Crime Puzzle (2021) Review

Crime Puzzle was a drama I had my eye on, but when no one picked it up when it started airing back in October, I figured it would have to be a drama I let go of. Thankfully, Viki grabbed it after it completed airing and uploaded all the episodes without much of a subtitle wait. For transparency, when I watched the drama a large portion of it was at various stages of translation, but as it was over 90% I decided I didn’t want to wait for it to finally get around to being all at 100% before finishing. I had no intention to talk about the drama, so I didn’t take notes nor screencap or do anything I would normally to prep for a review, but after finishing it up I did want to briefly talk about it.

Written by first-time writer Choi Jong Gil and directed by Go Jae Hyun (who previously worked on dramas such as Player and Black) the drama focuses on the arrest of a criminal psychologist (played by Yoon Kye Sang) after the death of a political candidate, and his girlfriend (Go Ah Sung), a profiler and the daughter of the deceased. The story winds its way around what happened in the events leading up to the murder, and things that are happening in the present as Yoo Hee (Sung) tries to figure out why he’s there and what actually happened. It’s an intricate plot, and the drama spends a lot of its time in twists and turns that were genuinely surprising and engaging. It took me a good couple of episodes to really get into it, however, but a turn in the investigation really got me into the story and it continued to be rather engaging.

One of the things that I found most interesting about it was how dark the drama was. I know this is weird to say, but I actually…enjoyed it? It added a lot to the general storyline and added depth to what was going on having it dive a lot deeper into the psyche of murderers and corruption and how truly and deeply unsettling and terrible it is. Not to say that you can’t pull off a drama like this without going as far as they did, but it did make the drama stand out on its own and differentiate itself from other crime thrillers. And when I say dark, I mean dark. The drama was broadcast on Olleh TV, a VOD platform, and had a lot more leeway because of it. Knives didn’t have to be blurred out, a lot of deaths were shown - and graphically. The drama was much more violent and gory than you will find in other dramas that have come out. Squid Game is mild comparatively.

Because of this, I do think that it’s not the drama for everyone. If you had intended to watch, be aware about it before you dive into it. If you do end up starting, the story and clues really keep you into the story. I felt that the acting was strong for everyone in the cast and while there were a few things here and there that I didn’t like, on a whole it was a solid crime drama and was glad I was able to get it in before the end of the year.

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The Guardian (2021) Review

The 2021 Vietnamese horror movie, The Guardian (Thiên Than Ho Menh), was just added to Netflix’s catalogue and I decided to give it a try. I’m always looking for more Asian horror, especially accessible, and the plot of the movie seemed fairly interesting enough. After the suicide of a popular singer, her backup singer’s career starts to take off.

The movie, while not necessarily the best thing that I’ve seen, had some genuinely interesting moments. I have been burned by Netflix’s selection of Asian horror before, especially when it’s outside of Korea or Japan, and thought that a two + hour movie was going to be hard to get through, but I surprisingly didn’t feel too much of the length. Don’t get me wrong, the movie does feel weighed down by the time at moments, specifically as the horror is slow to come in, but the events leading up are an interesting drama about the fall of a singer, the rise of her backup singer, and the downfalls of the music industry and striving to make it when you fell you don’t have any sort of support. I think a lot of what I enjoyed about the movie was Amee’s portrayal of Huyen. She carries the role in a nice balance between naivety and genuineness, while being jaded by her dreams coming true. I felt the relationship she had with other characters seemed true and not forced.

The movie does fail at being a true horror, and frankly it’s not even a thriller. It chooses to follow more about the horrors and downfalls of the real world, and while it isn’t high-paced thriller it seems it wants to be, it lives in as an interesting drama surrounding an incident between the singers. While there is an introduction of a creepy doll, it fails to be much of the horror plot and is generally too campy. The doll we do get, however, is fairly interesting even if it fails to serve it’s horror purpose. Admittedly, I haven’t watched a lot of possessed doll horror, it’s not something I generally gravitate towards, but the movie takes it in a different approach than those that I’ve seen and incorporates local traditions and religion with the doll and even though we don’t get what I feel we needed with it, it added an interesting level to the overall story.

If you like slow (slooow) burn horrors, that fall more into the drama side and a creepy doll or two being thrown in, I say give the movie a shot. It’s not perfect and fails to deliver as a horror but I’ve seen much worse from Netflix’s selection, and at least the story was interesting.

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Random Asian Horror News 12.13.21

It’s been quite a while since I last posted a roundup of all the latest Asian horror news that has popped up around the web, but I figured it would be good to get one in before the end of the year. News has been fairly slow and quiet, so there’s not too much that I’ve missed but there is some fun things coming up soon, and I’m sure we’ll hear more about what’s in store for 2022 closer to the end of the month.

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Casting

-SHINee's Onew has been cast in the horror series 4:44 Seconds. Not much word on the Korean series, hopefully we’ll see it some time beginning of next year.

-Ong Seong Wu in talks of OCN thriller Blind. The drama is in the very beginings of casting, and there’s no word on date or a solid synopsis.

-Go Kyung Pyo in talks for the Takashi Miike kdrama, Connect.

-Lee Wong Geun cast in OCN's A Superior Day as Kwon Si Woo who seems nice but is actually a serial killer.

-Kim Yoon Hye is confirmed to lead upcoming occult horror movie The Scene as Siyoung, who is cast for an experimental film and caught in a mysterious accident on her way to the filming.

-Kim Nam Gil, Lee Da Hee, Cha Eun Woo and Sung Joon confirmed cast for tvN drama Island. Filming began in October and is expected for release the beginning of next year.

General

-Infinite Studios and the streaming service Catchplay will co-produce the Indonesian horror series Losmen Melati, scheduled for release next year. (source)

-Hellbound director Yeon Sang Ho when asked about second season of the drama says that nothing has been decided and plans to release a webtoon following the events after the series. (source)

-The 2019 horror thriller Repossession directed by Goh Ming Siu and Scott C. Hillyard will be getting a North American digital release on the 21st of this month.

-Korean thriller Midnight won the Best Feature Award at the British film festival Grimmfest.

-Shinya Tsukamoto's Hiruko the Goblin will be available on Blu-Ray January 24th. It has been restored and includes special features such as audio commentary and interviews.

-The music director for the Netflix kdrama D.P. confirmed that season 2 is in the works.

-Malaysian supernatural thriller ROH was released on VOD on the 29th of October.

