Legend of the Blue Sea

8.5/10 is my rating. This is a 2016/2017 South Korean drama inspired by a Joseon era legendary tale. It has 20, ~60 minute, episodes.

This drama tells the story of a mermaid, Se-hwa / Shim Cheong (Jun Ji-hyun) and a con-artist Kim Dam-ryung / Heo Joon-jae (Lee Min-ho) who encounter each other in various incarnates and at various points in time. The original love story ended in tragedy and steps were taken, at that time, for future incarnates not to Mthe same fate.

Spoiler 🚨 I was mainly drawn to this one because Lee Min-ho was the lead and I have loved everything, so far, he is in. He is a highly talented actor and I love that he often does his own stunts. For me it starts a bit weird but I think that is just my Western bias of what Mermaids should be like (spoiler from here) as she seems more like some strange mermaid/superhero combination. She has super strength which is not something most Mermaid legends include. There were also some super silly parts in the fight scenes which I felt would have been better left out. Not sure where she would have developed two leg kicking martial arts skills spending most of her life as a Mermaid. So that part was a bit hard for me to swallow even in fairy tale land. That being said I did appreciate that she wasn't a whiney weak female. Not that I find that critical - people are all points in the spectrum but I don't want to see that in every show. I like to see the variability. I did like her very playful nature though and her doing things like pretending not be be able to speak which was somewhat of a prank on Joon-jae - I liked that. I see that Mermaids are very playful in most renditions. I think anyone that likes the Mermaid or supernatural genre would like this story. It does have a slapstick comedic element to it at times.

I liked the romance - the chemistry of the two leads was off the charts. It ended well which is always really important to me.