top 10 doramas
So, most of the dorama portion of my f-list seems to be doing "top 10" lists.
calixaand
lesbiassparrowtold me to, so I shall, though it's possible that several I hope to watch soon will shake it up. No pics or MVs from me though, I'm afraid.
#10 is a 4 way tie. I reject the option of leaving any of them out.
10a. Young Warriors of the Yang Clan(cdrama): The only wuxia to make the cut. Young Warriors is the story of a famous clan of generals. They are, however, famous for two things:
1. Great heroism, and the fact that all seven sons were warriors, all generals or headed that way, and they all got there by merit, not by having strings pulled.
2. The father and most of the sons died in one battle after being betrayed, after which, the mother, surviving son who stayed with the family, the daughter, and the seven daughters-in-law became a clan of female warriors.
Clearly, it could only end in tears from the start. The drama, however, focuses primarily on the family aspect, as the younger sons find love and their place in the world, as well as try to prove themselves against the legends of their father and older brothers, and to prove to their father that they're ready to stand with him. It's very much an ensemble series, and despite the fact that no one looks a bit like they're related, you never dount that they're brothers. In addition, the women actually have LIVES apart from their men. There's a blacksmith, a doctor, a spy, a thief, and an adventuring princess. In addition, it's the only wuxia I've seen to make the antagonist just as compelling as the heroes-if not moreso-and a convincing third wheel in a love triangle. It also rips your heart out and stomps on it harder than any other drama I've ever seen.
10b. Sapuri/Suppli(jdrama): An office romance, and a hard one to explain why it's so good. Our Hero, Yuya, is a somewhat flighty young part timer who acquires a job at a prestigious advertising agency through a family friend. There he often finds himself in contact with Minami, a driven career woman who initially dismisses him as someone who doesn't take the job seriously. And initially, she's right. In time, though, they become friends and then more, as he learns to take life seriously, and she learns to look beyond her career. Yes, it sounds cliched, but somehow, it works amazingly well. Largely, I think, because, while it is a romance, it's also very much a coming of age and self-awareness story, not only with Yuya and Minami, but also Satoshi, a coworker Minami initially likes, but who is still in love with his first love, who's married, and Imaoka, their manager, who must learn to choose between his carefree lifestyle, his estranged daughter, and his romance with another coworker.
10c. Lovers(kdrama) The only kdrama to take all the kdrama tropes I hate, and work them in a way that I love. Want a plot destined to be FUBAR? Try this. A mobster is trying to buy the home of a priest, and clashes with the daughter of the priest, who is a slightly eccentric doctor. She, very conveniently, is the next door neighbor of his girlfriend, who wanted to break up with him until she learned she was pregnant. Meanwhile, the son of the mobster's boss comes home and falls for the doctor. He was also once involved with the pregnant girlfriend. Should go wrong in every way possible, yes? WRONG! The leads are actually adults, and act like it. The heroine is financially independent, has a successful career, and we actually see her working, and that she's good at it. No one is villainized. All the angst, the conflict, and barriers actually make sense. Most kdramas are Cinderella fantasy escapist melodramas. This one is a romance about adults, in a plot that(aside from the whole mobster thing) actually feels like it could almost be real.
10d. Pride(jdrama): In all honesty, I'm not sure why a drama revolving around hockey and contract dating works so well for me, but it does. Aki, an office lady, has been waiting several years for her boyfriend to return to Japan, and her friends are fed up with it and determined to get her a new one. Halu is a hockey player clashing with his new coach, who does things differently than the old coach, who was Halu's mentor. Halu and Aki meet, they spark, and they decide to date each other with the agreement that they'll break up if her boyfriend ever comes back. (Which, of course, he does.) I'm not sure if it's the mature handling of the relationship, the balance between romance and Halu's antagonistic/eventually respectful relationship with his coach, or just the chemistry and likability of Kimura Takuya and Takeuchi Yuko(or, more likely, a combination of the three) but it somehow works just right.
