Hotel del Luna: Episode 4 The Ghost Roundup

All the sassy and smart bitches here probably already discerned that all of the ghost that Chansung encountered so far are related to Manwol’s history and self-awareness. Let me round them all up.

The Mayor (from Episode 1):

He was a corrupt man who had other people killed. His soul was full of vengeance and he stabbed Manwol. Manwol said that she couldn’t ridicule the man for attempting to kill her when she’s immortal. She said, “I was also crazy like him and I carried a sword around.” She recalled the time she easily killed a troop of soldiers sent to hunt her down, and the time she dared slash the throat of the Old Woman. She lashed out because she was triggered by the Old Woman questioning her who else did she kill to avenge the deaths of her people.

Referring to the crazed Mayor, she asked, “How can living things not know their own sins?” On one level, she was talking about the Mayor who blamed her for his descent to hell. But on another deeper level, she could have been talking about herself. She didn’t want to admit to her sins: her arrogance and self-pity.

In Episode 3, she said, “Someone said that I was arrogant and foolish although I don’t acknowledge it.”

The tiger (from Episode 2):

She was like the tiger, the last of his kind. According to Chansung, “He came here without a pack, without a mate, living alone to the end.” Just like Manwol.

Then she observed, “He is dead. They made him look alive like this (in a taxodermied state).” Just like her. She’s made to look alive with couturier clothes, pretty jewelry, and luxury cars. But she’s dead inside like the stuffed tiger. Upon hearing her comment on the tiger, Chansung recalled her saying, “I’m not dead. I haven’t died yet. I’m just there.”

She also said, “You don’t need to put anything meaningful here. Because everything he cherished is somewhere he cannot return to.” Again, that’s like her. She only has to keep on existing; life need not be meaningful because all that she cherished were dead in the past. Like her friend (brother?) Yeon Wu.

 

The soldier ghost (from Episode 2):

Hmmm…I think this was a representative of the soldiers who hunted her down and killed her gang. This was an evil SPIRIT and unlike the ghosts he encountered.

I believe she knew it was coming. Hence, her warrior-like clothes and her appearance at the right moment.

The student (from Episode 3):

She and Manwol have poverty in common. The rich girl called the student a parasite in society because she was on public welfare. The rich girl said, “You live on public welfare but you want to buy this (the necklace)? Have a conscience. The money is given to you to eat. You’re a burden on the taxpayers’ money.”

Well, Manwol can be considered a parasite, too.

In the past, the rich people would consider a pest. She and her gang of bandits robbed the rich people on the highway. She attacked the market where the slaves from her hometown, Goguryeo, were being traded. More importantly, she also wanted the guy whom the “young lady at the Yeongju Castle” adored. lol. See that? She’s like the student who wanted to buy the necklace she couldn’t afford.

 

Then, in the present time, Manwol’s a parasite, too. She’s living high on the hog because she demands money from the people and ghosts for her services.

Here’s her conversation with Chansung after she’s dealt with the parents of the rich girl and told the student to go on living in a borrowed body.

MW: (cynically) She has become a real parasite. Even so she paid for a golden host. I’m sure the parents will suck it up not knowing she isn’t their daughter.
CS: The student will have a hard time looking at her body every day. It’s sad.

Like the kind-hearted soul that he is, Chansung worries for the student trapped in her killer’s body.

MW: It’s the law that you have to pay for everything you have done.

There are three levels of understanding this. One: the student had to pay price what she had done. She stole her classmate’s body because she wanted her necklace back pretty badly. But as consequence, she’s trapped in it and living like “parasite.”

Two: the PARENTS had to pay Manwol’s price, too, for covering up their daughter’s crime. They paid her silence with those gold bars and they will have to “suck it up” not knowing that their real daughter was already dead.

BTW, notice how witty the term “suck it up” is. The parents must “suck it up” (i.e., accept the price) when Manwol is the real parasite sucking (i.e., siphoning) money from them because she sucked up to them (i.e., flattered them). The parents thought she was doing them a good deed when she actually conned them.

