5 KDramas You Can Binge-Watch FREE in the US

1. Descendants Of The Sun
   Review
   Watch on Kocowa
   Watch on Viki
   Watch on ONDemandKorea
   
2. Orange Marmalade
   Review
   Watch on Kocowa
   Watch on Viki
   Watch on ONDemandKorea (English subtitles not available)
   
3. To The Beautiful You
   Review
   Watch on Kocowa
   Watch on Viki
   
4. You're Beautiful
   -When her twin Go Mi Nam needs someone to cover for him with his Kpop boyband for a while, Go Mi Nyeo leaves the convent where she grew up, cuts her hair, and disguises herself as her brother. Can such a sheltered and naieve girl make it in the Kpop industry without anyone finding out? Especially when she's sharing a house with her brother's bandmates... Starring Jang Geun Suk, Park Shin Hye, Lee Hong Ki (of FTIsland), and Jung Yong Hwa.
   Watch on Kocowa
   Watch on Viki
   Watch on ONDemandKorea (English subtitles not available)
   
5. I Hear Your Voice
   Review
   Watch on Kocowa
   Watch on Viki
   Watch on ONDemandKorea (English subtitles not available)

Orange Marmalade [오렌지 마말레이드]

♥♥♥/♥♥ 

TITLE: Orange Marmalade [오렌지 마말레이드] 
ORIGINAL AIR DATE: 2015, May 15 - July 24 
WIKI: asianwiki.com/Orange_Marmalade 
SEASONS/EPISODES: 1 / 12 
US AVAILABILITY (as of 2018-11-09): Viki (free w/ads), KOCOWA (free w/ads), ONDemandKorea (free w/ads, no Eng Subs) 

Orange Marmalade is a drama based on a webtoon (which you can read HERE if you're inclined) about a teenaged vampire girl and a teenaged human boy who fall in love. Before you dismiss it with "Oh so like Twilight but reverse the genders" ... well no not really. I mean it's a vampire story so there are similarities by nature, but instead of werewolves and Volturi we've got school bullies and prejudiced mob-mentality humans. And a mini historical drama sandwiched into the middle of the modern one. Orange Marmalade certainly seems to want to make more of a social justice statement. 

Ahh where to start? I have mixed opinions on this drama. 
First of all, I did read the webtoon, but I didn't want to spoil the webtoon by watching the drama first nor spoil the drama by reading the webtoon first, so I read/watched simultaneously. I shouldn't have worried: the two are vastly different. You won't give much (if anything) away by reading/watching one at a time, they are that different. 
I liked the female characters better in the webtoon, and the male characters better in the drama. I couldn't relate or feel sympathetic for second-lead Shihoo in the webtoon but Lee Jong Hyun's portrayal of Shihoo in the drama ripped my heart out and stomped on it a few times. The main male lead Jae Min was even more likeable as played by Yeo Jin Goo than the webtoon version. I know some would disagree with that but here's why I feel this way: To me, Jaemin in the webtoon was almost bipolar in his actions. Hot and then cold (back and forth from the extreme of being a complete stalker to not being able to stand the thought of Ma Ri) at the slightest provocation. I felt the extremes in his behavioral swings were unrealistic in the webtoon, but the drama dowplayed the extreme-ness a little bit, making the character of Jaemin more realistic. The downside of this was that he appears to have less noticeable character development during the course of the drama. Straight up comparing his first episode behavior with his last episode behavior you can see a change, but over the entire drama it's barely noticeable. 

Unlike the male characters, Ma Ri (played by Seol Hyun) as well as her various friends and enemies, were all so bland in the drama compared to the webtoon. Ma Ri for example was more bold and plainspoken in the webtoon, but in the drama she was not like that until the end; in the beginning she was a timid, shy, and cowering. I don't have a problem with a female character who isn't loud, bossy, and outspoken personally so it didn't bother me. I'm not one of those females who looks down on other females who have a "quieter" personality, but I'll admit that for the sake of dramatic effect I liked the dynamic of Ma Ri's don't-care attitude in the webtoon and kind of missed it in the early episodes of the drama. 

I liked the storyline of the drama better than the webtoon, especially the addition of the historical backstory, though it was a bit disconcerting to be watching a modern highschool drama for 4 episodes, then a historical drama for 5 episodes, then a modern highschool drama for the last 3 episodes. Halfway through the historical episodes I wondered if I was going to remember the modern storyline well enough to know what was going on when they switched back. Thankfully there were flashbacks to help reorient the viewer to the modern storyline so that wasn't a problem. If you don't like historicals, you could probably skip episodes 5-9 and still not be *too* lost for the ending. (A happy ending for most of the characters by the way.) :) 

Check out Orange Marmalade on Viki!
Check out Orange Marmalade on Kocowa!
Check out Orange Marmalade on ONDemandKorea (no English subs on this one though)! 
Check out the Orange Marmalade OST on Spotify!
(Above links based on US availability. Dramas may not be available on certain sites for certain countries. It depends who acquired the license for a specific drama for your country and who did not. Drama may be available on Netflix in your country but not even show up in mine, so check there if you have a Netflix acct. Ditto for Viki- may be available in your country but not mine. Click HERE for a list of legal Kdrama streaming sites and what countries they work in.)

