Recap – A few K-Dramas I've Been Watching Recently

It was July last year when I first decided to watch a K-Drama (A Korean Odyssey, which still is one of my favourites), and it's been love since then. Thankfully Netflix provides us with so many titles every month, so I can always make sure that I'm never short on them. Some I love to pieces and I suggest to all my friends; others I like less, but I'm still glad I gave them a go. As it's been a while since we last talked about K-Dramas (Something in the Rain, we talked about it here), I thought about doing a little recap on all the titles I've been watching over the last months, and which ones I really adored.

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W – Two Worlds Apart

The first one I watched has been W (available on Netflix), first because I really like actor Lee Jong Suk, and secondly because it's a fantasy, and it's no mystery that I like this genre more than any other.

So in W we have a love story between two characters, Oh Yeon Joo and Kang Chul. There is a problem though: Chul doesn't really exist, because he is the main character of a popular web-toon created by Yeon Joo's father.

How can a real girl and a paper drawing fall in love? Simply because as Yeon Joo's father draws the story, his main character gets more and more complex, three-dimensional, interesting... and eventually alive. To the point that Yeon Joo's father cannot control the development of the story anymore, as Chul makes his own decisions. Scared by what it is happening, the author tries to kill his own creation, but the moment when Chul is dying he manages to pull Yeon Joo in the comic itself, where she successfully saves him. Only after a good while she realises that she is not in the real world, but into the world of the web-toon; but Chul feels so real, and she slowly falls in love with him... so how will this two unfortunate lovers solve their rather difficult situation?

W is the perfect series to binge in a couple of days, as it is only 16 episodes long. The story is interesting, and there are a few good twists and turns that leave the viewer surprised and curious to know how the story is going to end. I really liked it, mostly because it reminded me one of my favourite manga, Fushigi Yuugi, where the main character is pulled in the world of a book and falls in love with one of the characters. Spoiler: the two have a pretty similar ending.

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I'm Not a Robot

This one is available on Netflix too, and I started to watch it a bit for chance, as I actually thought it was another K-Drama (Are you Human Too?, also available on Netflix, but I still have to watch it). I realised I was mistaken halfway through the first episode, but I kind of liked it, so I carried on, and at the end I watched a nice show.

In this one main character Kim Min-kyu is the multimillionaire first shareholder of a massive company. He has a secret though: he is severely allergic to human touch. If he touches another person he gets a terrible reaction, he can't breathe and risks to die if he doesn't inject straight away his serum.

He is contacted by professor Hong Baek-kyun, who wants him to finance his research on androids. To show him how excellent his work is, professor Baek-kyun lets Min-kyu have for a whole day his prototype android, Aji 3. Now, we need to specify here that Aji 3 has the same identical face of Baek-kyun ex girlfriend, Jo Ji-ah; and that the day when the android should be supposedly be delivered to Min-kyu, Aji 3 has some juice spilled over her, so won't work anymore.

Desperate, wanting at all costs that Min-kyu finances his research, Baek-kyun contacts his ex girlfriend and asks her to please fake to be a robot for just a few hours, while meantime he and his team will repair Aji 3. So what will happen to a person with a sever allergy to human touch and a girl faking to be a robot? And is Min-kyu allergy real, or maybe is just a reaction triggered by his brain, due to a terrible betrayal and an old trauma?

I'm not a Robot is a 16 episodes long series, and it's perfect if you're looking for something light and funny to watch. Although the idea that a person might not understand the difference between a true human being and a robot is ridiculous, it's very funny watching Min-kyu (who is supposedly a very smart person with an incredibly high IQ) misunderstanding Ji-ah reactions for system failures, and poor Ji-ah who desperately tries to get out the most absurd situations. Let's not forget that Ji-ah used to be Baek-kyun girlfriend, so when the professor understands that she and Min-kyu are falling in love, he will do everything to keep them apart.

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The Girl who Sees Scents

This is one of the most recent that I watched, and really liked it; it mixes together fantasy elements with thriller/mystery ones, and it's a pleasure to follow.

It all starts with a murder: a masked person has just killed two people. Choi Eun-seol is just coming back from school when she finds her parents killed, and the killer is still in her place. She runs away, and in the desperate attempt to escape, she is run over a car, and brought to the hospital.

At the same time, a school bus has an accident, and all students are taken to the hospital too. Among them is Choi Eun-seol, a girl who has the very same name as the one above; she only has a scratch, but still she needs to be seen by a doctor, so she gives a call to her brother Choi Moo-gak to advise him.

The boy goes to the hospital to pick his little sister up, but he finds her dead, murdered by the killer above, who mistook the two girls because of their name. The first Choi Eun-seol is kept hidden, as police understand that she is followed by a serial killer; so a policeman adopts her, and changes her name in Oh Cho-rim, as when she wakes up the girl has completely lost her memory. But she also has gained something special: one of her eyes has changed colour, becoming blue, and allowing her to see scents.

Thanks to this incredible ability her path will cross again Moo-gak's, who meanwhile has become a policeman and has swore to find his little sister's killer. The murderer, on the other side, keeps on leaving a trail of dead bodies behind him, and Mook-gak's team are getting closer and closer to him.

I really liked this K-Drama, loved the fantasy elements mixed with the thriller ones, and you can't but binge an episode after another to understand if the killer will find out he murdered the wrong girl, and what will happen to Cho-rim then... this is a 16 episodes long series too.

So these are the last K-Dramas I've been watching recently. At the moment I am watching My Love from the Stars, and will get back as soon I'm finishing it to let you know if I liked it or not. Until then, take care!

M.