt like a ton of bricks landing on my end. It definitely zipped right through any post-finale denouement, and in fact I was left sitting there completely baffled by what felt like a fake-out (ironic, in light of the main plot-points in the last six or so episodes) between the start and end.

I don't mind good dramas geared towards teenagers, or maybe it's more that I'll try just about any genre, since a story matters more to me than the setting or the intended audience. Sometimes it's obvious who the show's aiming for, and sometimes it's not. (I keep seeing recs for Be Strong, Geum-soon, but I haven't yet figured out if it's a korean-tragic ending or a korean-only-sort-of-tragic ending. It sounds like it's one that'd head right into tissue territory, and I just got over HGD -- and SKKS isn't exactly light-hearted fare, either -- so I'm not sure I can handle all of it at once.)

Don't worry about Goong -- just reading the basic plot synopsis was enough to make me give it a complete pass. I've got better things to do than watch gendered, conservative, "doesn't every girl want to be a princess!" barbie-doll crap. It would take a really phenomenal cast and script to make me get past its underlying message, which is one I find repugnant to the nth degree. Since I've yet to read a single review that mentions any kind of alleviating elements to offset that message, that series has been firmly off my radar.

As for QS -- I may give it another try, but man! The only torrents I could find were total bundles, and that's ninety-five gig. I was burning like crazy to free up enough space on the drive for all that, and after four episodes of a very, well, hong-sisters-like-ending at the very beginning, it wasn't worth letting the torrent continue and eat up all that space. Sheesh. Too bad there isn't a little korean shop around here that rents out kdramas. (I know there are a few that rent out cdramas and tdramas, but AFAIK, no korean shops that do.)

[troisroyaumes]

I'm fairly sure that Be Strong, Geum-soon has a happy ending; most of the longer family dramas do. (I haven't watched until the end but I did watch some of the later episodes with my mother and things seemed to be shaping up to a happy ending. Of course, that doesn't mean there can't be a last-minute flip.) But well, I was definitely crying during the first ten episodes, so it does hit you with the tragedy pretty early on.

I don't mind good dramas geared towards teenagers, or maybe it's more that I'll try just about any genre, since a story matters more to me than the setting or the intended audience.

Well, the bulk of what is popular in the English-language blogosphere tend to just fall within two, maybe three, genres and are predominantly oriented towards younger audiences, so I regularly encourage people to try out the shows geared towards older audiences so people will actually watch them.

And okay, it is largely fueled by the fact that I see so many fellow K-drama fans complain, "But there should be more dramas about X!" and I just sort of boggle at them and go, "If you want dramas about X, why are you watching the dramas that are almost exclusively about Y and are not likely to ever include X?" So I feel the compulsion to preemptively inform new K-drama fans that yes, in fact there are more types of shows out there. ^^; Also, I have leftover grumpiness from the days when people watched shows with terrible screenwriting while ignoring shows that were genuinely good. It's getting a lot better now, thankfully. But I'm quite serious when I say that the shows that are popular with ajumma tend to be the best; they've seen it all so they have higher standards that must be met. Some of these end up being trendy with the younger crowd as well, of course, but there are clear differences between dramas that are obviously catering exclusively to younger audiences and dramas that try to reach as broad a range as possible.

Hm, regarding Queen Seondeok, you might want to watch it on Dramafever or Hulu; I think it's easier to stream longer dramas. Also, I'm not sure where you live, but I remember your mentioning there are Korean women in your area, which means there is undoubtedly a Korean market somewhere and a video-bang close to it. Of course, the caveat is that none of it will be subtitled. --;

[kaigou]

the caveat is that none of it will be subtitled

depends! There are two groups I've found who release subtitles timed to and intended for specific US-DVD releases. I suppose the requirement is that you watch the series on your computer, instead, using an app like VLC that'll let you pull up soft-subs. I've been tempted by Damo (which has subtitles like that), and if I hadn't finally managed to find torrents for HGD, I probably would've gone that route then, as well. The one thing holding me back is the whole region crap -- it's possible to get region2 or region3, while whichever is the US-region is always like three times as expensive. (And still without subtitles, in many cases!) Highway robbery, for crying out loud. Even if I found a source for renting the series, I'd still be stuck with the whole "how many times can you change your DVD player's set up before you're screwed" BS.)

The whole thing with fansub groups... well, they're always going to skew young, in terms of what they'll translate and time. College and HS-aged speakers have a great deal more free time to commit to these kinds of projects, and who wants to translate or time a series they find unappealing? It's true just as much of the Japanese fansub groups, though at least anime currently has a large-enough online popularity that smaller groups are forced to branch out into unfamiliar shows, because there are already a plethora of groups doing the popular shows like Naruto, Bleach, NuraMago, and whatever else. More than four groups doing a single show, and it starts getting ridiculous.

