![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
So I'm watching this show called City Hunter. It's on Netflix instant right now. (I wrote most of this a week ago, before my wrist issues became too bad to type. Now I'm almost done with the show and much of this post is out of date, but who really cares, right?)
In 1983, a group of South Korean covert military agents infiltrated North Korea. Concerned of the political ramifications of this action, the South Korean government murdered their own agents in order to hide what had happened—but one survived. He kidnaps and raises his comrade's son, and 28 years later that child, Lee Yoon Sung, returns to Korean and infiltrates the presidential palace the Blue House in order to fulfill his adoptive father's demand for revenge against the South Korean government. But as Lee Yoon Sung creates a home for himself and meets Blue House security agent Kim Na Na, he discovers that his father's goals may not be his own.
Grimdark revenge drama? No, silly, that's just the first episode and a half—it turns out our hero is opposed to lethal force, and also has hidden desires to be a normal guy with a girlfriend and a mom and other nice things (including a whole lot of money: completely normal is overrated.) Run-on will-they-or-won't-they (of course they will) romantic comedy? Yes but no: the stars are far too crossed for that, and our hero does have a lot on his plate, so the will/won't feels justified. Soap opera? When discussing the plot (and then she was hanging from a balcony! and he reached down and grabbed her! and his wound reopened! and—) it sounds like one, but for all that it's convincing: these feel like the actual reactions of real people (some villains exempt) to extraordinary circumstances, not just drama for drama's sake, although there is plenty of that.
As such, the first few episodes are chock full of mood whiplash as the tone bounces across the scattering of genres. When episodes are an hour long, that's a significant drawback: it take almost two hours just to get past the prologue, and the show is never in a hurry, meandering along, dropping cliffhanger endings like confetti, dead set on drawing you through a solid twenty hour run-time.
And then somewhere around episode five it becomes awesome.
It doesn't really get awesome; it doesn't grow a beard in any recognizable sense. It's a gradual thing, a progression from "this character dynamic is pretty trite" to "man could this romantictriangle quadrangle geometry get any more complex" to "I could maybe ship them under certain circumstances" to "PERFECT YES GO ON NOW KISS."
But it's not just about kissing.
I ship Lee Yoon Sung and Kim Na Na—and it takes a lot for me to care about a will/won't het romance, because they're beyond played out and and often problematically heteronormative. But I don't only ship them romantically: I'm invested in their relationship. Their playful rivalry. The fact that they make pretty good best friends. Their unwillingness to be attracted to one another. Their attraction to one another. Their attempts to weigh a romantic relationship against their shared past and troubled present. Their abilities and inabilities to own their own feelings. The interaction between them is dynamic and complex.
All the interactions are. Protagonist Lee Yoon Sung is being hunted by Prosecutor Kim Young Joo, but the two share a grudging respect for one another that strengthens more than defeats their rivalry. (Yeah, it has as much potential for subtext as you think it does.)
Lee Yoon Sung's relationship with his adoptive father grows increasingly strained and antagonistic, which only serves to show the strength of the love between them. Lee Yoon Sung smiles while fighting enemies he detests, and grows emotionally conflicted when defeating them. Ship ALL the things, yes please. AND NOW KISS! or don't. That thing you're doing now? that's good too.
( And it's ridiculous: more silly show blather, +4 screenshots. )
It's silly and the cliffhangers grow frankly cruel, and Iam was at episode 16. Now I have one half of the last episode left. I've wanted to watch a live action Asian drama for a while, but I was worried—after trying and dropping K-drama Boys Over Flowers—that I liked them in concept but not execution. In theory, I love a whole other world, stylized and compelling (the way crack is compelling), which consumes you. In practice, a twenty hour marathon show like this a different beast from most media I've been exposed to. It's akin to Masterpiece Theatre (I also just watched Downton Abbey season one), but those shows love their delicacy—period clothing and fancy manners and clever little scripts—whereas Asian drama says, "Why delicacy when we can have extremely tight pants?" It's exaggerated, bigger than life, but can be paced at a crawl.
But the delicacy is still there. It's delicacy in the way that the Ciel/Sebastian relationship in Kuroshitsuji drips with the stuff—and what it drips off of is a Victorian lace-swaddled eyepatch-wearing discomfortingly mature shota ordering around butterknife-wielding demon butler. It's delicacy in the way that Code Geass is a complex political and character drama (indeed, the protagonist/prosecutor relationship is keenly reminiscent of the Lelouch/Suzaku relationship) and also produced more memes than you can shake a stick at on account of its being batshit awesome crazy. It's fantastic and surprisingly subtle character interactions, coached within run-on drama and cliffhangers and the protagonist just wore a gold lamé vest while breaking into an enemy business, I kid you not.