Three: Manwol, too, has to pay the price. It amuses me that Manwol is singularly lacking in self-awareness. She’s laughing at other people’s plight when she herself is in the same situation. On the other hand, Chansung is very perceptive. He immediately remembered what the Bar Ghost told him about Manwol paying the price for something she’d done. He asked her flat-out about it.

CS: Are you also currently paying for some evil deed? I heard that you were being punished.

I love how the camera showed her hand almost touching the gold bars. To me, that was a reminder of her evil deed.

MW: That’s right. Someone said that I was arrogant and foolish although I don’t acknowledge it.
CS: Ahhh. (meaning, “Oh I see.”)
MW: What’s that. You just said, “ahh”. What does that mean? Are you laughing at me?
CS: No, that’s not it. It’s because you look pitiful too.

We come full circle. Chansung pitied the student because she’s trapped in that hateful body of her classmate because she had to pay the price. He also pitied Manwol because she’s trapped in this world in that dead, unfeeling body of hers because she had to pay the price too.

The old man and his dog (from Episode 4):

He didn’t want to leave because his dog would die of starvation. He wanted the dog to bark to alert people of its existence. The Old Woman told the Grim Reaper to open the door. She said, “In these cases, it’s alright to open the door slightly.”

Literally, the door opened for the dead man. Metaphorically, an open door means there’s hope for a way out to a new beginning.

Once the door opened, the dead man ordered its dog to go outside. The Old Woman said to the Grim Reaper, “Just leave him. He won’t get too lost. If he must, he can find the Full Moon House.”

She could have been referring to both the dead man and the dog. Either one of them can go to Hotel del Luna and seek healing (i.e., the man because he regretted leaving his pet alone) or assistance (i.e., the dog because it needed food to live since its owner died).

But as it turned out, the dog chose NOT to leave the side of its master. The door was ajar so it could have gone outside and look for food and water but it chose to lay down beside its owner and die with him. That’s why the neighbor wondered, “The door was open, too. Why didn’t the dog go out? It’s strange.”

When the dead dog and the dead man were reunited, the man kept on saying, “Here, this is not where you were supposed to go. (Meaning, it was supposed to go elsewhere like Hotel del Luna and live.) Gosh. Poor fellow. Aigoo. Alrighty then. Let’s go together. Let’s go together.”

Chansung witnessed this whole encounter.

To me, this scene is a foreshadowing of his and Manwol’s future. The Old Woman also left a door ajar for him. And I’m guessing Manwol will be like that faithful dog choosing to accompany his master till the very end. The old man wanted the dog to save himself but the dog wanted them to go together. The old man realized that, finally.

The blind woman (from Episode 4):

It was actually the blind woman’s story that made me rethink the ghosts and see that their vignettes weren’t randomly told to pass away the time. Each story revealed an aspect of Manwol’s past and how Chansung could help her heal.

The important element in the blind woman’s story is the touch.

Let me start with Chansung and Manwol’s conversation when she was drunk.

MW: A ghost can’t go around this world stirring up trouble. (Chansung covers his nose because of her alcoholic stink.) She hasn’t done anything major, so tell her to keep the reservation and go to the other world.
CS: I want to change that reservation so please sign here. There’s something she really wants to see.
MW: (throws the pen) There is no ghost who doesn’t have someone they want to see.

Chansung takes out another pen. I like it that he has a spare ready. It tells me that he’s in tune with her now and he can anticipate her reaction.

CS: She never saw the person when she was alive. That’s why she wants to see him. She was blind when she was alive.
MW: How can she want to see a person when she has never seen them? She doesn’t even know the name. Why is she looking for someone she doesn’t even know? Forget it and go. Stop annoying me.
CS: She says her hands remember. If she holds his hand, she can feel who it is.
MW: (snickering) That’s some nonsense the ghost is spewing. Go away! Go!

CS grabs her hand.

CS: Are you talking nonsense? You said you can tell by your feelings that I’m definitely not that man. Then, you don’t know either.

Manwol ridicules the idea that the blind ghost can recognize a person by touch. She claims it’s nonsense. But if that’s the case, then neither can Manwol recognize a person by touch.

Earlier, she laid her hand on Chansung’s chest and she pushed him away, saying, “It’s not you. I don’t feel anything. If you were that person, there’s no way I’d be like this. (implying she wouldn’t be calm and collected).” Based on touch, she determined that Chansung wasn’t the guy from her past. But now, she derides the ghost for saying that she too can also feel who it is.

