It's actually been long enough that I only remembered the basic outline of the plot: poor woman supporting her deadbeat father works two jobs (one in some kind of store, the other as a hostess) gets roped into marriage with a rich dude because she is desperate and he has his own family-related reasons for wanting to marry her. He's distant, she's too nice. There was another guy at her job that likes her. The husband's family was horrible and he has goals of taking over some family company or something. They clash but inevitably fall in love.
I remember being vaguely resistant to the husband but I did finish it (I think). At the very least, I had to have at least perused the final chapters enough to know they wind up "happily ever after" or near to. I did recently mostly enjoy the author's SP Baby, which was a quick 2 volume manga, though I wouldn't say it was one of my favs. It was decent. Kind of the rich man baby/poor but pure girl thing again, so I'm guessing that's kind of this author's niche.
So I saw that there was a live action version on Amazon Prime and I thought I'd try it. You know, a little Japanese drama instead of another Korean one. Change of pace. Apparently it was aired in 2016, though it has only recently appeared on my Prime list.
And...so...I watched the first three episodes. And...I dunno. I don't think I'll watch any more of it. There are some things that are bearable to read in a manga but once you bring it to live action it just doesn't work. Or maybe I just don't remember the story enough from the books and it was worse than I remembered? I might have read some of it on MangaRock or one of those type of things, so the translation was probably iffy.
Take the father -- he's literally gambling away their rent and food money. He takes Chiwa's (that's the girl) food. Is absolutely useless and has no job. When some bad dudes come to collect on one of his massive gambling debts, he LETS THEM TAKE HER away, knowing that they plan to stick her in a fucking BROTHEL. What parent would do that??? I'm a mom. I cannot even fathom any situation in which I would allow my son to be harmed in any way, especially through my own actions. I get that this is a fictional drama thing but it's different reading this type of scene in a manga, where it spans maybe a couple of pages, to watching it play out in a scene.
I've been reading Understanding Comics and Making Comics as prep for preparing the graphic novel proposal for my second publisher/editor and one of the interesting things it talks about is how a lot of the story/communication in a visual novel is done in the gutter; that is, the space between panels. That's the space where the reader makes the bridge between what is pictured in the panels. They can, somewhat, draw their own conclusions. Because you don't show everything in a graphic novel. Maybe that's why I could read this and not be absolutely pissed whereas I'm watching it going WTF. I dunno.
Other than that, I've watched some really good Kdramas lately with some really good actors and this one just doesn't seem to have the same quality. Some of the acting is a bit stiff. The lead girl's hair/wig/whatever really bugs me and she makes a lot of those exaggerated faces that also work best in a graphic novel because in real life...eh, you just look weird. There's also no real chemistry between the two leads. No spark. I don't think I can sit through all the bad shit that I know is going to be thrown at them to get to their happy ending. I don't care enough about them.
At least the SP Baby woman lead was tougher and had more of a spine (she literally works as the guy's bodyguard). Chiwa just seems like someone that things happen to. And I understand the filial duty thing but, man, if my dad was willing to sell me off to a fucking brothel? We'd be done, dude. I don't see how you come back from that. When she gets back safe, he's just, like, oh good, can you feed me now? He didn't even try to fight them off. It does make me curious about whether it was that bad in the book too. Do I just not remember?
Meh.
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