KDrama Review 2 [Heartstrings] 2014

KDrama Review 2 [Heartstrings]

Hello Everyone, I have another K-Drama review for you. Having loved seeing Yonghwa and Shin Hye work together in You're Beautiful I decided to watch another drama which features them and that drama is Heartstrings.

BE WARNED THAT THIS POST WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS.

SYNOPSIS: Set at a university, we meet Lee Shin, a very talented guitarist and lead vocalist for a local band called "The Stupid." Shin is loved by all the girls on campus and is constantly getting confessed to, however with his cold personality he brutally rejects every girl that confesses to him. Unknown to the girls, Shin has feelings for the dance professor at the university, Jung Yoon Soo. Lee Hyu Won is a girl who has had traditional Korean music drilled into her since birth, since her grandfather Lee Dong Gun, whom she lives with, is a famous traditional musician. Shin and Hyu Won's paths cross when Hyu Won asks Shin's band to play at a benefit, however Shin ends up missing and causing problems. With both their pride hurt when they confront each other, a challenge is set up where The Stupid and The Windflowers(Hyu Won's band of traditional instrument players) are to battle it out with the loser having to be the other's slave for a month. Losing their bet, Hyu Won ends up Shin's slave and slowly began to like the self centered guitarist. At the same time Hyu Won is approached by Kim Suk Hyun, a director who recently returned from Broadway and is asked to direct the school's celebration production. Suk Hyun agrees and tries to get Hyu Won to participate as an actor instead of just a musician, however things turn awkward when Suk Hyun finds that his ex-girlfriend Yoon Soo is the dance teacher he must work with to put on the school's production.    

MAIN CHARACTERS:

Jung Yong Hwa as Lee Shin [The narcissist guitarist]

Park Shin Hye as Lee Kyu Won [The empowered traditional musician]

Song Chang Ui as Kim Suk Hyun [The young broadway director]

So Yi Hyun as Jung Yoon Soo [The dance professor]

Woo Ri as Han Hee Joo

Kang Min Hyuk as Yeon Joon Hee (The Stupid's Drummer)

Lee Hyun Jin as Hyun Young (Actor who left but was brought back by Suk Hyun)

Im Se Mi as Cha Bo Woon (Kyu Won's friend and member of the Windflowers)

Lee Jung Hun as Im Tae Joon (Professor who is trying to ruin the performance) 

Jang Seo Won as Lee Soo Myung (Suk Hyun's friend and Tech at the university)

Shin Goo as Lee Dong Jin (Kyu Won's grandfather)

Sun Woo Jae Duk as Lee Sun Ki (Kyu Won's Father)

Lee IL Hwa as Song Ji Young (Shin's Mother)

ACTING: To be truthful I was actually very disappointed, not so much with the acting, but with how the characters came across. Let's start with Shin, his character is cold to pretty everyone, expect for his family, his band mates, and Yoon Soo. All this would be fine if they would have had a reason for it, however we are never really given a reason as to why Shin is so mean to everyone, especially girls. He does mention something about getting annoyed by the girls confessing to him, however that hardly explains his behavior. Then after half the show with him being cold and not relatable we see a sudden change in his character which is almost completely out of nowhere as he begins to start liking Kyu Won, even though he previously said he did not like her. Then we have Kyu Won's character, who is constantly switching from being respectful, to a woman full of fury and this simply gets confusing. Everyone at her school seems to treat her like she is a very brazen woman who is strong willed, fiery, and does not care what other people think of her, as well as a bit of a tomboy. However these characteristics are not played up enough to make me get the impression of those things from her character. Honestly I wouldn't call it poor acting, I would blame the script writers for writing such confusing characters. Those things aside I was pleased with the majority of the casts. Shin Goo did a wonderful job as Kyu Won's grandfather, also Song Chang Ui and So Yi Hyun gave a very conceiving performance, and I also enjoyed Kang Min Hyuk and Woo Ri's performances as well.

PLOT OVERVIEW: I was not a fan of the plot at all, frankly I felt like they could have shown episode one and then just skipped to episode eight and it won't have hurt the show at all. I think far to many of the first seven episodes were focused more one what was happing between Yoon Soo and Suk Hyun, then what was happening between Shin and Kyu Won. Also the whole relationship where Shin is pining after Yoon Soo just seems so unnecessary, and is not really explained well as to how his interest in her really came about. There were also many characters who's backstories were never fully explained but it was like the writers started to talk about it and then simply forgot about them in the later  episodes. For example

Hyun Young, it is this big issue that he left because he has stage fright, however I swear they never once said how he developed it. They should have at least shown a flashback or something to make his story have more of an impact.  

ENDING: The ending was kind of disappointing, and I felt like they should have stopped right after the  episode with school production. The fact that they wrap up, and solve, all the show's problems in that episode only to create a whole new one for the main couple who were finally happy with how things were. Only to have them break up and then within two episodes and get back together just felt really unnecessary.  

SOUNDTRACK: I have to rate this in an odd way since the music in the show and the music on the actually OST differs in the fact that many of the songs in the show are not on the OST. Over all the music in the show was very nice and one of the main reasons I choice to finish the series. The OST however was very disappointing because a lot of the song in the show are not on the soundtrack. I believe this is probably because many of them were cover songs and they probably would have had to go through some type of copyright to get to put them on the OST. One of my favorites songs in the entire show was "If I Leave" by Lee Hyun Jin and it is a cover of a song, and I was so sad to see that it was not on the OST, I'll post a video of it below. Also both "Will Fix Myself" by Woori and "I Will Forget You" by Park Shin Hye(which is a cover a a CN BLUE song) did not appear on the OST.

RATING:(on a scale of 1 to 10, one being the worst thing i've ever seen and ten being a show I could watch every day of my like)
 I would give this 5 stars out of 10, which I think is fair.
I put this rating simply because for more then half the show the main characters are understated and their relationship is really awkward. Also a lot of the time it felt more like Yoon Soo and Suk Hyun where the main characters instead of Shin and Kyu Won. There was also a major lack of activity from Tae Joon who is supposed to be the main villain however he only starts around the middle of the series. Having random characters that really didn't contribute much to the storyline, like Shin's mother and Kyu Won's father, that had a past relationship but it really wasn't that important, also killing off Shin's father early on made me almost wish that they hadn't shown him in the first place because he was starting to become a good character only to be completely forgotten for almost all the drama.