(no subject)

[skygiants]

genarti and tenillypo and I have been watching Goblin (or Guardian: The Great and Lonely God, but given how many people are into another show called Guardian it feels unhelpful to sow confusion) for the past couple months. For obvious reasons, we are now Skype-watching rather than in-person for the time being, but nonetheless we finished the show on Thursday!

Goblin falls into (and indeed may have kicked off?) the vibrant subgenre of high-budget kdramas about powerful immortal beings! having hijinks and doomed romance! with young woman of Destiny who see Ghosts!

... ok yes the only other show of this subgenre I've actually seen is Hwayugi, but tenillypo assures me that there's at least one more.

In this case, the powerful immortal being is Kim Shin, a general who was cursed to immortality for just killing SO MANY people in battle, before being betrayed by the king he fought for and killed in turn. He will only find peace and eternal rests when he finds his destined bride: Ji Eun-tak, a plucky high school student with an abusive family who sees ghosts, and also, the sword sticking out of Kim Shin's chest.



Romance between an immortal and a high schooler is not generally my jam, but there is an additional element that truly elevates the show, and that is ... Kim Shin's roommate, the socially awkward Grim Reaper, a sad amnesiac with a bad supernatural job and a perpetual expression of vaguely woebegone bewilderment.



Over the course of the show, Kim Shin and the Grim Reaper pass through all the stages of 'oh my god, they were roommates' - from antagonism ...



... through acceptance and friendship ...



... to discovery of a tragic and emotionally fraught preincarnation backstory ...



... to permanent cohabitation!

(I asked genarti to review this for accuracy and she said, 'all this is completely true, but you need to clarify that they remain incredibly awkward throughout the entire experience. It never gets less awkward.')



Meanwhile, their vibe with Ji Eun-tak through much of the show is more like ... two awkward dads attempting to support their teenaged daughter through her high school graduation than anything else? It's a very cute found family! It's a bit weird when Kim Shin and Ji Eun-tak start kissing!

The Grim Reaper also has an official romance, by the way, featuring Ji Eun-tak's cool boss Sunny with whom the Reaper shares another tragic and emotionally fraught preincarnation backstory. The romance is also genuinely pretty cute as it mostly consists of Sunny asking the Grim Reaper a perfectly normal question, like "what's your name," after which he runs away and agonizes for a week before returning with an answer.

Sunny is a genuine delight and it's not her fault the costumers occasionally dress her like a serial murderer of muppets.



Anyway, all these elements meant I enjoyed the show very much despite my lack of interest in what is literally its central trope, but the cherry on the cake was the fact that the show apparently received a large chunk of money from the Canadian tourism bureau to have its leads occasionally spontaneously teleport to Quebec City to visit a little hotel owned by Kim Shin ... called the Chateau Frontenac ....



All hail the maple nation!

Comments

[genarti]

IT'S SO DELIGHTFUL

AND WEIRD

and I love very much the Two Awkward Supernatural Dads Raise Their Plucky Adopted Daughter show that it is in my heart although, tragically, not quiiiiite in reality

but at least we'll always have their awkward, awkward bickery faces

[skygiants]

We make our own fun out here (helped along by their awkward, awkward bickery faces.)

[china_shop]

This made me laugh. Thank you!

[pengwern]

This show looks amazing. I'm sad to see the sword doesn't remain...?

[cinaed]

That reminds me that I started watching this show and then got distracted. I should pick it back up again. The goblin and the Grim Reaper definitely have a great dynamic, haha.

[skygiants]

I just went back to look at your write-up for this and saw "epic in scope, story, and product placement" and laughed out loud. I need to start a kdrama drinking game for every time someone pops up with an emotionally supportive Subway sandwich.

[skygiants]

The sword is only visible to Ji Eun-tak as part of her Destined Goblin Bride powers, so it only shows up in key scenes when we want to make it clear that She's Seeing The Sword, which is a bit sad as it would be great if the lead had to spend the whole show dodging furniture with his glowing supernatural sword.

[skygiants]

I'd also seen the first episode or two beforehand because of another friend who loves the show (and also really wanted Beth to experience the long and hilarious Canadian sequences) but didn't actually get around to watching it through until now!

[brownbetty]

Wow, I was not expecting the surprise Chateau Frontenac. Sacre Bleu!

[chestnut_pod]

My entire experience of this show is from kpop normal-AU fics that I read during my withdrawal period from Les Mis fandom (really, it's a very similar dynamic to the Amis fic…) and this is NOT what fannish osmosis led me to believe it was!

Thank you for setting me straight with such verve and humor.