-Shudder Original Raging Grace will be the first British-Filipino produced film in history. It’s scheduled to be released some time next year. (source)

-Takashi Shimizu's Suicide Forest Village has been acquired by Cinedigm for North American rights and is scheduled for release next year. (source)

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Doom At Your Service (2021) Review

Doom At You Service had been on my list of dramas to watch this year, but by the time it came out I was just not feeling it nor did I have the time to watch it. I ended up being asked to record an episode with the K-BAE Podcast who have been recapping each episode of the drama. For the podcast I originally had decided to just watch the first episode and then skip to the episode that we were discussing (episode six). Their podcast is fairly loose, and that setup would have been fine for me to be able to participate, but when I started the watch one episode became two, then three…and by the time I recorded the episode I was half way through the series. Surprise, I liked the drama. I figured at that point I was already in the binge and ended up finishing the rest of the episodes the next day or so. Before coming into the series I had heard some mixed reviews from the people I knew that was watching it, and the general Twitter users I saw. Most of what I saw didn’t look favorable, so I was surprised when I started to watch it and found that I was enjoying it. The drama is by no means my favorite of the year, and I did find there to be faults, but it generally was a great watch. I had fun with the stories, I generally liked the characters, and found the overall watch to be a nice one. So much so that I decided that I should do a full review on the drama.

There are no major spoilers in this review, so if you haven’t watched it yet you should be fine reading this.

What I found most interesting with the drama and what I think pulled me in much more than I was expecting was the lack of a second male lead. The person closest in the second lead spot, Lee So Hyuk’s character, is not a love interest in a way. In fact, he’s barely a friend - he begrudgingly becomes a friend of Dong Kyung (Park Bo Young) and his story lies in the secondary plot between Hyun Gyu (Kang Tae Oh), and Ji Na (Shin Do Hyun). It’s an interesting device in the drama, as it is bulit like as a drama within a drama, and the usually tropes live inside of that secondary story line. Instead the main drama decides to focus the tension on the supernatural bits, and the general transformation of Sa Ram (Seo In Guk). The leads already have a lot of obstacles from the very beginning, and not having to drag them into a love triangle on top of that helped the story move along for me.

I saw that a lot of people found the Ji Na/JooIk/Hyun Gyu story line to be weird. I think the true hindrance of the story line wasn’t that it was written as a secondary story, it was that the the actors didn’t have that much chemistry between them. In fact the two male characters felt much more natural together and it felt off when pairing Ji Na with either of the two. I don’t think it was necessarily the fault of the actors, the main story line that they are given that pulls all three together didn’t work out as well as it could, and it didn’t mesh well with what was going on because of this and felt a little incomplete. These are characters that would normally not have much depth in favor of the main leads, and it’s felt in this.

Doom lies in the area of dramas I enjoy, less comedy and more romance and melodrama and found the drama enjoyable because of it. It had large breaks from the comedy, and it tended to not go as far as others. I suspect that this was also the problem with the drama for most. Because the secondary storyline was the ‘romcom’ story of the drama, and paired with the lead actors previous works, a lot of people came into this drama thinking it would be more comedy than it was. It’s largely a melodrama, a lot of parts tended to be bleak and dark and didn’t try to constantly be bright or happy until the jump back to the humans of the story. It’s actually part of a greater problem I’ve personally have run into with other dramas. A lot of people label dramas with romance and any level of comedy as romcoms. The lack of no popular genre tag in Asian dramas for the inbetween of romcoms and melos adds disjointedness when you come in thinking this was one or the other. While the main story line not being a true romcom didn’t bother me (in fact, I enjoyed it much more than if the main lead lived in the romcom parts) I can see how it would be a turn off, and nothing kills a drama faster than the wrong audience viewing it. I also suspect that this wasn’t as jarring for me because I watched it as a binge and not week-to-week, not having to wait long to figure out what was happening with the plot.

I generally like both Park Bo Young and Seo In Guk as actors. They are good actors and can handle leads well. I thought they played off each other really well and were good at focusing on the tension in various parts of the drama. I did find a lot of - at least the first half - of the drama and the couple’s dynamic a bit hard to watch. It lives in a tricky spot, where at it’s core it is an enemies to lovers where the enemy is an actual threat, one that is constantly talking about killing her and showing the power dynamic imbalance on how he could and would. It’s hard to get into a love story when you have that, and despite it being a supernatural and non-realistic take it still left an air of weirdness when they got close. I do think the drama did a fairly good job towards the later half of showing his character development and reminding the audience that he was essentially a dangerous non-human being that can’t be viewed as a human transforming, but felt the drama didn’t handle it well in the first couple of episodes.

One of the aspects of the drama that I was most surprised about, and heard next to no one talk about was the cinematography and set design. I think it’s executed really well and a lot of the shots were interesting and different. The director and crew used a lot of angles to portray the emotions and intent of the scene, well more than I had expected from the drama. It being a supernatural fantasy it also allowed them to set up fantastical shots. Showing Sa Ram’s world as black and white, only colored when Dong Kyung comes closer was gorgeous and added to the fantastical love story. Sa Ram’s bedroom melding into Dong Kyung’s bedroom was a fun set pick. A lot of the time the sets and shots were meshed together to bridge the fantasy/god world and what was going on in the real world and the drastic difference between the two was interesting visually.

All-in-all I thought the drama was an entertaining one, accomplishing what it personally set out to do, and am glad that I finally hit play.

Listen to my episode with The K-BAE now:

Doom At Your Service is currently streaming on Viki.

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December Premieres

A good amount of dramas premiered last month that are still airing and several projects got pushed to next year, but there’s still a good variety of dramas and movies coming out this month that I’m personally excited for.

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-The 2015 action comedy film Veteran is coming to Netflix on the 1st about a detective (Hwang Jung Min) who pursues a man on the run (Yoo Ah In). It did really well when it was released in theaters, it's the 5th all-time highest grossing film in history.

-Thai horror movie The Whole Truth will be available on the 2nd on Netflix. It is directed by Sid Wisit Sasanatieng who wrote the thriller Deep (also on Netflix). The movie follows two siblings who find a strange hole in the wall at their grandparent’s house.

-Thai drama 55:15 Never Too Late premieres on the 6th. The fantasy drama is about second chances, following five high school friends. It should be available subbed on GMMTV.

