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Post by ajk on Sept 7, 2015 17:08:31 GMT -5
This thread is for everyone who watched the series to share their opinions about it. Please do post your thoughts if you watched it. I'm interested and I'm sure everyone else who visits here is interested.
Plus, I like to have some comments about these shows for the benefit of anyone who comes along in the future looking for information about a series. Having some reactions and comments helps people decide whether or not they'll watch a series. So it becomes a good resource.
I want to go over my summaries before I say anything so it will be a little bit.
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Post by MTR on Sept 8, 2015 11:45:38 GMT -5
As you all know i watched it without subs(even though i would revisit the ep after reading the synopsis here.) Anyway i was really enjoying it, but felt it petered out after ep 30, it just seemed to get bogged down with sneaky Ming and Gwanghae vs Seonjo .
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Post by simisteve on Sept 10, 2015 23:14:58 GMT -5
I can't speak to the authenticity or historical accuracy, so my comments are from the entertainment aspect:
On the whole, I thought this was a very enjoyable series and at times, quite exciting. It makes me wish I had seen IYSS.
I wonder if the writers felt as compelled as it seemed near the end, to cram as much as they could in the last 4 eps. As I think most have agreed, this series needed about 10 more eps to make more sense at the end; I wonder if the series was pitched to KBS as how it turned out?
The cast in this case was stellar. I can't find fault with anyone, and that's a first for me in a long time. Normally the supporting cast exceeds the leads, but not in this one. I have to admit, I really liked both Konishi and to a slightly lesser extent, Kato. Very compelling characters. And especially to the actor portraying Adm Yi. I thought he was great.
The locations, CGI and lighting were excellent. Very well done, as was the soundtrack as we've already noted.
I also really liked the ending scene, using Ryu's walking down a county path as metaphor for the future path for Joseon. That was really well done.
One thing I did feel was lacking, was a summary of "what happened to them" of the main characters: Kato, Konishi, Wazikawa, Meada, Gwanghae, Yun Dusu, Lee Sanhae, etc. The haste to end the series left too many loose ends.
But on the whole, I thought it was a worthwhile way to spend weekend evenings.
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Post by truth on Sept 11, 2015 0:16:37 GMT -5
One thing I did feel was lacking, was a summary of "what happened to them" of the main characters: Kato, Konishi, Wazikawa, Meada, Gwanghae, Yun Dusu, Lee Sanhae, etc. The haste to end the series left too many loose ends. This was a drama based on Ryu's book Jingbirok, which only focused on the war and nothing about the aftermath, so that's probably why they didn't show what happened to the characters you mentioned. I posted what happened to Kato, Konishi, Wakizaka, and Maeda on Episode 50 summary. Gwanghae succeeded Seonjo to become the next king 10 years after the war, but was dethroned by Consort Kim's grandson on 1623. He was exiled to Jeju Island afterwards and lived there until his death on 1641. Yun Dusu took over Ryu's position after Ryu was gone, but was impeached by Lee Sanhae. He returned to court on 1599, but faced constant opposition from the Easterners. He died on 1601. Lee Sanhae took over Yun Dusu's position after impeaching him, making Northerners the leading faction in the court. However, Hong Yeosun's bribery scandal led to the split of the Northerners : Big Northerners(Lee Sanhae, Lee Yicheom, Hong Yeosun) and Little Northerners(anti-Hong Yeosun). On 1600, the Big Northerners split again into Flesh Northerners led by Lee Sanhae and Bone Northerners led by Hong Yeosun after arguments between Lee and Hong. The two factions united to become Big Northerners again in order to fight off Little Northerners trying to replace Gwanghae with their choice of prince. Lee Sanhae faced constant impeachment appeals until 1602. Lee Sanhae tried to resign like Ryu did every time that happened, but Seonjo never allowed him to resign(Ryu wasn't coming back and Yun Dusu was gone, so he probably wanted Lee to stay at least.) He enthroned Gwanghae after Seonjo's death on 1608, retired on Spring of 1609, and died on August of same year.
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Post by ajk on Jan 2, 2016 19:08:45 GMT -5
Ridiculously late with this but I didn't want to let the holidays wrap up without finishing this board, and in particular this thread. So I'll put in my two cents and we'll move on.
When this series was announced there was grumbling--I grumbled too--about another Imjin War series after IYSS. Don't worry, KBS told us. They said (1) it would be about Ryu Seongryong; (2) it would show aspects of the war that we didn't see in IYSS, and (3) YSS himself may not even appear in the series. So did they keep their word? Sort of.