What I'm saying is that it took me a while to adjust to the style—and it helps that City Hunter is pretty slick (Boys Over Flowers: not so much)—but now that I have: oh man, guys, this show. It's like watching Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon all over again. Half the things I have to say about this show make it seem like you should run far, far away, and maybe you should. But me, well, I'm ever so glad to be watching it.
In 1983, a group of South Korean covert military agents infiltrated North Korea. Concerned of the political ramifications of this action, the South Korean government murdered their own agents in order to hide what had happened—but one survived. He kidnaps and raises his comrade's son, and 28 years later that child, Lee Yoon Sung, returns to Korean and infiltrates the presidential palace the Blue House in order to fulfill his adoptive father's demand for revenge against the South Korean government. But as Lee Yoon Sung creates a home for himself and meets Blue House security agent Kim Na Na, he discovers that his father's goals may not be his own.
Grimdark revenge drama? No, silly, that's just the first episode and a half—it turns out our hero is opposed to lethal force, and also has hidden desires to be a normal guy with a girlfriend and a mom and other nice things (including a whole lot of money: completely normal is overrated.) Run-on will-they-or-won't-they (of course they will) romantic comedy? Yes but no: the stars are far too crossed for that, and our hero does have a lot on his plate, so the will/won't feels justified. Soap opera? When discussing the plot (and then she was hanging from a balcony! and he reached down and grabbed her! and his wound reopened! and—) it sounds like one, but for all that it's convincing: these feel like the actual reactions of real people (some villains exempt) to extraordinary circumstances, not just drama for drama's sake, although there is plenty of that.
As such, the first few episodes are chock full of mood whiplash as the tone bounces across the scattering of genres. When episodes are an hour long, that's a significant drawback: it take almost two hours just to get past the prologue, and the show is never in a hurry, meandering along, dropping cliffhanger endings like confetti, dead set on drawing you through a solid twenty hour run-time.
And then somewhere around episode five it becomes awesome.
It doesn't really get awesome; it doesn't grow a beard in any recognizable sense. It's a gradual thing, a progression from "this character dynamic is pretty trite" to "man could this romantic
But it's not just about kissing.
I ship Lee Yoon Sung and Kim Na Na—and it takes a lot for me to care about a will/won't het romance, because they're beyond played out and and often problematically heteronormative. But I don't only ship them romantically: I'm invested in their relationship. Their playful rivalry. The fact that they make pretty good best friends. Their unwillingness to be attracted to one another. Their attraction to one another. Their attempts to weigh a romantic relationship against their shared past and troubled present. Their abilities and inabilities to own their own feelings. The interaction between them is dynamic and complex.
All the interactions are. Protagonist Lee Yoon Sung is being hunted by Prosecutor Kim Young Joo, but the two share a grudging respect for one another that strengthens more than defeats their rivalry. (Yeah, it has as much potential for subtext as you think it does.)
Lee Yoon Sung's relationship with his adoptive father grows increasingly strained and antagonistic, which only serves to show the strength of the love between them. Lee Yoon Sung smiles while fighting enemies he detests, and grows emotionally conflicted when defeating them. Ship ALL the things, yes please. AND NOW KISS! or don't. That thing you're doing now? that's good too.
( And it's ridiculous: more silly show blather, +4 screenshots. )
It's silly and the cliffhangers grow frankly cruel, and I
But the delicacy is still there. It's delicacy in the way that the Ciel/Sebastian relationship in Kuroshitsuji drips with the stuff—and what it drips off of is a Victorian lace-swaddled eyepatch-wearing discomfortingly mature shota ordering around butterknife-wielding demon butler. It's delicacy in the way that Code Geass is a complex political and character drama (indeed, the protagonist/prosecutor relationship is keenly reminiscent of the Lelouch/Suzaku relationship) and also produced more memes than you can shake a stick at on account of its being batshit awesome crazy. It's fantastic and surprisingly subtle character interactions, coached within run-on drama and cliffhangers and the protagonist just wore a gold lamé vest while breaking into an enemy business, I kid you not.
What I'm saying is that it took me a while to adjust to the style—and it helps that City Hunter is pretty slick (Boys Over Flowers: not so much)—but now that I have: oh man, guys, this show. It's like watching Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon all over again. Half the things I have to say about this show make it seem like you should run far, far away, and maybe you should. But me, well, I'm ever so glad to be watching it.
