The thread is now open for comments, analyses, rants and raves.
“Hi!”
If you have any mythology, urban legends, and folklore to share, it’s better if you post them here:
Tale of the Nine-Tailed: @GB’s Compendium of Urban Legends
I don’t mind if you double-post here and in the “Urban Legends” thread. It just makes it easier for everybody to find, if legends are all located in the same thread.
Enjoy the show!
Many thanks @pkml3. You’re more on top of the episodes than I am. I didn’t even notice when Zombie’s new episodes came out. We are approaching the mid section of the series so developments will be on the ‘sweet and warm’ side before we get the fallout.
👋🏻 @GB, I haven’t seen the episode today because life is just busy. 😩
I’ll catch up tomorrow and watch the 2 episodes.
No worries @agdr03. I’ll watch it if there’s nothing else I need to do as well!! (❁´▽`❁)*✲ﾟ*
Episode 5 of TOTNT
This episode we do not get more new folklore, but instead more information on the legends of the Gumiho and the Imoogi. The little that I’ll garner from Ep 5 and 6 I’ll post in the Compendium thread.
Show has rightly decided that it’s time to give viewers the sweet and warm bits on our characters’ relationships plus more of their backstories, so that we can relate with them slightly better.
Lee Yeon and Ah Eum
We see that Ah Eum was precocious, entitled and even obnoxious as a child, and that Ji Ah was like her. She treated the mountain spirit like her own personal pet dog. As a child she even talked down to LY and she actually wanted him to serve her. He ended up doing that for the child and adult Ah Eum and even continues to do so for Ji Ah. He ended up the faithful ‘dog’ who was punished for her sake.
Both Ah Eum and Ji Ah are very capable, perceptive and clear-minded in what they want. LY claims that he lost to both females because he allowed them to win. He has a soft spot for the weak and little, as in his bothering to do more for the dead sisters Min Seo and Yeon Seo. However he can be ruthless and violent towards those he suspects or from whom he wants information.
There’s another backstory on why Ah Eum wanted to kill the king, her father, whose kingdom was beset by the Imoogi.
Guesswork here: It’s likely that the Imoogi possessed the king and so she aimed to kill it. However it may have counter attacked and possessed her instead, and in order to save her soul and kill the Imoogi, LY ran his sword through her and killed her as well.
We see a parallel tragic tale with a young Lee Rang who couldn’t bear to kill his beloved pet with his own hands, while his brother killed his beloved Ah Eum.
Lee Yeon and Ji Ah
They seem to have a cosmic connection because when she thought of how in moments of danger, she had come to depend on LY and was waiting for him to save her, he seemed to have heard her thoughts. After breaking her fall from the roof, he says he was waiting for her too.
In their unofficial ‘date’, they looked for things that they have in common since Ji Ah never watched Toy Story 3 or liked the same kind of music LY does.
It’s interesting that Lee Yeon who could have every luxury, has the normal Gumiho dream to become human. JA very consistently has as her dream, a future with her parents. In the way that LY served Ah Eum before, he embarks on fulfilling JA’s dream.
It was sweet that when he drove her in his car, he played the music of the boy band Monsta X, because she liked the pop of idols (while he liked the classics).
Lee Rang
LR’s backstory, while it informs us as to why he’s the resentful monster that he is, cannot justify his evil. Even as a child, he had the propensity to be evil, killing the villagers indiscriminately. The only good thing we see him do is love his pet dog.
As an adult, in his boredom, he plays evil tricks on humans and tortures them. So far there’s nothing much redeemable or relatable for me with LR.
Worse still, he leads Yu Ri down the same dark path.
Unlike Lee Yeon who does not seem to have human lackeys, LR has cultivated the President of the network where Ji Ah works, as his minion. He had also some kind of deal with the shaman who was killed in Episode 3
I’m assuming that he is raising the Imoogi from the ‘dead’ in order to once again have the girlfriend of his brother, and his brother killed, since he himself is unable to best Lee Yeon in a fight.
Shin Joo and Lee Yeon
We learn that Shin Joo has been a subject of Lee Yeon’s since the time he was the mountain spirit. The nature of their relationship looks like he’s the ‘mother’ indulging a fractious child.
