#leeseyoung

In my spare time, I lowkey write reviews in some secret websites just to express as-of-the-moment hyped emotions. As I always tell my students, its best to capture it raw. Lol.

So My thoughts are all over the place and I don’t really have much time to write a decent review si I’m just going to leave here my fascination of The Red Sleeve. This may be a mess as I don’t have all the time in the world anymore to organize my thoughts 😂

First off, iIm borrowing 500 days of Summer’s tagline— this is not a love story. This is a story about love. This is a historical fiction based on the novel of the same name. I might read the novel if time permits since I usually love comparing text and media. Anyway, I won’t spoil those who havent it watched it yet. So I’m merely sharing my thoughts on this masterpiece but wont be going over the details. Again, it’s certainly not a romcom and I don’t know why in the world Netflix tagged it under kilig. Some bits yes, but as a whole, nah. I grieved. What absorbed me the most is the thought provoking message of the themes presented kn the story. There’s actually a lot to talk about. The fl to begin with is such a revolutionary role. And again, she’s a real person. She really existed and was rightfully glorified by the script. There’s also a lot of action in it, politics, rebellion, friendship, culture, ideals, and many more. But what drives the whole story is the steong depiction of The push and pull of love and duty. If fairytales taught us that love conquers all, TRS showed the bittersweet reality of choosing love and the consequences that come with it. Most dramas with boss-servant couple easily taught us that to be swayed by the former is the ultimate goal, as if it’s where all the good stuff will start happening. but here it’s quite the contrary, It acknowledges the ugly truth of being chosen by the prince charming is not that charming after all. The story also questions man’s capacity to exhaust all means to get a hold of love despite knowing well that that there’s an eternity of doubt and sacrifices that follow. There are so many questions to ask after the last episode. Was it all a dream or a memory? Did the main characters gain or lose? And going back to “love”, which face of love is the strongest of all? Is it the love for oneself? Filial love? Patriotism? Loyalty to the system? Did love change them or they manipulated love as they wish? it ended ambiguously. It wasn’t happy nor sad, but borderline depressing. lol.

I’ve watched a lot since my pregnancy to either keep me awake or lull me to sleep, from anime to movies, c, K, and JDramas, jumping from one genre to another. I’ve seen a lot and I would say this is my number 1 drama this year. They specifically call this type of kdrama saeguk. I’ve seen classics of my time like Jewel in the Palace, Jumonh and Hwang Jininbut didnt really like the platform back then since I’m too young for some serious stuff. I like watching hollywood period dramas though just not Korean in particular so I would say this is a first taste for me. I’m more familiar with the Japanese, planning to watch at least one Chinese if I feel like going after their standard 30+ eps, but I like to have them three compared soon.

So I dnt know if Saeguks are really riveting as as this one since they hold the magic of true historical events. But I hate how the show haunts me more now that I’ve finished it. The plot, the characters’ portrayal, their character development and the conversations they carried out, they all linger. The exchange of lines also got me so hooked and I was always waiting for the caption, thinking about how would each character uniquely deliver their words. I recall one review from MDL, the last few episodes are more on tell than show and I find it truly captivating as if I’m reading from a novel. I have read many reviews on Tumblr too and I like how there are so many angles it could be viewed from. I’m four years late to react so I’m also afraid that my thoughts might appear copied elsewhere. I could have joined reddit discussion too if time’s being gracious. Anyway, what I just want to finally do is to bring this in the classroom to end my TRS fever. I wonder how many of the students I’m about to meet in my class are already or would be interested to discuss the elements of this drama. I hope they would be reminded that love is not all about chocolates, roses, butterflies and kilig— it’s more like rose water abs and will DearDiary you. Char. Got those from a Tumblr review haha. So many hilarious remarks over there than MDL but what’s funnier is that I’m crying bc this is just so messy 😭 typed all these while breastfeeding my little one haha