Didn't see a post so I thought I'd drop it. Social Media has blown the series up and I have to say it lives to the hype. Really great edge of your seat thriller and a great new entrance into horror/game genre.
sometimes u gotta leave ur inner nigger in the bank vault. - desus
3. "Its great. Took me a while to click it because..." In response to Reply # 0
it looked like a Alice in Borderland knockoff. But the story is great. Definitely see themes (and even games) they pulled from Borderland, the anime Kaiji, and the movie Battle Royale. But still unique enough to be enjoyable.
_________________________________________ "Too weird to live.... too rare to die..."
4. "pulls you in after an episode" In response to Reply # 0
but it runs out of material while it takes the long way to the ending "reveal". not sure what was lost in translation, but even the dialog seems to repeat itself just so the mid-to-late episodes hit their 50 minutes (and one is barely a half hour).
amazing to see a subtitled Korean series be the most popular show worldwide for a week, however. would never happen with old media.
The dubs are just the voice actors reading the subs. I have a Korean co-worker and she was saying the translations are bad and you miss some stuff. You'd think with netflix putting out so much non-english content that they'd spend a little more money on getting proper translations going. Right not it's like the subs I used to see on anime I'd download from bit-torrent back in the early 00's
sometimes u gotta leave ur inner nigger in the bank vault. - desus
14. "the dubbing was different than the subtitles" In response to Reply # 7
I heard this complaint about translation being off and i watched with both subtitles and dubbing. The subtitles seemed like a google translation of dialogue or even a first draft before it got cleaned up for reading too robotic. The dubbing was way better. But yeah my korean friend said it was all around bad. Both were not good translations.
November 8th, 2005 The greatest night in the history of GD!
9. "Agreed, though that’s a testament to how dope episode 6 was. " In response to Reply # 8
From a pacing standpoint it would have been great if episode 6 was the penultimate episode, with one long episode following it as a finale.
But that episode and everything about the marble game was absolutely FLAWLESS. Every partner pair had an absolutely gut wrenching story, just beautifully well done. But to your point - if they are gonna have that much happen at that point, they needed to bring it on home afterwards. No need for so much time between 001 losing and the reveal. Showing him from behind as the host made the reveal completely obvious. Up to that point is was perfect with the subtle hints, but they shouldn’t have given anything else between 001’s death and the reveal.
To make this work they could have completely cut out the policeman subplot with trying to find his brother. The stuff that happened in that subplot was probably the most unrealistic of the show, and that’s saying a LOT. How did NO ONE find him out in that right operation, with him switching uniforms and personas and effing up on his “job” the whole time? How did his cell phone still have a charge after all that time, and taking video?and after all that it was pointless - there was never a connection between him and the main characters, and they could have done a reveal about the front man being a former winner without ever having his brother involved.
Cut that out, and you could fit episodes 7-9 into one long finale. Episode 8 was only 30 minutes anyways. Maybe also cut out the final dinner, and condense it down by having Sang Woo kill Sae-byeok right after the glass bridge, back to back after pushing the other dude off, for his full transition to evil mode before the last game.
All that being said, great watch as it was, and honestly the predictability and somewhat let down of the ending was just due to how great episode 6 was and where it fell in the season.
10. "Forgot to mention - woulda cut out the VIPs too…" In response to Reply # 9
If they cut the police brother subplot to tighten it up after Ep 6 they could have naturally cut out the goofy VIPs. Definitely the worst acting and dialogue of the show. I do get that it may have been intentional to make the Americans over the top stereotypes in the same way Hollywood has traditionally made Asian characters exaggerated stereotypes, but still took away from the show.
13. "Yeah - that's the only possible benefit, set up for season 2." In response to Reply # 12
That subplot also let us know that the games have been happening for 30+ years, and introduced the VIPs, but none of that went anywhere and could have been handled with a quick mention.
I read in an article somewhere that the policeman subplot wasn't in the writer's original draft from 2009, so maybe they added it to make the season longer. Which gets back to my point of episode 6 having been better positioned as the penultimate episode before a finale in episode 7.
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