Midnight's Girl

Yes. Yes, I know you're going to read this maybe because of Nam Tae-hyun and I will not even fully deny this but read what else I've got to say before you love or hate the drama for an idol staring in it.

0시의 그녀 (Midnight's Girl; Girl of 0AM) is a South Korean mini drama series that aired from May 04th to 14th 2015 on Naver TVCast and MBC Every1. The special thing about this drama is that the 8 episodes are only about 15 minutes long each what turns the whole drama more into a movie of two hours in total.

Story: Gong Ji-dan dreams of becoming a superstar and after failing a casting ends up taking care of a karaoke business for some time. He meets Min Se-ra, a girl who is working part-time and helps him to not only grow as a person but as a singer while she keeps an important secret to herself.

Cast: As I mentioned before Nam Tae-hyun of WINNER is in this drama as Gong Ji-dan. While his acting was not that good and he definitely should work on that if he wants to continue as an actor and idol I think it was still good he was picked for this drama because of the music. Somehow Gong Ji-dan fit him and they seemed to also have some musical things in common which I consider an important factor - the actor needs to be able to identify with the character in some way to make it better. (Does this make more sense? I don't know if anyone gets me in this point). Anyway, I still stay with: He needs to work on his performance.
Seo Min-ji actually is a lot more experienced but her acting in this short story also seemed pretty plain but it was overall an okay thing. Her character Min Se-ra is a cheerful girl who wants to help Ji-dan as good as possible which is adorable - but she behaves too cute for her age in the drama so it was a little bit difficult for me to see her like that.
This drama has also a bunch of idols included in guest appearances - for example Yerin of G-Friend and Sangdo of Topp Dogg! Okay, since they were only customers at the karaoke/noraebang it is in fact not really necessary to judge their acting since they only appeared for a few minutes but not any longer.
Son Jin-young is in this drama as a good friend of Ji-dan, Kwang Chul. He is a character that doesn't seem that bright but I have a feeling he wasn't bad person in total so it is interesting to me.
 
Soundtrack: The main song in and around this drama is CLC's "First Love", a cute song that in my opinion fit the total theme of this series well. It is a song I personally don't like outside of the drama much though so I can't really see it as a plus or a minus. The rest of the music in the drama is alright and supports the cute and innocent feeling this drama delivers.


After all this drama is a cute love story to watch between other dramas but nothing more - just a small 'snack' you won't take too serious about a basic, vague love story that is based more on names than on the acting itself. I don't think I wasted my time though since it is cute in some way and deserves a 6.5/10 from me.

My Love Eun Dong: The Beginning

사랑하는 은동아: 더 비기닝 (My Love Eun Dong: The Beginning) is a South Korean web drama and the prequel to jTBC's "My Love Eun Dong". The series aired from May 18th to May 26th 2015 through Naver TV Cast.

Story: This short series shows how Ji Eun-dong and Park Hyun-soo, later known as Ji Eun-ho, meet for the first time and become close friends. After Eun-dong's grandmother dies she's adopted and the two of them don't get a chance to meet for ten years. They then start to develop even deeper feelings for each other until they're seperated again.

Cast: The story starts of with the teen characters. At that time Park Jin-young of GOT7 plays Park Hyun-soo. The acting is pretty decent but he's not one of the best actors I've ever seen. Lee Ja-in as Ji Eun-dong is the female main character in this generation. Her acting was good after all. The friendship the two of them showed was a nice thing to watch but I honestly refuse to call it romantic interest or something. It would be kind of a pedo thing if I would regard it as a love interest so I prefer just staying with a good friendship that might be close to the way siblings feel for each other.
The next generation consists of Baek Sung-hyun as Park Hyun-soo/ Ji Eun-ho and Yoon So-hee as Ji Eun-dong. The two of them can pull off some chemistry and I enjoyed watching their scenes a lot though they're not as cute and innocent as the first couple (but the first pairing wouldn't have been legal for whatever's sake..). And I loved to see Baek Sung-hyun dealing with different emotions in this.

The last generations is played by Joo Jin-mo and Kim Sa-rang. Now there wasn't too much of them in this prequel but so far they delivered a solid performance.
Other actors in this short series are Kim Hyung-kyu as Eun-ho's friend and Jang Ki-yong as Lee Seok-tae.


After all I've rated this short series with a 7.5/10 though I'm not really sure why. It was a cute love story I enjoyed a lot. Maybe it's because some scenes were shown over and over again. That wasn't necessary, the whole series had a duration of only a little more than one hour.
Is it worth watching if you plan on watching the actual series? Well, I'm going to check that out and will report back when writing the review for the original TV series.

Vampire Flower

뱀파이어의 꽃 (Vampire Flower) is a South Korean mini drama series that is/was available on Naver TVCast. It consists of 6 episodes with a duration of about 10 minutes per episode.

Story: Louis stumbles upon Kang Seo-young, a girl with the "golden scent". He needs her help to finds the 'Vampire Flower', a flower that has been stolen by humans around 150 years ago. He falls for Seo-young but deletes all her memories at some point to protect her from Ashel.

Cast: Most of the characters that appear regularly are played by members of idol group A-JAX. We have Seo Jae-hyung as Louis, Kim Hyeong-kon as Reika/ Rehka, Lee Seung-yub as Baekhan and Moon Hyo-jun as Akan. Now I wouldn't really criticize their acting but rather the story and the non-existent character development - how could characters develop anyways in such a short series. Kim Ga-eun accepted the role of Kang Seo-young. I've never heard about her but well, her acting seems to be fine. It's difficult to judge though.

Soundtrack: The OST is probably one of the things I really loved about this drama as a huge fan of A-JAX. The group recorded two songs, "뱀파이어의 꽃 (Vampire Flower)" and "Fate In (달빛주문)". Maybe I'm even happier about this because of DSP not promoting them properly but that made me really happy.


This mini series could've been better. If they would've made it a little longer. Or at least explained some things. 6.5/10 though because.. we all know for what reason I've watched this. The cast is lovely, and that's it. The story is somewhat close to the oh-so-lovely-vampires we've seen too often. It's not as bad as expected though and as long as DSP keeps on ignoring A-JAX, I see myself watching this over and over again.

And yes, Jae-hyung, I do. Many people do.