Night Watch

불침번을 서라 (Night Watch, also known as Neighborhood Watch) is a South Korean drama special that was aired on KBS2 on August 7th 2013 and has a duration of 1 hour and 7 minutes.

Story: Kim Hee-chan is an unpopular novelist and usually stays at home during daytime. On the other hand, his wife Jo Min-sook works during regular work hours. One morning she leaves for work and finds a blue bag filled with food trash tied to her car. She suspects Kim Soo-ji but the next morning, Soo-ji finds a blue bag like that next to her door and assumes it is revenge. However, during the next few days, blue trash bags appear in front of other neighbor's doors as well and cause a lot of suspicion and even one accident. Trying to find the "culprit" the residents start to check the CCTV and literally go on night watch.
I'm not fully sure if I understood the point of this drama. Yet it is a cute watch and keeps you busy for 1 hour. I actually caught myself being suspicious of everyone at one point and trying to figure out why someone would place trashbags in front of random doors.

Cast: Ki Tae-young as Kim Hee-chan. I don't really know what I should write here, it's not like I did not like his acting but more that it was again over the top and I think it was supposed to be like this to light up the mood a bit but.. I wish the whole special would've been just a tad bit more serious. But after all it was good and I have no idea what to criticize.
Lee Seung-min as Jo Min-sook. Oh, I liked her acting but not her character! I guess I just generally have a problem with female characters in dramas sadly but the jealousy was no joke and I hated it.. Well, I can't change that at least but a part of her character was actually understandable.
Kim Yoo-hyun as Kim Soo-ji. I found her character to be much more interesting for a female character. I can't pinpoint what it is but maybe it was just that she actually seemed interested at one point and wanted to find out what was going on (if I remember right).
Kwak Hee-sung as Kim Jin-hyuk. Oh, his character is a sweetie in this one and he reminded me of a puppy, especially the way he cared for his parents even though they were not present in this drama directly was quite sweet. I fairly enjoyed his acting, too.
Keep in mind that after just 1 hour you're usually not able to talk a lot about acting skills unless you really focus on that.


6/10
This was an entertaining, light-hearted watch but I probably wouldn't rewatch it because yes, it got me bored here and there and I still don't understand what the big deal is about a trash bag if you carry out your trash every single day anyway. I probably wouldn't bother to do research but rather rely on surveillance cameras or anything but I certainly wouldn't care enough to sit outside during nighttime and observe the building.
Also, parts of this looked more like a play that could've been performed on stage but not really like a drama special. This bothered me slightly but it wasn't terrible.

Kang Koo's Story

강구 이야기 (Kang Koo's Story) is a South Korean drama special that was aired on March 29th and March 30th 2014 on SBS.

Story: Kyung-tae is considered a good-for-nothing gangster and goes to Kanggu, a place at the coast. After a friend of his died, he wants to take care of his friend's older sister Moon-sook and her son Kang-koo. As the story goes, Kyung-tae falls in love with Moon-sook and also becomes closer to Kang-koo but there are two problems - the two of them don't know that his friend and Moon-sook's brother, Jung-soo, died and Moon-sook is sick..

Cast: Lee Dong-wook as Kyung-tae showed a huge variety of emotions in this drama, at least this was my personal feeling. I liked his acting as well as his character after all though it wasn't a kind of character one would expect in a series dealing with "gangsters".
Park Joo-mi as Yang Moon-sook was nice to watch in this movie as well. She seemed to soft in some parts I think, for a strong woman who's working even though she's sick and who raised a child mostly on her own it's just that it didn't work that well.
Shin Dong-woo as Kang-koo was just the perfect son. His acting was good, the way his character changed was portrayed in a nice way and in general his acting seemed stable. Regarding the fact he's one of these "child actors" (he was like 15/16 when this was filmed) he's definitely an actor to look out for in the coming years.