-Psychological thriller kdrama Artificial City premieres on the 8th from the Mystic Pop Up Bar director Jun Chang Geun. The drama looks like more of a makjang, and is about power struggle and greed of the wealth.

-Indian crime series Aranyak drops on Netflix on the 10th about two cops trying to figure out a puzzling murder.

-Netfix will drop the Vietnamese horror film The Guardian (Thien Than Ho Menh) on the 16th about a backup singer who is pushed to the front due to the sudden death of a pop star. The movie was released in theaters earlier this year.

-Amazon Prime jdrama No Activity: Honjitsu mo Ijou Nashi premiers (potentially drops all of its episodes?) on the 17th. It follows a former detective who joins up with a rookie to work an undercover drug case. No word if it will be accessible internationally on the platform, but if I had to guess: no.

-Starring Lee Dong Wook and Wi Ha Joon, the Korean drama Bad and Crazy premieres on iQIYI also on the 17th. It is about a superhero who decides to become a champion for justice against police corruption. The Uncanny Counter director/screenwriter team is working on it.

-Bulgasal: Immortal Souls will begin airing on Netflix on the 18th. The fantasy kdrama revolves around two characters, one a woman who remembers her past lives and keeps reincarnating and a man who used to be human. The screenwriters for The Guest (Seo Jae Won and Kwon So Ra) will be writing for the drama.

-While the upcoming kdrama Snowdrop is not a horror, thriller, or fantasy, it is worth mentioning on this list. The drama is set in 1987 and adapted from notes from a man who escaped a political prison camp in North Korea. It’ll kick off Disney Plus’s Asian content as the service’s first kdrama on the 18th.

-And finally as a Christmas Eve gift Netflix drops the long-awaited sci-fi/thriller, The Silent Sea about a team traveling to the moon who uncover a mystery at an abandoned space station. The drama stars the best of the best in Korean actors and I have been literally waiting years for this one.

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100 (Asian) Horror Movies in 92 Days

This year I did the Spooky Sarah Says challenge to watch 100 horror movies in 92 days. The challenge started in August and ran till the end of October. The rules were simple: watch 100 new (to you) movies during the time period. When I decided to do the challenge, I was in the middle of watching a lot of Korean horror and had just started planning my October posts. Because I knew that I was already going to be watching a bunch of Asian horror, I decided to do the challenge with a focus on only counting Asian horrors. I started off just tracking movies, but as I got into October I feared that the challenge was forcing me to focus on movies too much, and added tracking dramas into the mix. In the end, it didn’t really work out and I barely touched dramas. Such is life.

I thought it would be fun go through the movies and dramas I watched and check out some of the stats on them to see how the challenge went (besides whether I completed it or not). I also think it would give a greater look into what I chose, and may help in the movies that I choose from here on out. I didn’t try to vary up my content that much, I was mostly concerned with the number, but towards the end when I was less concerned about hitting 100 I started to really try to expand what movies I was watching.

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The Stats

-My final count was 116. 8 of those being dramas. My starting baseline for this is 108 movies, 8 dramas.

-The oldest movie I watched was the 1958 Mansion of the Ghost Cat, from Japan. This was a movie I had no clue about before this challenge and one that I randomly picked up. It was a YouTube suggestion after another movie I had been watching and decided to give it a try after realizing that I was enjoying a lot of the older Japanese horror movies I was encountering. The newest movie I watched was Ouija Japan. Its premiere date is listed as October 19th, and I watched the day it dropped on Amazon Prime.

The years in between the oldest and newest least of my worries when picking, mostly because it would be the thing I have the least control of or care due to my options to watch and not having a budget to buy or rent new movies. I did want to see if I somehow favored a year. I assumed that they would mostly be older just purely because I was watching movies on streaming services and assume those would be the cheaper to get rights for thus populating my options. At a tie for first place with 9 entries each was 2009 & 2016. I don’t know how 2009 got to be so high - maybe it was just a good year for horror to come to the box office? I would like to dive deeper into this when I get the time, I would assume that the previous years had popular box office hits that reignited the passion to ride on that popularity or focus distribution rights budget on them. 11 out of the 33 years represented have only one movie or drama watched within them, a much higher number than I would have expected.

-I’m not much of a fan of rating things, and thus rate things extremely weird. Since most of the time I’m rating dramas, I've gotten used to my rating score over there. Problem is…it doesn’t necessarily translate to movies. With dramas I drop them and not rate if I do, that means that I rarely will have a low-rated drama and I’ve worked that into my rating system. With movies, I rarely drop due to their length being a smaller time restraint. I did want to include some stats on my ratings, though. Generally, my rating thought process was 5’s: perfect, 4/4.5’s: all-around great, 3/3.5’s: pretty good 2/2.5’s: not the best, but didn’t hate everything, 1/1.5’s: mostly sucked, .5’s definitely sucked.

Here’s the breakdown of each rating:

• .5: 7

• 1: 6

• 1.5: 7

• 2: 19 (1 drama)

• 2.5: 11 (1 drama)

• 3: 30 (2 dramas)

• 3.5: 13 (1 drama)

• 4: 21 (2 dramas)

• 4.5: 2 (1 drama)

• 5: 0

I didn’t rate any movie or drama a perfect 5, but I did give a 4.5 to one movie and one drama. One Cut of the Dead was the movie. It is the best movie that I watched during this time, and truly one I had on my watchlist for way too long. If you haven’t watched it yet, don’t read anything about it and watch it knowing nothing. The drama was The Guest. Fantastic drama that was also one I kept putting off not because I didn’t want to watch it, I just didn’t make the time to.

Some other interesting data from my ratings: 2 out of the 3 Indonesian films I watched got .5 stars, the lowest rating based on percentage. All three of the top dramas were Korean. Korea also dominates the 4 stars section. I gave out the most 3 stars (26%) which roughly translates to middle of the road in my enjoyment level, fairly average but possibly had some better than average aspects. I also gave out a fairly large percentage of 2 stars, about 17% of the movies. I was kind of expecting my 1.5/.5 ratings to be a bit higher than they actually turned out. Not because I think I am a ruthless rater, but simply because of the movie pool I was picking from. A lot of the time I would turn on movies at random on Tubi leading to more of a gamble if the movie was good or not.

