Rowena
From So Cal, Living in Vegas
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My name is Wena and I live in Las Vegas and am still waiting for my Prince Charming to come and find me. My best friend keeps singing, "Someday our Prince will come..." so Prince Charming, if you're looking for me, you have to pass Southpoint!

Welcome.

This is my personal blog where I'll be sharing my thoughts on whatever I feel like sharing. I'm mostly going to be sharing my thoughts on all things k-dramas since that's what I'm into right now. Enjoy!

Tag: Kim So Hyun

Review: Goblin

Posted September 17, 2020 by Rowena in Reviews | 2 Comments

Male Lead: Gong Yoo
Female Lead: Kim Go Eun
Secondary Leads: Lee Dong Wook, Yoo In Na
Also Starring: Yook Sungjae, Hwang Seok Jeong, Go Bo Gyeol, Jo Woo Jin, Lee El, Kim So Hyun, Kim Min Jae, Park Hee Bon, Jung Hae In, Kim Byung Chul, Park Hyung Hye, Yeom Hye Ran
Year Released: 2016
Number of Episodes: 16
Genre: Fantasy, Drama, Romance
Country: Korea
Where I Watched It: Viki
Recommended By: TikTok
Watched it For: Gong Yoo, Lee Dong Wook, Kim Go Eun

Is it better to live forever or to finally be able to die? Kim Shin (Gong Yoo) is a decorated military general during the Goryeo Dynasty who is betrayed by the jealous king he served. When Kim Shin is faced with death instead of honor after fighting a mighty battle, God turns Kim Shin into a goblin instead, tasked with protecting certain people from the life of misery. But immortality is wearing on Kim Shin, and he longs to find the prophesied human bride who can set his soul free.

Kim Shin becomes accidental roommates with Wang Yeo (Lee Dong Wook), the grim reaper who ushers people’s souls into the afterlife. Kim Shin’s nephew, Yoo Deok Hwa (Yook Sungjae), is a rebellious chaebol heir whose family has been caretakers of the goblin for many generations. Ji Eun Tak (Kim Go Eun) is a high school senior whose mother was saved from an accident by Kim Shin 19 years ago, and ever since then, she has been able to communicate with the dead. Sunny (Yoo In Na), the owner of a chicken restaurant and Eun Tak’s boss, crosses path with Wang Yeo and becomes smitten with him.

Can Eun Tak be the true “goblin bride” with the power to release Kim Shin from his eternal misery? “Guardian: The Lonely and Great God”, also known as “Goblin”, is a 2016-2017 South Korean drama series directed by Lee Eung Bok. It is written by Kim Eun Sook, who also wrote the very successful dramas: “Heirs” (2013) and “Descendants of the Sun” (2016).

Oh man, this show. I wanted to see this show because I saw so many videos of people recommending it on TikTok (my For You Page is all Korean dramas, all the time) but also because my love of all things Gong Yoo demanded that I watch it. And boy am I glad that I did because holy shit balls, this show was fucking good.

This show follows our fellow Goblin, Kim Shin, who was wronged in his human life that his soul cried out in agony and vengeance. When he’s given the chance to avenge his family, he takes it. In return, he becomes an immortal Goblin who has to protect people from a life of misery. As decade after decade living as an immortal Goblin, protecting strangers from life, starts wearing on him, he starts searching for his Goblin bride. His Goblin bride is the only person that can set his soul free. He has to find her, get her to agree to be his bride so that she can pull the sword that only she can see out of his chest and end his immortality.

Nine hundred years later, he finds her and she’s in freaking high school. LOL. She’s also immature, naive, and living a hard life. Her mother died when she was just a kid and she never knew her father so she’s sent to live with her mother’s sister, who resents the hell out of having to take care of someone else’s kid. When she meets Goblin, she is immediately drawn to him. He’s a lot older than she is but they still strike up a friendship anyway. Goblin becomes a guardian like presence in Eun Tak’s life and she comes to rely on him a great deal. Along with Goblin, Eun Tak gets a Grim Reaper in her corner and together with Goblin and Goblin’s nephew, she gets a family to love and support her but it comes with a lot of work and some chaos.

There’s a lot going on in this show and I was here for it all. From Goblin’s complicated human life, to seeing the way that he spends his immortal days saving people from bad decisions and hard times, to the love that blossomed over the years with Eun Tak, to his budding bromance with the Grim Reaper, to the secondary romance between the Grim Reaper and Eun Tak’s boss, to all of Eun Tak’s ghost friends and their struggles, to the complications when everything starts falling into place and you’re left looking like…

There’s no denying that Gong Yoo is a gorgeous man and there’s also no denying the fact that I wanted to watch this show for his fine ass but though I came into this one strictly for Gong Yoo, I developed a love for Kim Go Eun, Lee Dong Wook, and everyone else. The writing on this show was fantastic and the actors did such a great job of portraying their characters in a way that made me connect with every single one of them. I was on board with everything. I cried happy tears, ugly cried sad tears but through it all, there was nothing but love. The ending had me ugly crying like it was nobody’s business and though I’m put back together before the absolute end, when we’re back in Canada, I felt it was a little rushed. Still, this show was amazing and it’s easily in my top 5 Korean Dramas of all time. I definitely, DEFINITELY recommend.