***NOTE for those watching on Viki:
I will warn you that the timed comments on this drama on Viki.com were exceptionally obnoxious. Repeatedly asking if the comments are a live chat. (No but wouldn't that be nice, then the annoying comments would actually eventually go away.) The people (there were so many of them) who somehow missed that JaeMin is the male lead (HOW do you even miss that?!) and thus is destined to end up with Ma Ri, and decided that if they whine and complain loudly and obnoxiously in the comments then Ma Ri will wind up with Shihoo instead... They even went so far as to bully and hate on the young actor Yeo Jin Goo in the lowest and most classless manner as though being hateful would change the story. Then there are always the perverts who just say gross things for no real reason, the trolls who mention BTS not because they truly love or hate them but because they know it will incite a comment war between those who do, and those who spend endless portions of the drama arguing about what other Korean celebrities the actors each supposedly look like. (They look like themselves. Seriously. Most of the time I can't even see the similarity and I wonder if these people just basically think all Asians look the same so when they notice a feature seems barely-sorta-vaguely uniquely similar between 2 celebs they get so excited they want to brag from the rooftops that they have noticed a characteristic that these two share that is *gasp* different than allllll the other Asians!)
If you are a sort of emotional vampire yourself, one who gets off on contentious internet strife, then keep the comments on: you'll love it. Have fun charging up your happy little troll battery. If you'd rather watch it in peace however, I suggest you hide the comments for this drama. ;)

I (Can) Hear Your Voice [너의 목소리가 들려]

♥♥♥♥/♥ 

TITLE: I Hear Your Voice/ I Can Hear Your Voice [너의 목소리가 들려] 
ORIGINAL AIR DATE: 2013, June 05 - August 01 
WIKI: http://asianwiki.com/I_Can_Hear_Your_Voice 
SEASONS/EPISODES: 1 ssn / 18 eps 
US AVAILABILITY (as of 2018-11-08): Viki (free w/ads), KOCOWA (free w/ads), ONDemandKorea (free, no subs) 

After his father is murdered right in front of him, 9 year old Soo Ha gains the ability to hear people's thoughts. He spends the next 10 years learning martial arts to be able to keep his promise to protect a girl, Hye Sung, whose testimony sent his father's killer to prison. Hye Sung grew up to be a defense lawyer. This is a thrill ride as the killer gets out and comes after them over and over, deciding not to give up until either they're dead or he is. He messes with their minds and uses fear tactics and trickery. Soo Ha and Hye Sung will need to use their skills to protect each other through the various schemes of the villain... and hopefully survive long enough to live happily ever after. 

Basic summary: 
Two teenaged girls witness a murder in which a vehicle containing a father and his 9 year old son is struck by a large truck, then the truck driver gets out to finish off the father by beating him in the head. The murderer spots the girls and takes off after them before he has a chance to murder the boy. Hearing approaching sirens and unable to locate the girls, who have hidden in some bushes, the murderer yells out a threat he hopes they will heed: tell anyone and he will kill the girls as well as anyone they've told, or shut up and live a long life.
Seeing on TV later that the trial isn't going well because the victim's son, Soo Ha, is the only witness and he's been rendered speechless by trauma, the girls go to the courthouse to testify. Both are scared and count to 3 with the intent of going in together... however Do Yeon chickens out and runs away, and only Hye Sung winds up going in. Not a moment too soon either, as Soo Ha has written on a notepad that he can read minds (a talent he developed apparently from the head injury he received in the accident) and "heard" the murderer taunting them, and now everyone thinks he's crazy and his testimony is unreliable. With Hye Sung's testimony, Soo Ha's father's killer, Min Joon Gook, is pronounced guilty. Filled with rage, Joon Gook leaps past his guards and attacks Hye Sung, trying to strangle her and screaming in her face that he will come for her someday.
Later, Soo Ha and Hye Sung meet outside. Soo Ha tries to thank her for testifying but he still can't talk, and Hye Sung is terrified and lashes out, wishing she'd never come because now psycho Joon Gook was going to come for her. Soo Ha finally manages to speak and makes a promise that he will protect her.

10 years pass and Hye Sung has become a lawyer and has just gotten a job as a defense attorney. Her childhood Best-Frienemy Do Yeon is now a prosecutor. The little boy Soo Ha has spent 10 years learning martial arts and searching for Hye Sung. He finds her just in time as Joon Gook has been set free and is looking forward to enacting his revenge, but Hye Sung isn't the sweet angel-noona that Soo Ha has built up in his mind all these years. Even still, he must stick with her both to protect her from psycho Joon Gook, and to convince her to use her job to protect the innocent, something she seems to have lost faith in.
Throughout the drama, Joon Gook comes after them time and again, sometimes with devastating consequences. How many times can they escape before something has to give? And what hope is there for a puppy-love romance with a large age gap? 

Flow and sequence: 

For about the first half of the drama there are two storylines running parallel. The first is Min Joon Gook has gotten out of prison and is determined to kill Hye Sung as he promised to do. The second is that Soo Ha has to convince Hye Sung to care about her job and use it to defend her clients. She's been apathetic about her purpose for a long long time, and having the help of a 19 year old who can read minds is motivating and empowering, driving her to find the thrill in taking and winning challenging cases.
About halfway through the drama, things seem to come to a head with the villain and we get a somwhat false-finale sort of feel. There's a showdown that doesn't go as planned and important characters get hurt. Our underaged hero confesses his love for noona Hye Sung, and after the chaos he vanishes for a whole year (don't worry, they don't torture us with some long drawn out year's worth of boring scenes), during which time the police find reason to presume villain Min Joon Gook is dead. Soo Ha is suspect #1 of course, and the fact that he's missing doesn't help. When he's finally located, he's got no idea who he is let alone the man he's been accused of killing. In addition to that, he's lost his mindreading ability. He's a legal adult now and the courts want to try him for murder as an adult... The 3rd quarter of the drama centers around Hye Sung's legal battle to save Soo Ha.
The last quarter of the drama is the real finale and I can't tell you much without giving things away but this portion of the drama is much less about the legal battles and more about revealing everything that's been hinted at and bringing to an end all that's been brewing. 

