Fanletter, Please (2022)

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Drama: Please Send Me A Fan Letter (팬레터를 보내주세요)
Network: MBC
Episodes: 4
Release Date: November 18 – November 26, 2022
Runtime: Friday & Saturday 22:00
Language: Korean
Country: South Korea

Plot
A father writes a fake fanletter from a popular celebrity to his ill daughter in hopes to keep her happy, but ends up getting found out in public. The popular celebrity goes to find the kid and realizes it’s the daughter of her first love. Will they both find love this time around?

Main Cast
Choi Soo Young – Han Kang Hee
Yoon Park – Bang Jung Seok
Shin Yeon Woo – Bang Yoona

Review
I expected this to be a romcom but this turned out to be a melodrama. The first 2 episodes were light, and sweet, showing a little some flashbacks of Kang Hee and Jung Seok’s high school relationship and how they meet again as adults with adult issues. The second half was more serious, focusing on healing and finding love again. The story is simple, nothing new, but it worked because of the 2 leads and the cute kids. I liked the first love trope and the leads meeting again still liking each other after all these years. And how they support each other.

Being a celebrity is really tough. You just get too many haters and people can easily ruin your reputation with a lie. But it’s worse if the lies are coming from classmates and friends. I like Kanghee, I wish she had more friends who can defend her.

I also like Jungseok. Hope there’s a way he can go back to being a lawyer although I understand his kid’s welfare is more important to him. But maybe now with Kang hee beside him, he can have more helping hand.

Some might feel that the overall mood of the drama is gloomy and might find this boring, but I didn’t because it was tightly written and was only for 4 episodes.

Rating: 8.5/10

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First Love: Hatsukoi (JDrama) (2022)

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Drama: First Love (First Love 初恋)
Network: Netflix
Episodes: 9
Release Date: November 24, 2022
Language: Japanese
Country: Japan

Plot: They were each other’s first loves, but a tragedy broke them apart. Years later, they meet again as adults.

Main Cast:
Takeru Satoh / Taisei Kido – Harumichi Namiki
Hikari Mitsushima / Rikako Yagi – Yae Noguchi

Review:
Wonderful leads. I love the high school version – they were full of love and passion and energy. You will just think where did it all go wrong?

Using amnesia as a plot device to keep them apart for years. They had their first major fight but why is it so shocking as to cause severe amnesia? And her friends and her MOM did nothing to tell her that she has a boyfriend!!! The mom even told Namiki to go away and she burned all his letters.

Her mom was selfish, wanting her to marry the rich doctor and look what happened to her! She had to drop out of school, get married young and have a kid, get insulted and divorced at a young age. And lonely for the next 20 years.

The adult version were great too but they were both broken and sad. Can you imagine if the mom didn’t keep them apart, they could have fallen in love all over again when they were still in their 20s? Because it’s fate.

I also liked the small bonding between Namiki and Yae’s son, even when they didn’t know who they were.

I realized that Tsunemi was also a wonderful person, when we finally get to see how they first met. It’s just too bad Namiki never got over Yae, and she will never be able to get his heart.

Eps 8 and 9 had me crying so hard, tears won’t stop falling.

I also loved the ending. Together, their dreams finally came true!! 🥰

It was a little confusing that the timelines kept jumping from past to present.

Rating: 8.5/10

20th Century Girl (2020)

Movie: 20th Century Girl (20세기 소녀)
Release Date: October 21, 2022
Runtime: 119 min.
Distributor: Netflix

Plot: A girl tries to get close to a boy that her best friend likes while the best friend is away, and the girl falls in love with the guy’s best friend.

Main Cast:

Kim Yoo Jung – Na Bora

Byun Woo Seok – Poong Woonho

Park Jung Min – Baek Hyun Jin

Roh Yoon Seo – Kim Yeon Doo

Review: This movie reminds me of classic Korean movies in the early 2000s like Ditto, The Classic, Lover’s Concerto etc about friends, youth, falling in love, and sad endings. I kinda guessed that Bora got mixed up with who Hyunjin was, since she didnt have a picture and it was hard when there were no cellphone cameras back then. Watching the movie I thought Hyunjin dodnt look THAT handsome for Yeondoo to fall in love that quick and turns out I was right!

I love the girls’ friendship, they were willing to sacrifice or let go of love for the other person. My only comment is I wished they showed a little more of what really happened to Woonho, not just one scene with the younger brother. I thought if we were still in the 2000s we will get a full heartbreaking scene where he was supposed to fly to Seoul but had a car accident and they couldn’t meet in the airport or a terminal illness he hid from Bora or any other tragic ending that will make people cry.

Rating: 8.5

Lovers of the Red Sky (2021)

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Drama: Lovers of the Red Sky (홍천기)
Network: SBS
Episodes: 16
Release Date: August 30 – October 26, 2021
Runtime: Mon & Tue 22:00
Language: Korean
Country: South Korea

Plot
This fantasy sageuk is about King Seongjo looking for a divine painter to seal the Devil in the king’s portrait while a blind scholar plots revenge on the king and everyone who ruined his family 20 years ago.

Main Cast
Kim Yoo Jung – Hong Cheon Gi
Ahn Hyo Seop – Ha Ram
Gong Myung – Prince Yang Myeong
Kwak Si Yang – Prince Joo Hyang

Review
I didn’t realize when I started watching that this is a fantasy drama but episodes 1 and 2 were interesting and I loved the actors who played the younger versions of Haram and Cheon Gi, the background story was enough to get invested in the couple.

I loved the paintings, it was so amazing that simple brushes can make these fantastic masterpieces. I did take big brush and small brush calligraphy when I was in school so I know how to feels like to write using these brushes. It is hard and my penmanship was bad so I can’t imagine having to actually draw these kinds of paintings. The best episodes were the painting competition, although it was still unbelievable that a young inexperienced painter can win against everyone else when her butterfly painting was not even that great to be honest.

I loved the Baekyu Painters Society and how they always had Cheongi’s back, esp her two painter friends. And the friendship between Haram, Prince Yang Myeong and Cheon Gi.

The story got messy and a lot of things were unexplained. More than halfway and I still didn’t get the reason for the ring, or why they need to seal the devil inside the painting (because the drama said so), how Cheon Gi is the divine painter (when it turns out without Hwacha’s power her painting was useless so what was the point?), why Joohyang was still alive when his body is supposedly rotting away, the king knew all about Haram’s plan and never told him the truth (rendering his whole life’s revenge plot unnecessary). And the whole nonsense about Haram’s grandfather. And what about Maehyang and her mysterious hatred against the royal family? It was never revealed. The whole showdown with the devil, Samsin and Ho Ryeong was also anti-climactic. Even the death of Haram’s bodyguard wasn’t that memorable.

The ending kind of redeemed the entire story since they get their happy ever after, but still don’t understand why they decided to live in an area so faraway from the city. The last scene between the two princes, at first I though the story is incomplete, now thinking back I guess they are trying to say that life goes on.

Haram was also blind for 20 years but he is extraordinarily aware of his surroundings that he doesn’t look blind at all! He looks straight at the person he is talking to, he fights against the soldiers when blind, he can interpret the stars without seeing them. It was too weird.

Rating: 7/10 (i should give a lower rating but the four leads were so pretty)