War of Money / 쩐의전쟁 (Summer 2007)
From Chosun Ilbo:
The male and female leads of a hit Korean drama about the illegal loan sharking industry were appointed public relations envoys for the Finance Ministry on Wednesday. For one year Park Shin-yang and Park Jin-hee of “War of Money” will promote the ministry’s “micro-credit” system which offers low-interest loans to people with bad credit. The government in February will use dormant deposits to establish a W200 billion fund to finance the micro-credit program.
I absolutely adore the SBS k-drama War of Money and I think it is so awesome that the stars of the drama have been co-opted by the Korean finance ministry to promote their microcredit program, which no doubt needs a lot of help, although I think they should pursue a more commercial approach. Also, given the number of SK dramas imported to the north through China, the stars might well be supporting much-needed microfinance/small-business education in NK and paving the way for economic reform and development efforts in the north.
I have only seen the first episode of the drama, but it is incredible: there is this scene in the hospital where the protagonist both makes a huge character transformation (Broken by the loansharks’ psychological games, he swallows his pride to accept help from his love interest) and reveals his tragic flaw (he is too proud to face her as a man after taking her money). The girl then throws the money at him in slow-motion while the theme song takes over.
School Days
I was most interested in seeing how they would integrate the multiple mutually-exclusive storylines of the game into a linear plot for the anime, but having never played the game (language skills required are beyond me, even though it is not text-based as most others in the genre are) it is difficult to appreciate what liberties they have taken with the original. Furthermore, much of the popular appeal of the game has nothing to do with the ‘happy ending’ type romance story but with the multiple-storyline ultra-violent ‘bad endings’ that have made it infamous, and they can’t have those because these really are mutually exclusive and there’s simply no way to integrate the ‘A kills B’ scene with the ‘B kills A’ scene short of a ‘A and B kill each other’, which is completely different altogether. So I suspect this adaptation will be very much of a disappointment to fans of the game, or at least more so than usual.
What I do like about it so far is how psychologically realistic it is (well, as psychologically realistic as a wish-fulfillment fantasy can be). Basically the plot is essentially the same setup as KGNE, except without the accident and timeskip: best friend sets up boy with pretty girl even though she likes him too, love triangle ensues. At the end of the third episode, the protagonist Makoto remarks to his best friend Sekai (i.e. the other love interest) that being with his dream girl Kotonoha is “tiring”. Now this may only be a plot convention to help integrate the multiple storylines, but I think it works very well. Its “tiring” to be with the dream girl, because to do that he has to be her dream guy, and it takes so much effort to be that guy, whereas he is loved for simply being himself with his best friend. Damn, this show just makes me angry.