Cast/ Characters/ Acting: 

Lee Jong Suk as Park Soo Ha - I found no flaw with Lee Jong Suk's acting. He always manages to play his roles convincingly, with emotion and realism, and I found this one to be no different. It was a little bit difficult to go with it when the storyline was saying he was a 19 year old in a school uniform and looking at his 24 year old face my eyes were arguing too much for me to really get into imagining him as a 19 year old. I expected to sense some awkwardness between him and the lead female because they are really 10 years apart as well as playing characters who are 10 years apart, but to his credit, for Lee Jong Suk's part I could feel no hesitation or awkwardness. I enjoyed seeing the difference between the carefree and hot-tempered person the character Soo Ha began the drama as and the more self-controlled and confident person he later became.
Lee Bo Young as Jang Hye Sung - The character Hye Sung was extravagantly annoying. She's arrogant and apathetic, self-centered, and mean. She got somewhat better through the drama... I presume the viewer is to attribute her personal growth to Soo Ha's good influence. Lee Bo Young's acting was good, but it's harder to appreciate good acting when it's a character you're supposed to be cheering for but whose personality you can't stand. Hye Sung was basically your quintessential drama-trope narcissistic lead male, except she was the female. She's not on top of my "lead female characters I detest" list (those positions are currently held by the female leads from My Love From The Stars and My Sassy Girl) but she was notably obnoxious. Good acting, but not great. I could find no flaw with her facial expressions, mannerisms, delivery of lines... but the something that's invisible is what I was having trouble finding: namely the chemistry between her and the male lead. She acted her part in a way that I can't name anything she could have physically done differently, but there was an underlying tension (and not the good kind) in her character's romantic interactions. I felt more zing from her fangirling over the second lead than I did when Lee Jong Suk's character was leaning over her on the couch. In fact that scene was a perfect example of what was missing. Hye Sung was basically crawling backwards away from him on the couch while Soo Ha looked at her with hungry eyes and advanced. The scene should have been literally buzzing with sexual tension. Despite her posture and facial expression being "right" for this scene, there was nothing in her eyes that made it feel real. While Lee Jong Suk's pupils were dilated and there was a hardness around the eyebrows making his acting seem very real, there was nothing in Lee Bo Young's eyes, making her acting seem like *just* acting. Any time he got near her for any sort of romantic interaction, her eyes went flat. Every kiss scene she stayed about an inch further away from him at all non-liplocked times than would have been comfortable. I have a feeling the fact that the actress got married in real life a month after this drama ended probably had a big part to play in why she couldn't get into the romantic scenes enough to convey the unspoken attraction that I felt was absent. It would be decidedly uncomfortable to act a romantic drama with another man a month before you marry your fiancee.
Yoon Sang Hyun as Cha Kwan Woo - As always, Yoon Sang Hyun gives a believable performance as a larger than life character. Lawyer Cha is a bit of a complicated character, appearing cheerful and childlike on the surface but being an emotion-driven optimist-by-choice on the inside. Yoon Sang Hyun has a tendency to steal the show with his great acting and eye-grabbing aura. He has a charisma that makes you pay attention to him whether you want to or not. The first thing I ever saw him in was Secret Garden, playing the self-tortured aging Kpop star Oska. I was so drawn in by his portrayal of that character! He's currently a minor side character in My Secret Terrius (an OBGYN who is the brother of a friend of the main character and has to patch up wounded Terrius a few times) and as usual he's a total scene stealer with his agelessly handsome face and his expressive eyes. 

Writing and directing: 

There were a few plot holes. Like how do we have a murderer being let out after only 10 years in prison ... a murderer who rammed a car containing a child with a truck and then bashed the head of the driver in repeatedly in front of that child and then attacked, and attempted to choke to death a 19 year old girl in the courtroom in front of judges, lawyers, guards, and witnesses, while screaming in her face that you're going to come for her. Yeah, let's just let him out after 10 years, great idea. Meanwhile his cellmate was also convicted of murder for which he's actually innocent and no body was ever found because the supposed victim was never actually dead, but he's in prison LONGER than the demented head-bashing, child-threatening lunatic? That was the most glaring but there were a couple other less glaring plot holes. 

Happy Ending Factor? 

I'd give this drama a 9 out of 10 for happy ending. The female lead actress had a fiancee to think about and a wedding to plan so I think she was just not feeling it with the male lead, thus her acting didn't quite reach her eyes at times. Truth is she's a good enough actress and Lee Jong Suk was so phenomenal that you could easily have a totally different opinion on that than me, you might feel like they had fabulous chemistry! Aside from my personal feelings on their chemistry, the drama was nearly perfect and all the happy-ending-requirement boxes got easily checked. 

Final Summary: 

I thought this drama was going to be about some mindreading guy who solves crimes with his lawyer girlfriend, but instead it was more of a serial killer thriller mixed with a legal drama. I really enjoyed it- I thought it was a sweet drama, but also a MAJORLY suspenseful and sometimes scary drama. My only qualms with the drama overall were the few plot holes and the female lead's lack of chemistry with the male lead. I am glad to have watched it and might watch it again in a year or two. I'd say watch it for sure if you like crime dramas or serial killer thrillers with some sweet romance as a secondary plot, but if you're not really into either of those and were hoping for a super steamy/juicy romance with a supernatural twist, this one promises more than it can deliver. 

Check out {I Hear Your Voice} on Viki!
Check out {I Hear Your Voice} on Kocowa!
Check out the I Hear Your Voice OST on Spotify! 
(Dramas may not be available on certain sites for certain countries. It depends who acquired the license for a specific drama for your country and who did not. Drama may be available on Netflix in your country but not even show up in mine, so check there if you have a Netflix acct. Ditto for Viki- may be available in your country but not mine. Click HERE for a list of legal Kdrama streaming sites and what countries they work in.) 

Dramageddon and the Viki vs. KOCOWA Dilemma

So I'm sure by now you all know DramaFever bit the dust. 

October 14th everything was normal. 

October 15th first they charged everyone with a subscription on time as usual (yes me too!), then they put a freeze on every airing drama with wording that insinuated everything would be back to normal ASAP. 

I was chatting with a YouTuber who said she actually got a bad feeling that day and emailed DF to make sure nothing bad was happening, only to have them reply that all was well and the delayed episodes would indeed be uploaded ASAP. If that's true then it's even more upsetting that not only were they shady but also liars.

