THE SHORT VERDICT:
Old-school, classic kdrama of the romantic, melodramatic variety, circa 2001.
Although not quite as wildly popular as Winter Sonata or Autumn In My Heart, Beautiful Days is actually a pretty good watch when you’re in the mood for retro melo.
Yes, it’s angsty, but it’s not depressingly so.
Plus, our male lead is a very smoldery Lee Byung Hun oozing oodles of machismo. If you like your kdrama heroes of the manly man variety, you might want to check this out.
So today Stephanie posted on her blog Crazy for Kdrama a post titled Second-hand Crack. In it, she describes her experience re-watching Smile Dong Hae, and finding that it just wasn’t as cracktastic the second time around.
That really resonated with me, coz as some of you may know, I’ve been marathoning Beautiful Days for review, and that review’s been taking a while to actually get written.
The reason is pretty much the same as Stephanie’s experience with Smile Dong Hae. I’d loved Beautiful Days on my first watch, and had devoured it pretty quickly.
Fast forward several years, and now that I’m watching it for the second time, I still find it pretty engaging, but it’s just not as cracktastic as I had first found it.
Which begs the question: What exactly makes drama crack stay fresh / turn stale?
Celebrate with me! This is a double first for me: my first Year-In-Review, AND, my first guest post too! 😀
This guest post is especially close to my heart because how it came about is actually the origin story of this blog.
THE ORIGIN STORY
Up to about 2 months ago, I had been a persistent lurker in the kdrama-verse.
For most of my six kdrama-watching years, I visited lots of blogs regularly and kept up with the k-entertainment news and lapped up other people’s views and reviews, but I almost never commented on anything.
Once in a long while, I would leave a comment somewhere, but mostly only if I had something that I was just burning to say.
I’m an introvert at heart, though most people who know me in real life wouldn’t guess it, and this was my inner introvert acting out.
THE SHORT VERDICT:
Very, very good.
What we get is an interesting fantasy world that has a well thought-out mythology and that is well fleshed-out in all its little details.
Add the fact that this world is populated with interesting characters, each with their own backstory and motivations, and we get a very believable, intricately-woven drama.
Both Lee Jun Ki and Shin Min Ah are fantastic in this.
And no, it’s not a scary show 🙂