The Legend: an unspoilery, fangirly, super-pushy post
So, because fivil asked if I was going to do a rec post for Legend. Yes, yes I am going to make one.
Here is entirely unspoilery, very very pusher post.
What is The Legend? The Legend (also known as The Story of the First King's Four Gods, Tae Wang Sa Shin Gi , and 태왕사신기), is a 2007, 24-episode Korean fantasy/epic/period 'drama' (i.e. something akin to a miniseries, or a TV show with a limited, predetermined number of episodes).
The main character of the story, Dam Deok (I have also seen it spelled DamDuk and various other ways, the perils of transliteration) is loosely, loosely, very very loosely based on a real fourth-century King, but the story is a fantasy-adventure-romance in the tradition of Lord of the Rings or King Arthur, rather than a historical narrative.
What is the plot? It's a little hard to encapsulate, because unlike with a typical romcom, where you can summarize it as 'A loves B but B loves C, what is A to do?' the plot of The Legend is rather complicated. It involves prophesies, promised Kings, wars and politics and love and magic.
2000 years before the story started, a god came down to earth to create a prosperous and large land of 'Jooshin.' It didn't really work out, the land fractured, and the god left, leaving behind four sacred symbols which have supernatural properties, and which can only be activated by 'the Jooshin King,' a prophesied individual who will be able to control them and reunite Jooshin. Fast-forward to the 'present' and the contentious, poisonous court of a small nation of Gogureyo. Our main character, Dam Deok, is (or maybe not) the prophesied Jooshin King. He is, however, also a neglected prince of the nation, whose father is a weak ruler who tries to protect his son from the powerful Yon family (who married the King's sister and who believe their own son. Ho Gae, a talented and warlike individual, is the true Jooshin King) by asking him to pretend to be stupid and weak.
Will Dam Deok ever realize who he is? Will he reunite Jooshin? Find the symbols and their guardians? Fight off the Hwachun, a supernatural tribe that also eagerly awaits the return of the Jooshin King, but for its own, nepharious purposes? Will he find friendship and love and heartbreak? Yes, of course. And what about the supposed guardians of the four symbols, especially two women who do not know they are sisters (Kiha, kidnapped by the Hwachun and brought up to be a fire priestess, and Sujini, a tomboy, hard-drinking archer), and either one of whom not only possesses the power over the most dangerous symbol of all, but can also end the world with her power?
OK, this was a sucky summary but it's really hard to summarize.
So, a very short summary is thus: Battles! Court intrigue! Gorgeous men and women! Friendship and villains and love and amazing costumes! A really tight plot! Very complex characters!
So, here comes the next question. Why should you watch?
1. To start with the most shallow reason of all: PRETTY PEOPLE!!!! Seriously, this drama is awash in gorgeousness of either gender. You like your girls pixi-ish and tomboyish? Or maybe womanly? Is your idea of sexiness a conflicted, complicated warrior with long hair and perfect features? Or a tormented, ambiguous intense hottie? Or maybe an aloof warlord with cheekbones better than mine? How about an anime-looking masked assassin? Come right in, folks. Come right in.
Exhibit 1, Dam Deok:
Exhibit 2, Sujini:
Exhibit 3, Kiha
Exhibit 4, Ho Gae
Exhibit 5, Chuh Ro
Exhibit 6, Sa Ryang
2. Gorgeous production values
This is, apparently, the most expensive Korean drama ever made. And it shows. Korean dramas, in general, have great production values, but this goes far above and beyond what you normally see in a drama. The costumes, the armor, the sets (from villages to elaborate carved furniture), the massed armies and the CGI monsters. This is gorgeous enough to be shown in movie theaters.
Medieval Polo Game:
Temple fields:
Battle:
3. A tight, complicated, complex story
If I didn't know otherwise, I'd assume The Legend was based on an acclaimed fantasy novel or trilogy: the plot is not only water-tight, it is complex. It encompasses world-building, character growth and development, a strong narrative drive (the quest for who will become a Jooshin King, and what ultimately the Jooshin King's role is), and balances them all perfectly. It can move the plot in a quiet, character-driven scene of Dam Deok confessing his weaknesses, and have character and relationship development in the middle of a vast battlefield scene.
And it has such interesting things to say about nature of free will, and responsibility, and even fate and love. But it's not stuffy: it never loses its sense of humor, or the delight in even the most grim situations. It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me yell at the screen. It was the most perfectly written drama I've ever seen.