MW: (insisting) You… definitely are not him.

CS: Then, because what I’m saying is correct then, you should sign this.

 

He tugs her by the hand. Her eyes are covered by the sleep mask. And he helps her sign her name…just like the guy in her past. See, I like that her eyes are blindfolded. Since she doesn’t have to rely on eyesight, she doesn’t have to remember the face of the Other Guy. Like the blind ghost, she only has to rely on touch to identify Chansung as the right guy.

CS: I’ll find the person she wants to see and send her off. She’s the first guest I brought her so I want to send her off nicely.

MW removes her eye mask and glares at him. He misinterprets this. To me, she’s eyeing him suspiciously because he reminded her of that other time when she learned to write her name. She reckons that he has an ulterior motive for reminding her of the past. However, he suspects that she’s devising of a way to extort money from the ghost.

CS: Don’t try to get money off her. She doesn’t have any.
MW: Why are you doing something that won’t get you money? You’re being used by that ghost. You’re so weakhearted. You’re an easy target for ghosts.
CS: You’re right. If I’d been tougher and held out (resisted longer), I wouldn’t have ended up here. I regret that I’m a frail human… that you like so much.

This whole conversation is rather interesting to analyze but let’s stop here for now.

To me, the reason why Manwol senses that Chansung wasn’t the guy from the past is because she’s sure that Chansung is weak-hearted, and the guy from her past wasn’t at all weak-hearted. She felt his heart and knew it then.

But she re-confirms it when he grabs her hand. The way she said, “you’re definitely not him,” and looked at him suspiciously after she removed her mask indicated that she did NOT recognize him as the guy from her past.

Not one bit.

If Chansung was truly the guy from the past, that handholding should have proved it. She’s already in the romantic “zone” and she’s remembering that moon-lit moment.

However, she doesn’t feel anything for the guy sitting beside her. Chansung isn’t the Other Guy.

To me, that’s the reason she looked oddly at Chansung after she removed her eye mask.

After her 1000-year wait, she should have jumped up ecstatically had that been the same guy. lol. Of course, she could have killed him, too, in vengeance. Remember, we still don’t know if her last memories of him were good or bad. We have to be open to the possibility that she was betrayed. If so, Changsung will be in danger if he turns out to be the reincarnation of the Other Guy.

Image result for kill you gif

Anyway, instead of recognition, she becomes exasperated that Chansung will help out the blind ghost without remuneration. She spars verbally with him then she flops down on the couch, exhausted.

To me, that’s the whole point of the blind woman’s touch.

She recognized the baker’s hand right away.

But Manwol didn’t. She didn’t recognize Chansung’s hand as familiar.

More importantly, the story of the blind woman reveals the importance of touch to a dying person. Manwol enlightens Chansung about this at the Italian restaurant.

MW: Speaking of bran cake, do you remember the bread you bought and gave to me last time? What happened at that bakery?
CS: It all went well. She found him through remembering the hand.
MW: Really?? But then, with ghosts’ memories, their memories can get mixed up. If the ghost wanders around a long time, it’ll forget important things. Sometimes they only remember what they want to remember.

And we see the blind ghost finally remembering why the hand’s important to her.

MW: You said that she only remembers his hands. What a beautiful story. Nevertheless, it lacks impact.

lol. By “impact,” she means that the blind ghost’s romantic story needed a dramatic effect. But she’s also saying that the hard truth behind that story involved a literal impact, that is, a collision.

MW: (continuing) She lived a decently long life, so why would she remember a pair of hands that picked up a few pieces of bread for her?
CS: What are you trying to say?
MW: Important memories are mostly similar for all ghosts. The memories of when they die.

In a split second, Chansung realizes what actually happened to the blind ghost: she was involved in a hit-and-run. Across town, the blind ghost remembers her moment of death. The baker’s hand was the last thing she touched. She had grasped before she died and begged the baker to help her. But he fled the scene.

Chansung leaves the restaurant and searches for the blind ghost. She’s riding the motorcycle with the baker. Chansung stands in the middle of the street to stop her from crashing the motorcycle and killing the baker.