9. Ame to Yume(jdrama): Sakarai Tomoharu, a musician and single father, falls to his death while trying to catch a rare butterfly. He wakes up in the apartment he shares with his teenaged daughter, Ame, in Tokyo, with no idea that he's dead until his neighbor Akiko, who claims to be able to see ghosts, tells him his fate. Knowing that Ame will be heartbroken when she learns the truth, he sets out, with Akiko's help, to keep the truth from her until he can find a way to tell her gently. Meanwhile, Ame's mother, who abandoned them shortly after Ame's birth, returns for her daughter, and Ame goes through her first love. Both heartbreaking and uplifting, Ame to Yume focuses on the relationship of a father and daughter who are utterly devoted to each other, and don't realize how much they need each other until after one is dead. Meanwhile, her regular exposure to a ghost is allowing Ame to see other ghosts, something that's never good, and there's a brilliant twist to the end that would have made it all worth it, if it hadn't been worth it already. (Yet, I'm always scared to mention the twist, because I worry even saying there is one will give it away.)
8. It Started With A Kiss(twdrama): The only Taiwanese drama I can honestly say I love. Super-dim Xiang Qin tries to give her crush, class genius Zhi Shu, a love letter at school, only to be rejected out of hand. That night, her house is destroyed in an earthquake. The next day, her father's old school friend sees him on TV, and offers them a place to live, and when they arrive that night, she learns that it's Zhi Shu's family. OH NO! SHE MUST FACE HER HUMILIATION DAILY! Another one with elements that shouldn't work for me at all, but it does. The series covers several years of their life as they eventually become friends and then more, and features a lot of character growth for both. I should want to punch Zhi Shu in the face and strangle Xiang Qin and...ok, sometimes I do, but mostly, I just want them to straighten out the roller coaster they're on, and go make babies.
7. Fantasy Couple(kdrama): Based on the movie Overboard(but without the actual adultery) an arrogant millionairess and a money grubbing handyman raising his three nephews clash multiple times, with the millionairess, Anna Jo, coming out on top each time. Chul Soo, the handyman, gets his chance at revenge, however, when he sees her amnesiac in the hospital, and decides to claim she's his live in girlfriend. He soon regrets it, however, but when he tries to send her home, he realizes that he doesn't know who she really is, her boat no longer officially exists, and NO ONE WANTS HER BACK! Trapped in his own trap. Both leads are amazingly appealing in roles that should be unappealing, and the drama does an excellent job of reversing many of the typical kdrama tropes. And again, lots of character growth. It's also the only time where I don't really mind that they made the other girl evil, because there, it was done to show the difference between appearances and what a person is really like. Flower Vase(yeah, I only remember Anna's nickname for her) is outwardly sweet and generous, but actually very petty and self-centered. Anna seems petty and self-centered, but is always able to set her pride aside to do what needs to be done, and cares about people far more than she'll ever admit.
6. Hwang Jin Yi(kdrama): Probably tied with Emperor of the Sea as the best drama I've seen, Hwang Jin Yi is about the life of a gisaeng, or courtesan, of the same name. Another one that's hard to put into words, HJY is about the battle of a woman's love for her art constantly at war with her romantic love for man. Every action in her life, every relationship, brought the artist and the woman into conflict, and that, combined with the boundaries placed on her by society, resulted in a near empossible life, where every joy brought a tragedy, and every gain a loss. Because of this, even the saddest, most depressing scenes were somehow uplifting and freeing, and the happiest moments were also full of sorrow. Despite the very low body count and the (mostly) happy ending, it's possibly the most tragic dorama I've seen.
