Love and Destiny (Chinese Drama, New)

This one aired just when I started traveling so I didn’t have time to write about it until now. From the same team that gave us Eternal Love (aka Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms), Love and Destiny tell the epic love story between a young fairy and the god of war who had died/slumbered for the last fifty thousand years after he sealed the demon lord away. As it happens, our heroine is prophesied to be the one who will free the demon lord so things will obviously get bumpy as our hero face the difficult choice between duty and love. Sigh, why is it always a choice between duty and love…

I am still traveling so I only had time to watch the first three episodes…but I am liking the pacing so far. Our hero is a bit stoic for my taste but I guess that is to be expected since his character was the same in Eternal Love. Love and Destiny is set in the same world as Eternal Love. However, while we see many familiar characters from Eternal Love in this one but many of the characters have been tweaked. The biggest change I think is the fact that our hero’s 13th pupil (our heroine in Eternal Love) become a merfolk who was originally born a male but ended up turning into a female. It’s a bit odd to see the character that was our heroine in Eternal Love becoming a comic relief in Love and Destiny but hey, once I got used to it was entertaining to see how different characters were tweaked.

Before checking out the show I had wondered if Chinese actress Ni Ni who is 30 years old in real life could pull off playing a young innocent trouble maker fairy. I am glad to report that Ni Ni pulled it off without any difficulty! I usually get a bit impatient with the clueless trouble maker type of female lead but I actually found Ni Ni portrayal of our heroine quite charming.

The Fearless (Taiwanese Drama)

After a near-death experience, our hero (Lego Lee), unexpectedly gains the ability to see ghosts. As a gangster who never intended to take over his estranged father’s funeral home business, his father’s sudden death AND his new ability will eventually push our hero onto a new career path of helping ghosts. Our heroine is a forensic medical examiner who only believes in what the evidence tells her but will team up with our hero as their path keeps crossing.

I am really liking T-drama’s recent (as in last few years) productions of these dramas that have the indie films feel to them. The ghosts in this one are not scary since they look exactly like they did when they were alive but the show nonetheless still manages to inject a good amount of spooky vibe.

King’s Avatar (Chinese Drama)

Yang Yang’s new C-drama where he plays an expert professional game player who loses everything when he was expelled out of his team for refusing to play the game of the corporate world. Leaving the pro-gaming behind, our hero resurfaces as a manager at an internet cafe. A super fan of Glory- the game system our hero used to compete in professionally, the cafe owners hires our hero despite his lack of experience simply on the fact that he said he knows how to play the game well. With no intention of giving up on his passion for the game even if he has lost everything (in the game) he has earned in the last ten years, our hero re-enters Glory as a newbie and will eventually form his own team.

This one is based on a popular novel (there is also an anime version). Unfortunately, in the novel, there is no romance line for our hero and the drama’s producer has already said the show will stay true to the novel…which means while there will be two female leads (hero’s childhood friend and the cafe’s owner) in the story but neither of them will have a love line with our hero. According to the producer, King’s Avatar will focus on friendships and what happens when a person loses everything but instead of falling into despair, gets up and start climbing to the top again. While I am quite disappointed there is no love line in the story but with Yang Yang as the lead…I think I could be good with an uplifting inspirational story especially since I found the first two episodes fairly enjoyable.

 When The Devil Calls Your Name (Korean Drama, New)
Jung Kyung Ho (Life on Mars, Prison Playbook) plays a successful songwriter who sold his soul to the devil 10 years ago in exchange for money, success and youth. With less than a week left before his 10 years is up, our hero desperately tries to figure out a way to save himself.
The first episode felt slow at parts for some reason but fortunately, the story picked up towards the last third of the first episode. I was also pleasantly surprised that the show had more comedic feel than I had expected it to have. I especially love Park Sung Woong’s portrayal of the devil who appears to the rest of the world as a top star. I had assumed the devil character would be fairly stereotypical of those sort of “sell your soul” story but Park Sung Woong’s character here is just as complex and even more intriguing in some ways than Jung Kyung Ho’s hero as our two male leads embarks on an unexpected path of discovering what it means to be human.
Doctor John (Korean Drama)

Earning the nickname of “10 seconds” due to his brilliant ability to diagnose patients in 10 seconds, the first time our hero meets our heroine is while he is an inmate in the prison she works at as a part-time doctor. Our two leads will eventually meet again as professor and student when our heroine returns to the hospital to continue her residency. FYI, this show will deal with the complex and very emotional issue of mercy killing.

Ji Sung has a good track record for picking solid scripts and has the acting chops to make his character memorable so I was pretty excited to check this one out despite my recent lack of interest in medical dramas. Living up to my high expectations, Doctor John was solid all around. I was especially pleased to see that despite Ji Sung’s onscreen charm and strong presence, the show has created an equally strong female lead to match our hero’s character.

The Golden Garden (Korean Drama)

Her identity along with the life that should’ve been hers stolen, our heroine (Han Ji Hye) was abandoned on a bus when she was five years old. Growing up in an orphanage, our heroine is a bright and kind young woman despite the hard life she has led. Lee Sang Woo plays a firey detective who has no interest in marriage but will of course end up falling in love with our heroine. This is a K-family drama so there are obviously going to be birth secrets and twists such as our heroine’s family is somehow involved in our hero’s parent’s death but no fear, this one is only 60 episodes (30 minutes episodes so really only 30 episodes long) so no matter how makjang it gets it can’t last too long.

This is the second time Han Ji Hye and Lee Sang Woo has teamed up in a drama (The first one is 2018 drama, Mary Me Now?). I really liked their easy chemistry in Mary Me Now? so I am excited to see them teaming up again.

By the way, reading the show’s synopsis I had thought it was the heroine’s evil stepmother and stepsister who stole her identity but going with bits of information from the first two episodes I am actually wondering if the stepmother was not step but her biological mother…which would make the whole thing even more heartbreaking.

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