Lovely shot. He looks like Manwol’s moon symbol with his arms outstretched over the pavement.

At the last second, the biker evades Chansung.

Later, the ghost admits, “The memory I had of his hand was a horrible one. But I was a fool to remember it as a warm and heart-fluttering memory.” Chansung responds, “That’s probably because of the kind of person you were. You were probably the kind of person who always tried to remember happy memories no matter how small they were, rather than the great tragedies.”

On the surface, Chansung’s words sound like a criticism of Manwol. Unlike the blind ghost, she’s bitter and her heart is full of grudges.

But if we take a second look at her memories, what remains vivid in her mind are her memories of the green tree (that’s why, in a perverse way, she can’t bear to see it looking green) and that moment when she learned to write her name. These are simple, happy memories, too, rather than the great tragedy.

Lastly, the important lesson that Chansung gleans from this adventure with the blind ghost is that Manwol will always save him.

Initially, Manwol wasn’t inclined to save him. In the restaurant, she bid him goodbye, “Gu Changsung. Come to my hotel once you die.” Then she took a bite of her spaghetti. This gesture implied her indifference.

But at a crucial split second, Manwol saves him and steers the motorcycle away from him. Changsung spots her at the intersection, watching him. Of course, she denies aiding him.

Here’s their conversation by the tree.

CS: If something happens to me, I’m sure you’ll protect me.

MW is speechless. I think she wasn’t expecting him to figure her out.

CS: (explaining) You said you were going to protect me since I’m a weak human. You were the one that stopped the motorcycle tonight.
MW: I didn’t. I couldn’t care less even if you died in that crash.
CS: I know that it was you. I jumped in front because I trusted you.
MW: It wasn’t me.

lol. She could have just said that she had nothing to do with it and that the biker swerved to avoid hitting him. If it wasn’t her magic that made the biker avoid Chansung, then it was the biker himself who made a split-second decision to avoid him.

CS: I trust that you will protect me. So please protect me if something happens. (he shows her the green leaf) I’ll stay right next to you.
MW: (threatening him) I’m going to kick you out.

He just stands up and fixes his jacket and walks away.

The ghost in the closet (From Episode 4): 

We don’t know yet what’s up with this ghost, but we already can know its significance. The ghost proves that Manwol will step in to protect Chansung. This is important milestone for her because after a thousand years, she’s no longer indifferent to another human being. She used to be filled with apathy but now she’s starting to care again.

Oooh.

Image result for oooohh gif

So, that’s our ghost roundup.

Should I try to explain Chansung’s remark here next?  At 1:03:57. “Did it come from a dream, this split second from Jang Manwol?”  Maybe you all can take a stab here and tell me what you think he meant.  🙂  There won’t be wrong answers.

 

 

 

13 Comments On “Hotel del Luna: Episode 4 The Ghost Roundup”

  1. Question about the tree. In episode 1, MW is standing in a desolate empty space when we see a shadow approaching her from behind. All we really see is a head. MW spins and thrusts her sword … into the heart of the tree, which grows and swallows her sword. I thought the tree was part of MW, but now… is the tree in some way one of the two men in her life, one who she killed with her sword?

    In discussions, there are threads about MW needing to forgive herself to move on; what if she’s hanging on to keep someone who betrayed her from moving on? In that case, she would not want the tree to leaf and flower…even after a thousand years, given her personality…

    And to reuse the idea of a ghost’s memory being faulty, perhaps MW’s anger is misplaced, due to a faulty belief or memory? She’s remembering the betrayal, but not everything else, the inverse of the eyeless ghost…

    Finally, flowers of the tree gave memories through dreams. The leaf…?

  2. “In discussions, there are threads about MW needing to forgive herself to move on; what if she’s hanging on to keep someone who betrayed her from moving on? In that case, she would not want the tree to leaf and flower…even after a thousand years, given her personality…”

    From the little I have seen, the tree and MW are tied. Their spirits are tied. If the tree is dead, so is she. It’s like a visual metaphor of what she is like inside. Dead. It accepted her “sacrifice” as it were. Remember how she wanted to kill herself? Her sword was stained with her blood and the tree swallowed up her sword accepting her sacrifice as if to accept what life she had left and thereby tying her irrevocably to itself.

