[Drama 2017-2018] A Korean Odyssey/Hwayugi 화유기

[jeijei]

@haymochi@chocolatepie, annyeong my scaredycat squad! Let's not livestream and watch it in broad daylight instead. 

 

[jaiwook_08]

Viki did get the license for the drama, but Episode 1 RAW is still not available in their site or maybe they will update it as long as they finish subbing it. I DON'T WANT IT TO BE LIKE PRISON PLAYBOOK WHERE YOU ARE BEHIND ONE WEEK, URI KIM JE HYEOK BOGOSHIPDA :'( BUT ANYWAY, let's celebrate for the success of the drama or is it too early?

[incoty]

 

 

[kokodus]

RAGEEEEEE. WHAT THE HELL NETFLIX??? GAHHHHHHHHHHHHD. I NEED THE SUBS RIGHT NOW. 

[haymochi]

That's why i'm not happy when i heard Netflix picked up the license for this drama...

 

anyway just rewarched the drama... i'm getting hooked right away. Love the chemistry btw the cast... and i was lol-ing at the scene when Oh Gong was punishing the man whi tried to hit Sun Mi

I say good chemistry btw Seung Gi and the ahjussi. The bts  must be funny af....haha

 

[jeijei]

If Netflix picked it up, Viki would be behind by 2-3 weeks. Anyone would like to post scene summaries and translations? I'm waiting for Sarah's team (dramabeans) to recap it.

[jaiwook_08]

1 hour ago, jeijei said:

If Netflix picked it up, Viki would be behind by 2-3 weeks. Anyone would like to post scene summaries and translations? I'm waiting for Sarah's team (dramabeans) to recap it.

 

SO THAT MEANS WE WILL WAIT FOR 1 WEEK BEFORE THE SUBS? OH GOD. 

 

NETFLIX ALREADY ANNOUNCED THAT A KOREAN ODYSSEY WILL BE COMING ON DECEMBER 29, SO WE WILL WAIT UNTIL THEN 

[AlexandraReid]

[Naver] Hwayugi's 1st Broadcast Lee Seung Gi x Oh Yeon Seo x Cha Seung Won

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

Hwayugi's 1st Broadcast Lee Seung Gi x Oh Yeon Seo x Cha Seung Won, Horror/Exorcism Drama

 

http://entertain.nav...&aid=0003195284

 

(This article have been trending n°1 on naver for over 4h and is still n°1)

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

[YongZura⁷]

“Hwayugi” Is Off To A Strong Start With Stellar Viewership Ratings For 1st Episode

 

tvN’s highly-anticipated drama is starting on a high with impressive viewership ratings for its first episode.

 

 

According to data released by Nielsen Korea, the first episode of “Hwayugi” that aired on December 23 scored average nationwide ratings of 5.3 percent, with real-time ratings peaking at 6.3 percent. In the capital area, the drama recorded ratings of 5.9 percent and peaked at 7.6 percent.

 

For the 2049 target audience [viewers between the ages of 20 to 49], the average ratings were at 4.4 percent and peaked at 5.6 percent, making it the most-watched show of its time slot including both cable and public broadcasting channels. Not only this, but “Hwayugi” broke the record for the highest ratings for the first episode of a tvN drama in the 2049 target audience bracket. The drama now holds the record at 4.425 percent, followed by “Reply 1988” at 4.402 percent and “Goblin” at 4.186 percent.

 

The scene that attracted the most viewers was near the end of the drama when demons started circling the home of Oh Yeon Seo, drawn to the smell of her blood after she sustained a cut on her arm. The drama captivated viewers till the very end with action and suspense, leaving many excited for the next episode.

“Hwayugi” is a modern interpretation of the classic novel “Journey to the West” and follows the story of demons Son Oh Gong and Woo Ma Wang as they try to find light in a dark world. The drama was written by the Hong Sisters and features a star-studded cast that includes Lee Seung Gi, Cha Seung Won, Oh Yeon Seo, and FTISLAND’s Lee Hong Ki.

 

Taken from: Soompi

[Dramanoona]

Yay! I am onboard.

The subs will make the drama complete.... I'm just doing guesswork at the moment.

[Kasmic]

Really that's tough if we have to wait till 29th Dec for the subs to come out...why? @triplem when we watched M2M on netflix it was so cool as the eng subs came out the same time as Korea. Yikes!!! why cant netflix do the same here. I guess the difference was that M2M was pre-produced and Hwayugi isnt. 