When he find Ji Ah present and taking care of Lee Yeon, he cannot sell LY off fast enough to JA, in the way a mother sells off her child of marriageable age to a likely suitor. LOL
Shin Joo and Yu Ri
Show is making it look like YR might end up with Shin Joo. She’s tasked by LR with getting close to Shin Joo because LY cares about him a lot. She starts off thinking of him as a weakling, but is surprised by him because he does not react towards her like a man with an ego.
Yu Ri says: “That veterinarian. Unlike other men, he doesn’t push himself on me. He looks at me with pity and sadness in his eyes.”
She watches Shin Joo who cares for the ill-treated dog, and his attitude towards the creature, and his praise of her stealing the dog to keep it safe, seem to affect her.
The thing is though, she seems to have committed a bunch of atrocities like possibly eating and replacing the real Yu Ri, and other evils as egged on by LR, therefore it’s hard to come onboard the Shin Joo-Yu Ri ship if ever show wants it to sail. I don’t want her to have anything to do with gentle, upright Shin Joo.
The Theme of Parents and Children
Something that seems to be explored or at least mentioned is the parent-child connection.
The relationships and outcomes seem to be more driven by the emotions/actions of the offspring or child-figures, than by the parent-figures.
Parent-figures disappear but the child-figures refuse to let go, reacting either by wanting reconciliation, or wanting revenge.
Ji Ah’s parents seem to have been taken away, and it is Ji Ah who continues to miss them and insists on searching for them, regardless of the dangers in which this might place her.
Lee Rang looked up to LY as if he was a parent, and after being abandoned, and almost ‘killed’ by him, continues to nurse resentment (in Ep 4 he says he spent 600 years cursing him) and to take out his anger on humans.
Ah Eum is determined to kill her ‘father’ who was likely possessed by the Imoogi, but we don’t hear if the father ever tried to get help for himself. Perhaps he’d abandoned his child in order to save her.
The truck driver father who lost his 2 daughters because he left them in the care of a wicked brother, is forgiven by the ghosts of his daughters. Min Seo and Yeon Seo chased Ji Ah, in order to get help to resolve their resentment, and to assure their father that they loved him.
The dead fisherman, Seo Ki Jang is avenged by his daughter Seo Pyung Hee, who with LR’s help haunts his killers to their deaths.
By contrast the parent-figures’ attitudes are indifference or guilt.
For the first time, I’m hearing horribly faulty logic about how parents were treated when grieving for their children. The gravesite for little children was deliberately left without tombstones so that parents wouldn’t be able to find their children. This was supposedly to stop the latter from dwelling on their deaths. However cruelly denying people a proper farewell and closure, is the best way to make them dwell longer instead of the opposite. The attitude here seems to be that children are not worth the time and effort to be grieved over. The adults should quickly move on.
Lee Yeon was a parent figure to Lee Rang, but he abandoned him, and reacts to LR’s acting up without understanding, and instead with disdain and indifference.
Ah Eum had been abandoned by her father.
Great points @GB! Thank you.
I have to say that I like Yeon and Ji Ah’s date and finding out what common interests they have. 😊
I liked Ji Ah’s reaction to Yeon’s kiss too by saying is that for the one in your past or for me? 🤨
I feel the President of the TV station is the one that’s holding Ji Ah’s parents. He had that angry look after meeting her in the lobby. And it’s said that initially it’s Ji Ah that’s supposed to be taken and not her parents.
They told a few times in the episode that one of them will die so I’m bracing myself for a not happy ending. I think Yeon pretty much promised her that he’ll find her parents and he’ll make sure that she’ll live a happy life.
It’s certain too that the Imoogi is in her.
Sigh.
Thank you for the great insights again, @GB. Just finished episode 5 and I liked the sweet moments between LY and JY here, to take off the tension of the last few episodes.
@agdr03 Oh no, please no sad ending😔😔 Haven’t watched ep.6 yet but I do hope LY becomes human and stays back with JY in the end. Tjey do deserve their happy ending after waiting for 600 years!!
Hi @agdr03
Me too about that date and that question after the kiss. It was so funny that after that, she got self conscious and couldn’t look LY in the eye. I wondered why though. Writer Kim’s only clue was that JA “is a loser when it comes to men” … maybe that has to do with the fact that JA prefers not to depend on anyone. I was amused that she regretted telling LY to look clearly at her and to see her, and then can’t take too much staring LOL.