5. Gokusen(jdrama): My first dorama, so I'm actually pretty biased about it. This amazingly funny drama is about a yakuza heiress, Yamaguchi Kumiko, who wants to be a high school teacher. Both a complete dork and a complete badass, Kumiko hides her family history and becomes a math teacher at a high school known for its problem children, and finds herself the homeroom teacher to the worst of the students. Her students rename her Yankumi and almost immediately(ok, ditch the "almost") start harassing her. Yankumi, of course, is having absolutely none of this, especially from the class leader, Sawada Shin, a brilliant but lazy and violent boy who figures out almost immediately that things aren't what they seem with his new teacher, and she sets out to reform them, with her own, special style of tough love. Secret identities, badass, dorky heroine, and insane high school hijinks, what's not to love? It also gets a special nod for pretty much being the only student/teacher pairing to ever actually work for me. (Also, though it's not nearly as good, I also love the sequel.)
4. Nobuta wo Produce(jdrama): This drama is why the term "OT3" was created. When Nobuko, a withdrawn, morbid, almost catatonic girl transfers to a new school, she takes it as a given that she'll be ruthlessly bullied, and she is. However, one of her classmates, Akira, a strange young man determined to live a life he likes before he has to be serious and take over the family business, is having none of that, and decides to help her. Akira has also decided that he will recruit Shuji, a boy so desperate to be liked that he does anything he can to be the perfect, popular student, and who learned on Nobuko's first day of school that she had planned to hang herself from his favorite tree, only it was cut down first. Together, the three take on a project to make Nobuko the most popular girl in school, with sometimes hilarious, sometimes embarassing, and sometimes sad results. Though I wish it had focused a little more on Nobuko and a little less on Shuji and Akira, the series is an amazingly touching coming of age story for all three.
3. Trick(jdrama): There are, seriously, no words for how much I love this drama. This is essentially an extended(3 TV series, a TV special, and 2 movies) bizarre courtship about a book smart, world dumb, physicist who is incredibly gullible to all things supposedly supernatural, and a street smart, book dumb, stage magician who can see through any trick in existance, but, frankly, sucks at her job. He's supposed to be an expert on the supernatural, but needs someone to keep him from getting fooled every time. She needs money. They may drive each other crazy, but it works. Many of the "mysteries" are formulaic, but the real draw is the dialogue and chemistry between Abe Hiroshi and Nakama Yukie, and all the jokes about everything from size(he's huge and she's tiny) to romance to pop culture to history and myth. It's probably the most unromantic-yet convincing-romance I've seen, and very few people more clearly need to get their act together than Naoko and Ueda. (Also vastly amusing is Ueda's relationship with Naoko's mother. In everything but the first series-they only meet at the end-the two act as if they already have Ueda and Naoko's wedding planned and first three kids named, they've just forgotten to tell her about it, and Naoko knows perfectly well that they're leaving her out of Very Important Things. And yet, none seem to have a clue how they're acting.) And finally, the end of the third series has got to be the best ending to a dorama I've ever seen.
2. Emperor of the Sea(kdrama) Like HJY, EOTS is an epic(if fictionalized) retelling of the life of a famous historical figure(only, you know, EOTS is twice as long...) EOTS is about the life of Jang Bogo, a man of Shilla(ancient Korea) who was born a slave, and eventually became a powerful merchant who ruled the seas between China and Shilla, all but eliminating piracy from the area. It follows his life as a slave to his freedom as a soldier under the command of the powerful noblewoman and merchant, Madam Jami, to his reenslavement and imprisonment in China(she didn't take well to betrayal) to his being noticed and recruited by a merchant in China, and then rising to take over his own merchant group, until the end of his life. It's also about Yum Moon, a man who befriended Jang Bogo during their childhood, and who was a member of the pirate party who attacked Jang Bogo's childhood home(he saved Jang Bogo) and who strove to be the best friend to him he could until their ideologies, and love for the same woman, made them enemies. And it's also about Jung-hwa, the noblewoman both men loved since childhood, who was raised by Madam Jami, and who set out to prove to her mentor that you could become powerful and influential without becoming corrupt. It's also built around two love stories...Jang Bogo and Jung-hwa's lifelong love, and Yum Moon's one-sided, yet absolute love for Jung-hwa. Though technically a triangle(though Jung-hwa never allows Yum Moon to have any doubts about who she loves) it never actually feels like one, and both stories alone are powerful enough to carry such a long series, without everything else in the plot. The characters, both major and minor, are very complex, and deeply flawed, and the relationship between Jung-hwa and Madam Jami(who also has her own interesting, if understated, love story) is possibly one of the best "rivalries" I've ever seen.
