Drama Review: Arang and the Magistrate (2012)

Grade: A-

Supernatural fusion sageuk

In the Joseon era, a memory-less ghost and wayward young nobleman cope with a host of supernatural beings while working together to solve the mysteries that are key in each of their lives.

Bright, beautiful, and crisply written, Arang and the Magistrate might just be the sageuk I’ve been dreaming of—one that’s serious without being boring, and lighthearted without being stupid. Let’s see how long the charm of its pretty sets and prettier cast will last.

I’ve been burned by fusion sageuks a lot more than I’ve been satisfied by them. For every carnival of delights like Sungkyunkwan Scandal, there seem to be a football stadium’s worth of over-the-top train wrecks. Two of these duds almost convinced me to give up on the genre altogether: the shallow still-life that was The Moon that Embracesthe Sun, and the low-rent Iljimae, a dramacharacterized by cartoony characters doing cartoony things, like occasionally bursting into fits of Hong-Kong style violence.

And then there’s Arang and the Magistrate, a gorgeous, lavishly imagined piece of worldbuilding with only one major flaw: it slightly overstays its welcome. Had this show been compressed into 16 episodes, it would have benefited from jettisoning some useless characters and repetitive plot twists. But Arang still has a lot to offer—it’s a charming love story, a spooky murder mystery, and a silly comedy all rolled into one. Its expansive world ranges from the gates of Hell to the misty flowerbeds of Heaven, and everywhere in between.

Most impressive is the show’s ability to balance the emotional heft of traditional sageuks and the cheerful impossibilities of the fusion genre. It manages tonal shift after tonal shift with aplomb, somehow making flower-growing goats, death angels, killer fairies, and earth-bound courtly intrigues all coexist in one diverting world.


As far as I’m concerned, the story’s one real weak spot is its development of the character of Arang. As the series progressed, the plot’s focus moved away from Arang to the male lead. In the meanwhile, she changed from the spunky, take-no-prisoners ghost of the first few episodes to a passive MacGuffin with little to offer as a human being. Even at her most sketchily drawn, though, Arang’s emotions ring true, in spite of the fantastical improbability of the things that inspire them.

Random thoughts
• While it’s certainly possible to enjoy Arang as a Westerner without a lot of knowledge about Asian culture and history, I suspect that its multi-layered world is full of in-jokes that I didn’t really get. I can’t quite find the dividing line between whole-cloth invention and things that might based in long-standing tradition: The Jade King is certainly a “real” mythological figure, and those beans that ghosts are so afraid of bring to mind the Japanese holiday of Setsubun. But the blooming goat? The peach-blossom injuries? I’m not so sure.

• Episode 1.The most unbelievably supernatural thing in this drama so far? Lee Joon Ki’s bone structure.

• Episode 3. The Christian view of the afterlife is certainly not all puppies and rainbows, but this concept of hungry ghosts is really upsetting. Especially when it’s happening to cute-as-a-button Shin Min Ah in what’s supposed to be a romantic comedy. With foundations like this, no wonder Asian cultures seem to be having a harder time accepting homosexuality. If you die without children, your afterlife is a horror show.

• Episode 4.The theology in this show is fascinating—from this episode’s creation myth to the duality it establishes between creation and destruction. That’s not really an understanding we have in the West: if you’re a religious person, there’s pretty much one God and you need to believe that he’s responsible for everything that seems good and everything that seems evil. Of course, you might argue that a lot of that evil is a result of the free will we treasure so much. I wonder how Asian tradition deals with the concept of fate versus self-determination?

• Episode 11.Props to this show for making Arang a ballsy character, but guess what’s not at all hot? Kissing someone who’s unconscious on the lips.

• Episode 14. I’m always amused by how they style characters in these fusion sageuks. When historical accuracy is barely even on a show’s radar, they feel free to do things like leave bright red dye-jobs peeking out from under period wigs, cast actors with obviously pierced ears, and slather on the ivory-toned makeup. Now that Drama Fever has high-def options, this stuff is all the more obvious: Every time Shin Min Ah is shown from the back, you can see that her ears and neck are about four shades darker than the foundation they’ve used on her face.

• Episode 19. In the Drama Fever subs, they keep referencing the Styx River and the word Abracadabra, both of which are associated with Greco-Roman traditions, not Eastern ones. Is this a case of Drama Fever overcompensating by targeting their translations toward North American viewers, or does the show really use these words? It is fusion, after all—anything goes.

• Episode 20. Finally, Kdrama zombies! Huzzah!

DramaFever 

Viki 

• Tamra, the Island, for its silly sageuk fun