Soundtrack: The soundtrack supported this drama perfectly! The only problem about this soundtrack is that basically no one knows all of the songs that were included and I couldn't find any information on that! Grrrrr..


In general I gave this drama special a 6.5/10 rating solely because I did have some.. too melodramatic aspects. It's not that much my style but I still enjoyed watching it after all. The scenery is incredibly beautiful in this drama so if you want to see some wonderful places in South Korea, this drama might also be to your liking.

Recommended if you like sweet but sad love stories and not that much blood!

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.

Code Blue

コード・ブルー  ドクターヘリ緊急救命 (Code Blue - Doctor Heli Emergency Lifesaving) is a Japanese TV series consisting of 11 episodes that aired on Fuji TV from July 3rd to September 11th 2008.
The special was aired in January 2009.

Story: Code Blue shows the life of four interns in the Shoyo University hospital. Being responsible for emergencies, those four are flight-doctors-in training and work with Doctor Heli, a program involving a helicopter transporting patients to offer help as fast as possible. However, those four work under Dr. Shuji Kuroda, a senior doctor who's said to not really like young people. Mihoko Hiyama is a straight-forward young woman while Megumi Shiraishi seems to be more calm and doesn't want to hurt people with words if she can avoid it. Kazuo Fujikawa is a talkative young person but seems to lack skills sometimes while Kousaku Aizawa is extremely quiet and cold which is why he can deal with emergencies well.
While working together, those four experience difficult situations.

Cast: As I am not one of those who watched many J-Dramas I think it's something special when I can say that I've known a few actors. And well, those are actually two but nevermind.
Tomohisa Yamashita is a quite good as Kousaku Aizawa. Why exactly? Well, I don't really know about his acting in general but this cold character in this series just fits him perfectly, and also the emotional scenes with his grandma (not a huge spoiler I guess) seem to be fine.
Erika Toda is in this series as Mihoko Hiyama. Compared to the movies I've seen her in before (*cough* Death Note *cough*) her role in this one is strong and confident. While I found her sometimes to be the difficult type of person, I did like her acting overall as well and seeing two different sides of one actress is a good thing as well.
As Megumi Shiraishi we see Yui Aragaki. While her rather shy character sometimes was too quiet in my opinion (or just didn't say what she thought), I was a little frustrated with her being careless in the end. Nonetheless I think she was a necessary part of this series, mainly because they wanted to show completely different characters.
The same actually works for Yosuke Asari as Kazuo Fujikawa. While at some point you pity him because he's seriously not that good compared to the others, in the end it seems like he just needed to adjust himself to the team and the new surroundings while following his dream to become a flight-doctor. Since he doesn't seem to be blessed with extremely medical talent, he's working hard to make his dream come true.
My favorite character in this series was by far Haruka Saejima played by Manami Higa, a young and extremely beautiful flight nurse who seems cold at first but warms up in the end. She's an important part of the team itself and she's good in what she's doing, sometimes even better than the average doctor.
And lastly I feel like I need to name Toshiro Yanagiba as Shuji Kuroda. While at some point one might start to hate him he's a good doctor and wants to safe patients in the end. That's also the reason why he's strict when it comes to the interns.

Soundtrack: The music in itself is not bad. The opening, "HANABI" by Mr. Children isn't bad, as an opening song it's quite nice actually. But then again the music in the whole series sometimes missed the atmosphere. This might be only my opinion but especially during those emergency operations I would actually expect something more dramatic if it's about life and death.
That being said, the soundtrack is probably the weak point this drama has.


After all a 9/10 for the series and an 8.5/10 for the special are still a good and strong rating because of the interesting stories told in such a short amount of time.
While the worst part in fact is the music in general it's not that bad and didn't really make me dislike the drama, that was just something I need to say.
Also, something about the special in itself: I found the talk about separation alright. Yes, it was nice, but not nearly as exciting as that huge accident (should I feel bad for saying this?). The last part of this special episode (actually almost two hours long) was rather slow, there was no major action since emotions were most important then.