Bride of the Water God
Aug. 27th, 2017 11:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spsnI haven't been watching any drama in particular nowadays, I guess work is getting in a way and the unnecessary stress level starts to build up lately, but anyhow, I finally finish watching this pretty drama. At the end of the day, unfortunately this is what it came down to, this drama is a pretty drama, the color, the scenes are pretty, there's no doubt about it. But then? Ah, this is where all the ugly parts come about.
As much as I hate to say this, this drama is on the way to the doom since the get go. Firstly they have the manhwa which obviously has lots of fans, then they deconstruct it (I like to use this word just like any other contestant in MasterChef), and you know when you have to use the word deconstruct, you have to deliver a bloody damn good job if not to exceed the original. In this case, what they do is just basically taking the idea of the bride water god, change the whole setting to modern setting instead of historical (probably makes sense for budgeting purposes), completely change the storyline that what's left is that it's an inspired drama based on manhwa 'Bride of the Water God' instead of a live-action.
It is one thing if you made tons of changes for the drama to the original works, after all, you need to change something to adapt the manhwa into drama format and make sure it delivers within 16 episodes, the keyword is the story got to be bloody damn good, in which this drama fail miserably. It started off pretty OK, with rather slow phasing with HaBaek was given mission to search for the god stones in the human realm as a test before he become a king, and then since he lost all his power (well, except for emergency usage, which can't be entirely explained), he found the god servant to basically support him, and slowly the god and servant fall in love. Okay, it doesn't sound so bad, but then the drama lost its track in the original plot somewhere along the line when supporting characters start popping up (HaBaek friends, the half god CEO, the small gods, the irritating but good assistant, the bitchy bully of a 3rd rate celebrity, the CEO's secretary, to name a few) and the drama doesn't really know what to do with all those, and have them running around with no apparent back story which even related to the main plot itself. For example, MooRa's bitchiness towards the girl, SooAh, is it due to pure jealousy and just plain bitchiness or because she thought only the best for HaBaek. Even her loyalty is questionable. If she's that loyal to HaBaek, why she's so persistent in breaking the OTP up to the point collaborating with the half god CEO that she doesn't like. Some will say, but she has to do that to prevent HaBaek to stop existing because HaBaek will disappear if he stays in the human realm and not becoming the king of gods... but wait, that's just the last minute angst added on, so what's MooRa's intention in the beginning? Then you have BiRyeom, the other equally annoying god that use his power just for his whim. His hatred towards half god is explainable, but not to why he seems to have some ill intention towards HaBaek. Some friends that HaBaek has, huh? And in between all the chaos, you suddenly have MooRa and BiRyeom suddenly hooked up, after 1 or 2 kissing scenes, which has zero feels in it. Then in the last 4 episodes, the drama suddenly have the feels 'oh shit, it's going to end, but we haven't done anything yet, so let's create some last minute angst and quickly wrap the whole thing up in the last episode, but oh wait we still have to slip in cute scenes of HaBaekxSooAh just to appease the already infuriated fans, just for the sake of it'. So, there you have it, a pretty drama that is really pretty but in massive mess of a story and a half-assed ending.
Lots of K-drama also can't escape from a messy plot, regardless whether it's pre-produced or live-production, and I've never seen any perfect drama except for PRIDE or Ryusei no Kisuna or Tenno Ryouriban. Okay, there're others in J-drama, but this is just utterly biased opinion of me, and the fact I can't find that equally satisfying result after finishing a drama series in K-drama, on personal level. K-drama tends to leave me wrecked with emotion or rolling eyes with fluffiness but still watching them because they're just addictive. But definitely not the feels of 'wow, that's satisfying'. Back to the topic, so, despite of the imperfectness, K-drama thrives if the OTP works because they give you feels, the shipping is good because you get the characters and you just want them to be protected and happy. And sadly Bride of the Water God has a very weak OTP that when you add up the messy story line, it becomes a huge pile of mess. Why the OTP doesn't work here? You got the pretty Nam Joo Hyuk, and Shin Se Kyung, and they're really pretty to look at. Where is the wrong part of the equation? Well, it goes back to the story line. Basically in this drama our OTP just do cute things together, share some stories, stare at each others, but the yearning, the wanting, the small touches is not there. I won't say there's no chemistry between the OTP because for this case it's beyond the chemistry. You have Soo Ah keeps on saying things that she doesn't mean to, trying to do the good for the situation that they both in, but her wanting HaBaek or loving HaBaek not really properly told in the drama other than how miserable she was when HaBaek was gone and how happy she was when she saw HaBaek was back. It gives you the big question, so what? Does it mean that SooAh really loves HaBaek (just saying 'sarang hae' is not enough if there's no story to back it up) or she just like his company? Same thing with HaBaek, we don't get to see that one moment when HaBaek realized that he loved SooAh. He just kept on saving her life, ordering her around, waiting for her to go home at the same spot (this is very sweet btw, but it's just not enough), and then? Where's the yearning, the longing? Let's do an extreme comparison with Scarlet Heart Ryeo, the drama where the OTP is obviously working so hard that the fans just can't forgive the wretched ending that the drama gave them. The drama purposely put 1 scene to show the moment Wang So realized that he's falling in love with HaeSoo and his attitude and everything just gravitated towards her afterwards, despite how messy the story is. We don't have this here, the drama just expect the audience to ASSUME that HaBaek loved SooAh along the way. Well, that's not how it works, right? We as audience liked to be told and showed, which is why we watch TV, not reading books. Again cute date scenes DOES NOT mean that the love is there.