New stills

Spoiler

 

 

 

cr. naver

 

Looking very festive...anyway MERRY CHRISTMAS CHINGUES!!! I hope we will have a better 2018.  Let's be positive as life is too precious to let any negativity get to us. 

 

 

I was scared watching this ep  too. That doll just reminds me of Chucky  and till this day I never bought any dolls even for my children  sorry Barbie you aint getting any profit from me. 

But to anyone else whom was scared...check out the spoilers. I hope it wont scare you anymore. Sorry Lee Kwang Soo I do love you but this is too hilarious not to share. 

 

Spoiler

 

cr. https://twitter.com/graceyvergara

 

[dreamfall92]

5 hours ago, jaiwook_08 said:

Viki did get the license for the drama, but Episode 1 RAW is still not available in their site or maybe they will update it as long as they finish subbing it. I DON'T WANT IT TO BE LIKE PRISON PLAYBOOK WHERE YOU ARE BEHIND ONE WEEK, URI KIM JE HYEOK BOGOSHIPDA :'( BUT ANYWAY, let's celebrate for the success of the drama or is it too early?

 

3 hours ago, jeijei said:

If Netflix picked it up, Viki would be behind by 2-3 weeks. Anyone would like to post scene summaries and translations? I'm waiting for Sarah's team (dramabeans) to recap it.

 

Nope, the first episode has already been uploaded (the late upload could be because of the holidays, that's also why subtitles take a bit longer) and is 54 % subbed as of now (I checked via VPN because it's not licensed for my region.).Viki always uploads the RAW episodes first, otherwise, the volunteer subbers can't start their work.

 

I hope Netflix doesn't start the weekly releases only in some selected countries (Canada, Australia, the UK) like they did/are doing with Black and Prison Playbook.

[chocolatepie]

5 hours ago, jeijei said:

@haymochi@chocolatepie, annyeong my scaredycat squad! Let's not livestream and watch it in broad daylight instead. 

 

for me it's not the doll but the ghost during the beginning that scared me off.  I don't watch horror movies/dramas..   For the scaredycat squad members (maybe only the 3 of us, hahaha) , we can watch sat episode on sun..  

 

[AlexandraReid]

Hwayugi (A Korean Odyssey): Episode 1

 

 

Seung-gi’s back, rejoice! More to the point, Seung-gi’s back with perhaps the most perfectly cast role, which is a promising way to kick off one of the big buzz projects of the year. This hasn’t been the most thrilling drama season (or seasons), so it’s a bit of an understatement to say I was pinning a lot of hope on Hwayugi (or the faintly generic-sounding A Korean Odyssey) to lift me out of my doldrums, while also trying to keep my expectations to a minimum.

It’s rather early to draw conclusions, but if you asked me which Hong sisters we’re getting with this drama, I’d say it’s much more of the Master’s Sun Hong sisters vibe, and not as much the Big/Warm and Cozy vibe. The source material is rich and plentiful, and I think the Hongs do much better when there’s a lot to riff off of and reinvent, rather than starting from scratch. And the casting really is spot-on.

(The drama does, it must be noted, follow in tvN’s infuriating pattern of shows coming in at ungodly lengths—you want me to watch TWO 90-minute episodes a week? I can barely watch one 90-minute movie a month! As a result, I started drinking to help me get through the exhausting length, which on one hand sped up the watching process but on the other hand vastly slowed down the writing process. You win some, you lose some.)

 
BACKGROUND

In anticipation of Hwayugi’s run, I’ve been reading the (English-translated, unabridged) Journey to the West for the past several months, because knowing the Hong sisters’ style, I knew they’d be throwing references left and right and I wanted to be able to catch them. Moreover, Journey to the West is a story that I’ve seen referenced a lot in pop culture, but is not really explained—it seems one of those things that is so generally well-known that it’s assumed one is already familiar with the broad strokes of the story. I felt it was knowledge worth having, and so I dove in. 

Spoiler

 

I’m only 700 pages into the book (…it has a LOT of pages), but I feel pretty confident in understanding the setup and characters and feel of the world. Journey to the West is, in an overarching sense, a story that starts Taoist and ends Buddhist, and can be seen in some ways as a religious masterwork, although it’s not really “religious” in a straight sense. It’s more folkloric with rich fantasy elements. I wondered whether a 500-year-old classic, seminal literary work might be rather stodgy through a modern lens, but was happily surprised to find Journey to the West funny and irreverent—it really does feel like a rollicking adventure romp.

