This is another new drama that I currently follow for the past few weeks, Memories of Alhambra. I think perhaps the title was inspired by the classical guitar with the same title and how it was related to cities in Spain for their background story.
The theme itself is quite interesting for me since they tried to put a popular AR (augmented reality) game into a fantasy story. How the game has changed the life of its main characters in a very surprising way. I remembered when back then Pokemon in AR game format reached its popularity and most people talked about it and even played to the extent of jeopardizing the lives of its players. I also like the previous work of this writer in W: two worlds which was related to webtoon characters that came to life.
Up until 6 episodes so far, I'm still curious and also a bit bored with repetition with the game-playing which took longer duration that it supposed to be. Meanwhile, the character's development, pace are significantly slow and unanswered questions started to pile up more and more. I'm worry if the writer maybe repeat their blunder in W:two worlds when they failed to impressed me with the mysterious villain identity and after that the story went downhill. Let's see if it takes more and better in story telling in the rest of the episodes.
Updated 13 January 2019 after Episode 13 (contained spoilers):
To be honest, the premise of this drama is actually good or shall I say promising. Not to mention the backward and forward story telling which might be confusing for some people. However, I begin to think there were some obvious plot holes as I finished watching episode by episode.
The girl, Jung hee jo, is not changing a lot since the first episode, just the same nice, kindhearted girl with a lot of responsibility for her family and finally own small guitar shop, who gradually fell in love with the main guy, Yoo jin woo. She didn't worry that much for her little brother after receiving fake emails for a year. She voiced out her curiosity and began to question everything only after meeting the guy again. It was quite weird.
The main guy, Yoo jin woo/Zinu is still busy trying to finished the unfinished and unrealistic AR game while searching for the creator/ the girl's 17 years old little brother, Jung se jo. After he accidentally killed his former friend who he thought would only be killed in the game but instead in reality and turned into an immortal game character that haunted him since, I was left with several questions in mind. He can log in into the game without the lens automatically without him knowing and can't be monitored by his IT employee. Surprisingly, in recent episodes, the server can be shut down (in which this is not explained the cause of the anomaly of the game) and he can take a rest from it. I mean why didn't he do it, shutting the server a long time ago to recover his body when he got sick.I also didn't understand how the guy got the special key when it was never shown before in the story. All he think about is how to level up, finish the game and rather look like taking advantage of the girl instead of really appreciating her feeling for him. He also became the know-it-all narrator in every episode and magically explained the part of the little brother feud with his evil friend. Weird case no.2.
The brother and his mystery remained a mystery whether he is dead or alive. I just didn't get the part when he laid down in the train station but invisible (which would be possible that he is dead) as his body is unknown and nowhere to be found.
The explanation of how the real people got killed just because of the game and become the game characters. It is God-like game with that kind of power. As for the last one is Emma, the pandora box. As if she is a living being rather than a mere game character in episode 13.There is a lot of weird cases to solve here, including Yu ra, Su jin and hee jo's friend characters with annoyingly disturb the story in my point of view. I still have to wait 3 more episodes to come to a conclusion.
Latest update January 21, 2019 after the drama is ended:
I guess one thing is pretty clear and obvious, not to expect much of this writer to do her work in a better way after W drama. This one is a lot worst compared to her previous work after watching the remaining episodes. She didn't manage to wrap everything in a good way and answered all the questions she pulled out from the beginning. Although let's say the drama is in fantasy genre, but still things needed to be properly explained as of why it happened. It felt like she was rather confused to tell her own story and only came up with one or two things to cover up the holes along the way. If I have to make the list of questions there will be more than enough to make anyone lazy to watch it. I have to say this is such a disappointment. I have to rate it personally as 6.5/10 which only the idea and special effects that I can praise more but other than that is a thumb down. The writer needs to learn from 'Ready player one' movie to get a sense of mixing game and reality would look like.
The clothes worn by the main girl is really casual and appropriate for daily use.
*the picture was a half hour random digital speedpainting I did on a break time from work.