October 16th, Dramageddon, according to several people I spoke to, they were still accepting NEW subscriptions (and the money that went along with that) up until late afternoon when (without ANY warning, contrary to a statement I saw in a news article where they claimed to have sent out an email) hordes of Asian drama addicts like myself were literally CUT OFF mid-watch by either an error message on mobile, or this ugly and thinly-veiled 'Thanks for the dough yo (we might give some back if we think we can't legally avoid it), we don't feel like we owe you an explanation OR apology, so Sayonara Suckers!' where the website full of happy sweet Asian drama cuteness used to reside. 

I spoke briefly online with an ex- volunteer employee from DramaFever who was pretty certain from what she knew that the employees who were laid off in this debacle went to work Monday morning not knowing they wouldn't have a job to come back to the next day. That makes me angrier than anything else honestly. I figured as much, because they were still updating things meticulously and adding writeups, posters, pages, episodes until about 24 hours before the site went dark (why would they work so hard right up to the day before Dramageddon if they knew?), but to hear my suspicions echoed by an ex-employee really made my heart sink.

Yeah so all that was a whole 3 weeks ago and I'm still seething. I NEVER got an email explaining ANYTHING, firstly. Would it have killed the powers-that-be at Warner to give their poor employees a heads up so they could, I dunno, look for a NEW JOB?! I hope they did. Would it have KILLED them to give their CUSTOMERS a heads up so we could at the very least write down what episode we left of on for each of our dramas? Did they really have to get so competitive about getting exclusivity for dramas like 100 Days My Prince, Age Of Legends, The Third Charm, and Devilish Joy, only to DUMP us mid-season with zero warning? Not to mention other dramas that were completed but they had exclusivity to, like Miss Hammurabi, leaving mid-season watchers of those dramas just as stranded as those who had been watching airing dramas.

Out of 4 airing dramas I was watching, I only found ONE on Viki or KOCOWA. (Terius Behind Me aka. My Secret Terrius and I found it on KOCOWA.) The others left me and so many others stranded on a midseason cliffhanger with no way to find out how it ends aside from abusing Viki's Request Form and hoping for the best, or finding a less honest way/place to watch the rest of what we PAID Drama Fever for before we got scr*wed over.

The kicker? Apparently there are rumors that Warner is wanting to launch it's own streaming service to compete with NetFlix and they were concerned that DramaFever would compete with it. If the rumors are to be believed, they hope to launch by the New Year and charge us more for a streaming service that mixes HBO programming with Kdramas. They might think we're going to go "Oh wow yes, Kdramas totally go well with HBO! Of COURSE I forgive you for yanking DramaFever out from under me the day after you took my money, I don't give a rodent's rear about the employees you screwed over, and I'm more than happy to throw twice as much cash at you monthly for the honorable privilege of subscribing to the new streaming service that you launched to replace my favorite Kdrama streaming platform. Where do I sign up?!"

How about no. I dunno about you all but I'm more like... "Thanks sooo much DramaFever. */sarc* I would have understood if there had been some warning for everyone affected, a decent apology, and at least somewhat of a real actual explanation. I'd have been sad to see you go, but accepting. The way you skipped out on us all like a one-night-stand however leaves me inclined to give you this little bit of advice: If you think I'm going to come crawling to you for a new streaming service, that I in any way think you understand your customer base if you're going to offer HBO alongside Kdramas, that I forgive you for your insane lack of employee and customer consideration, and that I'll ever want to trust you again, well you can take that big fat NO and shove it along with your rumored streaming service."

And on that note, this whole Dramageddon thing left so many Kdrama lovers in search of a new place to get their drama fix... Me too. I don't know anyone who wanted to wait around for December to see if Warner was going to launch that rumored streaming service after all. The two main players in the replacement category seem to be Viki and KOCOWA. [ Off topic but... How do you even pronounce that? Like a co(habitating-moo)-cow-a or like a coco(nut)-wa(ter)? I have no clue. Let me know if you know! ] I guess there's another one available to the US, called ondemandkorea.com but when I looked at it, not everything was subtitled and it seemed to be 99% the same things Viki and Kocowa had. If you're not in the US, I saw a good list of suggestions here: https://www.kdramapal.com/top-korean-drama-streaming-sites/

Back to Viki vs. Kocowa... From what little I know, KOCOWA is a Korean company that offers dramas from the 3 bigwig broadcasters in S. Kor. and has a partnership with Viki where they allow Viki to distribute most (but not all) of the dramas they offer as a part of Viki's most expensive subscription package. You would think that makes Viki the obvious choice, but alas, KOCOWA had "My Secret Terrius" which they did NOT share with Viki and I was going nuts to see the rest of it. (It's adorable and hilarious BTW, with bite-sized episodes perfect for my busy life.) Overall Viki seemed like the better choice. Viki is a subsidary of a Japanese company I guess? and they offer more dramas from other Asian countries than Drama Fever did. In addition, they have some older American movies (classics, action movies, westerns, Roy Rogers, John Wayne, there was even the Shirley Temple version of A Little Princess on there for a while but they seem to have just taken it off- glad my kids got to see it before they deleted it), Iniesta (Japanese sports & culture), Variety shows, Awards shows, telenovelas and they generate their own content including Viki-exclusive Kdramas and celebrity interview shows. They also have educational and socially interesting content by popular YouTubers such as TalkToMeInKorean.com and Drawing Hands. Oh and they are currently having a sale - 30% VikiPass Standard Annual. That means about $50 for a year of Standard (No Kocowa included.)

Some of the other disgruntled DramaFever Dump-ees I spoke to opted to go for either Kocowa OR Viki, some opted to get Viki Standard and Kocowa separately. I opted to get Viki Plus (which includes most of what Kocowa has, but not all) annual, AND Kocowa monthly.
[Hi, my name's Jessica and I'm addicted to Asian Dramas. I've hit both Viki AND Kocowa today. My last fix was 1 hour ago. I probably need help.] 
If Kocowa doesn't keep having enough dramas not shared with Viki to keep my interest, I'll cancel it eventually. For now though I have GOT to see how My Secret Terrius ends. (It's so cute! If you have Kocowa you so need to see it!!!)