1. Damo(kdrama): (Is anyone surprised?) Damo is, quite possibly, the only more "hopeless" drama than HYJ that I've seen. Incidentally, Ha Ji Won played the titular character in both. Damo is about Chae-Ohk, a young woman who was born into the upper class, but who became a servant after her father was accused of treason, and was separated from her brother. She becomes the personal servant of Hwangbo Yoon, a young boy who is the illegitimate son of an official, and is raised and trained along side him as servant, friend and sister, and she follows him into the police force, becoming a low ranking tea servant-a damo-in order to stay by his side. Though his love for her gives her more respect and freedom than a woman in her position would normally have, every rule in their society forbids them from being any more than they are, causing her to bury her feelings for him. Thingsreach a head, though, when she goes undercover to investigate a counterfeit ring and she meets Jang Sung-Baek, a charismatic rebel who, despite his outlaw status, possesses all the qualities that make Hwangbo Yoon a great man...and who can offer her the freedom Hwangbo Yoon cannot. Did I mention that Chae-Ohk's brother escaped when the police came to arrest them, and couldn't go back to rescue her? And that Jang-Sung Baek is a rebel because of crimes committed against his lost family, including his younger sister? Oh yes, the angst in this thing is through the roof in every way possible. Also built around a love triangle, at it's heart it's the story of a young woman denied everything she could craves by the world she lives in, who is torn apart by impossible loves, and the need for freedom.
calixaand
lesbiassparrowtold me to, so I shall, though it's possible that several I hope to watch soon will shake it up. No pics or MVs from me though, I'm afraid.
#10 is a 4 way tie. I reject the option of leaving any of them out.
10a. Young Warriors of the Yang Clan(cdrama): The only wuxia to make the cut. Young Warriors is the story of a famous clan of generals. They are, however, famous for two things:
1. Great heroism, and the fact that all seven sons were warriors, all generals or headed that way, and they all got there by merit, not by having strings pulled.
2. The father and most of the sons died in one battle after being betrayed, after which, the mother, surviving son who stayed with the family, the daughter, and the seven daughters-in-law became a clan of female warriors.
Clearly, it could only end in tears from the start. The drama, however, focuses primarily on the family aspect, as the younger sons find love and their place in the world, as well as try to prove themselves against the legends of their father and older brothers, and to prove to their father that they're ready to stand with him. It's very much an ensemble series, and despite the fact that no one looks a bit like they're related, you never dount that they're brothers. In addition, the women actually have LIVES apart from their men. There's a blacksmith, a doctor, a spy, a thief, and an adventuring princess. In addition, it's the only wuxia I've seen to make the antagonist just as compelling as the heroes-if not moreso-and a convincing third wheel in a love triangle. It also rips your heart out and stomps on it harder than any other drama I've ever seen.
10b. Sapuri/Suppli(jdrama): An office romance, and a hard one to explain why it's so good. Our Hero, Yuya, is a somewhat flighty young part timer who acquires a job at a prestigious advertising agency through a family friend. There he often finds himself in contact with Minami, a driven career woman who initially dismisses him as someone who doesn't take the job seriously. And initially, she's right. In time, though, they become friends and then more, as he learns to take life seriously, and she learns to look beyond her career. Yes, it sounds cliched, but somehow, it works amazingly well. Largely, I think, because, while it is a romance, it's also very much a coming of age and self-awareness story, not only with Yuya and Minami, but also Satoshi, a coworker Minami initially likes, but who is still in love with his first love, who's married, and Imaoka, their manager, who must learn to choose between his carefree lifestyle, his estranged daughter, and his romance with another coworker.