-Out of all the data I was most interested in seeing was my breakdown of movies based on location. Again, I didn’t try to vary this at the beginning between the Korean Summer Horror posts and the 31 Days of Asian Horror posts constraints. Here’s the breakdown:

• Cambodia: 1

• China: 1

• Hong Kong: 8

• India: 4 (2 dramas)

• Indonesia: 3

• Japan: 37 (1 drama)

• Korea: 37 (3 dramas)

• Laos: 2

• Mongolia: 1

• Philippines: 3

• Singapore: 1 (1 drama)

• Taiwan: 5

• Thailand: 9 (1 drama)

• Vietnam: 3

I pretty much knew that Korea and Japan would make it to the top of the list without guessing. I had the most options from those accessible, and the most that were already on my watchlist. Hong Kong came in fourth, which was the most surprising out of the group. I had some movies lined up because Hong Kong had the most options in vampire movies (a theme for some of my blog posts), but most of the ones I picked up were completely random. Most of the movies from Indonesia, Singapore, and the Philippines were from Netflix which I have found seems to be the platform’s favorite area to pick up Asian horror content from.

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I know this data is probably only interesting to me, but I had fun trying to figure out some of the stats and it gave me a good look at how I did. I think it’s an interesting perspective on my viewing habits, and I think in the future will help me try to diversify my viewing a bit more. I might do a break down like this for the dramas that I watched this year to give me a greater look at my drama watching.

If you want to see the full list of movies and dramas, check out my Letterboxd list here, and while you’re there follow me so we can be friends!

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Hellbound (2021) Review

I love and hate cult shows. On the one hand, I find them fascinating, and I love the look at the psychology that happens with the people who are involved. On the other, they annoy me to no end because I absolutely despise everyone involved. While I don’t have to love everyone, I have to at least care about them so they aren’t perceived as boring and meaningless characters. That wasn’t necessarily the case with Hellbound. I found that the way the drama dealt with the cult(s) for the most part was a different and interesting take, showing not only how they would advance in a world that has definitive proof of God’s intervention but the different ways people would take that information. That being said, while Hellbound had some good moments - and I generally liked the drama enough - it fell flat running out of steam after the time jump in the middle, creating disjointed circles trying to create a reason to have a cliffhanger at the end and story for future seasons.

Spoilers below.

The drama is divided into two parts, the first half comprising of the start of the prophecies and the angels coming to earth, the latter four years later as the prophecies have become a normal thing, with the focus on New Truth’s solidified power. And that is partly the reason I didn’t connect with the drama. The first half really got me into the drama, setting up more like a crime thriller, where we see Kyung Hoon (Yang Ik June) trying to figure out what is going on with the angels and the start of the rise in popularity of the religion helmed by Jin Soo (Yoo Ah In). It was an interesting look at religion and God in the modern world, and I felt that it created a fascinating look at what God was capable of and sort of in turn forced the narrative that He was not in fact something to be revered, and yet people were still willing to do anything for Him. The cult’s presence started to pick up fairly rapidly, so we were able to see some of the mob mentality of people blindly following, to the point they too would (and should) have been considered sinners. The radicals that stir up the pot in different forms such as The Arrowhead and the bat-wielding teenagers that followed his streams, the new religions and cults that spur on top of it, the aggressiveness of everyday people trying to find sinners all formed a broader look at the newly forming society. We see this portrayed most stunningly with what is essentially the public viewing of the execution of Jung Ja (Kim Shin Rok). Seeing everyone excited for her death, clamoring to take a front-row seat with their cameras ready was a good modern-day interpretation of Jesus’s death.

Once we actually get to the focus of the New Truth cult as a fully infiltrated and established group after the time jump, they lacked anything super interesting for me. The time jump derailed a lot of what had been happening. I felt that not only did New Truth suffer from this, but also the Sodo group was not allowed depth, they both were just not given enough of a chance for the viewer to really connect with what they were because a lot of that information would have been given during the time period we don’t get to see. We get the before and after of New Truth and I felt it left a lot of emptiness to it not having the middle. The latter half of the series lacked direction, trying to force more storyline into it while simultaneously pivoting to a messiah story that it knew it would not be resolving, and also focusing on setting up the ending.

Netflix did what Netflix does best, and killed what is great and wonderful about Asian dramas, containing the entire show in one season. By leaving Hellbound on a cliffhanger, the plot suffered. I suspect that a lot of the lack that the latter half of the series had was because Yeon Sang Ho had to start winding everything down so they had a reason to give it a cliffhanger instead of just allowing it to be part of the story. And while it isn’t the worst thing to have to wait for more of the story, cliffhangers are a fairly new plot device in Korean entertainment. It’s a weak point in Yeon Sang Ho’s writing, as it isn’t worked into the story well. Also hindering everything is that there’s no word on the second season being filmed, thus making it a potential reality that we won’t get a conclusion. The only two kdramas that are Netflix originals that have had second seasons that come to mind are two dramas that were essentially filmed as one season and just split in half. At this time, there has been no word that they had already filmed more episodes for this drama, and so I’m just not that hopeful to ever see any of this resolved.

I honestly would have loved to see the messiah storyline with the baby play directly alongside Jung Ja's resurrection. The interpretation I have for the series is that this first half (as in these first six episodes) is supposed to focus on God causing destruction on earth to make everyone repent for not following His will, with the second about humans reclaiming it. Having the messiah storyline start at the beginning of the time jump left the plot disjointed and rushed, instead of allowing these six episodes to be squarely about God taking control and seeing the full growth of the New Truth cult in society and how those opposing were suffering. A more plausible cliffhanger would start with the baby being given his death date and Jung Ja’s resurrection, thus allowing the reclamation storyline to be played out during the (hypothetical) six final episodes (in this case, season two).

I feel like all I’ve done is bash the drama and have been overly critical about some of the plot in this post, but it does have good moments. I thought that the deaths were done well. The level of gore and spectacle (as in the spectacle of us, the viewer, not the people in the world) was tampered down by it not being constantly shown. It was a nice touch that focused more on the act of the angels being there as opposed to the kill itself. Speaking of the angels, having them stay close to the comic designs was a nice nod to the manhwa the drama is based on. They are a little bit cartoonish and silly but they worked for me, especially since they were tied to God and varied from what we would classically see in religious texts, and were an interesting variation of a monster design. In the beginning of the first episode, there is a group watching a video of someone being prophecized to die and the group thought it looked fake. I think the fact that they looked fake worked more because of what we expected these angels to look like (pretty, human-like, etc…), and surprises the viewer in that nothing is as we perceive or think, and that God’s power is not pretty and magical.