[larryhammer]

The Boulder approves of your icon.

(Has the Eaglet been more-or-less-continuously watching the complete Avatar set they got for Hannukah? Yes. Many, many times.)

[whimsyful]

I still maintain the best kdrama Subway product placement happened in Hotel del Luna, cause it also somehow managed to be an Audrey Hepburn homage/cosplay at the same time. (It also happens to be about a powerful immortal beings having hijinks and doomed romance with a young man of Destiny who see Ghosts, but for once the powerful immortal being is female.)

[genarti]

The Boulder also approves of your offspring's taste!

(Avatar is so great a) as a show, and b) for dramatic icons.)

[genarti]

They film SO MUCH on location all over the old city and it is hilariously disconcerting to me every single time. A constant parade of HEY I'VE BEEN THERE!!! which I attempted not to annoy skygiants and tenillypo with (but probably failed). But it's very pretty!

(Also just in case we missed the product location placement memo, a couple of episodes feature an Emotionally Significant Tourism Brochure.)

[skygiants]

Aaaand adding Hotel del Luna to the kdrama list, effective immediately. >.>

[skygiants]

They spend a lot of time in the prominently located Korean graveyard in the middle of the Plains of Abraham!

[skygiants]

Okay please elaborate though, what DID fannish osmisis lead you to believe? Now I'm desperately curious!

[chestnut_pod]

I thought it was a hopelessly tragic contemporary romance of heartrending emotion that somehow involved both city life and agriculture? I definitely have a strong association with agriculture. And adult heterosexuals? Who can say.

[china_shop]

Or withholds Subway sandwiches while pretending to not be outrageously wealthy!

Btw, I just searched through my journal for this:

I did the year end poll on dramabeans yesterday, and my favourite option was in the Most Dysfunctional Couple category: "THE LONELY SHINING GOBLIN: I waited 900 years to find you, so I can wait another year till you’re legal."

[skygiants]

I'm desperately and hilariously struggling to figure out how the agriculture fits in. NOBODY FARMS.

Unless ... did someone misunderstand ... what the Grim Reaper was reaping???

[skygiants]

At the end of every episode, I would turn and say optimistically to my friends, "maybe NEXT episode they'll do the timeskip and she'll be an adult finally!"

[china_shop]

LOL! And then, instead, at the end they somehow managed to make it WORSE! /o\

[chestnut_pod]

Maybe it was all the Canada seeping through.

[genarti]

My only guess is that there ARE significant buckwheat flowers? Like, nobody farms it onscreen or makes things with the buckwheat, they just have sprigs of flowering buckwheat with emotional associations picked from a field of it that the hero occasionally teleports to, but maybe... that got game-of-telephoned into agriculture...??

I love misleading fandom osmosis so very much.

[whimsyful]

\o/ yess can't wait until you meet Man-wol and her fabulous wardrobe!

[chestnut_pod]

That seems plausible! Buckwheat flowers are very pretty.

[larryhammer]

*WE* approve of their taste too!

They actually haven’t watched a single minute of Avatar all week: they discovered The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, and rewatched it every single day. Also, via that, the Spy Kids franchise.

[pengwern]

if all the 'And they were ROOMMATES' scenes had to....happen with a sword in the way....

[lannamichaels]

All of this sounds absolutely delightful. :D

[laleia]

I watched Goblin last year and really enjoyed it with much the same impression as you!

Last Thanksgiving, I was talking to someone who mentioned she started a new kdrama that was really good, and I asked what it was called, and she couldn’t remember the name but said there was a huge age gap, and I guessed Goblin and turned out to be right — so I guess the age thing that weirded me out a little weirded others out too.

Also, if you want a gender-swapped version of the Immortal Being / Plucky Young Heroine dynamic, I highly recommend Hotel Del Luna! Watching it felt like watching a mashup of Hwayugi (which I never finished; I watched half and then skipped to the last episode) and Goblin, but I liked the dynamics much better with the genders flipped.

[skygiants]

It's super charming! We've just started watching a new show (as recced by half the comments) that also includes a Grim Reaper, who is just a sinister shadow with a giant vacuum, and that's also great but we're constantly a little disappointed that he's not a bewildered, woebegone human in an oversized hat.

[skygiants]

It was SUCH a weird age gap! It would have worked so much better if she was just their adopted daughter!

We just started watching Hotel Del Luna last night and this so far seems absolutely correct; we're vastly enjoying every time the hero faints, shouts uselessly, and has to be rescued by the heroine and her GIANT STABBY IMPROVISED WEAPONS from an implausible ghost.