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Hajimemashite minna san....welcome to my site on my fave Japanese Pop Culture likes such as dramas, movies, magazine scans, promo events etc. Mainly concentrate on my faves...Risa Watanabe... Kyoko Saito... Yui Kobayashi....Nana Owada.... Nene Shida.... if you're a fan at all of any of them then you've come to the right place(!) but many others are featured here besides them. Do mainly quick reviews on things I've watched, try to make the reviews brief, quick to read through with not too many spoilers, just whether they're good or bad and why I thought so plus whether you may find them enjoyable. Many, many screenshots are included from everything I've watched plus any video trailers if they're available. Hope you find something that interests you, don't hesitate to comment, arigato gozaimasu!

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Sunday, March 17, 2019

Jin Se-Yun: "High End Crush" drama episode one recap





 This drama has had two air dates. First time around it aired from November 14, 2015 to January 17, 2016 on Sohu in China and Naver in Korea as it was a joint production. There were twenty episodes that ran for fifteen minutes each.
 For the drama's second time around it aired from April 4th to April 25, 2018 on MBN. The episodes were combined into five shows at an hour each, those are the ones in the recaps. MBN is a cable network in Korea and the shows aired Wednesday nights at 11:00 pm.

Main Cast:

Jung Ii Woo as Choi Se-Hoon.... arrogant CEO of Choi Entertainment
Jin Se-Yun as Yoo Yi-Ryjung... 24 year old who lived in the mountains, soon to be an Idol(?)
Lee Si-Un as Heo.... Se-Hoon's daffy assistant
Moon Se-Yun as CEO Jang.... Se-Hoon's rival when it comes to signing Idols and actors
Yoon Bo-Ra as Min-Joo.... popular Idol woth Choi Entertainment, real life once a part of Sistar
Jung Sang-Hoon as Jong-Hyun.... Se-Hoon's only friend and his psychiatrist 
Tae Hang-Ho as 'The Beast Man'.... Yi-Ryung's neighbor from the mountains


 As you read above this is just a five episode series, will have two recaps today with the second one following this post. Hopefully will have the other three next weekend and as of now haven't watched any of them yet. At the top of each post will try to have a short promo video for the episode. Just for this recap will look at the two main characters to start off with and then get into the meat of the story.




 Though the story revolves around Yi-Ryung the main character through two episodes has been the CEO of Choi Entertainment, Se-Hoon. Not sure what his age is but guessing around thirty and what an arrogant, conceited man he is. We had first met him when the show began and he had stormed into the offices of a drama producer with his faithful entourage. Choi Entertainment seems to be the largest and most successful agency in Korea and if you yourself want to make it you had better have the backing of Se-Hoon.
 That unnamed drama producer we met did have the backing but instead of using their main male star the producer was going to go with a bit of an unknown from the Jang agency. The man Jang we'll meet here and there throughout the episodes and he's Se-Hoon's fiercest rival. He had been in the room when Se-Hoon had stormed in, he meekly watched as Se-Hoon put that producer in his place who will end up using one of his top stars, Ji-Won.
 Incidents like that seem to happen on a daily occurrence for Se-Hoon and to date he always gets what he wants. It comes at a bit of a price as he trusts no person on his staff with the mild exception of his assistant Heo. Se-Yoon's most used line is 'If you want it done right you have to do it yourself'. And that theory has worked 100% of the time in his career, that is up until he met a younger woman and for the first time couldn't bully anyone to do what he demanded. As a matter of fact to date
Se-Hoon had never been in love and dislikes those kinds of dramas, that's all about to change.




 That woman is above and the character is played by perhaps the most dazzling woman in history,
Se-Yun. In the show she plays the 24 year old Yi-Ryung and she's led an incredibly strange life up until now. Yi-Ryung had lived her entire life on a remote mountain in the Odaesan region which is about two hours south of Seoul. For a very long time Yi-Ryung had lived in a modest house near the top of a mountain with her grandfather who is now passed away and she lives by herself.
 There's no power on the mountain so for 24 years Yi-Ryung has had no idea what happens in the outside world. On occasion she makes a trip to the local village store where Yi-Ryung sells some of the hand made items she creates, that little money is all she needs to survive. That's because there's no bills plus Yi-Ryung grows most of the food she eats, her favorite pastime is reading old Chinese literature and often speaks quotes from books to others.
 For some strange reason which was never revealed one day Yi-Ryung had traveled to the large city of Seoul and it may have been her first time there. Didn't appear she had any destination in mind and was just enjoying the sites when an incident occurred right in front of her. A young woman had ran by quickly saying men were trying to kidnap her, that wasn't the case but soon Yi-Ryung jumped in to save the woman.
 That woman was Min-Joo who was a popular K-Pop singer and part of Se-Hoon's stable. She had been fleeing from Heo and his crew as for some reason she didn't want to go with them but all they had wanted was to bring her to the studio to tape a video. Min-Joo was able to escape from Heo as Yi-Rying had bashed him over the head with a bat, Min-Joo was eventually corralled by Se-Hoon. Once Heo began to look at Yi-Ryung a bit more closely he noticed her attractiveness and ended up bringing her to the studio but he was still peeved at being hit over the head with a bat.