[UPDATE 4/20/2019: If you like Chinese dramas, there's a new streaming site in town!]
*~*~*

Did you get dumped on Dramageddon too? Did you find a new place to watch your dramas yet? How do you feel about the way DF ditched their customers and about the rumors surrounding Warner's possible new streaming service? Whatcha watching lately? Leave me a comment! :)

To The Beautiful You [아름다운 그대에게]

♥♥♥/♥♥ 

TITLE: To The Beautiful You [아름다운 그대에게]  
ORIGINAL AIR DATE: 2012, August 15 - October 04  
WIKI: asianwiki.com/To_The_Beautiful_You 
SEASONS/EPISODES: 1 / 16  
US AVAILABILITY (as of 2018-11-14): Viki (free w/ads), Kocowa (free w/ads) 

Gu Jae Hee is a female highschool student on a mission to help her favorite athlete return to his sport. She's willing to do anything, no matter the cost, even it means leaving her family in America and moving back to Korea disguised as a boy in order to infiltrate said-athlete's all-boys'-school and figure out a way to help him. She fortuitously manages to get assigned as his roommate, but he's not very cooperative with even having a roomie, let alone starting up practice for the high jump again. 

Basic summary:
Gu Jae Hee's father died and her mom moved to the US when she was 5 to remarry. Now Jae Hee is a highschool student and the person she admires most is Olympic high-jump medalist Kang Tae Joon. Tae Joon was reportedly injured and did not return to his sport, worrying the kindhearted Jae Hee. She disguises herself as a boy, transfers to Tae Joon's all-boys' school in South Korea, and sets out to convince and help him to return to his sport. 

After facing some minor hazing, and somehow managing to get assigned to the same dorm room as TaeJoon, JaeHee tries to juggle sports, school, new friends, and her angry antisocial project-roomie. She is befriended by the "happy virus" Cha Eun Gyul who shares the dorm room next to TaeJoon and JaeHee's with TaeJoon's high jump rival. EunGyul turns out to be a loyal friend, but he also finds himself inexplicably drawn to JaeHee in more than a friend way.
Meanwhile, JaeHee has barely managed to secure acceptance from TaeJoon as a room-mate. He seems on the verge of kicking her out every other minute. JaeHee's older step-brother is in town to speak at a lecture and of course wants to hang out with little sis. She poses as a student from a nearby girls' school for a day in order to convince him all is well. Unfortunately for all the work she puts into fooling him, he still finds out. TaeJoon accidentally overhears an argument between JaeHee and her Oppa in which big bro scolds her royally for posing as a boy and transferring to a boys' school and demands that she come home to America with him!
Feeling like the best option for all involved is to kick JaeHee out ASAP without letting her know he knows her secret, TaeJoon surprises himself when he changes his mind and chases after her to bring her back.
JaeHee puts her all into helping TaeJoon but a perpetual monkey wrench in her plans is TaeJoon's female childhood friend, a gymnast, who keeps sneaking into the dorm and trying to convince TaeJoon to date her. She knows something is "off" about JaeHee but she can't quite put her finger on it... yet.
Can JaeHee stay friends with EunGyul, help TaeJoon return to jumping, and avoid being found out? 

Flow and sequence: 

Step 1: secure identity as a male student and room mate of TaeJoon.
Step 2: convince big brother not to take her away and do everything possible to get TaeJoon back on track to qualify for the Olympics again.
Step 3: Dodge a lot of potential problems, including a best friend who has begun to fall in love with her despite believing she's a boy, an old guy friend showing up to try to steal her away, and a certain overly suspicious and persistent gymnast who dislikes JaeHee near TaeJoon but doesn't have all the pieces just yet to understand WHY JaeHee makes all the warning bells in her head scream.
Step 4: wrap up life as a boy while the inevitable day draws nearer and nearer in which she'll likely be outed to everyone and have to leave in shame. 

Cast/ Characters/ Acting: 

f(x) Sulli as Gu Jae Hee: Her acting was good. She's really good at doing the big-eyed cry face and did a good job portraying her character. I had the most problem with the fact that there's just literally no way in real life that she would be mistaken for a boy over the age of 12.
Minho (SHINee) as Kang Tae Joon: I saw him in Hwarang first (where he did a fabulous job, IMO) and while I don't think he was "terrible" in To The Beautiful You, his acting wasn't the best back then. It wasn't anywhere near distractingly bad, just here and there something nondescript would feel like it was missing if you looked too hard. I think his looks and facial expressions matched the character perfectly.
Lee Hyun Woo as Cha Eun Gyul: Okay now this kid can ACT. Wow! He blew me away. You could really just feel everything he was feeling.
Side Characters: Kim Ji Won did a great job playing the immature and obnoxious gymnast Seol Han Na. Seo Jun Young as senior student Seung Ri in JaeHee's dorm was a character you see more and more as the series goes on. He did great playing the slightly-annoying but still somehow likeable character. Kang Ha Nuel played TaeJoon's rival Min Hyun Jae, a character where you could tell there's more than meets the eye. Kang Ha Nuel played Hyun Jae's frustration and inner conflict perfectly. The half-French half-Korean actor Julian Kang did well as Jae Hee's brother. He wasn't the best actor but I'd say far from "bad." I don't speak fluent Korean myself, but his lines in English were delivered believably, and I confess I was quite entertained watching and hearing someone who LOOKS so "western" speak Korean with such ease. 

Writing and directing: *SPOILER ALERT* skip to Happy Ending Factor section to avoid spoilers.  