10c. Lovers(kdrama) The only kdrama to take all the kdrama tropes I hate, and work them in a way that I love. Want a plot destined to be FUBAR? Try this. A mobster is trying to buy the home of a priest, and clashes with the daughter of the priest, who is a slightly eccentric doctor. She, very conveniently, is the next door neighbor of his girlfriend, who wanted to break up with him until she learned she was pregnant. Meanwhile, the son of the mobster's boss comes home and falls for the doctor. He was also once involved with the pregnant girlfriend. Should go wrong in every way possible, yes? WRONG! The leads are actually adults, and act like it. The heroine is financially independent, has a successful career, and we actually see her working, and that she's good at it. No one is villainized. All the angst, the conflict, and barriers actually make sense. Most kdramas are Cinderella fantasy escapist melodramas. This one is a romance about adults, in a plot that(aside from the whole mobster thing) actually feels like it could almost be real.
10d. Pride(jdrama): In all honesty, I'm not sure why a drama revolving around hockey and contract dating works so well for me, but it does. Aki, an office lady, has been waiting several years for her boyfriend to return to Japan, and her friends are fed up with it and determined to get her a new one. Halu is a hockey player clashing with his new coach, who does things differently than the old coach, who was Halu's mentor. Halu and Aki meet, they spark, and they decide to date each other with the agreement that they'll break up if her boyfriend ever comes back. (Which, of course, he does.) I'm not sure if it's the mature handling of the relationship, the balance between romance and Halu's antagonistic/eventually respectful relationship with his coach, or just the chemistry and likability of Kimura Takuya and Takeuchi Yuko(or, more likely, a combination of the three) but it somehow works just right.
9. Ame to Yume(jdrama): Sakarai Tomoharu, a musician and single father, falls to his death while trying to catch a rare butterfly. He wakes up in the apartment he shares with his teenaged daughter, Ame, in Tokyo, with no idea that he's dead until his neighbor Akiko, who claims to be able to see ghosts, tells him his fate. Knowing that Ame will be heartbroken when she learns the truth, he sets out, with Akiko's help, to keep the truth from her until he can find a way to tell her gently. Meanwhile, Ame's mother, who abandoned them shortly after Ame's birth, returns for her daughter, and Ame goes through her first love. Both heartbreaking and uplifting, Ame to Yume focuses on the relationship of a father and daughter who are utterly devoted to each other, and don't realize how much they need each other until after one is dead. Meanwhile, her regular exposure to a ghost is allowing Ame to see other ghosts, something that's never good, and there's a brilliant twist to the end that would have made it all worth it, if it hadn't been worth it already. (Yet, I'm always scared to mention the twist, because I worry even saying there is one will give it away.)
8. It Started With A Kiss(twdrama): The only Taiwanese drama I can honestly say I love. Super-dim Xiang Qin tries to give her crush, class genius Zhi Shu, a love letter at school, only to be rejected out of hand. That night, her house is destroyed in an earthquake. The next day, her father's old school friend sees him on TV, and offers them a place to live, and when they arrive that night, she learns that it's Zhi Shu's family. OH NO! SHE MUST FACE HER HUMILIATION DAILY! Another one with elements that shouldn't work for me at all, but it does. The series covers several years of their life as they eventually become friends and then more, and features a lot of character growth for both. I should want to punch Zhi Shu in the face and strangle Xiang Qin and...ok, sometimes I do, but mostly, I just want them to straighten out the roller coaster they're on, and go make babies.
