Hwarang (2016)

Grande delusione

Avevo sentito parlare benissimo di questo drama e guardandolo sono rimasta molto delusa, specialmente nella prima parte del drama.

TRAMA
La trama partiva con buone premesse ma poi è andata perdendosi in tante scene no-sense, allungamenti di brodo inutili e dispersivi che hanno tolto attenzione dalla parte davvero interessante che è stata gestita malamente. Per la maggior parte del drama mi son trovata a pensare "ma di questa cosa perché dovrebbe interessarmi?"
Nella parte finale poi troviamo un plot twist interessante che però... finisce e si risolve nel giro di poco buttando così una splendida occasione

PERSONAGGI
I personaggi sono incredibilmente incoerenti. Partono in un modo, si presentano con certe caratteristiche e poi si comportando in modo totalmente opposto. Gli attori sono molto bravi ma non riescono a salvare dei personaggi scritti molto male. Park Seo Joon, che ho molto apprezzato in altri drama, qua l'ho trovato nella maggior parte delle scene spento, fatta eccezione per le scene drammatiche dove ha fatto brillare le sue capacità. Ho invece molto apprezzato Park Hyung Sik che credo sia riuscito a dare più spessore al suo personaggio (che ho amato ma che avrebbero potuto gestire meglio).

I personaggi secondari sono anch'essi nati con ottime premesse ma poi gestiti malissimo. Esempio d'eccezione Suk Han Sung che hanno prima rilegato a macchietta comica, poi gli hanno dato una storia molto bella e profonda per poi... concludere in quattro e quattr'otto.

STORIA D'AMORE
Che dire... I personaggi partono sapendo una cosa per certa, poi se ne scordano e poi SORPRESA! Non ho apprezzato la gestione del triangolo e anche il personaggio protagonista femminile non l'ho trovato davvero non all'altezza, ho infatti preferito di gran lunga la coppia secondaria (che ovviamente è stata tirata via).

È una recensione arrabbiata? sì. Detesto quando una storia con buone premesse presenta queste problematiche che compromettono l'esperienza della visione.

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Un drama storico diverso,molto più di una storia d'amore.

Un drama storico in costume un po' diverso dove la trama si concentra non solo sulla storia d'amore ma anche sui legami che si creano tra i personaggi.
Molto gradevole da vedere e mi sono piaciuti molto questi hwarang bellissimi che creano un legame di amicizia che va al di là dei ranghi.
Molto bello e pure bravo il futuro re e tutta la lotta che farà per diventarlo.Ho amato lei con i suoi modi di fare e la sua forza di volontà.Ho persino rivalutato la regina.
Un mix di tutto tra un amore bello e alla fine anche forte,il triangolo amoroso,la rivalità tra i personaggi e la grande e bellissima amicizia che ne verrà fuori.Tante risate ma anche un po' di lacrime.Ci sono un po' di colpi di scena che fanno tutto più interessante.
Bel drama da vedere sicuramente.

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Wow che spettacolo!!!!

Il primo drama storico che guardo e mi è piaciuto tantissimo.
La trama è articolata e accattivante. Si passa da momenti divertenti a momenti drammatici a momenti romantici senza mai perdere l’autenticità della storia.
Ho amato tutti i Hwarang, guerrieri di Silla. Il cast è spettacolare, pieno di volti noti a partire dal mio amato Park Seo Joon, che come sempre è perfetto nella parte. Poi c’è Park Hyung Shik (idol del gruppo ZE:A) che nella parte del principe tormentato è stato bravissimo, Choi Minho (idol degli SHINee) e V (idol dei BTS).
La cosa che ho amato di più di questo drama è stata l’importanza che viene data all’amicizia. I protagonisti, sarà perché sono vicini anche nella vita reale, sono riusciti a rappresentare al meglio il valore e la forza della vera amicizia.
Un drama da vedere per la storia ricca di azione, colpi di scena e tanti sentimenti. Ma anche perché è pieno di tantissimi gnocchi coreani.

