Hwarang

Title: Hwarang

Genre: Historical, Romance

Leads: ‎Park Seo Joon, Go A Ra, Park Hyung Sik, Choi Min Ho

Premise: A band of handsome and elite young men are selected by the queen to fight for justice and stop the nobles from conquering the throne. Their lives are filled with romance and family drama but they end up forming lasting bonds as friends.

Rating ⭐⭐⭐✶ (3.5)

Describe the show with a hashtag: #HelloHandsome

Plot *minor spoilers ahead*

This show is set in the 10th century Korean kingdom of Silla. The queen has been ruling in place of her son for over 10 years and is struggling to retain power, so she creates an elite team of warriors, chosen for their beauty and status, to help protect the power of the royal family. Her son, the real king, has grown tired of waiting for his mother to step down and joins Hwarang as a means to become stronger and gain favour and backing, and also to spite his mother. We also meet a peasant who is strong willed and of good character who, due to unfortunate events, is forced to join Hwarang to protect the woman he loves and her father. We get to see the struggles the young king faces to reclaim his throne, the love story unfolding between a beautiful young lady and the man she thinks may be her brother and the stories of several members of Hwarang.

My Feelings

I generally don't go for historical dramas because I feel like they all have the same story, corrupt nobles that seem to have more power than the king (for reasons I still don't completely get), the power hungry queen/queen mother, love between a noble and a peasant etc. This show did have all of these BUT it had so much more going on that one could easily not focus on that. They gave us enough to enjoy by giving us a glimpse into the lives of several of the members of Hwarang, plus their crazy leader was just hilarious to watch. The love story between Aro and Moo Myung was complicated but simple, once things were revealed, there was no pretending not to like each other or any of those time wasters, they were both in it for real. Moo Myung was sooo manly in the way he was ready to do anything for Aro, I mean, what girl doesn't want to feel safe and protected? He is complete #MCM material. Although there was a love triangle, there was never any doubt where Aro's heart lay, so personally I did not have second lead syndrome for this show, but that could also be because I didn't really like Ji Dwi's character. He seemed a bit weak and whiny to me and I part of me did not want him to become the king, but the writers did a good job of showing his growth, so I can't hate (plus I think I don't like Park Hyung Sik cuz I didn't enjoy him in Strong Woman Do Bong Soon either). We also got to meet some other beautiful men and got to know them enough to root for them as a team and feel bad for them when they went through something difficult (there were some tears).

The bromance in this show was REAL! and the cute added love story between Ban Ryu and Soo Yeun was so sweet. Oh did I forget to mention that this show is FILLED with good looking men??? Here's one more glimpse of the beautiful men of Hwarang.

Feast your eyes

Conclusion

There were nice stories and proper character development for most of the cast so there was enough going on. The love story was really good, not draggy and overdramatic and the second, smaller love story was really cute to watch. I would definitely recommend this show, I completely enjoyed it and did not feel like it was dragging on while I was watching the show.

Annyeong

Naija Noona