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Love Upon A Time (Thai Series)

By Golu
On paper this should've been a show I really got into, especially with how much love it's been getting from fans online, but somehow it just didn't click for me. The first four or five episodes had me so lost that I started checking out mentally, and honestly it never really recovered from that for me. There were definitely bits here and there that I enjoyed, but as a whole it just felt like too much was happening at once and I kept losing my grip on what I was watching. Doesn't help either that this is a twelve episode series where each episode runs somewhere between seventy and ninety minutes in its uncut version, that's a lot to sit through and process. Nakhun's a twenty year old college student living in Bangkok who doesn't buy into superstition at all, but his twentieth birthday turns into a disaster anyway, everything that can go wrong does, he even gets mistaken for a thief at one point. Later that night, feeling down, he's out watching shooting s...
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First Love Again (Korean Series)

By Golu
This 6 episode Korean series, each of about 20-25 minutes is an easy simple watch. The primary story is about a reincarnated man searching for his long-lost love. I whole idea of looking for love over different periods of reincarnation was veery exciting and after the end of first episode I was really looking for to it. Sadly, the romance here is half baked, drama and conflict seems forced and the resolution is quick and easy. This could have been a saga of a love story, but sadly doesn't quite reach there.

Yeon Seok is a famous author in current times and his agent is his best friend. He has a couple of best sellers and his working on his next novel. We then find out that this is his third reincarnation. In his first life he was a servant in feudal era and there was a girl he loved but because of class difference they were never accepted. They both are born again during world war times and do become lovers, but the girl is eventually killed and Yein Seok commits suicide. He is now hoping that in this life he will be able to find the girl and unite with her. His current agent is actually a mystical diety who had granted a wish to Yeon Seok that she will remain with him till she finds his love and unites them. She does find the girl in this birth, however the twist is that she has been reincarnated as a man. When Yeon Seok finds this out, he is conflicted between love and desires. The boy Ha Yeon going the author as an editor because he has some crush on the author of his favorite novel. The duo eventually fall in love after some confusion. But one day Ha Yeon sees an old picture of the author with his girlfriend (no explanations on how it got there from previous life) and he feels cheated that Yeon Seok likes him not for who he is but for the fact that he is same person from previous life. Eventually over next few weeks things are clarified and the two get back together.

The show is definitely very polished and had a very compelling concept in there hands. But somehow, as I mentioned before, they just run out of steam and feels like they don't know how tocontinue the show. The create a forced conflict and then sort it out equally simply and fast. Not just that, even the initial built up of romance was too quick and sudden. Yeon Seok and Ha Yeon had a rocky relationship in the beginning until the tension culminates in an emotional climax. All of a sudden, their feelings accelerate too quickly. The couple was still getting to know each other up until this point. Yet, the love story dashes ahead at an unnaturally fast pace without clarifying the vague attraction between the characters. Also I was very confused about one issue of reincarnation. Ha Yeon's sister actually looked like the girl that the author loved in his previous two lives, so how do we know that the rebirth in this life was a man. I was so confused.  Although the series begins with so much ambition and promise, it concludes flatly without much fanfare. I personally, also am not sure of the author really loved the guy or the idea that he is the rebirth of his original love. The conflict does get addressed and the guy is convinced it is true love, but somehow I am not. The show is worth watchable because it is not too stretched out and it dies look really good with nice production values. Actors are strictly ok, but they do have good chemistry. But besides this, there is nothing memorable about it. (5/10)
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