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Hwarang began at the top of my list for most anticipated drama. It boasted a star studded cast as well as the fact that it was pre-filmed which seemed to promise a quality show that would become "the next big hit". As it turns out, the drama became a pitiful case of lost potential.

The story was lacking, to say the least. It didn't seem as if there really was one sometimes to be honest. The episodes were mainly made up of small conflicts that didn't seem of much importance to the central story at all. Even the the climax of the main story was resolved rather anticlimactically in the last episode. I often found myself wondering what the heck happened after an episode, not because I was shocked by the events, but because nothing really did happen. The story trudged along at a horse and buggy speed and it seemed that our lead female Ah Ro was just along for the ride. She didn't seem to have any purpose in the story, but to give our leads some angsty tension (not that it was needed because they had enough of that on their own). The main couple had no chemistry whatsoever and I even found myself bored at their scenes. And lets not even begin talking about the plot holes. There were many and they were extremely noticeable.

The acting was mediocre. This is an average amongst this large cast; some were better than others. Going back to the issue with the main couple, I believe it wasn't totally the fault of the cast. Park Seo Joon had amazing chemistry in his last drama with Hwang Jung Eum and Go Ara did well in Reply 1994. While they are not exceptional actors, they have shown good acting skills, and even they could not salvage how stale the plot was. Minho's acting became a lot more natural though and Taehyung did well with his emotional scenes.

The OST itself is pretty good and some of the songs were actually quite memorable. I did notice though that the music editing was not very good throughout the entire drama. It cut off weirdly and some of the music didn't even fit the scene, which is disappointing coming from a show that was prefilmed and edited.

Overall, it was only slightly enjoyable to watch so I will not be rewatching. I would like to give some honorable mentions though to my otp Ban Ryu and Soo Yeon, Sung Dong Il the designated ahjussi of kdramas, and Park Hyung Sik's face (it's beautiful :')).

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Honestly felt more like a kpop fangirls wet dream rather than an historical coming of age drama. Which is a pity, because the actors did really well, but the writing was horrible.

I honestly don't know what the writers were thinking because the characters were interesting, but not developed enough to be interesting or matter and the acting wasn't that bad, Go-Ara is a brilliant actress but her character was written so badly she couldn't show her skills. Park Seo-Joon did a brilliant job with what he was given, although he wasn't as badly written.

The worst character was by far Han-sung. His character was so interesting - A fun-loving young man who loved his peasant brother dearly, opposed his families views, and had the burden of being the sole heir. THE POTENTIAL FOR DEVELOPMENT WAS IMMENSE. But he got no development and was shown perhaps once every other episode. He was a big part of the shift in direction towards the end but his dynamic with various characters wasn't explored so it was more of a fact stated than actors showing this - again, writers fault, not the actors.

Some characters had interesting histories but weren't explored at all - mainly the Hwarang who didn't know who his father was.

The romance was just thrown in their for the sake of showing some kissing. Park Seo-Joon and Go-Ara did well enough to show that their characters cared for each other, but story wise, the romance wasn't needed. I cared much more for the dynamic between Hyung-Sik and Seo-Joon.

The plot had potential, but showrunners focused more on Go-Ara walking around depressed than moving the plot forward.

Overall, the acting wasn't bad at all but the showrunners left no room for the actors to, well, act. The characters were so 2D that it was like asking an actor to act as a lifeless corpse.

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I really wanted to write a review as soon as the series had ended. Since spoilers are not tolerated in a review, I decided to do a pro/contra list in the comment section containing spoilers because there were concrete things that bothered me a lot and I needed to get them off my chest.

I started watching Hwarang because it is a historical drama and I was interested in the story. I am not an expert when it comes to history, my knowledge on Korean history is particularly poor, and so I read some articles on Silla/Hwarang to be prepared a bit. Of course you have to keep the fact in mind that this is a drama, thus fiction. Some things had to be dropped for sure, and some things had to be (re-)invented to create this drama. I’m saying this because I do not want you to have extremely high expectations on this show being historically accurate. It is not. Personally I did not mind, it wasn't TOO bad for me. I will not compare real historical events with this drama in the next lines for several reasons; instead, I will provide summarized impressions of mine and tell you about the things I liked and disliked.