Random Thoughts
Significant Title?
I have not been paying attention to the titles, as nothing stood out or they were pretty much reflecting something or other in the episode.
The Episode titles that I garner from the subtitles are:
1) The Incident that occurred on Yeou Gogae
2) I’ve been waiting for You.
3) The Secret of the Dragon King
4) The Verge of Death
5) I also Waited for You
6) Four Pillars of Destiny
Of these titles 2) and 5) seem unimaginative and repetitive, but 6) ‘Four Pillars of Destiny’ is obscure to me. I can’t figure out what the title is referring to except maybe to the 4 mountain spirits. I don’t know about the other 2 mountain spirits, but we see that Lee Yeon and the Governor are both ex-mountain spirits. They’ve both done something ‘naughty’ that lost them their positions.
I just thought I’d put this out here as something I’m puzzling over.
Hey @Phoenix!! Yes… we get the nice sweet moments. These are the episodes that gives us the couple times but with the Damocles Sword hanging around above them of course. LOL. Even before the end of Ep 6, we are given cause to worry. So far the tone of the show has been a good mix of tension and levity, and now with more character moments included. We get to know more about the side characters as well and see that they have very major flaws and are criminals when it comes to people, but, are kind towards animals.
I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be enough for us to consider them redeemable. At the moment, I don’t. However, it’s something I’m noticing that show is putting out there. Of course the villains are mostly non-human or are spirits of animals, after all, therefore maybe it’s natural that they are more considerate of their ‘own’ than of humans.
Taluipa, Lee Yeon, Ji Ah
Taluipa seems the closest thing to a mother that LY has. She’s a discipline master, a stickler for the rules and disdains how LY is a sap with the children. However she’s fair and does help LY when he calls upon her.
She knows more than she is willing to tell but cannot always see everything. In the case of the Imoogi, the talismans seemed to have hidden it from her so that although she sensed that it was alive, she could not tell where it was.
She has warned many times that Lee Yeon is courting calamity by insisting on loving a human being.
In Ep 5 I guessed: Because of Ah Eum, who presumably accosted the Imoogi in her father, and got attacked in return, Lee Yeon came to be involved. He killed Ah Eum, in order to kill the Imoogi that possessed her. The Imoogi may have left a bit of itself inside Ah Eum when it died, so that her reincarnation into Ji Ah, made the latter a precious sacrifice. Ji Ah’s blood dripping into the well in which the Imoogi lived, started it’s rebirth. It may account for the appearance of the scales of the Imoogi over or under Ji Ah’s skin, in the same way that it did when Ah Eum died.
In Ep 6 this was confirmed: There’s a part of the Imoogi still in the reincarnated spirit of Ah Eum that is now in Ji Ah. So we have shades of Harry Potter and his scar. Ji Ah’s connection to the Imoogi remains, and (now shades of Star Wars ‘Rise of Skywalker’ I think?) in her dreams, she can be summoned by Imoogi into its ‘presence.’
Tragedy Replay
I guess this show is going to explore if the mistakes of the past are once again going to be made. From all appearances, the ‘mistaken’ choices of LY seem to be repeating.
I feel that he did the right thing by killing the Imoogi, even if it meant that he had to sacrifice Ah Eum. But his mistake was that he gave priority to going after Ah Eum after she died and gave her the Fox Bead, and the order to reincarnate.
If he’d left well alone:
1)His mountain would not have been burnt by overly entitled villagers
2)His brother would have no reason to massacre villages (although I’m not sure that would have kept him from killing some humans some time anyway)
3)The Imoogi would have been gone for good
4)Lee Yeon would have been sad and lonely but he’d still be a mountain spirit and on good terms with Lee Rang
I feel that LY is his own worst enemy. The trouble that erupted was because of his bad decisions. By Ep 6, he’s received umpteen warnings to break the connection with Ji Ah, more than once from Taluipa, also from the Fortune Teller and from his friend, the Governor. But he’s repeatedly said that he does not care. I guess this is a flawed hero indeed, one with an obsession and without the ability to self-reflect and stave off a worse calamity that will affect others.
