(no subject)
Feb. 22nd, 2013 06:04 pmOkay guys, I guess it's time for me to talk about GAKSITAAAAAAAL!
(You cannot pronounce the name of the show just as Gaksital. You MUST pronounce it with at least six as and a heartfelt scream of despair!)
So Gaksital starts out as a show about a Korean policeman during the Japanese occupation who's trying to catch a costumed nationalist vigilante; for the first few episodes, this made it weirdly like watching a version of Capital Scandal where Lee Kang Gu was the protagonist.![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
innerbrat and I started watching it because we loved Capital Scandal SO MUCH, and this show is set in the 1930s, and there were presumably going to be people in snazzy suits and fedoras and ladies with guns. Priorities: we've got them!
After a few episodes we rapidly came to the conclusion that we couldn't actually . . . recommend it to anyone else . . .
Okay, the thing is, there are many ways in which Gaksital is a very good show! It's super well-crafted in terms of production values and suspense and so on, and it has about six million plotlines and it actually does an amazing job juggling all the side stories and not giving anybody an easy out; all the side characters feel like real and complicated people. This is a full (if very dark) world -- and the scope keeps pulling out, so you start with one angsty individual and end with a movement, in the grand scheme of which one person's kind of silly vigilante revenge quest is not all that important. I really appreciated that.
That being said, the MAIN storyline is SO FULL OF MANPAIN. Our two lead dudes have paid the price SO MANY TIMES. (The show made sure to cast people who were very, very good at ugly crying! My favorite is the tandem bicycle ride of mutual sobbing.) I mean, sometimes it's evil manpain that's called out as evil! The best example went like this:
HEROINE: I'm not going to tell you anything!
DUDE THREATENING HER: Do you not understand how hard it would be for me to have to torture you? WHY DON'T YOU EVER THINK ABOUT MY PAIN?
. . . did I mention there is also a lot of torture?
BUT THERE ARE ALSO A LOT OF AWESOME CHARACTERS, most of whom are played by super attractive people, so . . . I guess at this point I'm just to picspam a bunch of people at you and you can make your own decisions on the rest of it?
( Cut for images of lots of attractive people! )
(You cannot pronounce the name of the show just as Gaksital. You MUST pronounce it with at least six as and a heartfelt scream of despair!)
So Gaksital starts out as a show about a Korean policeman during the Japanese occupation who's trying to catch a costumed nationalist vigilante; for the first few episodes, this made it weirdly like watching a version of Capital Scandal where Lee Kang Gu was the protagonist.
innerbrat and I started watching it because we loved Capital Scandal SO MUCH, and this show is set in the 1930s, and there were presumably going to be people in snazzy suits and fedoras and ladies with guns. Priorities: we've got them!After a few episodes we rapidly came to the conclusion that we couldn't actually . . . recommend it to anyone else . . .
Okay, the thing is, there are many ways in which Gaksital is a very good show! It's super well-crafted in terms of production values and suspense and so on, and it has about six million plotlines and it actually does an amazing job juggling all the side stories and not giving anybody an easy out; all the side characters feel like real and complicated people. This is a full (if very dark) world -- and the scope keeps pulling out, so you start with one angsty individual and end with a movement, in the grand scheme of which one person's kind of silly vigilante revenge quest is not all that important. I really appreciated that.
That being said, the MAIN storyline is SO FULL OF MANPAIN. Our two lead dudes have paid the price SO MANY TIMES. (The show made sure to cast people who were very, very good at ugly crying! My favorite is the tandem bicycle ride of mutual sobbing.) I mean, sometimes it's evil manpain that's called out as evil! The best example went like this:
HEROINE: I'm not going to tell you anything!
DUDE THREATENING HER: Do you not understand how hard it would be for me to have to torture you? WHY DON'T YOU EVER THINK ABOUT MY PAIN?
. . . did I mention there is also a lot of torture?
BUT THERE ARE ALSO A LOT OF AWESOME CHARACTERS, most of whom are played by super attractive people, so . . . I guess at this point I'm just to picspam a bunch of people at you and you can make your own decisions on the rest of it?
( Cut for images of lots of attractive people! )
