Hey everyone!

We’re having guest posts from the lovely folks on Patreon, to help us take stock of our drama years, kinda-sorta like what we had last year, woot! 🥳

We’ll be seeing about 2 guest posts per week, and this will unfold into January 2023, and that’s perfectly ok. AND, my annual year-in-review, which usually comes out in December, will also come out in January (or thereabouts 😅), after all the guest posts have been published.

If you missed our earlier posts, you can check them out as follows: phl1rxd, j3ffc, Uyen, Sean, Martina, David.

Today, I’m pleased to announce that Natalia is sharing her drama year!

Natalia’s been away from the blog and from dramas for a little bit, and we have missed her, but YAY that she’s now back, and ready to share her drama year with us! Way to update us on how you’ve been, Natalia! 😉🤩

I hope you guys enjoy!

KFG ❤️

Dear friends, greetings.

My name is Natalia and I have long inhabited Dramaland – nevertheless, 2022 in particular has been a pretty catastrophic year for my love affair with asian tv: all of a sudden, I just didn’t feel like watching anything that:

a) didn’t involve murders or the paranormal

b) was longer than 8-10 episodes and

c) was in any other language than those I can understand without using subtitles (that means that I basically only watched English, French and Spanish crime or horror shows).

I have no idea why this happened; but as K and you guys advised me early on in the year (K had posted a relevant Dear Fangirl question), I just took it slow, did a break and maybe I am over it now? Hopefully?

The result is that I have only completed 8 asian shows this year, which I am going to rank below.

A few of those, I didn’t like at all and sort of fast-forwarded them to the end. There has also been quite a few that I dropped after 1-2 episodes (Money Heist, Forecasting Love and Weather, Why Her and many, many others).

But, disclaimer: this doesn’t necessarily mean that those shows (the ones I hate-watched and the ones I dropped) are not good. It’s just that I was probably not in the right mood to watch them.

So, without further ado, the list of the shows I did manage to finish:

8. A Business Proposal

This one was promising at first, I thought. I liked the FL well enough, I was ok with the ML, I appreciated the friendship between first and second FLs.

But after that, it was all downhill form me, starting with the centuries old cliché that if a person wears different clothes/has a different haircut/puts on some makeup/wears glasses people around them won’t tell the difference.

Later on, I thought it got pretty boring, funny was not funny, I didn’t detect any chemistry between the leads and the second FL got so unreasonable I sincerely wished for the second ML to dump her.

So, without meaning to offend anyone who liked Business Proposal, my feelings about it were akin to this:

7. Love in Contract

Now, whereas Business proposal was among the last shows I watched before I went on a hiatus, Love in contract was a show I watched just after I decided that I could now get back, and I picked it because by then I had had a little too much of crime shows and thought that a sweet rom-com would be a nice change.

Well, it was a change, but not very nice.

Once again, I found the plot to be highly unbelievable, I thought Park Min Young phoned in her performance, I got seriously mad at all the red herrings the show kept throwing about (“Oh no, they will know it’s her? Well no, the photo was blurry”) and I hated the second ML, which is sad, I guess, because I am sure the actor (Kim Jae-Young) can do better.

The only reason I stayed until the end was the male lead, Go Kyoung-Pyo, who I thought did a very good job to make his not that well written character endearing.

So, my feelings about this show can be visualized through this photo:

6. Soundtrack # 1

I was already deep in my sudden dislike of love stories when I started watching Soundtrack#1 and the only reason I watched it was because I was still under the influence of last year’s Happiness and Park Hyung Sik.

So I watched it, and although it wasn’t bad, it wasn’t anything to write home about either.

Something was lacking maybe, or was it that the male lead’s smitten looks were not enough, after all? Still, I have to give it to PHS, he does smitten pretty well:

5. Alchemy of Souls

Alchemy of Souls was a whole different experience than the previous shows.

I liked the world-building part, this fantasy world that I found intriguing enough for me to keep watching. Plus, I have long been a fan of Jung So Min (since her Oh Ha Ni days…).

What made it an ultimately meh show for me (and the reason I will not be coming back for season 2) is the fusion sageuk side of it, plus all the attempts at being funny, plus some bad acting (possibly due to not that great directing).

Just like Master Lee Cheol below, I would love to ask the writers to please stick to their good honest fantasy world and skip the funny!

4. The Sound of Magic

I have no idea why I watched this show. I don’t like musicals, and Ji Chang-Wook is not a favourite of mine.

Still, I watched it and I liked it quite a lot, even the musical parts!

I really felt for the lead (Yoon Ah Yi – Choi Sung Eun) and her troubles and I appreciated there was no romantic hints in her relation to the (much older, anyway) magician.

The realistic part of the show really touched me, and the magical part was, well, magical.

So, without it being a great show, I thought it was an honest, and esthetically very pleasing drama. Just look at those colours:

3. Our Blues

It took me months to finish Our Blues, possibly because I was never thrilled by it.

But, the thought of dropping it never crossed my mind, because, honestly, it was such a good, heartwarming show.

And while I was not quite anxious to see what will happen next, watching every episode felt like checking on old friends.

The writing, the acting, all was excellent. And what I particularly appreciated is that the show managed to keep all those stars around for so many episodes and actually connect them to each other’s storyline.

