Back to jdramas

[riji]

After 2-3 years of watching kdramas exclusively, I've started to get back to jdramas again. The main reason is because I'm getting tired of romcoms, or romance in general. Well, actually my depression is also one of the triggers, but that's not the point of this post. Kdramas are full of romance, and Koreans sure do loveeeee romance. Even in cop shows or any other mystery/thriller genres, the focus is pretty much on the romance between the leads, while the actual plot is usually meh. I'm actually not sure myself why I'm watching so many romcom kdramas when I don't even like romance story in general. Peer pressure, I guess? During my freshman year, literally all my friends were obsessed with kdramas. They were all talking about the "it" drama at the time, and I couldn't follow the conversation. Although I grew up watching Asian dramas, I never watched more than 2 airing dramas, and I never watched them all year long continuously. So at the time, I wasn't watching any Asian dramas, instead, I was watching tons of US shows. And since I was never that big of a fan of kdramas, I wasn't really sure of what they meant when they were talking about kdramas in general. But I didn't really care. I was already busy with school and hundreds of shows I was watching anyway. But in the summer, I didn't have a lot of classes. And all my shows were on hiatus. So I decided to watch some kdramas and jdramas. When fall quarter started, the only drama I was watching was a jdrama. But I couldn't talk to anyone about it, since nobody watched it. So since then, I started watching less and less jdramas. And after my graduation, somehow I only watched kdramas exclusively and started to watch less US shows. Long story short, I started to get bored with kdramas last year. It was always the same romcom trope, with a lot of unnecessary angst (and tears), and not enough (good) comedy. Moreover, 2015 was a dull year for kdramas. A lot of kdrama fans were struggling to find good dramas, especially during the first half of the year. So I slowly picked up more US shows, and eventually, jdramas too. It was a really good change. I needed it. US shows and jdramas have good thriller/mystery shows, which are more relevant to my interest. And they don't focus on the romance. If they do have romance, it's usually more like subtle romance. And I also love that the people who are watching it actually cares about the plot. While in kdramas, most people just talk about the ships. No one really cares about the plot. And I'm tired of seeing that.

I had an unintentional hiatus from kdramas during April and May. I don't know if it was because "Signal" raised the bar too high and nothing could top that, or I was just done and needed a little break. In any case, I dropped the two shows I was watching because the plot was really bad and not moving anywhere. And there was no other shows that interested me at the time (and I had decided to avoid romcoms for a while). Anyway, during my little hiatus, my love for jdramas and jvariety grew a lot bigger. I started to blog them daily, get obsessed over them, and search for updates very often. Basically the stuff I used to do with kdramas. Meanwhile, I skipped most of kdrama posts on my tumblr dash, and only checked for updates like once a week. But I'm not completely over kdramas. I don't think I'd be able to completely get away from them. Watching kdramas has kinda become a habit, so it's gonna feel weird if I stop watching them forever. I've been watching them again since June. I finally have some dramas that interest me. But I'm still avoiding romcoms as much as possible tho.