What I've been reading and watching so far. Anything which caught my eye worth noting. I have been reading a few books and webtoons over the months and while some of the stories were interesting for a while, it began to lag and lead to disappointment. I'll just try to jot down what was memorable.
Brave Citizen (Kim Junghyun) - Before watching the film I decided to read the original webtoon first and it was luckily a quick read with less than 100 chapters. So Simin gave up Hapkido when her father passed away seven years ago and decided to live a normal life per her mother's suggestion. She becomes a substitute teacher at a secondary school and witnesses a school bully who intimidates teachers and fellow students. Han Sugang enjoys terrorising the weak and Simin finds this unacceptable to the point she feels he needs to be taught a lesson. Unfortunately it isn't smooth sailing and Simin is told to hold back by not getting involved when there is school violence or bullying by Sugang.
Simin decides to take an alternative route and finds a cat mask, which leads her to become an anonymous fighter who takes down Sugang, teaching him a lesson and humbling him. Unsurprisingly he doesn't take this defeat well and tries to find out the identity of the kitty mask wearer at school.
The live action differs slightly from the original webtoon. Instead of her father being deceased, it's Simin's mother who is no longer in this world, whilst her father is a former boxing champion and coach to Simin who had to give up her dream of becoming a boxing champion by saving her father's gym. Due to debt Simin unfortunately has had to work hard to pay her father's loan off while working as a substitute teacher in Mooyoung High School. Byeongjin also knows a bit of Hapkido and learns more at Simin's friend's school. In the film, he's unfortunately Sugang's latest victim to bullying in order to stop them from hurting his grandmother.
Han Sugang live action is a more psychotic, unredeemable version played terrifyingly well by Lee Junyoung before he became Geum Seongje oh my. Sugang just enjoys giving people hell, is unafraid to be violent and snaps easily when people annoy him which includes his minions. They cower when they piss him off and I just wonder if they have any dignity for hanging around with a ruthless person like that. For sure, students bullying teachers should be taken into consideration and not just the other way round.
Sugang comes from a powerful family who controls the school foundation and is untouchable as a result. No teacher or student can report him and looking at his mother the apple does not fall far from the tree with the superiority complex and classism. No wonder the teachers have to bow down. I do like the webtoon backstory which explains Sugang's behaviour. It doesn't excuse how horrible he is but the source is there, the origin of his bullying and whatnot.
Shin Hye Sun is enjoyable as So Simin and there are a bit more layers to the character compared to the webtoon I think. Also Simin never found out the link between Byeongjin and her father knowing each other in the past and her father training him in Hapkido. Simin in both versions is brave and noble with trying to help the students and even puts on a cute facade to charm her colleagues. I personally couldn't keep that kind of mask up forever from my work experience but Simin knows she has to keep it professional in order to become a full-time teacher. Obviously with the epilogue she had to go elsewhere after the final fight but at least she acknowledges she can fight for justice in her own way. So Simin did what many teachers were afraid to do and challenged the bully.
Marry My Husband (2024) - The Kdrama was based more on the web novel which I have yet to read and only the webtoon so far. The main gist of the story remains the same in all versions where Kang Jiwon is terminally ill and finds her best friend Jeong Sumin and Park Minhwan her husband sleeping together. A tragic accident leads Jiwon to suddenly wake up a decade into the past way before the affair surfaces. One thing I did notice was how quick Jiwon realised her father had a helping hand in her time travel but also Jihyuk's. The webtoon took a while to reveal this discovery. I did however like Jiwon's transformation and appreciating the shorter hair which suited her well. The cast all did well in their roles and the antagonists were simply detestable on screen. BoA as Oh Yura was in the web novel so it was my first time seeing this character. You could tell she would be trouble the minute she appeared. I enjoyed seeing Jiwon get the justice she deserved and the enemies receive the Karma that was overdue.
The cute moment when Jiwon and Jihyuk realise they are both ARMY and like Bangtan is memorable. Jiwon listening to No More Dream was gold since she had gone back to the year 2013 when the group had debuted.
The Impossible Heir - this drama took a while to sink in as someone who isn't savvy with the corporate lingo featured here. I sat through the early episodes where school mates / eventual business partners Kang Inha (Lee Junyoung) and Han Taeoh (Lee Jaewook) team up and plan to pursue their dreams and become ambitious and successful. Their 'friendship' started from the final years of school when Taeoh didn't have a good first introduction with Inha in the local town and they happen to be in the same class. They then attend university together where they also befriend a girl named Na Hyewon. We all know how this will pan out. When someone says let's be friends and work together as partners then you add an extra person who is normally of the opposite gender to the mix we get the classic triangle. But the triangle isn't as simple as we watch further along.
We fast-forward a few years and this OT3 are still working together, keeping a professional facade when they meet up and Inha and Hyewon are an actual couple who are engaged to marry. You just know this teamwork will later turn into a mess when one guy bottles up his genuine feelings for the girl who ends up with his friend down the line and the friend learns as much from his best mate before making any moves in taking over his family's company. But then it all goes south and patience is no longer a virtue. Greed takes over and the knives are out.
It was rather sad to see what could have been a successful partnership turn sour but in the end everyone was using one another for their benefits to climb up. It's like working with colleagues and keeping it professional. You could almost consider this drama a bromance and Hyewon unfortunately got caught up in between. I personally would have liked to see more of Inha's backstory with regards to his mother. We know the general backstory of Taeoh and Hyewon's mothers but all we have is how Inha is the illegitimate son of Chairman Kang Joongmo and banned from entering the Kang household. He has managed to use his privilege to get away with a few things in the small town due to his name.
Side note - the random use of English by the characters and the random appearances of White European actors for small roles did catch me off guard. Also, Lee Jun Young's random bursts of cuteness did make me chuckle during Inha's early years.