Then again, it took me more than a year before I finally got started with this. While part of the reason was because I had no access to Amazon Prime until recently, another reason for the delay was my lack of interest in the genre of fantasy style-demon slaying. And even after I could watch this show on Amazon, it took me a couple of months later to hit that play button.
Since I have not read the webtoon before, I didn't know what exactly to expect, the basic settings of the stories and characters nor how the cast matched the original characters in terms of appearance and vibe. As such, I approached this with minimal knowledge and wasn't expecting too much in the first place other than to fulfill my wish of seeing Kim Nam-gil onscreen.
Interestingly, I felt that this drama had some similarities with "Kingdom" and "Goblin" along the way and kept making notes to compare them in my mind. In terms of the techniques employed in demon-slaying, "Kingdom" was on the analogue side of the spectrum because of its historical setting while "Island" featured some high tech stuff e.g. GPS tracking, mobile phones and car chases. The way the lust demons preyed on humans and multiplied also had similarities. On the other hand, the relationship of Van and Miho reminded me of the couple in "Goblin" in that there was a tragic element that made it difficult for them to be together. And the fact that Van lived for a long time in solitude and couldn't die - that was similar to Gong Yoo's role in "Goblin".
First of all, the pluses:
- The action scenes in the first few episodes were quite sleek and impressive to watch. Seeing Kim Nam-gil fight like that in those black-and-white suits was already worth my time investment to a certain degree. ^__^
- - The strong acting, especially from Sung Joon (Gungtan), Go Doo-shim (Grandma / Geum Baek-ju) and guest star Choi Tae-joon (Kang Chan-hee) left a deep impression on me.
- Kim Nam-gil was good in his own way too but the way his character Van was supposed to be, he couldn't be as expressive or show much emotion as compared to some of his other roles or his true personality offscreen. This may give people the wrong impression that his acting was stiff though.
- This was also my first time watching Cha Eun-woo and Lee Da-hee in action and I thought that they did decently well.
- Fortunately, the story did explain some of the key questions like how Van became weaker the more he spent time with Mi-ho or why he didn't get sucked into the ground in ancient times when Mi-ho sealed Gungtan and the other lust demons.
Now...the minuses for me were:
- There were some parts which seemingly contradicted each other or didn't seem to fit in quite well with various elements. For example, the parts about how Catholic prophecies were depicting what happened in Korean myths and folklore, Catholic priests sent to Korea to protect the saviour of the world, Western exorcism working its magic on lust demons in Korea or that holy water loaded in shot gun bullets can kill the lust demons that easily towards the end but Van had to do so much and hurt himself just to kill one in the earlier episodes. As such, this made it difficult for me to immerse myself in the story without questioning the logic of these settings.
- The demon slaying scenes relied so much on CG towards the end that it was overkill and tiring to watch.
- The damsel-in-distress setting for Mi-ho was simply too annoying and didn't match her gusty actions and strong/independent appearance at first. While it was logical that Mi-ho had to depend on Van and Johan to save her from the lust demons, I expected that she would become stronger and more significant in the fight against the demons. No doubt she was the person who saved the day, it just didn't match the suffering that the guys around her had to go through just to put her in that position and Lee Da-hee had to make her character look so vulnerable and dependable on Van that it felt so uncomfortable. I hoped that Mi-ho might have been a different type of heroine to hold her own but it was disappointing to note that this wasn't the case after all.
- Yet another drama/movie where Kim Nam-gil's character "died"!
In view of this mixed bag of pluses and minuses, I struggle to conclude whether I liked this drama. Seeing how the drama finished with an open ending, I also wonder if I would still like to watch a sequel just to tie up the loose ends and find out what the White Sect is all about. Even if Kim Nam-gil returns to headline this drama, I cannot say for sure if I will be onboard again for more of this story.
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