That was an amazing feat. Bravo!

2. Reset

2022 was a strange year for my drama-watching for one more reason:  until now, I mostly stayed away from Chinese dramas (the only exception being Nirvana in Fire), I think because they are so long!

But then a friend suggested that I should watch Reset, and I thought it sounded intriguing (a sort of groundhog day situation, but with a mystery) and was only 15 (if memory doesn’t fail me) episodes long.

End result: I loved it.

I watched all episodes with great interest and although there were scenes that were necessarily repetitive, the show never, ever got boring.

A huge plus for me was that through each episode’s possible suspect, the viewer got a glimpse to modern life in China. Some of these stories really broke my heart, like watermelon-dad.

Additional bonus: unexpectedly enough, there was a romantic liaison between the two leads, which felt as natural as natural, and real, those too characters felt.

Honestly, if anyone here hasn’t watched Reset yet, I warmly recommend it.

To be honest, I would recommend it even for this guy here, asthmatic self-proclaimed Cat Apostle Lu Di. How could any cat lover not love Lu Di?

1. Love like the Galaxy

Wow! My #1 is another Chinese show! And not only that, but it is a show I absolutely, honestly, passionately loved.

That was the second show I watched after getting back to Dramaland, sort of the last chance after my meh experience with Love in Contract.

I was just checking out shows on Viki and I thought to myself “wait, isn’t that little Fei Liu from Nirvana in Fire? Let’s see what he’s up too now that he’s older”.

Well, he’s up to a lot of things, I’ll say that. I am not a very eloquent person, at least not in English, but Love like the Galaxy is the (almost) perfect epic love story – the “almost” part is due to the fact that at some point the male lead, General Ling Buyi/Zisheng, gets so dark that I will admit to thinking that maybe the lovely, brave, clever Shaoshang would be better off with the second lead, snarky but loyal scholar Yuan Shen (by the way, that guy – Li Yunrui- deserves a leading part and soon).

Overall, despite some silly moments and the fact that Zisheng seems to be suffering from chronic PTSD and no one does anything about it, the show is a perfect mix of romance (and what a romance!), women empowerment, humor, action (thank God, no one’s flying around in fight scenes) and palace intrigue (but with the loveliest Emperor, Empress and Consort there could possibly be).

The cast is great (besides Wu Lei, Zhao Lusi, whom I didn’t know at all, is absolutely adorable and the supporting cast is flawless), the writing is almost excellent (although towards the end it kind of feels that there some scenes that are missing – maybe something that happened with editing?), the cinematography is amazing, the music will stay with me for a long time, generally speaking I could go on watching it for many more than its 56 episodes!

I mean, who would not fall in love just by looking at this picture:

So, that was my list, corresponding to my year of disenchantment – but ending with an absolutely enchanting show.

I am now pretty positive that Asian TV is not over for me – I already look forward to quite a few shows that are coming up, starting with season 2 of Alice in Borderland, a show I absolutely loved when its first season aired.

In case this list is out after Alice airs, and I manage to watch it fast enough, I will be glad to let you know how it placed!

As for the rest of the awards:

My Best Actor award goes, after very little thought, to Lee Jung Eun (Our Blues).

I have always liked her in her supporting roles, but the role of Eun Hi really let her shine. Her best moment: when she realizes she has been fooled by Hansu – but also when she asks for Miran’s forgiveness.

My Best OTP award I am sure you can all imagine. Zisheng and Shaoshang (Love Like The Galaxy) are actually one of my favourite OTPs ever.

Best Supporting Actor: The whole cast in Our Blues deserves a best supporting actor award.

Razzie award: I have, probably unfairly, been so harsh on half of the shows I have watched this year, I will not nominate anyone in particular.

And a special cinematography award goes to Love like the Galaxy. Also, how great were the costumes in that show. So, I guess a special Best Production award for Love like the Galaxy from me!

Thanks to everyone for reading, and enjoy the holidays! Happy 2023 to all!

ADDENDUM

Since I’ve put together my original list for 2022, I have watched one more, highly anticipated by me at least, show: the second season of Alice in Borderlands.

Alice was in my top shows last year too (although technically it was released in Dec.2020), and I was very excited to see the second –and last- season.

The excitement was shared by my other half, who is a great fan of the comic book although he absolutely, vehemently, from the bottom of his heart hates Yamazaki Kento (as do, apparently, all Japanese men, at least the ones I happen to know. I wonder why).

Well, Alice for me was a strange one.

The first episodes were… well, I said to myself, that’s it, I have my Razzie for this year, or the absolute let-down. Then Jack of Hearts came along, and the show won me back.

The final verdict is, the second season is weaker in many aspects than the first, and it does tend to have a lot of talking and philosophizing – in a manga way, which means a not very profound way.

But: by the last episodes, I got to really appreciate the manga vibe about it (including all those characters that NEVER die) and, more importantly: I really liked the finale, after all. Including, the OTP as end game, which I was certainly not there for but kind of happened for me.

Still, given all the weaker points about it, if I had to insert Alice in my original list, I think it would still feel unfair to place it before Our Blues and it certainly didn’t resonate with me as much as the two entries from China – so I have now two #3, and this is, after all, a Top-9 list!

~Natalia