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klspiegs
Reviews
Vampire in the Garden (2022)
Intriguing and beautiful, but lacking
No matter what the reviews think (including this one), I'd say watch this show. It's only 2 hours combined and a great ride despite its flaws. It has a lot of elements from Seraph of the End, Howl's Moving Castle, and Full Metal Alchemist, which is a hefty inspiration to live up to, but it really is just all of those with some great female characters and some original plotline.
The relationship between the two main characters, a runaway daughter of the military head and a vampire queen, is compelling and great lesbian representation (ignoring the ambiguous age gap which had me pretty weirded out). It does play into a particular gay trope that I was very disappointed in and it never really solidifies their relationship, but it's pretty obvious. Plus it does explicitly state for another relationship.
It's short, so a lot of questions go unanswered and characters are left half developed. I ended up liking this though, as I would rather it leave the wordbuilding fuzzy and focus on the main characters and plot since the runtime is so quick.
Overall, it's tragic but enjoyable and was obviously a passion project which is something I'm happy to see in our era of long running money maker shows and series. If you can spare 2 hours, watch it!
Jigeum uri hakgyoneun (2022)
Very Thoroughly Average
Going into this, I had admittedly high expectations because the trailer looked so good. Those expectations didn't hold up past the first episode, except for the phenomenal acting. All the characters pulled their weight and felt genuine the entire time. However, that is the only great thing about this show.
The plot is infuriatingly slow paced with no character development and even less chemistry between the main cast. There are no stand out cinematic scenes, no fun fight scenes, and as the stakes stay the same the entire time, everything starts to blur together.
The creators obviously tried to make statements about human nature, bullying, teenage conflict, teenage pregnancy, etc but all of those plot lines were messy and fell apart with no emotional hit on the viewer.
I really wish I liked this show. It had potential, but as me and my friend watched it, the #1 overwhelming emotion we experienced was annoyance. If this show was a color it would be gray-- no seriously it's like they had a gray filter over the camera constantly.
I don't recommend wasting your time on this. Even for a background noise show, you can find something actually entertaining and bad in a fun way, unlike this. The end makes no sense and isn't fulfilling either.
Thank you for reading :)