First of all, what _is_ “Hwarang” in my eyes? It is a historical drama mixed with modern elements, comedy, and romance; action, silliness und suspense included. It is partially somewhat of a high school drama embedded in an earlier century I would say, because you will recognize some types and things related to school dramas for sure. The supporting characters are likeable and enjoyable; I wished some of them were more vivid.

At first I was slightly addicted to this show, and I even stopped watching other dramas because I wanted to concentrate on “Hwarang”. The cliffhangers made me wanting to go on with the next episodes badly, Sun Woo was cool, and so were Ah Ro, Ji Dwi and the supporting characters. I was interested in Sun Woo’s development, but I fell for Ji Dwi very soon, and at some point, I was mostly interested in his fate because I started to see the major flaws. My addiction disappeared, but it still was enjoyable.

I had the feeling the makers were not sure on which aspect they should focus on more: The lives of Hwarang and their impact on society, that one love story going on, political stuff in general, Sun Woo’s story or on Park Hyung Sik’s role. I am perfectly aware of the fact that, usually, a story has several plots being connected to each other at some point. I liked nearly all the plots within this series and nearly all of the characters involved, but the plots are unbalanced. I would not go so far as to claim the first episodes not being important or to count them as dispensable fillers, because that is not what they are at all, but at some point, so many significant things happen one after another that all previous events become blurry. Besides, the characters are not given time to reflect on certain things properly, at some point stuff is thrown at you in raw form piece by piece; sometimes it did not make any sense to me. Instead of 20 episodes, the makers should have either made 15 or 30 episodes to avoid a very slow first half being followed by a very fast-paced second half. As it stands, the relationship between fast and slow is deeply unbalanced and harder to digest.

The thing that annoyed me the most is the main couple. It is hard to explain without posting spoilers, it really is. I did not feel it, maybe you will, I don’t know. They would have been off better as separated individuals and not as a couple because the developers wasted too much time on them instead moving on with things that I considered more important.

I liked the equivalences and symbolism. You will stumble upon analogous and opposite equivalences between human beings, humans and things, humans and forces of nature. To me, these things along with symbolism are important because you expand the meaning to create a huge substantial net without organizing a verbal orgy. The “meaning of something” is relevant to this drama. Two other things I liked are the writers’ ability to generate deep, emotional scenes and character development. Unfortunately, all of this has to face neglect soon; equivalences and relationships are created and then thrown overboard; adequate character development is avaliable in small amounts only. Ji Dwi and Ban Ryu’s progression were the only ones to be witnessed visibly.

I would divide this series into two parts, part A and part B. In part A you get to learn the characters, their relationship among each other and their motivations. In Part B things become… beyond good and evil, let’s put it that way. I really wish there would have been more interactions between all Hwarang in part A. I wanted them to talk to each other more; I wanted them to get to know each other better.

The acting was good. Park Hyung Sik and Do Ji Han’s acting skills impressed me the most. Park Hyung Sik’s facial expressions, his speech, his postures and movements are indeed that of a man of high importance, his face is made for this kind of dramas, and Do Ji Han’s emotions were frighteningly real. The others did well too, except for Go Ah Ra (and Park Seo Joon) in some scenes. I had the feeling that this is not her kind of drama, somehow.

Please do not assume I am here to simply bash her or her contribution to this drama, after all she is one of the main characters and I gladly “ship” her with one of the male leads. As I said before I liked nearly all of the characters, but they aren’t all perfect (putting the fact aside that we did not get to know them well enough). Ah Ro appears to be plain in some scenes, which is a shame. I haven’t watched another movie starring the actress so far, so I do not want to judge her acting skills as a whole. Ah Ro started out as an interesting and funny character, but in the further course I realized she was poorly written. Sun Woo is a rather irrational and static being, too one dimensional for too long, too much overkill towards the end. I think I do understand why they portrayed Sun Woo the way he is. I still think the developers gave him too much credit, even though Ji Dwi and some other boys deserved it as much, but the ending was legit, at least.

