superborb

spatz prompted: Favorite/least favorite cdrama? Or if that's too hard to pick, favorite rewatch/favorite one to recommend?

I find it very easy to drop cdramas (and I know a lot of people who simply never finish any cdramas, but start plenty, so it feels a bit inherent to the medium?), so I don't think I want to say anything is a 'least favorite'! If I finished it, there was /something/ redeeming about it, even if it fell on its face in the end.

But I think I have different favorites vs rewatches vs recommendations! ...okay by splitting hairs, because obviously those are overlapping categories.

Favorite: Qi Hun (my review). An adaptation of Hikaru no Go, but one that took enough creative liberties to feel fresh. The premise is sports anime vibes, where the sport is go/weiqi: Shi Guang discovers a haunted go board that gives him a go playing ghost that pesters him to play all the time. The show tracks his growth as a player into more elite circles of go and the friends (and RIVAL) he makes along the way.

Hikago was the first fandom I was in, and Qi Hun is arguably the fandom I'm currently the most active in, because I mod a discord server for it, so I have a lot of FEELINGS about like, the fandom around the show if that makes sense? And those interactions enrich and add layers to what might otherwise just be a very good show. Certainly there are frustrating issues (definite pacing problems, potentially censorship caused plot holes), but I just love the characters so much.

Rewatch: Nirvana in Fire. Revenge, politics, and conspiracies, what more could I ask for? Mei Changsu is bent on getting redemption for the unjust dead, so that justice will prevail. Step one: getting his former BFF, the emperor's least favorite son declared crown prince. Very good balance of political intrigue with harem drama, and enough outrageously improbable "MCS wins by having all the people" to lighten the mood.

I rewatch shows rather infrequently, but despite seeming like intrigue might not have a lot of rewatch capacity, this show really stands up to it, because ultimately the character interactions are the core of what is so excellent about the show and that never gets old. TBH, the plot is not /that/ complicated (people are on the side of justice or MCS, and it's a matter of them falling in line or being creatively manipulated to fall from grace), but the balance of character personalities is so good.

Recommendation: Imperial Coroner (my review). Mystery period drama is still how I'd sell this show. Excellent core group of four main characters, whose interactions are so fun, and a solid mystery to investigate, with many parts to solve.

The reason I tend to recommend this first is that it is well paced and is not too complicated, making it a good starting point for those who might expect... 76 episodes of intricate plot and character development. 36 episodes is long enough to sink into, while being not a huge commitment, and it really does move quickly so it's easy to keep watching. And the framework of the mystery means that it's pretty easy to keep track of what the goal is.

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