My impression of kdramas is that -- for the most part -- there are maybe six or seven consistent groups (if that many, really), so it's a much simpler issue when it comes to who's "claimed" a series... but it also creates a kind of monopoly. If you can't get torrents for a series, because that claiming-group has let their seeds fall or their downloads expire, then you're screwed. (Not to mention the kdramas seem to rely heavily on direct-downloads like megaupload, rather than torrents. I've never seen so many seedless torrents as I have when browsing the scanty kdrama lists, compared to anime torrents still going relatively strong that are four, five, even six years old!)

Right now I think I'm still in the stages of figuring out which writers or directors have work that I consistently like, but what's becoming a bigger priority is figuring out the key-words to know how to identify (and then avoid) any series where the heroine is a bumbling, awkward, waddling idiot. It's like the bad guy (or prostitute) with a heart of gold, except in this case it's the utter ignoramus with a heart of gold. Actually, I could handle the literal-mindedness, even the slight klutziness; it's the waddle and hunched shoulders (and the occasional self-slapping on the cheeks) that makes me start itching to throw things. (This is one reason I particularly enjoyed Delightful Girl Chuun-hyang, because Han Chae-young may've played the character slightly dense at times -- in ways and places that fit the character -- but she never played the character as stupid, and certainly never in that waddling, self-deprecating, hunched shoulders kind of shuffle.)

Actually, speaking of the waddle... I can't see anything in traditional garb that would prompt such a posture or demeanor -- as opposed to, say, the kimono, which combined with the geta definitely makes for a very knock-kneed kind of walk. I can see it even in adult Japanese women who've come to the West (and it's one of the ways I actually identify whether a Japanese woman is US-raised versus recent-immigrant). In the historical dramas, unsurprisingly, many of the women walk with long strides and shoulders back -- a natural posture, too, if you're either allowing your chest to be visible or want it to look larger. The hunched shoulders are a way many women (in many cultures) will hide too-large cleavage, or cleavage that simply makes them feel uncomfortable, so it's a posture I do associate with adolescence and a certain discomfort with one's body, but still... the notion that this has (from what I can tell) become part of a physical-comedic visual trope bugs the crap out of me. As if it's not bad enough that the girl is presented as naive, foolish, and clueless about the nuances of adult life, she's also presented as being in a physical retreat from her own body. Sheesh.

Ahem. Sorry. Just something (as usual) that's been on my mind while I browse some of the fansubbed shows...

[troisroyaumes]

The video-bang I've been to don't provide US-release DVDs; they're all rips from Korean TV broadcast (they're always up to date), which is why I'm really skeptical that there are matching softsubs. (ETA: I should add that they're usually burned at home, so there aren't any region problems! If the timing works out, then it might be an option.) But it's true that MBC America and KBS America air K-dramas with subtitles (their subtitles are considerably less smooth than fansubs though generally more accurate), and maybe there's a video-bang that rips those.

I honestly have no idea about the demographics of the K-drama subtitling scene since I don't really watch with subtitles. (By the way, if you ever want raws, I can point you to Korean BT sites and forums that upload streaming links to the latest episodes, which are all extremely thorough. They're all Korean-language though.) I know that one of the main subbers for WITHS2 is 1.5-gen and older than me by a fair bit (I'm in my mid-20s), but that's about all I know. I wouldn't be surprised to hear they skew young, given the somewhat strange translation mistakes they make.

Heh, no comment on the waddle. I had to think a bit to try to picture what you were talking about...it's definitely not traditional (keeping your head bowed is, but not hunching your shoulders).

[kaigou]

I actually wouldn't say (of what I saw, which was, hrm, the first five episodes, I think) that YB is misogyny fail in the text; the script is rather neutral in that regard. It's the directing, I think. It was the way the characters reacted to things, the physical gestures, the body language, and the "let's drag the girl all over the place" syndrome, which sometimes I can rationalize and sometimes... man, it's just too much. But I think you're right in that YB is mostly just generalized character fail. Honestly, if the stylist-character (the woman who's in on it) were to show up in every scene, I probably would've continued watching just for her -- she stole the camera every time. (And the problem with someone who does that isn't that it's always bad, just that it highlights even more any actor who lacks that charisma, and the leading female character totally lacked charisma or presence. She was like wet bread dough, to the point she actually made Jang look pretty good, and that's saying something.)

I read the original manga that BBF was based on, and once I realized that Hana Yori = BBF, there was no way I was touching that classist, sexist crap with a ten-foot pole. I still can't believe I trudged through the original manga, to be honest. Must've been really bored that day. (I don't think I finished it, though.)

HGD definitely suffered from last-episode-drag. Hmm, there's a Gainax ending (where nothing makes sense); maybe we need a phrase that means "kdrama/hong-sisters" denouement (where what had been a fast gallop becomes a plodding drag). Although HGD had its own issues, but like I said, that series really deserves its own post.