Ninja Chatter #4

Date: 1/25-1/31/2019

Black Widow Business (aka. Gosaigyo. Japanese Drama, New)

Busy working and worrying about her own issues, Tomomi Nakase believed her 70+  years old father prefers being left alone. Rushing to the hospital on being notified that her father has fallen unconscious, Tomomi is stunned to meet Sayoko Takeuchi who introduces herself as her father’s new wife. Suspicious right away why a woman as young as Sayoko would marry her father, Tomomi hires a private detective to stop Sayoko from taking her father’s fortune. True to Tomomi’s suspicion, Sayoko has made a career out of marrying old men then inheriting her “husband’s” fortune legally after they die.

This one had much more emotional complicity than I expected. The premise really isn’t my sort of thing but judging by the first episode I think this one should be pretty solid.
Spring Is Coming (Korean Drama, New)
Thanks to a mystery potion, two women leading very different lives ended up switching bodies (one is a soft-spoken perfectionist married to a politician while the other is a self-centered fist throwing news anchor)…and opened their eyes to brand new possibilities of their existence.

This one is fun! There are of course lots of predictable gags in the first couple episodes when our two female leads switched bodies but the fun is keeping the story feeling fresh. Not certain if we will get much romance out of this one but considering how fun and wacky it is I don’t think I will mind.

1/26
I have been marathoning Story of Ming Lang over the weekend and was pleasantly surprised that while the drama added a lot more conflict points to make the drama more interesting, the drama is still able to retain a sense of “easy going” style of the novel.  One difference between the novel and drama I found interesting is with the character Qi Heng who really had a much smaller part in the novel than he did in the drama. In the novel, Qi Heng is an ardent admirer of Ming Lan, unfortunately, our heroine has never considered him seriously for a second and pretty much squashed any of his hope any time the poor guy tried to approach her. A young girl but with the soul of an adult from the modern world, our heroine is extremely level headed and harbors no fantasy of encountering true love in the archaic society she finds herself in. Knowing full well that there is no way someone like Qi Heng could give her anything other than the position of a concubine, our jaded heroine treats Qi Heng’s ardent declaration of love as a young man’s silly imaginations.

1/29
Tower of Babel (Korean Drama, New)
Park Si Hoo’s new revenge drama where he plays a prosecutor who will do anything to avenge his father’s death…at least that’s what the synopsis said but the first two episode seems to indicate the revenge line will only be part of a bigger mystery. I had assumed our hero would have to go against the big colglomerate that caused his father’s death but by the looks of it, the big colglomerate family is on the path of taking each other out even if our hero doesn’t do a thing. As it is, it seems like our hero will soon have to be the lead prosecutor in charge of a case where an actress is accused of killing her own husband. The husband is part of the big conglomerate family our hero wants revenge on…and the actress (heroine) is the woman our hero is in love with. Sounds messy…yes very, but the plot looks to be quite gripping and moving at a breakneck speed with intriguing characters all around.

Kingdom (Korean Drama)

This one is a six-episode Netflix original set in ancient Korea where a plague begins to spread and a prince must find a way to save his nation from zombies. I was excited to see Joo Ji Hoo (he plays the prince) and Bae Doona (a physician’s helper) in the cast. I have to admit that it was a bit odd to see Bae Doona in a period style outfit but I guess that’s to be expected since this is actually the actress’ first sageuk despite her long career and she herself said in an interview that she laughed when she first saw herself in the mirror with a sageuk hairstyle and had wondered how the viewers would react.

Episode one was a bit slow but then prepare to have your heart start pounding once the backstory is set up. I had only meant to watch the first two episodes but ended up watching the whole six episodes in one shot.

By the way, the six episodes are just the first season. The second season is set to start filming in February.
Romance Is A Bonus Book (Korean Drama, New)
I haven’t been too interested in friendship evolving into lover sort of shows lately but this one intrigues me mostly because it has Lee Jong Suk (W, While You Were Sleeping) playing our hero and I kinda like the noona dongsaeng pairing of our two leads as well.

Synopsis: Divorced a year ago by her cheating husband, our 37 year old heroine desperately needs a job but suffers disappointment again and again when she is informed that her years as a stay-home-mom makes her useless in the working world. In contrast, our hero who has been like a little brother to our heroine is a successful author, college professor and editor in a publishing company. Stunned when our heroine shows up at his work to interview for a lowly intern job, our hero is dismayed when our heroine finally confessed that she has been divorced for more than a year. However, little did our hero know that the surprise is not going to end there since our desperate heroine has been hiding in his own house as well.

The first two episodes were quite enjoyable and the pacing seemed just perfect, not too fast nor too slow.

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