Robin's Random Rambles

    Concluding  my nostalgic look back at old OST tracks from various KDramas, CDramas, JDramas and TWDramas I've watched - all released prior to 2010. This episode covers the final year of that period, 2009. The Dramas are listed in the order in which I viewed them. 2009 Take Care of the Young Lady   This Yoon Eun Hye starrer Korean Drama goes by several English names, the one I've used is how I watched it and is descriptive of the plot. The Drama was my  first introduction to Kwon Yul, and triggered a remarkably long-lasting antipathy toward him - he always seems to play characters that make my skin crawl. Even though I watched this twice almost back-to-back in my "brand new to KDramas, watch YEH" phase, I was pleased to see when preparing this post that even back then I scored it only 6/10. I doubt it would score that highly today! The MV attached is a favourite of mine for the truly bizarre rarity of an upbeat fun song from the Queens of teary melo, Da...

  Continuing a nostalgic look back at OLD OST tracks from various KDramas, CDramas, JDramas and TWDramas I've watched - all released prior to 2010. This episode covers 2007-2008. Again, the Dramas are listed below grouped by year of release and sorted by the order in which I viewed them. 2007 Coffee Prince For me, 2007 was a VERY good year for Dramas. The first of several from then is a true CLASSIC  KDrama Coffee Prince . A very progressive romcom in many ways for its era it remains a VERY rare example of a KDrama romcom that was just that - no serial killers, no noble idiocy separations, no messy love triangles, just plenty of rom & com, with stellar performances across the board. Both the dialogue and the OST have since been referenced OFTEN in countless KDramas since and the actual coffee shop was long a tourist magnet. I don't care if you're an alien - just watch this!   ————   Capital Scandal My favourite Han Ji Min KDrama before Love Sco...

This blog exists " for whenever 500 characters at Mastodon is not enough " which is reason enough to build a series of posts around a thread I posted at Mastodon. A nostalgic look back at very old OST tracks from various Korean, Chinese, Japanese and Taiwanese  I've watched. All were released prior to 2010 and all except one I scored at least 6/10. The exception (chosen for its musical rarity), I scored at 5.5/10. Each 'episode' lists two years, except the last, which is exclusively 2009 Dramas. This first episode covers 2003 and 2004, the earliest years from which I've watched qualifying Dramas.  They are listed below grouped by year of release and sorted by the order in which I viewed them. As the title indicates, I have a simple mind, so compiling the list was a lot of fun. It was VERY nostalgic, with some "awww"-inducing entries, and some "eww"-inducing ones. Some of the Dramas that wowed me as a neophyte I would n...

Continuing a nostalgic look back at OLD OST tracks from various KDramas, CDramas, JDramas and TWDramas I've watched that were all released prior to 2010. This episode covers 2005-2006. Again, the Dramas are listed below grouped by year of release and sorted by the order in which I viewed them. 2005 It Started With A Kiss     The third Taiwanese Drama in this collection & second with (Ariel) Lin Yi Chen as lead and singer A remake of  JDrama Itazura Na Kiss , I VERY MUCH  prefer this to the KDrama remake Mischievous Kiss , largely because of the  amazing chemistry between "Ariel and Joe"  - very close friends IRL 20+ years now, they sell this iffy/regressive story in a way MK didn't. That Cheng never used his pregnant partner's ribs for kickboxing practice ( which the ML actor in the KDrama version is alleged to have done ) is another point of difference in its favour .     ————   My Name is Kim Sam Soon I watched the outstandin...

" Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called ... life ". I thought of this line while watching the final episode of When Life Gives You Tangerines . The drama opens and more or less closes with a very appropriate English-language song, Yesterday , but Prince's invitation does kind of sum up what the whole drama was about. Life, and getting through it. This was a remarkable drama. It was the 327th K drama that I have completed, and the third which I have scored at 12/10. I score dramas at more than 10/10 when they impact me in some way that is more meaningful or more powerful than simply being a more or less flawless viewing experience. This drama scored 12 for touching me deeply and for overcoming an obstacle in the process. I was a three year old middle child when my mother decided that the role was not for her and left it to my Dad. She made the right call, for her and us, but that experience has long coloured my interaction with Ko...

My first ever KDrama review on my blog, prompted by realising that 500 characters on Mastodon was nowhere enough to express how I felt about Check-in Hanyang. I started this drama because the synopsis on MDL made it sound like a fusion sageuk, basically a youth/college drama transported into the Joseon era. And the first few episodes felt a little bit like that, but were also setting up the revenge arc which was at the heart of the story—a minor detail the synopsis I read completely omitted. Particularly since 2023, K dramas of no more than 12 episodes have become much more common. So I was surprised that this one was 16 episodes of around 70 minutes each. That length contributed to one of the biggest problems I have with the drama – tonal confusion. When I speak of tonal confusion, I don't mean that I expect a Drama to have only one tone, or flavour. What I do want is for the Drama to be clear about which tone or flavour is dominant, and which is the garnish. This Drama, lik...