[Review Starts below picture]
Disclaimer: I was excited when I saw the trailer for Bride of the Water God, and before I decided to watch it I decided that I would do an animated review on it. However, I underestimated the amount of time it would take to animate and how much my programs can handle. I did make a lot of fan-art and character sheets for this however so I thought I would write a review on it now with the fan-art I've made and later when I have better programs I will finish the animation for the review.
Bride of the Water God is an adaptation of a manhwa (Korean comic). I did try to read the comic, however I found it really hard to keep interest with the story or make sense of it. So I will only talk about the drama here.
In the drama, the story follows our two main characters Soah and Habaek.
Soah is a doctor, who can’t get any business, but it is easy to see why early on because her empathy levels are really low at the beginning. Especially for a practitioner who specializes with helping those with mental illness.
She is rattled by her own troubled past and wants to escape her life in Korea for something better.
The story begins with her getting mixed up with the Water God, Habaek, and being compelled to be his servant due to her ancestor's transgressions against the Gods.
[normal Soah]
[Doctor Soah]
Habaek is a Water God who has to go through a trial on Earth to find the God stone so he can become the king of the Gods. However while he is on Earth he cannot use his powers as a part of these trials ( I am sure it is also because of the studios budget, lol). He meets up with Soah so that she can help him in finding the God Stone so he can quickly return to "heaven" and become King of Gods. Of course that won't be easy with Soah around and other forces also trying to usurp power or time away from Habaek.
This show from the get go is full of eye candy. The costumes are beautiful, the actors are gorgeous and the cinematography for the most part is really nice. The characters themselves are really fun, and there are many scenes inside of the show that feel like it is a homage to other dramas before it. For example, we had a guest star of an angry boar here much like there was one in You’re Beautiful. It is really fun to look for those, they are kinda like little shout outs to fans who are searching for them. I am not sure if it was done on purpose, but it is fun. I will be watching it again specifically to look for those, lol. If you are watching this show looking for these within, I am sure you will have a lot of fun spotting it. The woman being a doctor who helps mentally ill also reminded me of Kill Me Heal Me. So there is a lot of hidden concepts that are fun to spot.
If you are a fan of shipping characters there are many characters to ship on this drama~
I would tell you more, but you should watch it if you like ships~~~
Now with all the good there is... I do have some criticism as well.
The story has an intriguing storyline, however as the drama goes on the execution and followup for different plot points are not the best.
There are sometimes no explanations for things that need one. There are many things that are not discussed that need a backstory for people to understand, or there are situations and people who are brought into the show that seem important but then are dropped with no real explanation as to why they were played up so much in the story.
On top of this, a lot of pointless drama was made from things that had simple and painfully obvious solutions. I feel like this drama was entertaining, and there are a lot of cute and funny scenes in it, but the writers prevented this drama from becoming a great drama by not adhering to Chekhov's gun [ which is the dramatic principle that states that every element in a story must be necessary, and irrelevant elements should be removed; elements should not appear to make "false promises" by never coming into play]
If this were to be remade with the plot points filled out, I feel like it would be really really good drama. This one was full of potential, however the writing felt sloppy, like it was written fast on the spot and they were trying to connect the pieces as they made each episode rather than carefully planning out how each scene and episode tied together both forwards and backwards. They started the whole story making it feel like it was this grand mystery that they were withholding information from you until the last episodes, and everything was good until the last episodes failed to live up to the big mystery shadow they had set up. The whole time I thought the story would carefully unravel into this big twist, but it felt at the end it unraveled to nothing ( Kinda like The Last Jedi, lol)
Even though the story didn’t reach its full potential, ultimately it is still entertaining and the characters are nice to look at, which is why I draw them, lol.
This is my first Kdrama review, I do plan to watch it again and get more incites for when I do the animated review.. that one will have more information and perhaps spoilers...
Let me know if you would like to have more Kdrama reviews here. I will do my best to give reviews here that have no spoilers if you do want them. I have watched many Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese dramas so if you want I can continue giving you both fan art and reviews of other dramas.
Have a great day~
Cheers!