Then, to add the messiness, as much as I love NJH (pretty, how not to love?), HaBaek character is too complex for the current him, period. His struggles really shows in the last 4 episodes. The story line and direction obviously doesn't help him much either, so basically it's very difficult for him to have the right interpretation of HaBaek in the first place. As a result, you'll see often that HaBaek looks confused and just has blank expression, and he looks just like Yamapi in romcom! *gasp*, and NJH was doing well in Weightlifting Fairy, so this comes out to me as sad outcome of TV station trying to rake ratings just using the actor's rising popularity. I hope this experience helps NJH to better select his roles and hone his acting skills in the future.
There's still one good thing about the drama though. It's the half god CEO character! He's actually better written than the rest of the characters, even the OTP. Plus, the actor himself, Lim Ju Hwan, has so much varieties in emotional expressions that watching him in angst and put in the facade of the model CEO is so much fun! And he practically outshine NJH in most of the scenes, the acting level is so obvious. This is like watching the 3 brothers crying over Hae Soo's urn in SHR all over again.
So in conclusion, unless you're a huge fan of NJH, or just like to see cute scenes and don't care much about the story, and you've never read the manhwa before, then you will watch this drama without sighing in frustration, else, yeah...
As much as I hate to say this, this drama is on the way to the doom since the get go. Firstly they have the manhwa which obviously has lots of fans, then they deconstruct it (I like to use this word just like any other contestant in MasterChef), and you know when you have to use the word deconstruct, you have to deliver a bloody damn good job if not to exceed the original. In this case, what they do is just basically taking the idea of the bride water god, change the whole setting to modern setting instead of historical (probably makes sense for budgeting purposes), completely change the storyline that what's left is that it's an inspired drama based on manhwa 'Bride of the Water God' instead of a live-action.
It is one thing if you made tons of changes for the drama to the original works, after all, you need to change something to adapt the manhwa into drama format and make sure it delivers within 16 episodes, the keyword is the story got to be bloody damn good, in which this drama fail miserably. It started off pretty OK, with rather slow phasing with HaBaek was given mission to search for the god stones in the human realm as a test before he become a king, and then since he lost all his power (well, except for emergency usage, which can't be entirely explained), he found the god servant to basically support him, and slowly the god and servant fall in love. Okay, it doesn't sound so bad, but then the drama lost its track in the original plot somewhere along the line when supporting characters start popping up (HaBaek friends, the half god CEO, the small gods, the irritating but good assistant, the bitchy bully of a 3rd rate celebrity, the CEO's secretary, to name a few) and the drama doesn't really know what to do with all those, and have them running around with no apparent back story which even related to the main plot itself. For example, MooRa's bitchiness towards the girl, SooAh, is it due to pure jealousy and just plain bitchiness or because she thought only the best for HaBaek. Even her loyalty is questionable. If she's that loyal to HaBaek, why she's so persistent in breaking the OTP up to the point collaborating with the half god CEO that she doesn't like. Some will say, but she has to do that to prevent HaBaek to stop existing because HaBaek will disappear if he stays in the human realm and not becoming the king of gods... but wait, that's just the last minute angst added on, so what's MooRa's intention in the beginning? Then you have BiRyeom, the other equally annoying god that use his power just for his whim. His hatred towards half god is explainable, but not to why he seems to have some ill intention towards HaBaek. Some friends that HaBaek has, huh? And in between all the chaos, you suddenly have MooRa and BiRyeom suddenly hooked up, after 1 or 2 kissing scenes, which has zero feels in it. Then in the last 4 episodes, the drama suddenly have the feels 'oh shit, it's going to end, but we haven't done anything yet, so let's create some last minute angst and quickly wrap the whole thing up in the last episode, but oh wait we still have to slip in cute scenes of HaBaekxSooAh just to appease the already infuriated fans, just for the sake of it'. So, there you have it, a pretty drama that is really pretty but in massive mess of a story and a half-assed ending.