The drama has a solid cast, and the acting followed. I've always really liked Kim Hyun Joo, and her role as Min Hye Jin was my favorite of the cast. The rest of the production was equally as great. I really connected with the struggles of those outside the cult and enjoyed that it didn’t shy away from characters having a solidified anti-God narrative. Yeon Sang Ho has a way of focusing on the realities of how humans will react to catastrophic events (as seen in Train to Busan), and the drama highlights how different people would handle what is going on, and the reality of how selfishly most would act because their want to live outweighs their love or care of others.

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Netflix Japan Festival 2021

I wrote about the See What’s Next summit that Netflix hosted for Korean content back in February and over the past weekend Netflix Japan hosted their own event and released some of their plans for their future on the platform. While a lot of the content is not going to be released for International audiences, sadly, there were some good developments that leave me hopeful for the future of Japanese content on Netflix. One of the main takeaways that came out of the festival was that Netflix Japan intends to start focusing on Japanese films.

“Our next big bet is expanding feature films. Japan is home to extraordinary talent who shape the cinematic history of the world. With creators as diverse as the ones we work with today, we’re excited to play a role in the history of great local talent finding their voices and delivering them to audiences everywhere,” - Sakamoto Kaata, Netflix VP of content in Japan.

Over the recent months, a lot of news about new Japanese content coming to Netflix has already been announced. Released was a considerable amount of Netflix Originals and a collaboration with the Japanese channel TBS, and a NIPPON TV deal that covers over 30 titles. A majority of those titles will only be released for Japan and other areas of Asia. I was hopeful that this event would secure more international releases as it is so hard to get Japanese content outside of Japan, and am a bit sad about the lack that is listed.

Quit playing games with my heart https://t.co/zj5AaCpFpS pic.twitter.com/1Q8Q54N8ue

— 💀 ᴡɪɴᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ᴀ ᴋᴅʀᴀᴍᴀ ☾ • • •🍷 (@wineandakdrama) November 1, 2021

If you are into anime, Netflix is keeping up with their expanse in the catalog. I’m not going to focus on them in this post, Netflix has always been steadily in the anime game. Here’s the video presentation for that if you are interested.

Here are the dramas, movies, and series we’ll be seeing on the platform in the next several months.

-We Couldn’t Become Adults: Movie (Available Now)
”A friend request with a lost love sends a man back into his memories of the 1990s -- when life seemed to burn a little brighter.”

-Asakusa Kid: Movie (12/9)
”In 1965, Takeshi Kitano (Yuya Yagira) drops out of a university and enters the Asakusa France Za, which is a performance theater. He becomes an apprentice to Senzaburo Fukami (Yo Oizumi), who is a legendary entertainer. Senzaburo Fukami demands that Takeshi Kitano keep the mindset of an entertainer, not only on stage, but also in his daily life. Takeshi Kitano cultivates his dream of becoming an entertainer with other apprentices. Due to the popularity of TV, people attend the theater less and less, but Takeshi Kitano spends his youthful days with Senzaburo Fukami and other apprentices who are full of talent and unique personalities.”

-The Future Diary: Reality (12/14)
”Two people who have never met before are cast to live out a romantic storyline by following a rough "script" in the diary that is handed to them containing only a rough outline of a story. Their semi-fictional exchange, based on the casts' own words, takes them through an experience that could ultimately influence how they view one another. Viewers will be left asking themselves whether the casts' scripted adventures will lead to real romance. A reboot of a top reality series that made waves from 1998 to 2002.”

-The Journalist: Drama (1/13/2021)
”Anna Matsuda (Ryoko Yonekura) is a reporter for the Toto Newspaper. She is referred to as “Shinbun Gyokai no Itanji” (nonconformist in the newspaper field). Following her beliefs as a journalist, she carries out her work.”

-Love is Blind: Japan: Reality (2/2022)
”Love is Blind is the Netflix's American unscripted series where singles who want to be loved for who they are, rather than what they look like, have signed up for a less conventional approach to modern dating where they hope to meet the person they want to spend the rest of their lives with... without ever having seen them. The show was nominated for 2 Primetime Emmys including Outstanding Structured Reality Program With no distractions from the outside world, the singles talk to a stream of potential love interests and when back in the real world, as the couples plan towards their wedding day, they will quickly discover whether they can turn their emotional connection into a true love before the fast-approaching ceremony. Takashi Fujii and Yuka Itaya will be navigators for Love is Blind: Japan and see how the social experiment goes on.”

-Love Like the Falling Petals: Movie (3/24/2022)
”Haruto Asakura (Kento Nakajima) falls in love with hairdresser Misaki Ariake (Honoka Matsumoto) and asks her out. Watching Misaki Ariake work hard to achieve what she wants, Haruto Asakura, who almost gave up his dream to become a photographer, begins to pursue his dream again, but Misaki Ariake is diagnosed with a disease that ages her 10x faster than normal.”

-Last One Standing: Reality (3/2022)
No official synopsis.

-Alice in Borderland S2: Drama (12/2022)
No official synopsis yet, but this should follow the events at the end of the first season of the drama.

-Fishbowl Wives: Drama (2022)
”Due to an accident, Sakura Hiraga (Ryoko Shinohara) gave up on her dream. She is now married and her husband runs a hair salon. They live in a luxurious penthouse apartment. Her life seems glamorous and she is envied by everyone. What everyone does not know is that Sakura Hiraga is abused physically and verbally by her husband. She is unable to leave her situation. Sakura Hiraga considers herself a goldfish in a fishbowl. One day, due to a goldfish, she meets a man.”

-He’s Expecting: Drama (2022)
”Kentaro Hiyama (Takumi Saito) works at an advertising agency. His romantic partner is Aki Seto (Juri Ueno). Aki Seto works as a freelancer writer and an editor. She prioritizes her working career first and ignores her parents' pressure to marry. One day, Kentaro Hiyama learns that he is pregnant. Kentaro Hiyama and Aki Seto are surprised by the pregnancy. They both didn't expect to become parents. Kentaro Hiyama now faces a lot of difficulties due to his pregnancy. Kentaro Hiyama and Aki Seto must decided whether to have their baby or not.”

-First Love: Drama (2022)
”A man and a woman retrace their memory of an unforgettable first love. They first met in the 1990's and grew up together in the 2000's.” The drama is based on the Utada Hikaru song ‘First Love’.

-Sanctuary: Movie (2023)
”Describes how a young sumo wrestler joins the sumo world with the belief that he can get fame and riches through the sport.”