I am not sure whether the contemporary musical numbers were chosen on purpose to remind the viewers that “Hwarang” is still a drama and not a historical documentary or such, but I considered the music to be really off-putting sometimes. Sure, after five to six episodes you learn to ignore it/get used to it forcefully, but, eh, it should not be this way.

The last criterion here is “rewatch value”. To be honest with you: The possibility of me rewatching a series with more than five episodes or so is low. But if I were a person who likes rewatching things from time to time in general, I would probably watch this show again one day just to see the scenes that touched me the most/I liked a lot.

I was not satisfied by the final couple and the final scene, apart from that the outcome was appropriate. I had a difficult time while ruminating about a proper rating. First it was 8,5, then 6,5, finally I decided to rate it as 7/10. Episode 19 was a complete mess, and the final scene was screaming bruh, cliché right in my face, they rushed the ending and too many questions remain unanswered, although it is suggested that you will get the answers.* Nonetheless I liked many things about this show.

To sum up, “Hwarang” offers entertainment, some likeable characters; the plots within are interesting but things are solved poorly. This drama is neither extraordinary nor a must-watch (unless you want to get to see your favourite) and has obviously some major flaws. You can say the makers had reliable tools, but they didn’t know how to use them properly. Give it a try if you want to; after all you can still skip stuff or simply drop this drama if this isn’t your cup of tea. I hope this review is helpful!

*I like open ends, and usually I am fine with some things left unanswered AS LONG AS it has a function and is well presented.

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I rate this drama 2/10 (Dropped it at episode 16)

Because if you make the rules, you can break them!

So we all know that there are two kinds of logic in this world; Real world logic and Drama world logic.When it comes to Drama world logic, you just accept it and move on but if a drama contradicts it's own logic then I'm done!

There were so many reasons I dropped this drama.

It had so much potential to be an inspiring drama about the Hwarang boys struggling and dealing with their problem. Growing, making friends, they could even have added a death of a beloved character to tugg at our hearts a little bit and in that case, it would have been totally fine to add a bit of romance but NO.

This drama contains 90% triangle love drama, 6% recapping romantic moments. 3% fighting and 1% problem solving. Not to mention that the female lead is so pathetic, there wont be an episode where they don't show a 5-minute front angle of her walking and crying...

So because the writers based most of the characters off of a real life royal family and they used the true bone ranking system to create conflict, you'd think they couldn't go wrong.... until they add fictional characters and create relationships and events that never happened while still trying to follow some of the original story. There is nothing wrong with that but if you're going to add some spice, do it right! This just ended up giving the show a lot of contradiction, odd relationships and lose ends.
(Apparently, it's okay to marry your brother if you're royal but not if you're poor.)

To me, some "emotional scenes" turned me off completely. They had so many opportunities to really rip my heart apart by adding some real brutality and feeling into it. I have a specific scene in mind and I'm thinking that they could at least spend some time on this scene to make it believable... This scene got a little over 1 minute screen time... Go Ah Ra got 10 minutes screen time for walking and crying...

Oh well... If you love triangle love dramas with a lot of romance and crying and pushing and pulling and recaps after recaps of scenes that don't really move the story forward then this is PERFECT for you! Don't hesitate to watch it! As a bonus, you get a bit of plot on the side. It's weak... not very well worked out... not very logical... and it doesn't really start until episode 16.... BUT there is one heartbreaking death scene in the first episode so maybe I should give this show 10/10

ENJOY!

