Sweet Blood (2021)
Review of Sweet Blood /달달한 그놈 (2021).
I was really, really bored one night at twelve am and that’s how I somehow stumbled upon this show on my Viki.
I was really tired at the time and didn’t feel like comprehending something that had a heavier plot, and naturally, I read the synopsis for this show and knew immediately it was either going to be one of two things: bad or really bad.
I kind of feel terrible writing that now, especially since a lot of the actors in this had their first roles in this drama specifically. It turned out to be the perfect size episodes (they literally were only like ten minutes long); if they were any longer than they were I think my brain might’ve imploded. I don’t think I could’ve done it, especially since this drama felt like an amateur production.
I’ve complained enough already, so let’s get into the bulk of this review, shall we?
Content
Our main character in this drama is a 118-year old vampire who’s just trying to make it to graduate high school. All seems swell and dandy until she finds the blood of the Siren, Song Meu-ru, in a kid who happens to be in her class.
And, just perfectly, whenever this kid bleeds his blood has a hard time actually stopping the bleeding, so he bleeds more than normal. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, doesn’t it?
It gets worse when a vampire bad boy discovers Song’s special blood and decides to masquerade as a student. The local werewolf protector of the school doesn’t appreciate that, especially when this new guy is the main girl’s former fiance.
Woo, that was a lot in one paragraph and it sounds confusing. Because it is. The show is only fifteen episodes long and they’re literally only ten minutes, so there isn’t exactly a lot of room for world building and fleshing out the characters.
The vampire bad guy is cranked up to maximum stereotypical vampire; they put him in these really world contacts, a lot of really pale and obvious makeup, and this black trench coat for a good chunk of his scenes.
It’s like actually ridiculous. He then has this tension with the Vatican’s werewolf, who runs the school’s snack shop, which, to be honest, I ship it. But we pivot his romantic efforts to the female lead in a romance that…doesn’t seem to exist? We can also say that about our main couple to be honest.
It’s a hard sell trying to decide if they’re supposed to be romantically involved or just strange friends.
I think this drama had potential—it really did. But the writing was pretty poor and it feels like they were forced to stretch it out over the course of fifteen episodes.
Many things could’ve been resolved much earlier than when they did occur, and it feels like there’s just a lot of fluff sprinkled into the actual show.
Our male lead is kind of an idiot who keeps putting himself in dangerous situations and doesn’t learn anything from it, then we have the romance that isn’t really a romance trying to force its way through.
If they had the time and budget to stretch the story, make the characters and their backstories more complex, then this could’ve had better potential. Especially if they fixed the stereotypical vampire makeup. But there are just too many constraints on the drama, which makes it kind of unwatchable at the end of the day.
Overall Thoughts
If you have an hour to spare and want to go into this open-minded, just go for it. The episodes are only ten minutes. I feel bad because this was a lot of the actor’s first roles, and I do genuinely want to see them succeed on better projects in the future.
I feel like a lot of people would shoot for the vampire bad boy, I get that vibe, but I thought the female lead was really pretty and had the look for being in more fantasy dramas as a gumiho character. She has this very feline look to her. Too much information is dumped with short episodes, it needs to be longer, but totally understand they had limits they needed to work within.
