As I always say, the expectation is the enemy of the process. I started this show with high expectations, but I have to say that I am a little frustrated now. Now I could understand the reviews and critics that I saw before and I'll explain why I can agree with some of them.

The beginning of the show was rushed and somethings just weren't explained. I was hoping that with the following episodes this could be resolved, but it was the opposite. The dialogs and plots just get more and more superficial and confusing. I will talk about each character and the high and low points of each one.

About Moo Myung/Kim Sun Woo/Dog-bird, or as I like to call him, my husband, LOL. I love Park Seo Joon and I think that he is a great actor, but the script didn't make a good job to exalt his character. Sun Woo had everything to be the kind of character that takes your breath away, but sometimes I thought that he could be summed in two sentences: "I gonna kill the king!" and "I will protect Ah Ro!". He was so strong and important, they could make an amazing plot! Ah Ro (Go Ah Ra) was deceived as a female lead. I really don't like female leads that play the helpless maiden, and this is all we can see of Ah Ro in the entire show. They put some lines that talk about her "strongness", but this didn't match with the things that she did. They summed her in a potato bag to Sun Woo, that he had to protect, and kill the king... I will talk a little about the rest of the boyband: Sam Maek Jong/Kim Ji Dwi (Park Hyung Shik) was the promise that never happens. Started with strength and charism, but in the process, I couldn't tell if he was weak, or if he was scared, and then he just gets courage... It was very inconstant. Park Ban Ryu (Do Ji Han) had a big idea at first, that he just hold with all his strength, but then, in just an episode, everything blows up and he changes everything, I really didn't get it! I was like "ok, why you didn't this earlier?". Suk Han Sung (V): Weak, fearful, funny, in all the 17 episodes, then... BOOM! He did something totally unexpected that made me stay awake all night because my anger didn't let me sleep.

I noticed now that I was more disappointed than I thought. But I think it's because the big problem here was the script. They had amazing actors (and by amazing I wanna mean AMAZINGLY HANDSOME too), an interesting story, the main couple with chemistry... But they ruined everything with terrible dialogs, URGH! Sometimes I wanted to slap my own face to forgot the ridiculous lines of Poog Wol Joo (Sung Dong Il) with diarrhea or the no sense dialogs between Ah Ro and Sun Woo.

I almost forgot to mentioned Seo Ye Ji (Princess Sook Myung) and this was because her character was totally unnecessary. When I saw her as a badass princess I thought "WOW, THIS IS GONNA BE GOOD", but then... nothing. She does nothing. Exists for nothing in the story. I'm trying to understand why they put this character with an actress like Seo Ye Ji if they didn't want to explore this.

So, I'll be VERY generous here because I love the bromance between the Hwarangs, but this doesn't sustain a badly written story. For the bromance, and the OST singed by Park Seo Joon and Park Hyung Shik (I LOVED IT), I'll put one more star on my review and say that "I expected more, but okay" (★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★).

I'm very upset because I really wanted to love this drama. Tomorrow we gonna have the "first impression" of "Tale of the Nine-tailed", wait for it!

See you soon!
XOXO, Mari.