Lots of K-drama also can't escape from a messy plot, regardless whether it's pre-produced or live-production, and I've never seen any perfect drama except for PRIDE or Ryusei no Kisuna or Tenno Ryouriban. Okay, there're others in J-drama, but this is just utterly biased opinion of me, and the fact I can't find that equally satisfying result after finishing a drama series in K-drama, on personal level. K-drama tends to leave me wrecked with emotion or rolling eyes with fluffiness but still watching them because they're just addictive. But definitely not the feels of 'wow, that's satisfying'. Back to the topic, so, despite of the imperfectness, K-drama thrives if the OTP works because they give you feels, the shipping is good because you get the characters and you just want them to be protected and happy. And sadly Bride of the Water God has a very weak OTP that when you add up the messy story line, it becomes a huge pile of mess. Why the OTP doesn't work here? You got the pretty Nam Joo Hyuk, and Shin Se Kyung, and they're really pretty to look at. Where is the wrong part of the equation? Well, it goes back to the story line. Basically in this drama our OTP just do cute things together, share some stories, stare at each others, but the yearning, the wanting, the small touches is not there. I won't say there's no chemistry between the OTP because for this case it's beyond the chemistry. You have Soo Ah keeps on saying things that she doesn't mean to, trying to do the good for the situation that they both in, but her wanting HaBaek or loving HaBaek not really properly told in the drama other than how miserable she was when HaBaek was gone and how happy she was when she saw HaBaek was back. It gives you the big question, so what? Does it mean that SooAh really loves HaBaek (just saying 'sarang hae' is not enough if there's no story to back it up) or she just like his company? Same thing with HaBaek, we don't get to see that one moment when HaBaek realized that he loved SooAh. He just kept on saving her life, ordering her around, waiting for her to go home at the same spot (this is very sweet btw, but it's just not enough), and then? Where's the yearning, the longing? Let's do an extreme comparison with Scarlet Heart Ryeo, the drama where the OTP is obviously working so hard that the fans just can't forgive the wretched ending that the drama gave them. The drama purposely put 1 scene to show the moment Wang So realized that he's falling in love with HaeSoo and his attitude and everything just gravitated towards her afterwards, despite how messy the story is. We don't have this here, the drama just expect the audience to ASSUME that HaBaek loved SooAh along the way. Well, that's not how it works, right? We as audience liked to be told and showed, which is why we watch TV, not reading books. Again cute date scenes DOES NOT mean that the love is there.
Then, to add the messiness, as much as I love NJH (pretty, how not to love?), HaBaek character is too complex for the current him, period. His struggles really shows in the last 4 episodes. The story line and direction obviously doesn't help him much either, so basically it's very difficult for him to have the right interpretation of HaBaek in the first place. As a result, you'll see often that HaBaek looks confused and just has blank expression, and he looks just like Yamapi in romcom! *gasp*, and NJH was doing well in Weightlifting Fairy, so this comes out to me as sad outcome of TV station trying to rake ratings just using the actor's rising popularity. I hope this experience helps NJH to better select his roles and hone his acting skills in the future.
There's still one good thing about the drama though. It's the half god CEO character! He's actually better written than the rest of the characters, even the OTP. Plus, the actor himself, Lim Ju Hwan, has so much varieties in emotional expressions that watching him in angst and put in the facade of the model CEO is so much fun! And he practically outshine NJH in most of the scenes, the acting level is so obvious. This is like watching the 3 brothers crying over Hae Soo's urn in SHR all over again.
So in conclusion, unless you're a huge fan of NJH, or just like to see cute scenes and don't care much about the story, and you've never read the manhwa before, then you will watch this drama without sighing in frustration, else, yeah...
