I Watch MVs for the Stories, and Kdramas for the Music . . .
 I give it a 3.5.  | That's not entirely true. But it sort of is, at least for Monstar. I'm not gonna lie, JunHyung is the main reason I started this one. Hearing his voice on the OST tracks, utilized so differently than it is in BEAST . . . it set my little fangirl heart all aflutter. I love Kdramas, and Animes, and even some American TV shows because of the epic storytelling in them. I'm always super-late to the show's fandom, and therefore to reviewing them because I don't watch any Kdramas until they've finished Airing. I can't stand the week to week anticipation, and since I don't really have to, it seems stupid to stress myself out with it. Besides, I'm crazy-busy, so taking a day-off to watch a whole series in one go is easier in the long run than to spend more than an hour a day on new episodes (I'd rather use that hour to sleep than you very much). |
In case anyone else is late to the party, I'm putting my review under the cut to hide any spoilers. The short of it is that this was a pretty good series. I DO recommend watching it. JunHyung is fabulous, Ha YeonSoo is freakin adorable, and Kang HaNeul is pretty smoothe himself. And the music . . . well, the music is pretty much perfect.
My main complaint is that it dragged, not just drag-everything-out in normal Kdrama fashion, but really dragged and felt like it was a dead dog being pulled along. There was a little of the kdrama 'things are clearly about to spiral out of control' but there were only a few instances where that meant the plot felt urgent and eventful . . . Kdrama's are universally famous for the fact that you have to stop in the middle of an episode because the cliffhangers are killer, but honestly aside from the ep 8 to 9 transition and one or two others . . . I just wasn't really concerned by the fact that the episode had ended, because nothing in the episode was really heartbreakingly unresolved.
Monstar also features epically unimpressive bad guy (though I liked Moon YongSuk's performance) . . . he really doesn't do very much. In some ways I liked to see that the drama came from just being teenagers living in general, but . . . especially in Ep 12 when he rebukes the Goddess' Kiss director . . . why he was suddenly not the bad guy wasn't really dug deeply into and actually his backstory in general wasn't dug deeply into at all.
Aside from that this drama on had one really well done fear-cry-moment, at the end of ep 8 when I thought for a second that they might actually let GyuDong jump and use that to bring the rest of them back together as a group. The second best tear-jerking moment was in Ep 10 with EunHa getting that vocals text. The magic of good mixing = tears & hope / inspiration / EPIC... And that song is super sweet.
There was a lot of talking to the air . . . there were two really good hallucinations (one in the beginning when SulChan imagines the others leads in his bedroom, and later when SaeYi has the band from her lit class's video following her around), but I'd have liked more ... or like pets or an autistic kid or something to make the talking out loud a little less obviously speaking solely because of the lack of viewer telepathy thing... they do voice overs for some of them and there's a moment with a stuffed animal . . . but there's no consistency.
Also, there is a real band called MIB . . . with 4 members, perfect for putting JunHyung in the middle. Admittedly they don't really want to be known as traditional Idols, but if MNeT decided to name the Monstar band MIB, they should have used the real MIB . . . they could have made a mashup of Beast & BTOB's name or something, since that plays off the real bands they ended up using . . . I dunno it's a minor thing, but it bothered me.
On the Upside of things: I LOVED the music production BTS shots, mainly because I was squealing over the software they were using (or at least SulChan was) because it's my very favorite audio editing software. I also greatly enjoyed the moments when SaeYi thought it was SunWoo & SulChan, I wish they had played with that a little more. The flower-blooming metaphor thing is surprisingly not-over done, they pushed it really hard in the beginning, but then it settled into a good subtle piece of metaphoric storytelling. The hospital scene was cute. There always HAS to be one (I mean it IS a Kdrama) but it was refreshing not to have it be one of the main cast in a hospital bed with everyone else being angsty over them (that one came around eventually too, but it was much more tame than expected, just being a nurse's office thing, and it pushed the plot forward well).The heroine, Min Sae Yi was freakin' fantastic. Ha YeonSoo is utterly adorable as a human being, and Min Sae Yi was a super cool chick for how she was sweet and playful but also daring enough to stand up to the bully. When she first sang with Kim KyuDong at the end of episode . . . I was in love. She stood out as one of my favorite heroines in kdramas . . . at least until she folded up into the limp noodle of whatever she was in the middle of the show. She got her nerve back in ep 10, but then it eroded away again until ep 12 when the drama just sort of stopped . . . it didn't feel very conclusive or dramatic or anything of much note. All of the Sunwoo / Nana stuff = SUPER cute but nothing ever resolved from that.
