Kdrama Tropes: Best to Worst

Today, I decided that we should slowly descend from best to worst tropes. Everything will start great, till we finally reach something that should never come into existence.

These are just the tropes commonly found in kdramas. My all-time favourite would be enemies to lovers (yes, I'm that girly), but let's be honest, there is no drama where they're putting daggers near each other's throats.

What trope is your favourite? Or the most hated one?

Before watching the film "Soulmates", I never thought about this trope as a good one. From my understanding, it would be like the "Mean Girls" movie, or a similar aspect. Someone would get bullied, or they would be fake nice.

But that one film changed my perception. It can be so endearing, the friendship can mean so much, but it can be toxic as hell. You are soulmates, but at what cost?

Now, I'm watching "You and Everything Else", which also has a similar aspect to it. The leads are friends who feel jealous towards each other, even hatred at times.

There are just bigger emotions than just being a bully, and I feel like it delivers so well.

This is a bit calmer compared to the previous. Found family has a happy ending, and everyone is fulfilled.

It will always start with someone feeling a bit lonely or out of place, to finding that among those people. These dramas can be bad, but the trope helps them tremendously.

For example, "Law and the City" got only 5/10 from me, but the friendship between those people was amazing to witness.

The hesitations to open up or not, leaning onto each other and knowing that here, within this group, everything will be alright.

A very heartwarming trope.

I don't have anything against this trope; sometimes it's nice to imagine that you could be Cinderella, too.

This trope can go both ways; it can be very tropey like "Boys over Flowers", but it can also be something refreshing like "The Atypical Family". Yes, you have the same trope, but let's include a scammer female lead instead of just a poor one.

I feel like nowadays there are a few dramas that make the female lead the rich one, and the male lead is poor. There are fewer dramas like that, but maybe there will be balance one day.

This is a trauma. Nothing else.

Every time a main lead goes near the street, I breathe in. Every time a main lead drives through an intersection, I breathe in... and hold my breath till they're safe.

I don't want to say that it's a completely bad trope.

There are some good examples, "Twenty Five Twenty One", "Happiness", which gave me so many feels, and had very good writing and chemistry.

But it's so easy to mess up everything. I know a lot of people loved "Love Next Door", but for me, they stayed as friends, and I couldn't look at them as a couple. "Fight My Way" was dreadful, too.

I feel like this trope is similar to enemies-to-lovers in a way that it is hard to write a good one.

It will either end up as something you absolutely adore or something you hate. No in between.

This trope relates a lot to having a second male lead. There is no true love triangle, as we already know who the female lead will choose.

The love triangle I enjoyed was in the Reply series. A lot of them didn't end up with who I wanted, BUT they did a great job in "who she will end up with?"

Love triangles in the past were something where we needed a phrase like "second-lead-syndrome", while now I feel this has mellowed down.

Even if you like the second guy, they usually agree to give up, like in "Head over Heels". There is no fight, no choosing; he just stays there as a friend.

Don't get me wrong, this is better than "I'll wait for you however much it takes" guy, but nowadays there is even less purpose for this trope than ever.

Let's crack up with one of the most annoying tropes EVER.

Two people randomly cannot fall in love; they need a childhood connection showing that this was fate!

They might have met when she was crying, and he helped her. She might be the one who called him to play while everyone bullied him.

I don't know why this trope has started and where, but IT NEEDS TO STOP.

"No Gain, No Love" is a drama where the female lead asks a random man to marry her... For him to end up being close to her mum and knowing about her. I don't rememeber 100% if they met when they were younger, but it still holds up.

Even watching an airing drama "My Youth", it talks about their second chance at love. Before they knew each other in high school, and now the female lead is telling the male lead how they met when they were kids???

It feels unnecessary and out of nowhere at times. I have a lot of anger with this trope, and I hope it ceases to exist.

Yes, there is another trope which I hate even more than the childhood connection.

I will never understand why you need to pull it off in the last two episodes. Is there no topic to write about? No better conflict to add in?

Recently, I watched a drama from 2003 ("Winter Sonata") which did this trope, and after 22 years, we have not grown as a society.

The most recent drama I've finished that pulled this card was "The Nice Guy", a drama from this year.

I would be more keen on the trope if it didn't feel so out of hand. Usually, there is nothing that would suggest this coming; it seems like everything is finally solved, the lead can live happily ever after and BAM.

They break up because they love each other too much. They break up because now one is sick with a terminal illness or some shit. They break up because they're on different levels and so on and on and on.

Usually, this is what they've been fighting against for the whole drama, but now it's time.

All the time with the mother-in-law who doesn't want to share her baby with a poor girl, what was that all about?

They talk about how they can be themselves with their partner, to break up for no apparent reason.

Sometimes, they don't even say the reason. "Let's break up", and end up just with that, so we can watch them in pain for another episode or two until we get 5 minutes of a happy ending.

This trope has hurt me, and now I'm just frustrated every time it comes on screen.