Honestly I don't have a lot of complaints but I did feel like the character Eun Gyul really got the short end of the stick in this drama. He was smiley and cheerful and a good friend and fell in love and then all he gets out of the drama is rejected and abandoned. I felt really bad for the way the script drug this character along on and on and on, confusing him about his feelings and his loyalties and his sexuality and then just left him without a real happy ending. Like the whole script he was just being USED as the protagonist for whatever needed to happen that the other characters couldn't fulfill. I didn't like it. He was such a nice guy, he didn't deserve to be strung along so heartlessly and then left without a happy ending. He didn't even have the dignity of being told face to face that JaeHee was a girl.
The whole idea of a highschool-sophmore-aged(?) girl traveling to another country alone and unescorted to pretend to be a boy to befriend and help an athlete she admired from the TV was farfetched. It probably could have been explained more thoroughly in order to make it feel more plausible, but then the series would have drug on boringly while they did that, and people would lost interest before the real story could even begin. Catch-22. I suppose it's best that they just went with the sparsely-explained version rather than bore us to death, but even so I had a hard time getting pulled into the storyline for a while at first because of the unrealism of it.
The character Song Jong Min felt really unnecessary. It felt like he was just there to look like an @$$. All he really ever did was yell rudely about the obvious, scoff and roll his eyes, and apply more lip product than a dozen 11 year old girls.
The kisses/hugs/skinship progression was weird. Like the characters would overreact to their faces being too close together but then the same characters would be relatively chill about kissing, then back to having a panic attack at the other person being too close/touching. 

Happy Ending Factor? 

Probably 4 out of 5 on the happy ending scale. All the main characters seemed to be left with a clear or insinuated happy ending except the one I mentioned in the section above with the spoilers - which was my most irritant pet peeve about this series. 

Final Summary: 

Overall this was a cute series, and a fast watch. I'd say I'm glad I watched it once. I may even watch it again some day. 

Check out {To The Beautiful You} on Viki!
Check out {To The Beautiful You} on Kocowa! 
Check out {To The Beautiful You OST} on Spotify!
(Above links based on US availability. Dramas may not be available on certain sites for certain countries. It depends who acquired the license for a specific drama for your country and who did not. Drama may be available on Netflix in your country but not even show up in mine, so check there if you have a Netflix acct. Ditto for Viki- may be available in your country but not mine. Click HERE for a list of legal Kdrama streaming sites and what countries they work in.) 

I Cannot Hug You / Untouchable [无法拥抱的你]

♥♥♥/♥♥ 

TITLE: I Cannot Hug You / Untouchable  [无法拥抱的你]
ORIGINAL AIR DATE: November 20, 2017 to March 12, 2018 
WIKI: n/a
SEASONS/EPISODES: 2 seasons, 32 half-hour episodes total. 
US AVAILABILITY (as of 2018-11-11): Viki (free w/ads) 

Overview: 
This Chinese drama is based on the Korean webtoon "Untouchable." In the webtoon, vampires have evolved to no longer need to drink blood to survive, but can absorb a human's energy just by skin-to-skin contact. An impulsive young vampiress named Sia Lee becomes obsessed with a human man after a brief (but apparently delicious- haha) hand to hand touch. She has never failed in the hunt before, but this particular prey happens to be germophobic, making him quite resistant to skinship. 

(Warning, if you're interested in reading the webtoon, I would say it's inappropriate for kids based on both the images and content. As a model, the main female character is often depicted wearing little more than underwear for photo shoots. We also read her lustful thoughts for the human male and see her dreams/daydreams of him shirtless, in addition to her male childhood vampire friend constantly saying inappropriate things to and about her.) 

Basic summary: 

Popular model Li Shiya is a modern vampire who feels suffocated by her overprotective family. In this drama version, her father runs a stable and gives riding lessons, a family business that affords many opportunities to casually touch the humans who come to ride horses without absorbing enough energy from any single human to raise suspicions. He drills into his family, especially Shiya, that a vampire should never take more than the minimum amount of energy needed to survive, which is a total of 3 minutes of skin-to-skin contact every day. If a vampire goes a week without consuming human energy, they can die of starvation. Shiya is a bit of a "food"-addict and would love to "eat" as much as she could of many tasty humans every day, but her father is extra strict with her- strangely even moreso than with her older sister and younger brother. 

One day Shiya has had it with her controlling father and runs away, getting her own apartment and setting out to "eat" her fill of tasty humans. She accidentally-on-purpose bumps into a man carrying a stack of books, with the intent of accidentally-on-purpose touching his hand when she goes to help him pick up the spilled books. The touch lasts seconds, if that, but it's a taste Shiya won't soon forget, so delicious it practically spoils her appetite for anything else. The human man isn't pleased and jerks his hand away, shortly accusing her of being a stalker who keeps following him around trying to touch him, before stalking off and leaving her sputtering. Shiya is highly offended and complains to her psychotherapist sister Lanxi and her childhood best friend Simba that someone falsely accused her of being a stalker. And all of her social media... haha. As she's unpacking in her new apartment later, she opens a box that contains... children's books?! It's a misdelivered package that actually belongs to her new next door neighbor, a reclusive author by the name of Jiang Zhihao. Upon attempting to return the package to it's rightful owner, she finds out he's the delicious human from before... he reiterates his stalker accusation over the intercom and refuses to emerge to claim his package. Shiya decides to keep his package hostage then until he comes to apologize and ask for it, at which time she plans to refuse to open the door for him as revenge. After going drinking with her popstar BFF Simba and his human best friend Shihuan, expressing her frustrations by describing her craving for Zhihao as being like craving fried chicken, Shiya saves Zhihao's phone number off the misdelivered package under the name "Fried Chicken." Shiya finds out about Zhihao's germophobic tendencies, and also winds up stopping the REAL stalker from touching him, but to her frustration, instead of being thankful enough to touch her, Zhihao claims she's no better than the stalker anyway. 
Meanwhile Zhihao finds out that he can't just reorder those books from the internet as they are out of stock everywhere now. (We find out later the importance of those specific books!) When he has to go to Shiya to ask for his books back, she has hatched a plan to make Zhihao date her in return for his books. Her plan is that in the course of dating him she will "cure" him of his germophobia so that he'll let her touch him. 

Flow and sequence: 

The plot of Season 1 is half about Shiya's schemes to get Zhihao cured of his germophobia so she can "eat" him and the two of them falling in love with each other in the course of it, and half about a mystery entity kidnapping vampires and performing experiments on them. The plot of season 2 is about Zhihao and Shiya having to overcome each thinking they are protecting the other with their secrecy, but by their lack of communication they are actually making everything worse.  