    For me I am not sure forgiving herself is what MW needs to do. She killed a lot of people. She needs to repent? To acknowledge that what she has done in vengeance is still unjustifiable. Those soldiers had families too? To take their lives as a payment for the lives that they took isn’t the way forward. Killing those who took the lives of those she loved will not bring them back? The hate, resentment and bitterness that she harbors eats at her soul. She doesn’t need to forgive herself. She needs to first forgive those who did wrong to her. You can’t forgive yourself if you fail to forgive others. To pay back wrong for wrong is not right. She keeps calling CS weak hearted but ironically, he’s the one with the strong heart. He is kind, he is gracious, he is willing to give of himself so that others would benefit. That takes great strength. Self sacrificial love is the purest form of love. It melts even the hardest of hearts. You can see how MW is gradually thawing out as time after time, he shows her what it is to be kind. It confounds her. It makes no sense to her cold hardened self. It is exactly what she needs to awaken her dead soul from slumber.

  3. Will reply on the blog.

  4. Agreed.

    Are you still watching this? What’s your take on the that line when he was holding that leaf? “Did it come from a dream, that split second from Jang Manwol?”

  5. No sorry I stopped after Ep2. 😂. Just reading your insights now and chiming in from what I gathered watching first 2 eps. So I can’t really comment on the leaf. Didn’t see how the scene play out so I have no context.

  6. regarding the leaf.

    I thought Chansung was posing a philosophical question: If something happened in a blink of an eye, is it real or imagined? And plenty of things happened in a blink of an eye. Love at first sight. Split-second decision to save somebody. First impressions. Sudden repulsion.

    The moon represented something constant but the leaf was transitory. It was the same unchanging moon that Manwol sees for a thousand years, but the leaf was here-today-gone-tomorrow. Is a leaf less precious than the moon because its lifespan was so brief? Are the managers less important than the ghost retainers (the bartender, the housekeeper, and the bellhop) because the managers were expedient and interchangeable? Is love at first sight less real than love/pining she’s kept for a thousand years?

  7. It occurs to me that there is some interesting mirroring going on between the master and his dog and the bride and her fiancee in ep5 (and since all the MW being reincarnated as a dog/pig discussion in ep6 that’s not that imbalanced of a comparison). Both pairs wanted to be together but the death of one half intervened. The old man was worried about the fate of the dog and wanted to save him, but the dog ignored his and Mago’s intervention and chose to follow him over the bridge. The bride so desperately wanted them to be together that she was willing to drag him with her to the afterlife… until she finally realized that love is putting the other first so he let him go. There’s a lesson when combining these two together, but can’t get my head around it…

    It also occurs to me that the sacre nature of life is kind of lost in this reincarnation business… if dying now only means you’ll be reborn together again later, then what’s the point of her sacrifice? why should the groom keep living alone? i’m clearly missing something important here…

  8. Offhand, I think the difference between the master/dog and the wannabe-bride/comatose boyfriend was choice.

    Although it’s funny to discuss free will/choice in terms of animals… I’m not going to argue philosophy right now.

    It was the dog’s choice to die and it follow its owner. The old man was ordering it to go but it chose anyway to stay. Then, when the order was about to get on the car, the dog tried to call his attention by barking.

    The comatose boyfriend, however, ran out. When the wannabe bride ordered him to go and changed face (probably to scare him to leave her), he actually fled the place. He kept looking back, afraid that she was following him.

    I think that was the turning point. If the groom had wanted to go with her, he would tie himself no matter what happened. She had to let him go when she realized he wasn’t going to run back to her. The string tauten so she cut it.

    I told people here and elsewhere that reincarnation is a wacky concept. People who actually think through it will eventually see its many illogical unsound reasoning.

    You’ve pointed one: sacrifice. There’s also torture. It’s cruelty and inhumane to subject a person to a punishment for a crime he did NOT commit. lol. If my previous reincarnation killed a person, then punishment should have been meted out to that previous reincarnation. Why should I suffer for HER crime? What happened to PERSONAL responsibility? hahaha.

