25 in 2025 Part Five: October — November
We baked through the hottest mid-late Spring on record here, so it's fitting that this final installment is full of sizzle of various sorts
OCTOBER
She and Her Perfect Husband (2022) 9/10
Another C-Drama jia-didi romance with way more right than wrong. I started this one after loving the very unglamorous dirt-poor and dirt covered Yang Mi in This Thriving Land, after several SNS mutuals praised her very different appearance and role in this earlier Drama. They were not wrong.
The most important element of a noona-dongsaeng (old habit) romance is the chemistry. Do th couple work? Do they sell the relationship? In this case, the answer to both questions was an emphatic "Yes!" Yang Mi's VERY glamorous and successful business woman character her was parsecs from her poor peasant in This Thriving Land, but she was just as convincing. That she also looked AMAZING did not have a negative impact on my appreciation of the role either, I must admit.
There were serious issues I had, though. I hated the Mom from hell, and FF'd though basically every single scene she was in. Also, yet again a contemporary C-Drama romance with a really solid OTP dragged on way past its due date and imploded in the process. That I gave it 9/10 in spite of that shows how highly I appreciated seeing Ms. Yang in a whole new light (and wardrobe).
The 19th Medical Chart (2025) 9.5/10
I didn't know it at the time, but this turned out to be the first of two J-Dramas I watched in 2025 that were either based on or relevant to real-life current events in Japan. This one was about the establishment of General Practice as a 19th department in Japanese hospitals.
I normally avoid medical Dramas because of my extreme hematophobia, but I took a punt that one focused on general practice would not be TOO bloody. I was right. I also wanted to watch it for Koshiba Fuka, who has never disappointed me yet and who aced her lead role in Marry My Husband JPN.
What impressed me about this one was how it blended hopeful optimism with realism and pragmatism. The incredible bureaucratic resistance to setting up the new specialty was not presented as villainy, simply as reality. Hospitals are expensive and trying to make them profit centres is a challenge. Those whose primary focus is profit did often seem like 'the bad guys' but they were not demonised. Instead the Drama focused on the efforts of the 'good guys' to thwart the money men and get their new specialty up and running, through a series of 'case of the week' stories. The mix of personal warmth, personal and professional growth, and pecuniary politics was surprisingly compelling viewing.
Dear Enemy (2025) 12/10
A brief explanation of my 12/10 rating. This is only the fourth, from just over 600 completed East Asian Dramas. Basically, a 12/10 makes my heart sing, filling me with a lingering sense of profound and overwhelming rightness. Coming down from a 12 often takes quite a while. To find out why this one earned that rare score, click here.
Love's Ambition (2025) 9/10
I started this one partly as a parasocial expression of support for Zhao Lu Si in view of her highly-publicised real-life dramas. I was rewarded with one of the best contemporary C-Drama romances I've seen, at least for the first 85% of its length.
I first watched Ms Zhao in Dating in the Kitchen which I found overall to be on the better side of OK. I really enjoyed Hidden Love, and so came into this one hopeful that I would enjoy it. I really did, for the most part. First the VERY good:
The OTP chemistry was insane. Given everything that she was going through off-camera, the onscreen magic was all the more remarkable. These two really clicked, and we got to see a real romance. I've already alluded to the absence of physical displays of affection in so many contemporary C-Dramas, this one bucked that trend and delivered credible evidence of a couple in love. Learning that the director of this Drama also directed her in Dating in the Kitchen made me wonder if perhaps that past history helped in her excellent performance as a woman falling in love in this one.
Another highlight was Wan Peng's character and her performance. The spoiled, and outrageously favoured sibling is a standard East Asian character, but I can't recall having seen any in which that prejudicial privileged child was so devoted to their victimised and neglected sibling. Kudos to the writers for writing her character so well, as one who went out of her way to support her sister and build bond that managed to overcome the suspicion and resentment caused by parental favouritism. Once again, Ms Wan simply smashed a delightfully layered supporting role. Now for the niggle.
The Drama was at least 2-3 episodes too long. Episode 28 saw a basically note-perfect reconciliation and bonding of the OTP, and that should have been the cue to wrap it up. Instead, we were stuck with 4 episodes of pointless corporate politicking and malfeasance that no one cared about and that only served to rob viewers of the lovey-dovey sexy times our OTP could so easily have delivered. Had the Drama been 29 or 30 episodes, we could have had half of one episode for the 'it's business time' boring bits, and half to one and half episodes for the OTP and the STP - whose wedding photos WERE magnificent. Overall a great romcom, with really outstanding performances from all the key cast. If I rewatch it in the future, I'll stop at episode 28.
NOVEMBER
Miss King (2025) 9.25/10
This was the second shogi-themed J-Drama I watched in 2025, and the better of the two. Before watching Houtei No Dragon I knew really nothing at all about shogi. That Drama featured a former top-level female player who became a lawyer and used her shogi skills to win cases. It taught me a little about the game, and quite a lot about the incredibly archaic sexism and misogyny in professional shogi.
That latter element was fundamental to Miss King and I learned a lot more about it. Whereas Houtei No Dragon was a light workplace comedy-mystery series, Miss King was a revenge story. The title character was the daughter of supreme shogi champion who named her after the shogi piece she's shown holding in the poster, taught her the game, then had abandoned his wife and daughter and forged a new life with a new wife. After years of poverty and neglect, his first wife died, and his daughter comes after him for revenge.
In the course of her quest, she teams up with another 'victim' of her father, a top-level shogi player whom her father destroyed. She also experiences the astonishingly antiquated attitudes of the shogi establishment toward professional female players. The rabid chauvinism shown in the Drama was NOT exaggerated. A couple of weeks after finishing Miss King and a couple of weeks before starting to write this piece, I came across an online article about complaints from female players over how they were treated while pregnant. Truly, a case of Art reflecting life
Miss King was another J-Drama revenge story that ended up going beyond revenge to focus on the lead victim's own growth. She regained her love of the game, built a close (entirely platonic) relationship with the other victim who became her mentor, and the very end showed a surprising twist in her relationships with her half-brother and his family.
The lead actor was new to me, and I was very impressed. Non is a multi-disciplinary artist - musician, actor, screenwriter, director - who last year won a Japanese award that specifically recognises artists whose talents are broad-ranging. Miss King was a fine introduction to her work, and I'll be keeping an eye for her in future.
Aaaand that's a wrap! Overall, a very good year, and even if (as is far from unlikely) I'm the only one who's read all these entries, a look back at the year that was proved to be a lot of fun. As a final parting gift (to me, most probably) here are my complete stats for all Dramas watched in 2025 and then for Dramas released in 2025. And for the truly obsessed, here's every Drama I completed in 2025, listed in chronological order of viewing
Stats for all Dramas I watched in 2025
Stats for all 2025 Dramas I watched in 2025
|
PART 1
|
PART 2
|
PART 3
|
PART 4
|
Comments
Post a Comment