The first real kiss just sort of happened . . . in some ways I like it, Drama's usually go way overboard with setting up the scenario so it was kind of nice to see it as a simple story-flow aspect, but there was none of the usual rush behind it, nothing to make crying or screaming or squealing unavoidable (other than the straight up fan-girl squeal factor of JunHyung kissing anyone). I liked the post-kiss scene a lot, very cute, and the awkward running away thing, that was also cute (especially how JunHyung commented on how cheesy the star-heart thing was). It was also the only real kiss and that bothered me a bit, but it wasn't a bad one to have for it.
All in all, it was a decently done drama, with a really good concept and some absolutely fabulous situations. In a review I have to complain about how it was crafted, because I'm not just reviewing on how much I liked it. I really did enjoy this one, and I truly do recommend it to any kdrama fan out there, but it wasn't crafted by genius hands.
Monstar also features epically unimpressive bad guy (though I liked Moon YongSuk's performance) . . . he really doesn't do very much. In some ways I liked to see that the drama came from just being teenagers living in general, but . . . especially in Ep 12 when he rebukes the Goddess' Kiss director . . . why he was suddenly not the bad guy wasn't really dug deeply into and actually his backstory in general wasn't dug deeply into at all.
Aside from that this drama on had one really well done fear-cry-moment, at the end of ep 8 when I thought for a second that they might actually let GyuDong jump and use that to bring the rest of them back together as a group. The second best tear-jerking moment was in Ep 10 with EunHa getting that vocals text. The magic of good mixing = tears & hope / inspiration / EPIC... And that song is super sweet.
There was a lot of talking to the air . . . there were two really good hallucinations (one in the beginning when SulChan imagines the others leads in his bedroom, and later when SaeYi has the band from her lit class's video following her around), but I'd have liked more ... or like pets or an autistic kid or something to make the talking out loud a little less obviously speaking solely because of the lack of viewer telepathy thing... they do voice overs for some of them and there's a moment with a stuffed animal . . . but there's no consistency.
Also, there is a real band called MIB . . . with 4 members, perfect for putting JunHyung in the middle. Admittedly they don't really want to be known as traditional Idols, but if MNeT decided to name the Monstar band MIB, they should have used the real MIB . . . they could have made a mashup of Beast & BTOB's name or something, since that plays off the real bands they ended up using . . . I dunno it's a minor thing, but it bothered me.
On the Upside of things: I LOVED the music production BTS shots, mainly because I was squealing over the software they were using (or at least SulChan was) because it's my very favorite audio editing software. I also greatly enjoyed the moments when SaeYi thought it was SunWoo & SulChan, I wish they had played with that a little more. The flower-blooming metaphor thing is surprisingly not-over done, they pushed it really hard in the beginning, but then it settled into a good subtle piece of metaphoric storytelling. The hospital scene was cute. There always HAS to be one (I mean it IS a Kdrama) but it was refreshing not to have it be one of the main cast in a hospital bed with everyone else being angsty over them (that one came around eventually too, but it was much more tame than expected, just being a nurse's office thing, and it pushed the plot forward well).The heroine, Min Sae Yi was freakin' fantastic. Ha YeonSoo is utterly adorable as a human being, and Min Sae Yi was a super cool chick for how she was sweet and playful but also daring enough to stand up to the bully. When she first sang with Kim KyuDong at the end of episode . . . I was in love. She stood out as one of my favorite heroines in kdramas . . . at least until she folded up into the limp noodle of whatever she was in the middle of the show. She got her nerve back in ep 10, but then it eroded away again until ep 12 when the drama just sort of stopped . . . it didn't feel very conclusive or dramatic or anything of much note. All of the Sunwoo / Nana stuff = SUPER cute but nothing ever resolved from that.
The first real kiss just sort of happened . . . in some ways I like it, Drama's usually go way overboard with setting up the scenario so it was kind of nice to see it as a simple story-flow aspect, but there was none of the usual rush behind it, nothing to make crying or screaming or squealing unavoidable (other than the straight up fan-girl squeal factor of JunHyung kissing anyone). I liked the post-kiss scene a lot, very cute, and the awkward running away thing, that was also cute (especially how JunHyung commented on how cheesy the star-heart thing was). It was also the only real kiss and that bothered me a bit, but it wasn't a bad one to have for it.
All in all, it was a decently done drama, with a really good concept and some absolutely fabulous situations. In a review I have to complain about how it was crafted, because I'm not just reviewing on how much I liked it. I really did enjoy this one, and I truly do recommend it to any kdrama fan out there, but it wasn't crafted by genius hands.
| I started this drama for the music and I was not the least bit disappointed by it. Every episode had several instances of songs that were beautiful and fun and just a pleasure to listen to and most of them were an interesting look at the character's relationships as well as commentary on plot events and the general state of things. My favorite part, aside from the scene of episode 1 where Sae YI joins KyuDong in singing The Wind Blows was definitely this sweet little piano number that SunWoo and SulChan play together, a jazz rendition of Pachelbel's Canon. It's a great song and the boys are super cute. | |
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