It wasn't nearly as much about Ryu as it could have been. Ryu wasn't a very interesting character in the early episodes, and by the time they started developing him more and the character got better, the series had turned into a bigger story about the war. Ryu was never the lead character in the way that Jeong Dojeon was a lead character. Of course it was much easier to write a character drama about JD than Ryu, but I think they could have pulled it off with Ryu too. Maybe it was too difficult for the writers they had, or maybe the early low ratings pushed them to change course, or maybe they just got tempted by other stories and characters...but whatever...you'd think a guy who's been called the best official in the entire history of Joseon could easily fill out a 50-episode series. But they wrote it differently. Not to fault the material they did present, but I was disappointed about that.
KBS did deliver on the rest of it, though. We did see a lot of things that were only briefly mentioned in IYSS or not mentioned at all. Most of it was very interesting, too. And to their credit, they were very restrained about YSS. He did appear, but except for the final episode, they didn't overuse him and they kept his character from taking over the series like it could have. So that was a big relief, at least for those of us who saw IYSS and had no desire to see a redo of it.
Overall I enjoyed watching the series and thought it was excellent. The early episodes were a little slow, although the back-and-forth before the war started about trying to guess the Japanese intentions, that was well done. When the war got going the series got better. Later on there was way too much of the evil-Song-Yingchang stuff. It bogged down the series and took time away from much more worthy material (to the point where Ryu's promotion to first state councilor was relegated to narration! Like a footnote). And also too much time spent on the tension between Seonjo and Gwanghae. But those things only became problems towards the end.
One thing I didn't like at all was the amount of historical inaccuracy. It wasn't a big problem in the early episodes; it all seemed to start in Episode 15 when they first claimed that Konishi's army suffered major losses when it fought at Tangeumdae. That was a big part of the storyline in subsequent episodes--the supposedly crippled state of Konishi's army--but it wasn't true. And after that the inaccuracies seemed to pile up faster as the series went on. Hideyoshi killing people himself in fits of rage; Kato mistreating Prince Imhae; incorrect basic facts about battles; all of the silliness about Ryu and Gwanghae bowing down before the Ming flag...those are a few that I remember most, but there were just too many of them. Especially towards the end, after the evil-Song story got started, the series was a lot more willing to show things that weren't true. No historical drama is 100 percent accurate, but this one took liberties that weren't even necessary to tell its story--that's what frustrated me about it. There was simply no need to do it. Most of the series was wonderfully accurate, so it's a shame that so many unnecessary liberties were taken. (To be fair, this is all relative. Compared to your typical MBC historical, this series is like a documentary.)
One thing I thought was wonderful was all of the detailed material about the substantive controversies and issues that the government faced. A lot of policy-wonk discussions that maybe some viewers found boring, but I loved them and give the producers a lot of credit for presenting them in such good detail. Episode 41, with all of the details about the progressive rice tax Ryu wanted to implement, wow what an interesting episode that was. The competing ideas of saving the king's life as the symbol of the nation, versus the king needing to show bravery to inspire the people, that was fundamentally important to the war story and it was handled beautifully throughout the series. There were a few others, won't go through them all. Plenty of historicals shy away from this kind of material for fear of losing viewers so give this one big credit for presenting so much of it.
As far as specific positives and negatives, here are my lists. The positives:
--Most of the casting was very good. The Hideyoshi guy, I wondered at the beginning if he was right for the part, but he was terrific, full credit. Kato and Konishi, great fun watching those two. They gave the series a lot of life, and you could see how much they were enjoying their roles, especially when they were butting heads with each other. The guy playing Seonjo, they took a big risk with him...I was never entirely sure about it but looking back from the end I think it turned out well. He definitely isn't the kind of actor you typically see playing kings in these historicals, but the way the series showed Seonjo as being so internally conflicted, but at the same time being very savvy and manipulative when he wanted to be, he was a good choice and made it work. And the guy they picked to be IYSS, he didn't seem like a good choice at first, but in the end he was okay, certainly didn't do anything to hurt the series. It wasn't that substantial of a role and he didn't overact. Could have been a major negative but it worked out fine.
--Like I said, we did get to see a lot of new material about the war that wasn't in IYSS and a lot of it was very well done. A few things that stood out for me: the Shin Gak execution story in Episode 18; much more about Gwak Jaeu than we got in IYSS; and Luo Shangzhi, the sympathetic Ming general. Also the stories about the local rebellions that happened at the same time the government was trying to fight the war. Those really helped show the enormous complicated mess the country was in at the time.
--And speaking of new material, Episode 32 about the Haengjusanseong battle is one of the best episodes of any historical I've seen. Easily the best episode of the series. Absolutely fantastic.
--The Ming and Japan scenes were consistently excellent. The Japan scenes were intense and fascinating; they carried the series in the early episodes. And I enjoyed the Ming scenes too. The idiot emperor, maybe I liked that character more than most people did but I could totally buy the real emperor being just like that.
