25 in 2025 Part Three: August — September

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 As Winter gave way to Spring, I followed the Sun, with Korea left behind for places further East. 

AUGUST


Destiny (2025) 9.5/10

I'm a real romcom junkie, so most of my C-Drama viewing feels like prospecting for gold: Sifting through enough stony rubbish to rebuild the Great Wall, hoping to find the occasional nugget. That bitter experience meant I started this one with low expectations, and was thus delighted when it surprised me.

It had a lot going against it: VERY formulaic story, voice dubbing that was not a great match for the cast (a real bête noir for me!), but it overcame those by being funny, very sweet, and surprisingly intelligent. The dialogue really surprised me at times, much better than most of the 20 million High School/University C-Drama romances I've tried. The leads worked well together, and, possibly because it was a short Drama, there was good skinship. That last is not a given in full length contemporary C-Drama romances which are apparently mostly a meeting of minds not mouths. I enjoyed this one enough to put it on my my rewatch list. 

 

 

A Calm Sea and Beautiful Days with You (2025) 9.25/10

a perfect OTP, but the Drama could have been 1 episode shorter. The last 3 episodes had a bit of a 'rinse & repeat' feel to much of them, ESPECIALLY the separations and intrusions that became very predictable.  Fewer flashbacks as filler would've helped too.

That's the 'objective' review out of the way, let's return to the; important bit - the bit at the very beginning. "A perfect OTP" These two were quite literally impossibly cute together. So many "awwww" moments made this a favourite for me. The irrepressible smiles that came while looking for video clips to include here reminded me that these two are EASILY the cutest couple I've seen all year, and made me really want to rewatch it. 

I gave it 9.25/10 for the niggles above, but the overriding and lasting impression is sweet, genuine romance. The writer's to be commended for that, but so are the actors. There's a VERY fine line between "sweet" and "saccharine" and this one stayed on the right side of the line all the way. 

 


SEPTEMBER

Sunshine By My Side (2023) 9/10

I gave this 9/10 for the sheer intelligence and thoughtfulness of the dialogue that dominated the first two thirds of the drama. It had a lot to say about the role of women of all ages in modern Chinese society and the way in which their own perception of their roles, rights and choices often conflicts with what traditional (Confucian) society expects.

In that dialogue, and in the female lead character, I was reminded strongly of the second female lead from another drama by the same writer The Tale of Rose. She too was driven, independent, work-focused and I found her dialogue, as here, almost always impeccably well-reasoned.

However, the difference between these two dramas is that the second female lead in The Tale of Rose was also part of a truly moving romantic arc. The development of the love story between her and the lead character's brother had a lot of emotion, and always carried the sense that they were two people in a romantic relationship. That sense was missing almost entirely from this drama. The lead pair did develop a strong supportive relationship, but in terms of romance, the best that could be said was that we saw them build a friendship from which romance COULD at some future point grow.

It was a noona-dongsaeng ('jia-didi'?) romance apparently but the noona and dongsaeng spent comparatively little time together and more than 90% of the time they did spend together was exclusively work-related with zero emotional content. Even in the final four episodes, there was no overriding sense that one was watching a romance. The success of the romance in “Rose"The Tale of Rose proves that the screenwriter can do romance, so I'm going to applaud the content she delivered exceptionally well, and look forward to more romance from her in future.

 

 

My Dear Boy (2017) 10/10

This is my new favourite noona-dongsaeng romance. Or maybe that should again be jia-didi romance. In the end I scored it a 10 because there was nothing substantially wrong with it, and it delivered a near-perfect blend of emotion and realism that left me feeling completely satisfied at the end. No makjang (often a plague in Taiwanese Dramas), minimal histrionics, and lots of real feeling. Several times it skirted landmines I expected it to hit, impressing me each time.

I watched this immediately after the Mainland Chinese remake Sunshine By My Side. As I said above, I thought that one was very good, but completely different and lacking almost everything that this drama supplied. If you want a Drama almost exclusively focused on a woman succeeding professionally despite toxic Confucian chauvinism in both her personal and professional life, and with dialogue that ruthlessly skewers that mindset, watch the C-drama. If you want a not dissimilar message presented more quietly and with the addition of emotion, warmth and romance - and quite a lot of humour - watch the original. 

 

 


I'll Make a Dictionary (2024) 9.25/10

As you may have guessed after wading through 20 billion of them to get here - I love words. So I was predisposed to love this one, a story all about words that used them REALLY well. I didn't really love the romance arc for the FL, although I had accepted it by the end as the ML became less aggravatingly clingy. But I could put up with awkward and unnecessary romance because the real love object was lexicography.

Based on a manga which had already had a movie made from it, I was impressed to see the way in which the Drama celebrated "good, old-fashioned dead-tree dictionaries" while also acknowledging the digital realities of the 2020s. This reverence for the old while recognising the new was also evident in the dictionary itself. Great pride and almost worshipful care for the sublime poetic heritage of the Japanese language juxtaposed with awareness that mores and attitudes change and shift over time. The Drama handled those at times conflicting attitudes really well. Also, this was yet another  J-Drama that incorporates the scarring and isolating impact of the COVID pandemic on individuals and teams in a way I still haven't seen in K-Dramas or C-Dramas. 

Three down, two to go. Which probably also describes the state of the visitor count by now. The penultimate page and the elusive end can both be found below.

 

PART 1
PART 2
PART 4
PART 5

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