Cast and acting: 

This drama seemed to be overacted a little for comedic effect, especially near the beginning, but not nearly as much as some dramas I've seen. I think the actors and actresses did a great job with what they were given. I was especially impressed with Xu Kai Cheng's acting skills as CEO Cui and Su Ze Yuan's acting skills as Shihuan. 

Writing and directing: 

The original webtoon was well written and engaging. The characters' behavior was believable. I felt like the writers for the drama adapted it well, keeping it very close to the storyline in the webtoon. Where changes were made that diverted the drama from the webtoon, I feel those changes were beneficial to the film portrayal and kept the storyline cohesive. 

Characters (contains spoilers):
The storyline itself is a fresh take on the old vampire lore, and having the vampire be the female and the human male be a germ-freak makes for good plot twists and a lot of options for turning the old drama tropes around backward. For example, Li Shiya lustily pins Zhihao against a wall at one point and down on the couch at another, as he cringes away afraid of cooties. Then in season 2, we get to see Zhihao being manly and protecting her more, not just taking the lead in their relationship physically when she's shying away afraid to hurt him, but also with his beautiful writer's brain as he expertly goes all Sherlock Holmes and solves the mystery of who is out to hurt Shiya, why, and how.
Simba struggles with abandonment issues from being orphaned and unhealthy people-pleasing and fixation on Shiya as a savior-figure who gave him a home where he was finally understood. Zhihao also struggles with abandonment issues after his mother left him by default when she walked out on his cold workaholic father. Instead of people-pleasing, his symptoms manifest as an OCD.
Season 1 antagonist CEO Cui has tortured himself with the guilt of unintentionally having killed his first love, to the point where he has delusions that even if it took killing Shiya and Zhihao in the course of resurrecting his dead love, doing so would somehow absolve him of that guilt. Talk about serious mental issues. Even Shiya's family struggles with properly dealing with what happened with Shiya's childhood friend in season 2- Shiya's parents and older sister are overly strict and overprotective hoping to not have a repeat of the situation, but instead of giving her the knowledge and power to avoid duplicating her mistakes, they are relying on keeping her in the dark and controlling her. Shiya is chaffing from being so strictly controlled and aching to be free to make her own choices as an adult, and almost repeats a nearly-deadly mistake from childhood in her quest to make her own decisions even if it means direct disobedience to her parents and sister.
The whole series, Shihuan wholeheartedly loves Simba who only has eyes for Shiya. I found the contrast between the wholely unselfish way Shihuan loves Simba and the entirely self-serving way Simba loves Shiya quite profound. He defends him and stands by him, letting himself be used and abused as a human battery/ emergency food supply and never asking anything in return. In the end, he sees Simba starting down the path of evil and finally turns his back on him, which I suspect might have been the only thing that prevented Simba from totally turning evil in the end. After that, unless I missed it, we don't get to see what ever happened to Shihuan. The love Shihuan had for Simba was so pure and unselfish, so unsexual (in the webtoon it was more of a crush-love, but in the drama it's portrayed as a very pure kind of love), that I couldn't help but see beauty in it. Even the love between Shiya and Zhihao was more selfish and far more lust-based at times, making the truly self-sacrificing way Shihuan unchangingly cared for Simba bring me to tears. 

Other: 

If you're not familiar with Chinese dramas, the dubbing may catch you off guard. Many Chinese dramas have all the lines and sound effects re-recorded for volume and accent consistency and then dubbed over the video! In some of the older Chinese dramas I've seen, the dubbing is not in sync with their lips much if at all and it bothered me terribly! In this particular drama, the vocal re-recording is fairly well done and well synchronized (though still obvious it's dubbed over), so IMO one can get used to it quickly and get absorbed in the show without too much distraction. 

Happy Ending Factor? 

Both seasons ended happily for Shiya and Zhihao, though some of the side characters fared less pleasantly. There were some loose ends in the end of season 2 of the drama that were actually wrapped up a little better in the webtoon.  

(SPOILER SECTION! SKIP to Final Summary if you don't want to know how it ends!) 

At the end of Season 1, Yu Ze (the boyfriend of Shiya's manager Xu Quingran) kills himself out of guilt for the atrocities his underlings committed in his name, so if suicide is a trigger for you, you may wish to avoid this drama altogether or at least skip the rest of the episode when it looks like that part is impending. Quingran just thinks he's in prison and we don't see any resolution to that.
At the end of Season 2, Shiya and Zhihao are back together but we don't get any explanation as to how they can be together now after having it drilled into our brains all 2nd season that Shiya is so powerful she could accidentally kill him at any moment. However in the Webtoon, it was indicated that after sharing half her power with Zhihao to save his life, her powers were no longer a danger to him! We see Shiya and Zhihao back together and find out that when the child Shiya was in the hospital unconscious, having given up on her own life after nearly killing a friend, it was a child Zhihao who saved her life. Which brings up the question of what if Shiya and Zhihao have a child together... I don't remember that being addressed in the webtoon and the drama does not clear it up either; no it leaves us hanging on that question with the ending of the first season still lingering in our minds. Remembering the hopeless halfbreed Yu Ze killing himself because he spent his short life sparing no cost to try to live past 30 and wound up buried under the guilt before he could find a cure. So if Shiya and Zhihao have a half breed baby, what will be that child's fate? 

Final Summary: 

Very interesting drama that kept my interest throughout the series. No slow patch in the middle of the series- it mostly kept a steady pace. I think it took me 3 days to binge watch this entire drama! I watched the first season in 1 day, and then took 2 days for the second season. I liked how the characters struggled with deep and profound issues that took more than a few minutes in dramaland to work through. 

Check out I Cannot Hug You [无法拥抱的你] on Viki! 
(Above links based on US availability. Dramas may not be available on certain sites for certain countries. It depends who acquired the license for a specific drama for your country and who did not. Drama may be available on Netflix in your country but not even show up in mine, so check there if you have a Netflix acct. Click HERE for a list of legal Kdrama streaming sites and what countries they work in.) 