-Let’s Get Divorced: Drama (2023)
”There are many shows and movies depicting a couple's divorce and its hardships, but in this romantic comedy, we see a high-powered couple secretly join forces to achieve a divorce... but with so many forces working against them, will they succeed.”

-The Queen of Villains: Reality (Date Unknown)
”In the golden era of 1980s Japan women’s wrestling, Dump Matsumoto went from nearly being fired to becoming the most famous heel in the history of Japanese pro wrestling. But her success jeopardizes her friendships with fellow wrestlers and makes her a target of vicious fans. Having turned the entire nation against herself, where will she go from here?”

-A Blueprint of Love: Movie (Date Unknown)
”This remake has Japanese and Korean cast and the story takes place in Japan. Ibuki, an 18-year-old aspiring architect, attends art university where he meets the beautiful and charming Yuna. While learning about Japanese fine architecture, they fall in love with each other for the first time. Before they break each other’s hearts, Ibuki promises Yuna to build her a home one day.”

-Toma Ikuta: Documentary (Date Unknown)
”Toma Ikuta is a Japanese actor who started his career as an idol from Johnny’s & Associates, and he has been focusing on acting and has played various characters since 1997 such as in No Longer Human and Hanamizuki and won Blue Ribbon Awards in 2011, followed by a TV series IDATEN: The Epic Marathon to Tokyo in 2019. In 2020, he won the Best Performance by an Actor at Tokyo Drama Awards 2020 for If Talking Paid.”

-Gundam: Live-Action Movie (Date Unknown)
No official synopsis.

I am looking forward to several titles, most notably The Journalist and Alice in Borderland S2. While still small compared to the content that Netflix has for Korea, the movement of titles on the site makes me hopeful for the future and that we’ll here of more developments and additions.

Links and Resources:

• Netflix Press Release

• Netflix Press Release 2

• Variety

• Variety 2

• On Screen Asia

• Deadline

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Wine and an X-Phile Update

Just a brief post to update on what is going on. At first, I wasn’t really intending to post an update as I don’t think anyone would care enough for an update to be warranted but it just felt weird not to post something and explain what is going on with my X-Files reviews.

I’ve found that I need to admit defeat that I’ve been doing a bit too much between last month and this month, and that I need to step back on things. Currently, I’m in the middle of NaNoWriMo, and it is important to me to try to accomplish the challenge. Because of this, it means that I’m doing extra work every day and as this blog’s first focus is on Asian dramas and movies, I have found that if I want to keep up with posts on that and NaNoWriMo I have to let go of something. And that something right now falls onto the X-Files posts.

No worries, they will be coming back in December - maybe mid-month if I’m feeling too overwhelmed - but they will be starting back. They are just taking a break for now. I will also be moving them to Sundays. It’s something that I had thought of doing in the beginning but wanted to keep things so on theme and Fridays were the original day of the week the show aired that it made sense at the time, but it just didn’t fit with the way things work out with some of the other posts that I want to start working on. And that’s ok. I still want to do the reviews, though. It’s a long-time project that I’ve always wanted to do and I do have fun with them even if they are the oddballs out of my Asian entertainment bubble.

So if you were like the one person who actually read them, you are the true hero and I’m sorry they got pushed to the side for a bit.

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First Impression: Happiness (2021)

It’s been a while since I’ve done a first impressions post on an airing drama, so why not write one on a drama that I’m currently hooked on. Happiness premiered this past Saturday on tvN, and after a bit of delay on subs, Viki finally had both of the episodes up to watch. One of my many (many) dramas premiering this month, Happiness was one of that I was most intrigued by. I purposely didn’t read or watch much in the way of teasers, but I knew that it had a good chance of being a solid drama with the team behind Watcher, director Ahn Gil Ho and writer Han Sang Woon. I will admit that doing a first impression on this drama after only the first two episodes is not necessarily wise. While we get a lot in the first two episodes, the drama only has started its journey into the meat of the story by the end of the second episode, but I was so into the first two episodes that I couldn’t not say anything about it.

That being said, I think the drama has done a really great job in setting up what is about to unfold even when we obviously haven’t gotten there, its eventual main focus on the apartment building and its tenants after the outbreak of an unknown disease. While the drama hasn’t gotten to that point yet, only briefly setting the dynamic between the people of the apartment, we still do see a good bit of the foreshadowing within the building. Sae Bom (Han Hyo Joo) is presented with a lot of separation right after moving in and meeting her new neighbors. The higher floors (which house the bought properties) are blocked and restricted from access from the lower rentals. Amenities in the building were bought by those same rich owners, and thus being barred from the renters. While we don’t know how the building is going to play out for the rest of the series (and it does - it is the main part of the synopsis), I liked that we didn’t see that much of it for the first week of the drama. It gave that plot point a lot more mystery and allowed the setup of not only it but the zombie outbreak time to unfold. The drama is only going to be a 12 episode one, and I thought that it would try to rush to get everything in the get-go, so it was interesting to see how they were allowing it to take its time.

The way that the story has already started to set up the disease is also probably one of my favorite aspects of the show. The disease presents itself zombie-like, the drama referring to its rabies-like spread. While zombies are a pretty overused trope, the drama integrates an added layer to the world landscape as it is set in a world where infectious diseases are already running rampant. The people in the world are at this point used to being quarantined or wearing masks, and I think it’s going to present a more interesting turn when this new disease has been spread, especially from what we see at the end of episode two. I think the military/police involvement and the potential of other outside entities who may or may not have been the cause of the virus spreading are an interesting plot and I’m excited to see how the drama takes it. The drama has also taken an interesting turn in while it does have innate horror because of the zombies, they aren’t overused or used only to produce horror. A lot of the horror you see lies in the way that the virus is affecting the victim, and the steps taken to control the person. I think any drama that is set during this time and deals with a disease is going to evoke a different response than it would have if it had been made a couple of years ago, but I felt that the drama grounded itself in the realism of everything and didn’t try to focus a lot of the actions as over the top. Maybe that was in response to how we know things are now that we’ve lived through this, but I thought that the way they handled the virus - especially so far - was integrated well and not being abused in response to our own current emotions about disease.