7. Fantasy Couple(kdrama): Based on the movie Overboard(but without the actual adultery) an arrogant millionairess and a money grubbing handyman raising his three nephews clash multiple times, with the millionairess, Anna Jo, coming out on top each time. Chul Soo, the handyman, gets his chance at revenge, however, when he sees her amnesiac in the hospital, and decides to claim she's his live in girlfriend. He soon regrets it, however, but when he tries to send her home, he realizes that he doesn't know who she really is, her boat no longer officially exists, and NO ONE WANTS HER BACK! Trapped in his own trap. Both leads are amazingly appealing in roles that should be unappealing, and the drama does an excellent job of reversing many of the typical kdrama tropes. And again, lots of character growth. It's also the only time where I don't really mind that they made the other girl evil, because there, it was done to show the difference between appearances and what a person is really like. Flower Vase(yeah, I only remember Anna's nickname for her) is outwardly sweet and generous, but actually very petty and self-centered. Anna seems petty and self-centered, but is always able to set her pride aside to do what needs to be done, and cares about people far more than she'll ever admit.
6. Hwang Jin Yi(kdrama): Probably tied with Emperor of the Sea as the best drama I've seen, Hwang Jin Yi is about the life of a gisaeng, or courtesan, of the same name. Another one that's hard to put into words, HJY is about the battle of a woman's love for her art constantly at war with her romantic love for man. Every action in her life, every relationship, brought the artist and the woman into conflict, and that, combined with the boundaries placed on her by society, resulted in a near empossible life, where every joy brought a tragedy, and every gain a loss. Because of this, even the saddest, most depressing scenes were somehow uplifting and freeing, and the happiest moments were also full of sorrow. Despite the very low body count and the (mostly) happy ending, it's possibly the most tragic dorama I've seen.
5. Gokusen(jdrama): My first dorama, so I'm actually pretty biased about it. This amazingly funny drama is about a yakuza heiress, Yamaguchi Kumiko, who wants to be a high school teacher. Both a complete dork and a complete badass, Kumiko hides her family history and becomes a math teacher at a high school known for its problem children, and finds herself the homeroom teacher to the worst of the students. Her students rename her Yankumi and almost immediately(ok, ditch the "almost") start harassing her. Yankumi, of course, is having absolutely none of this, especially from the class leader, Sawada Shin, a brilliant but lazy and violent boy who figures out almost immediately that things aren't what they seem with his new teacher, and she sets out to reform them, with her own, special style of tough love. Secret identities, badass, dorky heroine, and insane high school hijinks, what's not to love? It also gets a special nod for pretty much being the only student/teacher pairing to ever actually work for me. (Also, though it's not nearly as good, I also love the sequel.)
4. Nobuta wo Produce(jdrama): This drama is why the term "OT3" was created. When Nobuko, a withdrawn, morbid, almost catatonic girl transfers to a new school, she takes it as a given that she'll be ruthlessly bullied, and she is. However, one of her classmates, Akira, a strange young man determined to live a life he likes before he has to be serious and take over the family business, is having none of that, and decides to help her. Akira has also decided that he will recruit Shuji, a boy so desperate to be liked that he does anything he can to be the perfect, popular student, and who learned on Nobuko's first day of school that she had planned to hang herself from his favorite tree, only it was cut down first. Together, the three take on a project to make Nobuko the most popular girl in school, with sometimes hilarious, sometimes embarassing, and sometimes sad results. Though I wish it had focused a little more on Nobuko and a little less on Shuji and Akira, the series is an amazingly touching coming of age story for all three.
