Dramaworld (2016)

Dramaworld is totally meta and makes fun of a lot of tropes. Tropes that you find in KDramas that is, ie, piggyback riding, karaoke scenes, getting drunk on soju, chaebol family, scheming female second lead - however the ending gave a twist, that you don't find typically in KDramas. If you've watched Dream High, you know what I mean^^

The acting in this was atrocious at parts. Wooden. But it gave me a meta feel still, because there are wooden characters galore typically in KDramas, and I thought it was a faithful representation, lol. The story is ambitious and follows Claire as she enters "Dramaworld" and tries to fix it before it ceases to exist forever. She meets another facilitator, Seth, who seems like a good guy, and he appears to be helping her on the surface. But is he really? *At the risk of putting spoilers, I'm not saying anything more*

Towards the ending, the story broke the fourth wall, which requires a lot of explanation and set-up, but there was no time here. By fourth wall, I mean the characters in the drama (well Joon Park) became aware he was a character in a drama. Although good ending, one has to wonder - is Claire's life now a drama? The ending is so ambiguous and not explained properly, I don't even consider it a spoiler talking about it, because it's open to interpretation.

Also, I was cringing towards the end. SERIOUSLY cringing.
However for a web-series and a collaboration between America and Korea - I see this as a stepping stone onto something more awesome. Watch this if you love meta references and you will be swept up in nostalgia :D The reason why my re-watch score is so high (practically unheard of), is because it's short, sweet and I can see myself revisiting the bits I liked, or just watch the Seth bits^^ (Justin Chon and Liv Hewson did a good job)

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Even though my rating for this web-drama is fairly low, I still think you should watch it (for a singular reason I'll get to in a second), but first I want to touch on the things I didn't like:

1. The characters were very wooden and one-dimensional. The acting wasn't very good--I honestly was cringing a lot of the time. I'm a person that loves to be swept away in a drama and feel EVERYTHING that our characters are feeling, but it was impossible with this drama. Perhaps because it is borderline parody and they're trying to wink to the audience quite a bit (the sole component I liked). But these characters never really came together to the point where you believed the emotions they were feeling, which was kinda disappointing.

2. Our main male lead was....awkward. I mean obviously he's supposed to be this super-character. He's the LEADING MAN and they try to portray him in that way. But his shifts between Korean/English were off-putting and just how he interacted with Claire....he was where most of the cringing took place. His lines were just not delivered very well.

3. The writing. Some of the lines they had these characters say....just shouldn't have been said. I liked their plot-twists, but I didn't like how the scenes all came together. Sometimes things got just a bit too ridiculous and over-the-top.

Now, here comes the part of my review where I say you should watch it anyway:

1. THE META. Oh my goodness, they covered SOOO many tropes within dramas and managed to play off of them and it gave some REALLY good laughs. The touched on giving drunk girls piggy back rides, karaoke, product placements, dangerous briefcases, brand names being blurred, etc. And they were SUPER-DUPER smart about all of that.

2. The episodes are only 12-ish minutes. And there's only 10 episodes, so just give it a whirl to see what you think. Like I said, while I think it really deserves the rating I gave it as a whole, those meta moments were just spectacular. Spectacular and funny enough that I'd say it's worth the watch. <3

Watch this in one sitting when you have the time, it'll be more enjoyable that way. Also, just don't take it too seriously and try not to think too hard about how horribly the lines are being delivered. xD

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