I can't really post pics for this subcategory, so here is a pic of the temple:
4. Fascinating characters
Dam Deok is, hands down, one of my favorite characters of all time, dramas, books, movies, whatever. He is complicated and nuanced, and fascinating. He is someone I fell in love with, but he is not saintly or cloying or unidentifiable. He is both larger than life and incredibly vulnerably human. And the characters all around him are every bit as fascinating: from the hard-drinking, common-sense Sujini, who made the screen a little brighter every time she was on, to the shrewed manipulative Lord Yon to the overmeotional, unstable Kiha to to to...
I can't think of a representative pic, so here is a pic of Dam Deok looking awesome instead:
5. Strong women
An epic drama is an odd place for a bunch of strong women characters, but nontheless, here it is. The women characters were all, without exception, strong, unique, interesting amazing. Whether it's Sujini, Dam Deok's best friend, always fighting at his side (and saving him on more than one occasion), and the one being capable of cheering him up no matter what, or Kiha, unstable yet powerful in her vengeance. Or Ba Son, the most talented blacksmith in Gogureyo, or Dalbi, a widow who demands a mercenary leader teach her how to fight because if she dies, she wants to go down fighting. Or Lady Yon, the mad Lady Macbeth-type figure, who will do anything to have her son rule. Or the Leutenant of the King's Guards, a woman so tough she will pull a sword piercing her shoulder out by herself. There are a lot of women in this drama, and not one of them is weak, and not one of them is window dressing.
Ba Son doing what she does best:
Lady Yon:
6. Amazing battles
Seriously. Eye-popping. Whether it's the choreography of individual brutal, fluid fights, or fields of hundreds and hundreds, these are some of the best battles I have seen.
Ho Gae and subordinates in a hopeless battle:
Dam Deok leading his forces:
7. OTPs! Enemies! Friends!
I love all the relationships in this drama, from friends-eventually-more Dam Deok/Sujini, to parental bonds, whether healthy (Sujini and her Master) or remarkably poisonous (Ho Gae and Lady Yon), to friendships which formed and lasted (Chuh Ro and Sujini) to those which were destroyed (Ho Gae and Dam Deok), to lovers-turned-enemies Dam Deok and Kiha, or Ho Gae's hopeless, unswerving devotion to Kiha. Everything. Relationships, romantic, familial, friendly, or full of enmity, really made sense in this drama, and made it work.
Sujini, Master, and Dam Deok:
Chuh Ro and Sujini:
Jumuchi, Dam Deok and Chuh Ro:
Kiha and Ho Gae:
Sujini and Dam Deok:
Not convinced? Here is a youtube general MV for the series, which isn't spoilery, IMO, and makes a good trailer:
Here is entirely unspoilery, very very pusher post.
What is The Legend? The Legend (also known as The Story of the First King's Four Gods, Tae Wang Sa Shin Gi , and 태왕사신기), is a 2007, 24-episode Korean fantasy/epic/period 'drama' (i.e. something akin to a miniseries, or a TV show with a limited, predetermined number of episodes).
The main character of the story, Dam Deok (I have also seen it spelled DamDuk and various other ways, the perils of transliteration) is loosely, loosely, very very loosely based on a real fourth-century King, but the story is a fantasy-adventure-romance in the tradition of Lord of the Rings or King Arthur, rather than a historical narrative.
What is the plot? It's a little hard to encapsulate, because unlike with a typical romcom, where you can summarize it as 'A loves B but B loves C, what is A to do?' the plot of The Legend is rather complicated. It involves prophesies, promised Kings, wars and politics and love and magic.
2000 years before the story started, a god came down to earth to create a prosperous and large land of 'Jooshin.' It didn't really work out, the land fractured, and the god left, leaving behind four sacred symbols which have supernatural properties, and which can only be activated by 'the Jooshin King,' a prophesied individual who will be able to control them and reunite Jooshin. Fast-forward to the 'present' and the contentious, poisonous court of a small nation of Gogureyo. Our main character, Dam Deok, is (or maybe not) the prophesied Jooshin King. He is, however, also a neglected prince of the nation, whose father is a weak ruler who tries to protect his son from the powerful Yon family (who married the King's sister and who believe their own son. Ho Gae, a talented and warlike individual, is the true Jooshin King) by asking him to pretend to be stupid and weak.
Will Dam Deok ever realize who he is? Will he reunite Jooshin? Find the symbols and their guardians? Fight off the Hwachun, a supernatural tribe that also eagerly awaits the return of the Jooshin King, but for its own, nepharious purposes? Will he find friendship and love and heartbreak? Yes, of course. And what about the supposed guardians of the four symbols, especially two women who do not know they are sisters (Kiha, kidnapped by the Hwachun and brought up to be a fire priestess, and Sujini, a tomboy, hard-drinking archer), and either one of whom not only possesses the power over the most dangerous symbol of all, but can also end the world with her power?
OK, this was a sucky summary but it's really hard to summarize.