3. Trick(jdrama): There are, seriously, no words for how much I love this drama. This is essentially an extended(3 TV series, a TV special, and 2 movies) bizarre courtship about a book smart, world dumb, physicist who is incredibly gullible to all things supposedly supernatural, and a street smart, book dumb, stage magician who can see through any trick in existance, but, frankly, sucks at her job. He's supposed to be an expert on the supernatural, but needs someone to keep him from getting fooled every time. She needs money. They may drive each other crazy, but it works. Many of the "mysteries" are formulaic, but the real draw is the dialogue and chemistry between Abe Hiroshi and Nakama Yukie, and all the jokes about everything from size(he's huge and she's tiny) to romance to pop culture to history and myth. It's probably the most unromantic-yet convincing-romance I've seen, and very few people more clearly need to get their act together than Naoko and Ueda. (Also vastly amusing is Ueda's relationship with Naoko's mother. In everything but the first series-they only meet at the end-the two act as if they already have Ueda and Naoko's wedding planned and first three kids named, they've just forgotten to tell her about it, and Naoko knows perfectly well that they're leaving her out of Very Important Things. And yet, none seem to have a clue how they're acting.) And finally, the end of the third series has got to be the best ending to a dorama I've ever seen.
2. Emperor of the Sea(kdrama) Like HJY, EOTS is an epic(if fictionalized) retelling of the life of a famous historical figure(only, you know, EOTS is twice as long...) EOTS is about the life of Jang Bogo, a man of Shilla(ancient Korea) who was born a slave, and eventually became a powerful merchant who ruled the seas between China and Shilla, all but eliminating piracy from the area. It follows his life as a slave to his freedom as a soldier under the command of the powerful noblewoman and merchant, Madam Jami, to his reenslavement and imprisonment in China(she didn't take well to betrayal) to his being noticed and recruited by a merchant in China, and then rising to take over his own merchant group, until the end of his life. It's also about Yum Moon, a man who befriended Jang Bogo during their childhood, and who was a member of the pirate party who attacked Jang Bogo's childhood home(he saved Jang Bogo) and who strove to be the best friend to him he could until their ideologies, and love for the same woman, made them enemies. And it's also about Jung-hwa, the noblewoman both men loved since childhood, who was raised by Madam Jami, and who set out to prove to her mentor that you could become powerful and influential without becoming corrupt. It's also built around two love stories...Jang Bogo and Jung-hwa's lifelong love, and Yum Moon's one-sided, yet absolute love for Jung-hwa. Though technically a triangle(though Jung-hwa never allows Yum Moon to have any doubts about who she loves) it never actually feels like one, and both stories alone are powerful enough to carry such a long series, without everything else in the plot. The characters, both major and minor, are very complex, and deeply flawed, and the relationship between Jung-hwa and Madam Jami(who also has her own interesting, if understated, love story) is possibly one of the best "rivalries" I've ever seen.
1. Damo(kdrama): (Is anyone surprised?) Damo is, quite possibly, the only more "hopeless" drama than HYJ that I've seen. Incidentally, Ha Ji Won played the titular character in both. Damo is about Chae-Ohk, a young woman who was born into the upper class, but who became a servant after her father was accused of treason, and was separated from her brother. She becomes the personal servant of Hwangbo Yoon, a young boy who is the illegitimate son of an official, and is raised and trained along side him as servant, friend and sister, and she follows him into the police force, becoming a low ranking tea servant-a damo-in order to stay by his side. Though his love for her gives her more respect and freedom than a woman in her position would normally have, every rule in their society forbids them from being any more than they are, causing her to bury her feelings for him. Thingsreach a head, though, when she goes undercover to investigate a counterfeit ring and she meets Jang Sung-Baek, a charismatic rebel who, despite his outlaw status, possesses all the qualities that make Hwangbo Yoon a great man...and who can offer her the freedom Hwangbo Yoon cannot. Did I mention that Chae-Ohk's brother escaped when the police came to arrest them, and couldn't go back to rescue her? And that Jang-Sung Baek is a rebel because of crimes committed against his lost family, including his younger sister? Oh yes, the angst in this thing is through the roof in every way possible. Also built around a love triangle, at it's heart it's the story of a young woman denied everything she could craves by the world she lives in, who is torn apart by impossible loves, and the need for freedom.