 

 

At the core of the story is our Monkey King, who was born a troublemaker. Carved out of stone and given life by spiritual beings, he learns ancient Taoist magic and grows into a being that’s too powerful for his own good—he isn’t overtly evil or malicious, but he is hot-tempered and supremely selfish, so anytime he has an impulse he acts on it. Anytime someone tries to reason with him, he just fights them and wins and does what he wants anyway. After running amok in the heavens for centuries and defeating anyone who tried to challenge him, the Monkey is finally subdued, his powers bound, and his body trapped for hundreds of years.

When he is finally released from his prison, he is given a chance at redemption by accompanying a virtuous human monk on a spiritual journey to collect scriptures in the West. Since Monkey is inherently impish and flighty, he is made to wear a golden circlet that brings him immense pain when the monk recites a sutra, which keeps him in check whenever he’s tempted to go off the rails (which is often). Even as a reborn spiritual disciple, Monkey is frequently mischievous, proving that you can’t change who you are, just what you do! Along the way, he picks up companions—monsters who have all gone astray in their prior lives, have been punished, and are given the same second chance at redemption.

 

 

Characters:

Sohn Oh-gong: The Koreanized name of Sun Wukong, our Monkey King. At one point before he was imprisoned, Monkey styled himself “the Great Sage, Equal to Heaven,” and is sometimes called this by other characters.

Woo Mawang: Woo Hwi is the name he’s been given, but “Woo Mawang” is the direct translation of Bull Demon King, and the writers are being punny here by making Woo his surname and Mawang his nickname, aka Devil. The supernatural characters mostly call him Mawang, while the humans know him as CEO Woo. As far as I can tell, the Bull Demon King is a pretty minor character in the original novel, so I’m expecting particular liberties with this character.

Jin Sun-mi: Descended from Monk Sam-jang (aka Xuanzang), Jin Sun-mi is a name that basically means beauty. (For instance, jin, sun, and mi are the designations for first-, second-, and third-place winners of beauty pageants.) In the novel, the monk is known for his virtuous nature, but rather wimpy in the face of the dangers of the journey, necessitating the cadre of protectors.

PK: Full name Jeo Pal-ke (Zhu Bajie). To be cheeky, they’ve restyled the idol as PK, rather than Pal-ke. The surname means Pig, and the character is ruled by lust, gluttony, and laziness. The rest of his name means Eight Precepts, which refer to the temptations he ought to resist (greed, lust, etc.). In the novel, Monkey often calls him Idiot as a name.

 

 

 

 

 

EPISODE 1 RECAP

In an ornate mansion, an eccentrically dressed man watches a news report of a mountain fire in the Gangwon region. Then we hop over to Gangwon Province, where the arrival of a young girl at school spurs classmate taunts of her being a ghost.

She’s JIN SUN-MI (Kal So-won), and she quietly takes a seat at her desk, which has been defaced with slurs telling her this is a school for people, not ghosts. She ignores them and looks up as the teacher enters and asks the kids brightly to stand up. Sun-mi stands… and then realizes that none of the other kids have seen the teacher. Ack, shivers!

Spoiler

The teacher-ghost grins widely to see that one child can see her, and zooms up to Sun-mi’s face (ack! Stop that!) to taunt her. As her classmates eye her in confusion, Sun-mi unfurls her umbrella at the ghost, and a talisman flashes on its surface to repel it.

The real teacher walks in and wonders what Sun-mi is doing with her umbrella out in the empty classroom, while Sun-mi whispers for the ghost to leave her alone. After school, the teacher-ghost haunts Sun-mi’s walk home and gets angry at Sun-mi’s repeated rebuffs. The ghost grabs Sun-mi’s umbrella and looms menacingly, just as a man shows up wielding an umbrella with a black bull’s head for a handle. One slam of the shaft onto the ground sends the ghost flying, then bursting into a cloud of black smoke.

Sun-mi looks up at the man—the eccentric from our opening, WOO MAWANG (Cha Seung-won)—and he smiles at her. She asks how he chased the ghost away, and he slams his umbrella down, causing leaves to blow away. She tries the same with her own umbrella, and is disappointed when it doesn’t work.

 

 

 

She guesses that he’s not human, and Mawang replies, “So you won’t get scared, let’s call me a fairy.” LOL.

Sun-mi tells Mawang that she doesn’t find him scary, unlike when she sees evil ghosts. He deduces that she can see things that aren’t human, saying that he’s been searching for a special human like her to do him a favor. She agrees to help if he’ll swap umbrellas, and they shake on the deal.

Mawang leads Sun-mi through the forest toward a house, where he needs her to retrieve a special fan for him. A fire has been raging in the mountains, and he needs the fan in order to stop the fire. Once she gives him the fan, he’ll give her his umbrella.