There’s a scene in the first episode when Sae Bam has been taken to quarantine after being bit by someone feared to be infected. At this point in the story, other viruses are already a lived experience, and her response is that of the infections she already knows. She is a bit hostile and thinks that the military is going a bit too far in keeping her in. It is then she sees her…commander (colleague?) who had also gotten attacked while detaining the same person. He is locked in a room with a mask on. Her not understanding the new infection, she breaks in. The way that the scene unfolds is a great example of how they’ve integrated the horror, and also shows how dangerous the infection is, especially within a world where the populous has already started to check out on the lived experience of viruses being present. The way he snaps and the means they have to detain him not only work in the horror but also share a lot - that it’s something that has been going on long enough for them to have measures to control the person, and that the actions are not what have been present in the normal viruses of this world. On the flip side, the tenants of the building have a mysterious pull. They are oddly controlling and secretive, and we see very little in who they are. They are mysterious and eerie, and I feel that the drama might surprise us on where the horror actually lives. I’m really interested to see how the power struggle is going to evolve in the drama between the tenants and the governing offices.

I’ve never watched anything that Hyo Joo has been in (that I can recall) and I’m already liking the way she is setting up her character. She is young and ambitious, and while she has done the typical thing that you find in most crime/thrillers where she goes above and beyond to find out things, I think the way that she has been handled has allowed for her character not to be over the top. A lot of the time these characters go well over the line and a lot of writers overuse it to add action or to move the plot along when they couldn’t figure out how, and the character becomes damaged in the process and you have little care if they hurt or not, because they have repeatedly put themselves and other in harms way selfishly. I'm also interested to see how Park Hyung Sik does in his role. I’ve not watched him in a lot, but he has been in mostly comedic or lighter roles, and this is very much not that type of role. The first two episodes focus more on Sae Bom than his character so we have more time to get to know how his evolves and his role in everything, specifically his role and relations with Jo Woo Jin's role as Han Tae Seok.

If the drama is at all handled as well as Watcher was with a good mix of intrigue and action, and the way that Han Sang Woon was able to accurately write morally grey characters and toe the line with who was good and who was bad to keep the mystery alive, I think this is going to be end up being a pretty awesome drama. Maybe one of my favorites of the year.

Happiness is airing on Fridays and Saturdays and being subbed over on Viki.

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November Premieres

It feels like so long since I’ve just done a regular post that’s not a review! November has a lot of dramas premiering, and a lot that I’m personally excited for. It’s going to be a heavy watching month for me, especially with some other dramas that premiered during October.

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-The supernatural romance Thai drama Prajan See Daeng will be out today, the 1st, about a boy born cursed to turn into a tiger-man during the red moon, and his journey to try to find the only way he can break the curse.

-Not a new movie, but the 2020 Korean horror The Closet will be available on Shudder today. The film follows a widower who enlists the help of an exorcist to help him find his daughter after she goes missing.

-On the 3rd the cdrama Wisher premieres on iQIYI. The sci-fi thriller tells the story of a mysterious organization that creates an app that allows users to make a wish - if they do the assigned task. It is part of iQIYI’s Light On Series, iQIYI produced dramas that are in the suspense genre.

-Also coming out on the 3rd in celebration of Apple TV+ being available in South Korea is the sci-fi thriller Dr. Brain - the first original Korean drama on the platform. It’s director/writer is Kim Jee Woon, known for being the director of the movie I Saw the Devil. I have high hopes for this one.

-While Dead and Beautiful may not be a by-the-book definition of an Asian horror film, it does follow an almost entirely Asian cast and is partially set in Taipei. A group of friends bored with their socialite lives go out for the night…and end up vampires. It’s been making the rounds at film festivals but will be streaming on Shudder starting on the 4th.

-Another older movie, the 2014 Japanese movie The World of Kanako will drop on Shudder on the 5th. The movie follows a former detective who uncovers a secret about his teenage daughter.

-Kdrama Happiness begins on the 5th about a deadly virus that spreads throughout a city, and the apartment building that has been sealed off from it. It looks super interesting, and the team behind it is really good.

-The webdrama Find Me if You Can will premiere on the 9th about a four-way love…square? And a stalker who is obsessed with the main female lead. The drama will star almost the entirety of the kpop group ASTRO.

-Korean horror drama Hellbound drops all of its episodes on Netflix on the 19th. The drama is about people being able to hear predictions on how they’ll die and are able to see the death angel in front of them. Director/writer Yeon Sang Ho is known for Train to Busan. This is one of my top dramas this month.

-Taiwanese drama Light the Night will be streaming part one on Netflix on the 26th. Set in 1988 Taipei Red Light District about the lives, love, and struggles of the club madam, and their hostess ladies.

-On the 27th the kdrama One Ordinary Day premieres. The drama is about the murder of a woman, and the person in jail who might not be the culprit. It is a remake of the BBC series Criminal Justice.

No Date:

-There hasn’t been much movement or information on the kdrama Goosebumps after some casting news, so there might be a good chance this one won’t be out this month. It’s directed by Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum director Jung Bum Shik so I’m interested and hopeful it’ll appear.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: The Bloodthirsty Trilogy (1971-1974)

Happy Halloween!

Today’s Asian horror pick is a trio of movies produced by Toho Studios: The Vampire Doll, Lake of Dracula, and Evil of Dracula. While there is no plot connection between the three, they are all directed by Michio Yamamoto and written by Ei Ogawa. The movies aren’t like other Japanese horror films, and fall more closely into the style of British gothic horror of the 50’s. I really enjoyed all three films, and they are the perfect fall afternoon binge but can be watched out of order without any worry about ruining the experience. What makes the trio even more interesting is that while they are pretty close to their original source, there is still a sense of what we would see in some later Japanese horror movies and the inherent difference in culture makes the movies unique in their own right. Sometimes you just need a classic spooky tale that doesn’t rely on gore or jump scares, and who centered the spookiness in original scares, haunting organ melodies, and things that go bump in the night.

The Vampire Doll (1970)

After returning home from an overseas trip Kazuhiko (Atsuo Nakamura) goes to visit his girlfriend at her country home. After not hearing from him for a week, Kazuhiko's sister Keiko (Kayo Matsuo) goes to figure out where her brother went with the aid of her fiance, Hiroshi (Akira Nakao).

Lake of Dracula (1971)

After a nightmare about a vampire when she was young, Akiko’s (Midori Fujita) dream is revealed true when an empty coffin shows up. Akiko's boyfriend, a doctor on the island, realizes that something is amiss when a series of deaths occur and go to investigate what is happening, which sets off a series of horrific events with Akiko being targeted by a vampire.