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Hwarang was a very.. special drama for me. It was a drama that although I thought was boring at times, had hundreds of plot holes and a pretty unshipable main couple it still has a special place in my heart. The story wasn't the most well written honestly but it was still quite entertaining. What made me love this drama so much was the fact that the friendship between the characters was so well portrayed and played a huge role throughout the whole series. The cast was full of known faces and they all did very well, and maybe the fact that the cast seemed to be quite close in real life is what made their friendship and hardships together so believeable. The last episode definitely showed that as well and made me personally very happy.
If you don't mind a drama with a not so amazing story but interesting and entertaining characters and relationships between those Hwarang is definitely one to watch.
The romance wasn't really that amazing tbh, it was a nice feature but the female lead was often unnecessary and sometimes a little annoying. There was a love triangle for a few episodes but it dissolved pretty quickly.
So my rating of 9.5 really is just because of my very non objective emotional opinion on this drama that made me cry, laugh and cry some more.

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I was a huge sceptic of historical dramas, especially when it came to the Asian history. I thought that this was going to be like those weird and awkward medieval films with poor acting and low morals...

...However, watching this drama was the best decision as it was spectacular. It perfectly combined historical, action, comedy and romance genres into a one big masterpiece. Not only did I become more interested in getting educated about whole Korean history, but about some of the cute actors as well!

Just look at all of those hot oppas on the posters of this series! Look! It was only appropriate for the name "Hwarang" to actually represent the "Flowering knights" because the actors were stunning! The OST amazed me but most of all the fact that some of the actors sang some songs themselves! I mean, every character, not only the knights, but the second lead character and the antagonists had a lot of charm and translated their characters really well.

I especially fell in love with Park Seo Joon. I loved his acting and I'm becoming more and more curious about him, so I'll jump onto this actor's train of dramas.

Overall, I'm proud to say that Hwarang was the first historical Korean drama that I've watched. If you're curious even a slightest bit, please check it out! And don't forget to check some of the interviews and the behind the scenes episodes, since they're a great addition to this as well.

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The saddest thing about this drama is the huge expectations everybody had about it.
Without those expectations, I probably wouldn't have finished it either , because the story was a bit slow and lacking in different areas and mostly because the romance part was not working out at all for me.
The main leads had, in my opinion, no real chemistry and their romance had almost nothing to do in the middle of the plot .
For the rest , i really enjoyed the bromance part, the training and the maturing of Hwarang guys , and that's what kept me on this show until the end.
Some bad and good acting , a pretty good cast , i discovered Park Hyung sik's acting through Hwarang and was pleasantly surprised , he might not be the greatest actor of all time , but gives a sweet feeling!

To conclude, the plot was partly interesting (birth and development of hwarang unit) , partly out of place and boring (romance part) , the acting was not bad but not perfect either , and some very funny and light moments that ended up working out way better than the tragic ones .

I do recommend it , but without big expectations !

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AWESOME HISTORICAL DRAMA!! I really love the story about Silla warriors which is called Hwarang. And hwarang train to become stronger in order to protect their kingdom Silla. The plot and its storyline really excite me and made me more anticipating for the next episode every episode that was released. Its not because of the number of flower boys that blinded the viewers, once you get the feeling of the storyline, this drama is actually great. The OSTs are really good too!! Trust me, this drama wont dissapoint you! At first when i started to watch this, i was not that interested but after watching a few episodes, i was so anticipated for the next plot REALLY The actors really acted well and conveyed their emotions well too! The ending was great!! :') I was really happy that its a happy ending and was sad that its the final episode because i was attached to HWARANG already.. the drama is super good serious :') i cried joyfully at the ending.. After finishing watching Hwarang, listening back to all the OSTs of hwarang really made me miss the hwarang moments and scenes that ive enjoyed :') trust me. I even searched the real history of hwarang and silla kingdom hahahah "post hwarang depression" seriously. i find myself feeling nostalgic listening to the ost and remembering of watching hwarang.. My point is Hwarang is highly recommended drama to watch! Ignore the ratings and i promise you that you will enjoy watching this drama! :) gonna miss watching hwarang and the casts too!! :)

This is like military enlistment but this is Hwarang version hahah thats why l love this concept of historical drama. :)

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