Prince of Wolf [狼王子]

♥♥♥/♥♥ 

TITLE: Prince of Wolf [狼王子] 
ORIGINAL AIR DATE: July 03 to October 31st, 2016 
WIKI: n/a 
SEASONS/EPISODES: 1 season, 18 episodes, 1 1/4 hours long each. 
US AVAILABILITY (as of 2019-04-20): Viki (free w/ads), HotPotTV (free)  

Prince of Wolf is the story of an herbalist's daughter meeting and falling in love with the heir of a wealthy company who was "lost" in the woods as a little boy and raised by "wolves." This is a Taiwanese take on the classic feral child legends. Tarzan or the Jungle Book or whatnot. This one is super corny, like if George of the Jungle expected you to actually take it seriously. Lol! With the drama My Love From Another Star I wished I could rate the first half like 2 or 3 and the second half 4 out of 5... Well with Prince of Wolf it'd be backward: I'd rate the first half a 4 and the second half a 2 or 3. The ending is really good but getting through most of the second half to get to it is annoying. 

Basic summary:
Mi Mi knows a legend about Wolf Mountain and goes to photograph it, where she gets stranded in the rain and spends the night in a cave with a super buff and unworldly man named Zhe Ming whom she found swimming in a mountain waterfall pool. He becomes her guide and they spend a few days together on the mountain. She gets sick (RAIN touched her HAIR! Ahhhh!) and Zhe Ming gives her a mountain herb that heals her. Later, she is back home and Zhe Ming has moved in with her family in their herb store in the village. Mi Mi teaches him to read and write and her family accepts him and he takes care of them too. Zhe Ming is head over heels for Mi Mi but she's hard to win over. Just when he finally wins her over and they are a couple, things start going wrong. Zhe Ming's uncle is the one who left him to die on the mountain as a child, so when uncle finds out he's still alive, he begins to plot how to get rid of him, keep him a secret, or if all else fails, kill Zhe Ming. 

Flow and sequence: 

Mi Mi finds Zhe Ming and they live happily together on Wolf Mountain.
Mi Mi takes Zhe Ming home with her to the herb store and they live happily there for a while.
Things start going wrong as Mi Mi has a secret and leaves for A YEAR to hide it, meanwhile Zhe Ming's uncle wants him dead and a childhood friend of Zhe Ming's surfaces.
Mi Mi is back. Zhe Ming and Ah Wei are rivals for the company now. Mi Mi needs a personal miracle, Zhe Ming and Mi Mi need a miracle in their relationship, and Uncle must be stopped once and for all... 

Cast/ Characters/ Acting: 

Derek Chang who plays Zhe Ming was only 23 playing the part of a 30 year old- and wow he didn't look a day over 19 IMHO. He's super buff though... The man has muscles for days. 
Amber An who played Mi Mi is like 5'8" tall and Derek Chang/Zhe Ming still dwarfs her!! She was 31 when this was made. So they do look a little lopsided together, both trying to play 30 year olds with 7 1/4 years of age difference. 

Writing and directing: 

Okay this show was SO CUTE for the first half with Mi Mi and Zhe Ming as a couple, but the second half was insanely frustrating. I was SO FRUSTRATED. You know those shows where nothing goes right for a while and then something cracks and everyone hugs and decides to push though together and fight for their happy ending as a team? Yeah no... this one the whole second half was nothing going right. Nothing "cracked" until the very end, leaving a very short time of satisfaction after such a long frustrating time. The writers almost made Mi Mi bipolar, she was so inconsistent. I thought I was connecting with her character but then they ruined it and I was just disgusted with her and all her inconsistent and dumb-as-a-clump-of-dirt decisions. While she was running away, Zhe Ming's broken heart propelled him to become a more jaded, serious, less innocent person and I didn't like the way that happened. It was like the writers couldn't think of any clever way to make him grow up and take his place in the world without killing the beautiful innocent spark of life in his eyes. I was so mad, but I couldn't turn it off: by the time things went down the drain, I was so invested in seeing that Zhe Ming gets a happy ending that I suffered through the second half and it was torture. I'm so glad after all that, that it did get a happy ending!  

Other: 

Apparently the show got some mixed attention for using Huskies to play the wolves. I didn't personally have any feelings on the matter either way. I did find the sound effects they used for the "wolves" to be poorly implemented (corny, eyeroll, cringe).

Happy Ending Factor? 

It was like being drug through broken glass to get there, but there was a happy ending. Barely, but once we got there it was good.

(SPOILER SECTION! SKIP to Final Summary if you don't want to know how it ends!) 

So many characters really tug the heartstrings in this one! Mi Mi's sister loves her very much despite her own struggle with feeling like she was only born to be a donor to potentially cure an incurable illness Mi Mi is afflicted with. The uncle is a mess, hating, hurting, fearing, and regretting at the same time! Zhe Ming's poor sweet mom who has been hoping to find him for all these years and even after he's found she has to wait still because the bad Uncle won't tell her the truth. :'( I even feel bad for Mi Mi's rejected suitor Hao Wei who just got the short end of the stick on pretty much everything his whole life, and still chose to be an honorable person in the end. 

Final Summary: 

I know it sounds like I hated it from my intense whining about the frustrating-ness of Mi Mi's character inconsistencies and the related drama-drama in the second half, but I actually didn't hate it. I love me a good fantasy. If I ever watch it again though, I will probably watch the first 10 or 11 episodes and then watch the last 3 episodes to spare myself the frustration of the episodes between when Mi Mi leaves and the long awaited resolutions and happy ending. That was just too many episodes of everything going wrong for me to handle. 

Check out Prince Of Wolf on Viki!
Check out Prince Of Wolf on HotPotTV!
Check out the Prince Of Wolf OST on Spotify! 
(Above links based on US availability. Dramas may not be available on certain sites for certain countries. It depends who acquired the license for a specific drama for your country and who did not. Drama may be available on Netflix in your country but not even show up in mine, so check there if you have a Netflix acct. Click HERE for a list of legal Kdrama streaming sites and what countries they work in.)