Listen to the OST

Final Rating

4.75 out of 5

2 Comments
Tags: 4.75 Reviews, Drama, Fantasy, Go Bo Gyeol, Gong Yoo, Hwang Seok Jeong, Jo Woo Jin, Jung Hae In, Kim Byung Chul, Kim Go Eun, Kim Min Jae, Kim So Hyun, Korean Dramas, Lee Dong Wook, Lee El, Park Hee Bon, Park Hyung Hye, Romance, TikTok, TV Show Reviews, TV Shows, Viki, Yeom Hye Ran, Yoo In Na, Yook Sungjae

Review: Love Alarm

Posted August 27, 2020 by Rowena in Reviews | 2 Comments

Love Alarm

Male Lead: Song Kang
Female Lead: Kim So Hyun
Secondary Lead: Jung Ga Ram
Also Starring: Go Min Si, Z Hera, Shin Seung Ho, Lee Jae Eung, Song Seon Mi, Song Geon Hee, Kim Young Ok, Cho Deok Hoe
Year Released: 2019
Number of Episodes: 8
Genre: Contemporary, New Adult, Romance
Country: Korea
Where I Watched It: Netflix
Recommended By: Nobody
Watched It For: –

In a world where an app alerts people if someone in the vicinity likes them, Kim Jojo experiences young love while coping with personal adversities.

Love Alarm is about an app that alerts the user when someone that likes them is within like 10 meters of them and it follows our main lead, Kim Jo Jo, a young woman who lives with her Aunt and cousin and works multiple part-time jobs to support herself. She came to live with her Aunt when her Mom died and left Kim Jo Jo, an orphan. Kim Jo Jo hasn’t had an easy life, she’s only known grief and unhappiness as her family life isn’t ideal. Her Aunt and cousin remind her constantly that she is mooching off of them, even though she works hard both at school and at work to support herself and works as a free laborer for the Aunt’s convenience store, but they don’t recognize much outside of themselves and their lives and that pissed me off a lot.

When the show first starts, we meet Kim Jo Jo but we also meet Hwang Sun Oh and Lee Hye Yeong, two childhood friends who are reunited when Sun Oh returns to Korea after being abroad. The two boys are best friends and Hwang Sun Oh comes home, ready to pick up his friendship with Hye Yeong again but while he was away, Hye Yeong has gotten himself a part-time job and is pretty busy. The two boys are close but the time apart has put some distance between them and Sun Oh doesn’t like it. While trying to run Hye Yeong down, Sun Oh sees the girl who has captured Hye Yeong’s attention. Kim Jo Jo. They work together at a Korean BBQ restaurant and Sun Oh follows Hye Yeong, who follows Kim Jo Jo to make sure that she gets to her bus stop safely. It is quite obvious that Hye Yeong has a crush on Kim Jo Jo and Sun Oh sees that while tailing his friend but as the show progresses, you see Sun Oh still go after Kim Jo Jo, much to Hye Yeong’s chagrin.

So I guess Netflix released only 8 episodes of this show, with the ending 8 episodes to follow sometime soon. With the pandemic, I’m not sure what happened to the release date for the second part but I hope we get to see where everyone ends up because I need some closure here.

This part was all about Kim Jo Jo and Sun Oh and while I did enjoy getting to know the both of them better, at the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but remember every time that Sun Oh and Kim Jo Jo kissed or hugged or fell a little more in love with each other, that Sun Oh did his best friend dirty. I’m not a big fan of friends sliding into the DM’s of girls or boys that their best friend likes so I wasn’t a big fan of the way that both Kim Jo Jo and Hwang Sun Oh got together.

It also took me a little bit to connect with Sun Oh’s character because he plays a very reserved but off putting character but the more you get to know him, the more you understand why he is the way that he is and what drives him to be the person that he is. There were sweet moments between Kim Jo Jo and Hwang Sun Oh but I couldn’t help but look forward to seeing what kind of relationship can blossom between Hye Yeong and Kim Jo Jo.

One of the main reasons that I adore Korean Dramas is that each show is 16 episodes and that’s it. There’s no dragging out romances and storylines for years and years and years. You get 16 episodes of a story that builds over those episodes and then you get a solid ending. We don’t get that here. This show ends on a cliff hanger and I wasn’t a big fan of that. I would have preferred to have waited to see all of the episodes together but by the time I realized that there were only 8 episodes of this show, I was on episode 6 so it was too late to stop.

I will say that the first 8 episodes are interesting and enjoyable but I wanted more Hye Yeong and I didn’t think we got nearly enough of him so I’m crossing my fingers that it’s a different story in the second season. I would definitely recommend this if you’re looking for a cute romance but beware of the cliff hanger and if you could, I’d wait until both seasons release to watch it all in one go. Still, I’m glad that I watched it and even though I spent a good chunk of the story frustrated, it’s still good stuff.