 Heo was planning on having Yi-Ryung stand in for the video and as you can see by that top screenshot what a video it would have been. But she was no longer needed as Min-Joo had arrived at the studio, that moment was the first time Se-Hoon had laid eyes on Yi-Ryung and for him it was love at first sight though he kept telling himself that wasn't the case. Se-Hoon wasn't going to let Yi-Ryung flee his studio so quickly so he sauntered into the dressing room where she was changing. He caught a glimpse of her naked(luckiest man in the world) which sent Yi-Ryung into another fury and she ended up clobbering Se-Hoon in the jaw. Guess when you live by yourself on a mountain you need to be good at protection and Yi-Ryung is one tough cookie though she doesn't look it.
 Now she's taken out the top two men in Choi Entertainment and Se-Hoon isn't taking it too lightly. He demands to know what Yi-Ryung is going to do atone for her viciousness when she turned the tables on Se-Hoon to scream out harassment as he saw her naked. Eventually Se-Hoon backed down but during their mini meeting he too was smitten with Yi-Ryung's ultra attractiveness, it popped into his mind she has the makings of becoming Korea's biggest Idol! But living on a mountain meant that Yi-Ryung had no clue about anything in the real world and especially Idols.




 Se-Hoon proposed the offer of him making Yi-Ryung the most popular Idol in Korea, Yi-Ryung wanted nothing to do with the world of celebrities and the argument went on for a while. Eventually she grew tired of Se-Hoon's contract demands and Yi-Ryung fled his studio but not before knocking him down once again and a wrestler may have been a profession for Yi-Ryung too.
 Se-Hoon wasn't going to let her flee so easily and was able to track down Yi-Ryung just as she was about to board a bus. He pulled her back and the pair ended up having a quick embrace, seems as though it was the first time for either of them doing that and it's not the last time the pair will embrace during these first two shows. But it was no use for Se-Hoon as Yi-Ryung still refused to listen to his offers of becoming an Idol, before long she left Seoul to return to her mountain home.
 Yi-Ryung may be gone but Se-Hoon can't get her out of his mind, is it because she could be such a popular Idol or is it because he's fallen in love with her? Little of both right now and Se-Hoon has his staff working on finding where Yi-Ryung resides plus his team, mainly Heo, created a new ad campaign about Yi-Ryung as they all expected their boss to get her back. Heo is quite a loony character in this show, he's Se-Hoon's main assistant but he treats him like dirt. You'll see Heo in so many of the screenshots as he is an important part of the story and is an asset to Se-Hoon's company though he won't admit it.




 Have a bit of an unwritten rule that recaps these days only consist of five segments which means there's just one more to go. Figured it made the reading a bit easier plus it makes my life easier with shorter recaps as it means I can squeeze a few more in. Before we hit the final part here are the best two screenshots from the drama to date though every episode promises to have a few jaw-dropping one, does Se-Yun need any more proof on being the hottest woman in the world!?!?



 And to the final few scenes but there is one detail that was left out. Se-Hoon had learned that his rival Jang had also met Yi-Ryung recently, not in Seoul but at her mountain home! Though a bit overweight Jang was an avid hiker and had been on a short trip through the mountains of Odaesan. He had run into some difficulty as he got lost and then had passed out from being out in the sun too long. Who should pass by while Jang was unconscious than Yi-Ryung, she brought him back to her house where he recovered after spending the night there. Once Se-Hoon heard that story he began wondering if Jang had already offered a contract to Yi-Ryung to become an Idol. Now to him time was of the essence and it was off to Odaesan to find his potential next superstar.
 Odaesan is in a very remote area of Korea, Se-Hoon was strictly a city boy and he couldn't believe people could live in such primitive conditions. There was one small general store but besides that not much else in the area Yi-Ryung resided in, like her house many places didn't have electricity. Plus there were no roads that headed up the mountain so Se-Hoon was stuck with having to climb the mountain, he may have looked it but he wasn't in the most fit shape. After hours of searching for
Yi-Ryung's house Se-Hoon finally stumbled across it, only problems were that she wasn't at home and there was a locked gate to prevent access to her yard.
 After waiting hours and hours there was no sign of Yi-Ryung and Se-Hoon had dozed off from being so tired along with practically starving to death. But he heard a noise in the woods, with no other options on doing anything Se-Hoon went to investigate and what he ran into was the above scene with Yi-Ryung, that's enough to give any man a heart attack. But Se-Hoon read it all wrong, he thought she was drowning in the small pond while Yi-Ryung was actually just swimming.
 There's no way his potential Idol could drown so Se-Hoon jumped in to save her, the big problem was he couldn't swim. Yi-Ryung was naturally startled to see him and once again she read the situation wrong too as she departed the pond and may have had thoughts about letting Se-Hoon sink to the bottom. But as much as Yi-Ryung couldn't stand Se-Hoon she also couldn't let him drown so she rushed back to save him, like Yi-Ryung did for Jang she dragged Se-Hoon back to her house to heal. Se-Hoon did eventually wake up but will continue with what happened in the next recap as this scene continued on into episode two.





 The recap did seem like it was getting a bit long so decided to finish that scene off in the next post which is the one right below this. First episodes usually are longer recaps as the characters need to be introduced plus most of the storylines are set up, there's really just one main plot for this series though. Did cover all of the main details and events but do have a huge amount of screenshots to help you follow the story better plus who wouldn't want to view more pics of Se-Yun!





















































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