 

===Read more: http://www.dramabean...ssey-episode-1/

 

 

COMMENTS

Okay, time to unpack!....

I liked this episode. I went into it trying to clear my mind of any thoughts or hopes, and found myself enjoying the lore, although I wonder if part of that is because I could recognize the source material. There’s always an extra bit of satisfaction in recognizing allusions and references, but that’s a separate issue from whether a story is itself compelling.

I think this drama should be fairly accessible to people who have zero background knowledge of Journey to the West, for several reasons: First, it’s a loose adaptation, and resets the world entirely by making it modern-day. There’s definitely new lore that is the Hong sisters’ own, so this is more like an “inspired by” story, not a remake or adaptation. And lastly, I think the original story is really pretty accessible too, as it’s mostly an adventure tale with a massive repository of monster characters and lots of exciting fights.

Spoiler

 

That said, I do like the way this show is adapting Journey to the West—it’s actually a cleverer adaptation than I thought it would be. There are the obvious traits they’ve worked in, such as Seung-gi’s monkey haircut (which somehow he makes work!), the tiger’s fur Oh-gong wears, his golden rod, and all the monkey and bull references (and, I assume also pig, once PK joins the party).

 

 

But there’s also the reinterpretation of the characters’ personalities, which I’m enjoying. Seung-gi makes the perfect Sohn Oh-gong, mischievous and hotheaded while at the same time betraying depth beneath the selfish surface. In the original story, I always thought the monk was the dullest character, being wimpy and whiny and constantly scared of monsters while his protector-monsters were flawed and entertaining.

But here, Sun-mi is shown to be brave in the face of her fear, and I really appreciate that while she has the power to see supernatural beings, she doesn’t have any superpowers. She’s still a weak human in a physical sense, but I see strength in her character that will provide a worthy foil for Oh-gong, which is a deeper relationship than I saw in the novel. And there’s a clever twist in making Mawang the actual protector, while Oh-gong is the one out to get her, which flips our hero’s role quite nicely from the original. The writers have put him in the role of someone she needs protection from, while also having set up this loophole where he becomes her protector. I dig that.

I’m hoping the rest of the mythology remains tight and compelling, and that the characters find their way into the quirky, sometimes-friendly, sometimes-at-odds dynamic that I think forms the backbone of this story. Well, that and kisses. I’m not going to be happy without some kisses.

 

[incoty]

 

 

 

Spoiler

 

[larus]

Watch: Lee Seung Gi Has A Hard Time Being A Bad Guy In “Hwayugi” Bloopers

E. Cha December 23, 2017

 

In new footage from behind the scenes of tvN’s “Hwayugi,” Lee Seung Gi tries his very best to look evil, while Oh Yeon Seo struggles not to laugh during a battle with a ghost!

After its successful premiere on December 23, the drama has released a new clip featuring some of the outtakes from filming.

In the video, Cha Seung Won is visibly excited to be on set for his first day of filming, even doing a little dance between takes.

 

more https://www.soompi.com/2017/12/23/watch-lee-seung-gi-hard-time-bad-guy-hwayugi-bloopers/

[jaiwook_08]

2 hours ago, dreamfall92 said:

 

 

Nope, the first episode has already been uploaded (the late upload could be because of the holidays, that's also why subtitles take a bit longer) and is 54 % subbed as of now (I checked via VPN because it's not licensed for my region.).Viki always uploads the RAW episodes first, otherwise, the volunteer subbers can't start their work.

 

I hope Netflix doesn't start the weekly releases only in some selected countries (Canada, Australia, the UK) like they did/are doing with Black and Prison Playbook.

Yeyyy! Thank you very much!  I thought we will wait for a long time for this drama. Yeyy! Thanks  

[JackieOnTheRocks]

Hi chingus, help I can’t find the episode with sub checked all the website I usually watched kdrama, I really can’t find it huhuhu. Send me link jeabal. Kamsahamnida x

[YourHighness .]

Can't find subs anywhere for this drama. Can anyone help me out please?

[dreamfall92]

47 minutes ago, JackieOnTheRocks said:

Hi chingus, help I can’t find the episode with sub checked all the website I usually watched kdrama, I really can’t find it huhuhu. Send me link jeabal. Kamsahamnida x

 

8 minutes ago, YourHighness . said:

Can't find subs anywhere for this drama. Can anyone help me out please?

 

It's officially available here on Viki (https://www.viki.com/tv/35620c-hwayugi, but subs aren't finished yet) and via Netflix next week.