  9. It’s good that you included the byline scene in your article.
    It’s a very nice scene in terms of the emotional input.
    I always wonder how the writers come up with that.
    It involves two elements:
    – The flashback where the heroine learns to write her name (and she must not know how to write).
    – A present situation where a signature is needed.
    It’s a scene that moved me directly.
    I don’t draw any conclusions from it though.
    This does not mean that CS is a reincarnation.
    Just that it brought up an emotion in Man Wol.
    And that she encounters that emotion again with someone different, with some doubt.

    The fact that the different ghosts are connected to a part of Man Wol’s psyche makes sense.
    Otherwise, why tell the specific case of one ghost over another?
    The tenants of the hotel are logically part of the mental construction of the protagonist, just like the hotel.

  10. Quoi de neuf, wenchanteur? 😂

    I’m glad you’re reading these posts. Cependant, while reading them, please do remember that tout devient tellement clair à postériori. Or as we say en anglais, hindsight is 20/20. 🙂

    Oui, NOW c’est facile à dire que les ghost stories sont plot points or incidents that dévoilent ManWol’s state of mind, et affectent her decision-making dans l’avenir.

    Mais, while the show was airing, il y avait pas mal des critiques who thought that these histoires were a mere bagatelle to the plot. Insignificant, boring and inutile. These viewers wanted them cut.

    Bien sûr, I had to expliquer why the Hong sœurs included them. One by one. Individuellement. There’s logic in their méthode, même si on ne le voit pas tout de suite.

    😂 Voila! You can’t say that I didn’t properly welcome you to my blog this time. I brushed up on my French.

    I’m going to have my morning coffee now.

  11. Damn-it.
    Thanks for the effort.
    But honestly…
    This strange mix of English and French sounds like a translation bug. 😀

    For the ghost side stories, I said it made sense, not that I detected it.
    I’m not very good at detecting all this at first viewing.
    Now that I think about it, I wouldn’t be able to tell if the same process was used for “Master Sun”.
    That being said, I don’t like it, but it was a foregone situation, like all series based on a fixed location, law office, police station, cruise ship, etc. “Ghost of the Week.” ^^

    I wonder how much of this scenario is calculated and how much is spontaneous.
    The Hong sisters look like engineers.
    Except instead of making airplanes, they make stories.

  12. Wenchanteur, I can’t have a conversation with you just in French, you know, because this is a public forum, and the other lurkers would be dying to know what we’re talking about. But I’ve found it very interesting that even when I add the French words (or Spanish) here and there, but keep the main points in English, the readers (at least the English-speaking ones, lol) will still be able to get the gist of what I’m saying. The brain is naturally able to link the words and infer the main idea based on those words.

    Anyway… yes, the Hong sisters are good. But they can be very “formulaic” and rigid, too, in the sense that the plot becomes focused, not on the story itself, but on the message theme that they want to explore through the characters. To hell with the expectations of the viewers! The plot is technically well-executed, but ordinary viewers fail to connect because the characters and their struggles don’t feel real to them anymore.

  13. I’m glad I was able to help you develop a language experience on readers as guinea pigs, myself included. 🙂
    I’m not asking to be written in French. As you can see, I manage to read common English, forums, newspaper articles. On the other hand, I have more difficulty with texts such as fanfictions or books.
    I can also translate from French to English, thanks to that wonderful translator http://www.deepl.com. I try to correct the translator’s mistakes but I certainly have to make a lot of mistakes.

    “ordinary viewers fail to connect because the characters and their struggles don’t feel real to them anymore.”
    Is there anything real in this drama?! Sincha 😀
    Damn writers… just write a story, the themes will come up by themselves!
    I appreciate all this attention to detail. Even if I don’t always notice it explicitly, I’m sure it goes home through a back door, making me love the drama more. As long as the story is captivating and the emotion strong, that’s the main thing. If it was boring and mainly focused on exploring a theme or message, I would have given up by now. Moreover, here you can see that the drama was not written on the fly, but that the beginning depends directly on what happens next.

    I can hardly participate often, but I left various messages, hidden on your blog, like this one :
    https://bitchesoverdramas.com/2020/01/01/happy-new-year-bitches/

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