--Good character development of the king and the crown prince. Seonjo, you never entirely knew what was going on in his head and it made him interesting. Presenting things like his insecurities about having been pushed around by officials when he was a teenager, and showing him making choices just to try to prove Ryu wrong, it's very satisfying to have a character be complicated and human like that. And the way Gwanghae gradually changed from a shy boy who wanted no part of ruling the country to the ambitious crown prince who had his taste of power and wanted more, that was well written.
--There were some good scenes of the struggles that ordinary citizens were facing. I always complain about this--not seeing the real-world side of the things that the elites struggle for power over. Wish we had gotten more of it but what we saw was good.
--A VERY good music score. That tends to get overlooked in these historicals but I commented a bunch of times about how good the music was in certain episodes. Great job on the music; too bad there's no official CD available.
--Several very funny scenes, nice additions among all of the death and misery. The one that has to be singled out is the first scene of Episode 33, when the king and court convinced Li Rusong that he was the reason for the Haengjusanseong victory. Came out of nowhere, totally unexpected, and it was brilliantly acted.
--I loved the discussion between Ryu and Seonjo in the final episode. A great recap of the major issues of the series. Presented their different points of view, passionately argued, without making either of them out to be entirely right or wrong. Great writing and acting.
Specific negatives, not very many but there were some.
--They showed some battles we already saw in IYSS, and did so at the expense of other battles not shown in IYSS. For anybody who didn't see IYSS it wasn't an issue but I was a little unhappy about it.
--The only thing I didn't like about IYSS was all of the evil laughter from the Japanese generals, like Saturday morning cartoon villains. It was silly and ridiculous. I expected this series to avoid that. Nope. Blecch.
--As much as I liked the Kato character, at times in the earlier episodes they made him out to be a complete boob. Went too far with it to be believable.
--The Cheonri character. Too annoying. The slave-turned-official angle was very nice and gave us a couple of genuinely moving scenes, but most of the time he just got in the way of more important things or else was shown in places and situations that weren't remotely plausible. (And I'm guessing the KBS World audience was spared even more annoyance when the episodes were cropped; probably a whole bunch of his content was taken out.)
--Consort Kim. They wanted to have some female presence; that's totally fine. Just didn't care for the idea of a consort being the king's most astute political adviser and repeatedly coming up with ideas that nobody else in the entire government came up with, when there's no evidence of any such thing in real history. Just couldn't buy it. And her character totally overshadowed the queen, too.
--The only casting mistake I thought they made was Won Kyun. Didn't think they chose the right type of actor to play him, from what I know about Won. Not a major role but it just didn't work.
So it wasn't a flawless series...but there's no such thing. And certainly the positives far outweighed the negatives. Bottom line, while I thought it was too soon for another Imjin War drama, this one was good enough that I'm glad I watched it. I enjoyed the parts of the war that the previous series didn't cover. Also the different portrayals of some of the characters like Seonjo and Yun Dusu; reminds you that there's a lot of room for interpretation even in a (mostly) historically accurate series. Some outstanding individual episodes and scenes, too, and those alone made the entire series worthwhile. So thumbs up.
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Post by ajk on Jan 2, 2016 19:10:14 GMT -5
And just to add a p.s.: Have to thank truth for all of the good information that he was generous enough to share with the rest of us. Much appreciated truth! And to thank everybody else who contributed information about guns, armor, people's descendants, and everything else. Won't try to mention everyone...but we did get big help this time from our Japan expert MTR so I should at least mention him. Arigotou MTR!
Everything you guys contribute here, it makes the board better for everyone else watching, and certainly helps this clueless American a great deal. And it's also valuable because when people watch these shows in the future, if they happen to Google their way into this forum they'll have all of our information there for them--especially the information about historical inaccuracies that will better inform them about what they're seeing. So there's a lasting value to this forum and I'm grateful to all of you who contribute to it.
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Post by truth on Jan 2, 2016 21:57:28 GMT -5
Ryu refusing to bow down to the Ming flag was true though. Gwanghae bowing down as his substitute was the false part.
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Post by ajk on Jan 3, 2016 2:25:52 GMT -5
I'd have to go back and rewatch that episode but I thought that in the end he did, after Gwanghae did. Maybe I mis-remembered.
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Post by sageuk on Nov 22, 2018 20:32:39 GMT -5
I have marathoned the rest of the series by using a torrent download of all 50 episodes and downloading ENglish subtitles. These subtitles were supposedly the ones used for the KBS World broadcast, but these subtitles have spelling errors, doesn't capitalize words when it needs to and proper punctuation marks are lacking.
Am I the only one who feels that the prelude to the war and the early parts of the invasion are the strongest parts of the show? Because I do.
Now that I have finished the KBS Historical "J" trilogy, I can now rank them.
1. Jeong Dojeon 2. Jingbirok * * * * * * * 3. Jang Youngshil
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