So, a very short summary is thus: Battles! Court intrigue! Gorgeous men and women! Friendship and villains and love and amazing costumes! A really tight plot! Very complex characters!
So, here comes the next question. Why should you watch?
1. To start with the most shallow reason of all: PRETTY PEOPLE!!!! Seriously, this drama is awash in gorgeousness of either gender. You like your girls pixi-ish and tomboyish? Or maybe womanly? Is your idea of sexiness a conflicted, complicated warrior with long hair and perfect features? Or a tormented, ambiguous intense hottie? Or maybe an aloof warlord with cheekbones better than mine? How about an anime-looking masked assassin? Come right in, folks. Come right in.
Exhibit 1, Dam Deok:
Exhibit 2, Sujini:
Exhibit 3, Kiha
Exhibit 4, Ho Gae
Exhibit 5, Chuh Ro
Exhibit 6, Sa Ryang
2. Gorgeous production values
This is, apparently, the most expensive Korean drama ever made. And it shows. Korean dramas, in general, have great production values, but this goes far above and beyond what you normally see in a drama. The costumes, the armor, the sets (from villages to elaborate carved furniture), the massed armies and the CGI monsters. This is gorgeous enough to be shown in movie theaters.
Medieval Polo Game:
Temple fields:
Battle:
3. A tight, complicated, complex story
If I didn't know otherwise, I'd assume The Legend was based on an acclaimed fantasy novel or trilogy: the plot is not only water-tight, it is complex. It encompasses world-building, character growth and development, a strong narrative drive (the quest for who will become a Jooshin King, and what ultimately the Jooshin King's role is), and balances them all perfectly. It can move the plot in a quiet, character-driven scene of Dam Deok confessing his weaknesses, and have character and relationship development in the middle of a vast battlefield scene.
And it has such interesting things to say about nature of free will, and responsibility, and even fate and love. But it's not stuffy: it never loses its sense of humor, or the delight in even the most grim situations. It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me yell at the screen. It was the most perfectly written drama I've ever seen.
I can't really post pics for this subcategory, so here is a pic of the temple:
4. Fascinating characters
Dam Deok is, hands down, one of my favorite characters of all time, dramas, books, movies, whatever. He is complicated and nuanced, and fascinating. He is someone I fell in love with, but he is not saintly or cloying or unidentifiable. He is both larger than life and incredibly vulnerably human. And the characters all around him are every bit as fascinating: from the hard-drinking, common-sense Sujini, who made the screen a little brighter every time she was on, to the shrewed manipulative Lord Yon to the overmeotional, unstable Kiha to to to...
I can't think of a representative pic, so here is a pic of Dam Deok looking awesome instead:
5. Strong women
An epic drama is an odd place for a bunch of strong women characters, but nontheless, here it is. The women characters were all, without exception, strong, unique, interesting amazing. Whether it's Sujini, Dam Deok's best friend, always fighting at his side (and saving him on more than one occasion), and the one being capable of cheering him up no matter what, or Kiha, unstable yet powerful in her vengeance. Or Ba Son, the most talented blacksmith in Gogureyo, or Dalbi, a widow who demands a mercenary leader teach her how to fight because if she dies, she wants to go down fighting. Or Lady Yon, the mad Lady Macbeth-type figure, who will do anything to have her son rule. Or the Leutenant of the King's Guards, a woman so tough she will pull a sword piercing her shoulder out by herself. There are a lot of women in this drama, and not one of them is weak, and not one of them is window dressing.
Ba Son doing what she does best:
Lady Yon:
6. Amazing battles
Seriously. Eye-popping. Whether it's the choreography of individual brutal, fluid fights, or fields of hundreds and hundreds, these are some of the best battles I have seen.
Ho Gae and subordinates in a hopeless battle:
Dam Deok leading his forces:
7. OTPs! Enemies! Friends!
I love all the relationships in this drama, from friends-eventually-more Dam Deok/Sujini, to parental bonds, whether healthy (Sujini and her Master) or remarkably poisonous (Ho Gae and Lady Yon), to friendships which formed and lasted (Chuh Ro and Sujini) to those which were destroyed (Ho Gae and Dam Deok), to lovers-turned-enemies Dam Deok and Kiha, or Ho Gae's hopeless, unswerving devotion to Kiha. Everything. Relationships, romantic, familial, friendly, or full of enmity, really made sense in this drama, and made it work.
Sujini, Master, and Dam Deok:
Chuh Ro and Sujini:
Jumuchi, Dam Deok and Chuh Ro:
Kiha and Ho Gae:
Sujini and Dam Deok:
Not convinced? Here is a youtube general MV for the series, which isn't spoilery, IMO, and makes a good trailer:
Click to view