Rants and Weekly Raves (RAWR) #414

Anne: Well...vacation is over and back to the realities of life. Although I guess I didn't go that far away from reality since I refused to let my work email pile up into high triple digits and having to go through it all in one go. It was quite relaxing for the most part since I was able to ignore almost all the scheduled meetings. I did managed to watch some of the older (as in one or two years from now) Korean dramas that had been in my queue. Now on to the shows that I've watched this week. (I'm writing this as I'm catching up on this weeks episodes of Alchemy of Souls. And next week we should talk about how the CP in this drama is really Jang Uk and the Crown Prince.)

Immortal Samara

I was very, very excited when this show dropped all of a sudden. I have watched the first 8 or so, and it is everything that I expected it to be...for better or worse. Yang Zi plays Yan Dan, one of two last descendents of some sort of plant, and her body is basically a treasure trove of "medicines". She was part of a twin, and her elder sister was considered the stronger one of the two, and had achieved what would be considered a good "career" after 800 years. Cheng Yi (still with that face paralysis problem) plays Tang Zhou, one of the upper deities. The plot is fairly usual and I stand by what I've said before, this is like Ashes of Love and Love and Redemption mashed together. Yan Dan is a plant, an a lazy girl whose only goal is to become the greatest playwrite in all of the realms. Tang Zhou is an upper deity who thinks that keeping peace among the realms is the only goal in his life.

After a major battle with the demons, nearly all of the upper deities were dead. Tang Zhou is severely injured and goes into the human realm. One of the interesting thing is that the battle is what caused the heavenly emperor to collapse the original 9 realms into 3, the heaven, mortal, and the "demon" realms. So this was an interesting detail that I have never seen.

So far, nothing out of the ordinary, and all the stupid cliches seems magnified. But I still like it though.

Taxi Driver (2021)

This was VERY good. I found this because I was looking up other works by the cast of Because this is My first Life, and I am now fangirling over Lee Je Hoon. In case anyone hasn't seen this little gem, Kim Do Gi was a solider who came home to find that his mother was murdered. He joins a crew of others who have lost family members to violent crimes. They operate a legitimate victim advocacy service, and a taxi service, that is the cover for a secret service to offer revenge for victims. Kim Do Gi plays different characters in the show, and he masters every single one.