Evil of Dracula (1974)

Shiraki ((Shin Kishida) accepts a position at an all-girls boarding school where he finds out the headmaster is not who he says he is and that the students, and him, are in trouble against the vampire.

All of the movies can be found on Tubi and AsianCrush as well as on Blu-Ray/DVD.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: Audition (1999)

Today’s movie is not only one that I adore, but I think a must for any Japanese horror lover to watch at least once in their lives. Audition is based on a novel by Ryu Murakami and was given to Takashi Miike to adapt alongside screenwriter Daisuke Tengan on the heels of the success of Ringu. The film follows Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi), a widower who, with the help of a film producer friend, holds a mock casting audition to find his new wife.

The slowest of burns in all the best of ways, Audition sets up the story almost flawlessly. The death of his wife, his relationship with his son and dog play into the type of man he appears. The silent grief and loneliness that occurs after loss, and the need to move on but not knowing when is the right time sucks you into the story and quietly takes you on an unsuspecting journey. The movie spends most of its time in this space and sets up the turn beautifully in a way that is not only unexpected but sombering. Eihi Shiina’s performance as Asami is the breakthrough out of the movie, her acting is quiet and unassuming and packs much more of a punch at the climax of the movie in a way that makes you question everything that you’ve watched - forcing it into a new light and playing into the true terrors of gender roles, how they can affect people, and how a lot of it goes unnoticed because it is the norm in society. Audition is one of those films that inherently work better the less you know about it and allow Miike is able to take you on that journey without knowing what is going on. It’s a top-rated movie for a reason, and highly worth checking out.

Audition is currently streaming on Shudder, Tubi, and AsianCrush.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: Kaal (2005)

Written and directed by Soham Shah, Kaal follows the story of a group of wildlife experts trying to collect information about a string of attacks and deaths that are attributed to a man-eating tiger.

Whether intentional or not, Kaal is a campy thriller that tries to be scary and doesn’t accomplish any of that with overacting and a generally terrible plot. The story takes a while to get going, and really only jumps into actual tension and intrigue towards the latter half. The problem with this is that the movie is over two hours long, forcing you to trudge through an hour of random bickering, not-so-great characters, and overdone jump scares that attribute nothing to the overall story. It takes a while to be somewhat interesting, and that’s only after the turn. The movie is just not good enough to dedicate that amount of time and falls flat even when it starts to get sort of interesting.

The tigers used in the film are real, opting to not use any sort of computer-generated ones, which is a slight bonus to the overall story. The movie spends a lot of its time in this area of trying to be a solid thriller, but unintentionally going over into the campy horror side and using the tigers worked a little bit more to ground a lot of it when dealing with those scenes, even if the rest of the movie didn’t follow suit. I wanted a fun creature feature but was left with a boring 2-hour movie, that didn’t go anywhere and takes itself well too seriously.

Kaal is currently streaming on Netflix.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: Blood (2015)

Switching gears a bit from a full review of a movie (and technically not horror but let’s just let that one slide), today I’m focusing on my first impression of the first two episodes of the 2015 kdrama, Blood. Written by Park Jae Bum (God’s Quiz) and directed by Lee Jae Hoon (Run On, Ghost Detective) and Ki Min Soo (Good Doctor), the series follows top Ji Sang (Ahn Jae Hyun), a doctor that specializes in a specific surgery who is also a vampire, and his colleagues at a top cancer treatment center.

Blood has always been on my radar, but I never quite pulled the trigger to put it on my watch list, mostly because it was always sort of pitched like a romcom to me. With my aversion to most romcoms, I steered clear of the drama for a while. I wish I had looked into it sooner, not realizing who was behind the project. Director Ki Min Soo’s recent works include some of my favorites of recent date. Park Jae Bum wrote most recently for Vincenzo, and is the writer for one of my favorite kdrama series, God’s Quiz. While the drama is not fully a romcom, it does have some of those elements and is a closer follow to the structure of older kdramas, having heightened exaggerations of situations and heavily leaning on the clash between Min Soo and the female lead, played by Ku Hye Sun. I’m not a fan of those tropes and is a turn-off for a good bit of the scenes concerning the two. The drama does have enough of a rotating cast, and because it’s a medical drama more excitement or intrigue than if the drama had to follow just their relationship.

For me, the biggest draw of the series is the integration of his vampirism within the drama. It’s a unique take on the trope, and from early on we see the struggle he has with being a vampire. It plays into some interesting storylines, and also helps introduce him as a doctor. It’s doesn’t seem as corny or off the wall. Having the scenes when he’s younger feel compassion towards others while fighting his demons worked with the drama and with the death of the parents the drama set up some mystery for a larger issue that I’m interested to see. I also liked that we didn’t have to wait around for a tangible reason why he can be out in public or out in sunlight. The drama sets up a lot of the questions regarding him being able to do what he does fairly early on, allowing the viewer to not have to dwell on it. I respected how tight everything was in that regard, and it didn’t needlessly bog down the episode with these types of unanswered questions on the logistics of him operating as a vampire.

That being said, I know I will have trouble with the main pairing. This time period of kdramas have some pretty insufferable female leads, and it makes it hard to really get into the drama because of that. I also find that Hye Sun’s acting, in general, tends to be overexaggerated a bit too much despite the project she is working on, and it interrupts my care for her the characters she performs. It also presents a specific problem within a medical drama where her character has literal lives in her hands, and feel that she is jeopardizing those patients to show off and not being held accountable. I have a hard time believing in characters being truly good and empathetic when they show that they’d rather place a patient in harm’s way than to be upstaged by someone, a long-time hated trope that is very much present in this drama.

Will I continue the series? Honestly, it’s a possibility. I was intrigued by the first two episodes enough to want to continue the series but it is a longer drama, coming in at 20 episodes. Add elements that I know will be a struggle (that will take a longer time to settle and resolve in the story), and I’m not in any rush to continue watching. I do have some hope for the rest of the series, though, even if I end up completing it and it’s not a top drama for me. The team is pretty stacked in favor of this being a generally good series for me. Another factor that is preventing me from picking it up fully is that I do have a lineup of dramas that I’m currently watching, as well as a November packed with new dramas premiering that picking up the drama now just doesn’t seem as feasible. At the very least I intend to keep it on my list so that I can watch an episode or two here and there, but not commit to watching it in one sitting or in any time frame.

Blood can be found on Viki and Kocowa.

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