I agree with @agdr03 that an ending which might not be all roses and rainbows is possible. We, the viewers, have been warned that the outcome does not look good for Ji Ah to live to a ripe old age. Taluipa, too, has found that she cannot see LY’s future. This might mean he will die. Of course there is the other outcome ie that LY’s dream comes true, and he becomes human. As a mortal human being, his future will be short, but at least that surmounts the issue of how a Fox and a human cannot be together. We just need Ji Ah to live long enough so that LY’s comment to the little boy in Ep 1, about not wanting to hang out with humans because they die too early, will not come to pass.
Hi @GB and @Phoenix, girlfriend!
I’d wish for the same thing as you @Phoenix, for Yeon to become human instead of him dying. But he needs to defeat the Imoogi inside Ji Ah so I’m not sure how it will go.
@GB, I thought it was funny too when Yeon kept staring at her and personally, having LDW look at me that way, I’d be beside myself too. 😁
With the episode titles, yeah I was thinking what’s the connection of the Four Pillars of Destiny in the episode itself but I couldn’t think of any. Is it pertaining to Yeon/Ji Ah, Yeon/Governor, Yeon/LR and Ji Ah/Imoogi? Ah don’t mind me. 😂
Hey everone!
I watched episode 5 and 6 last night and I read your comments as well.
I am in a *Rant* mode!
First of all, let’s talk about this Rang guy. I agree with @GB, his actions are not justified at all.
So far, what I have understood! He is a spoiled brat who thinks that his brother betrayed him! He killed people, because he said to Yeon, after he left people turned their back on him and burned down the mountain.
Let’s say that is true. If the Governor was around at that time, he could do something about it or someone else! Action – Reaction. The problem here lies to that all the celestial GOOD powers are MIA. There is not any balance between forces of Good and Evil.
So far, I think we don’t know what happened when A Eum was killed by Yeon, when the Imoogi was in her.
Let’s go back to Rang though, every person has good and bad traits in him / her. There is a Native Indian myth about the wolf we feed inside us. So, for me Rang CHOSE to be bad. He chose to kill all these people then, and for 600 years until the TOFNT’s timelime with NO repercussions. He was supposed to die from Yeon’s blade but the TV President showed up from thin air – he is bad news already, helped him live and they are cooperating ever since with many subplots to the main plot, i.e. Imoogi’s resurrection.
And NOONE does anything about it. Are they off the radar ? So where is the Balance? I read in the next thread maybe (?), that the Bad Forces are always a step forward from Yeon. That is totally true.
Yeon is a lone rider with no backup and it is infurating.
So far, Taluipa is not helping, because she is strict with the rules.
JA is not that innocent as it seems. I totally expected it since she is the Imoogi’s Horcrux.
As for this Fortune Teller guy, who is he? And how easily is for a celectial being to be “a precious thing” and be sucked in this bag aka the magic dimension?
Also, When The Governon and Yeon were fighting, JA heard about the FOX BEAD, and later on when the FT asked for it, in order to set free Yeon, JA gave up the fox bead so easily, without bargaining or asking more information about what the FT said.
I was… Okay, for a sharp Lady, didn’t she have any recollection of what happened a few hours ago? *frustrating*
I think there are inconsistencies with the sub plots, or they don’t give us the sub plots in a understantable way.
In any case, later on I will eat some icecream. – Nope I don’t have a chocolate mint one!
*rant over*
@Cleopatra I’m having sinilar issues with the plotline too. The odds seem to be stacked against Lee Eon deliberately as a plot device and he gets no help, while Lee Ran and Team Imugi seem to get away with anything. This is getting annoying! I agree with you that Lee Rang should be made to pay. He made a choice to feed his dark wolf (as the saying goes) and why is the show trying to paint him in shades of gray? I’m just hoping Lee Yeon doesn’t die in the end like a noble idiot..that will make me super angry!
@Phoenix Good morning from my part of the world!
I am excepting for someone to die… Everyone is repeating it to Yeon!
I totally understand that people have good and bad traits, but I cannot accept a person who tortures people for fun to be gray. He is not. He planned all along with the TV President for some History repeating…
Even if he asks for redemption, he has to pay for his crimes.
Good morning, @Cleopatra! I agree..I feel if someone has to die, it shoube Lee Rang to atone for his sins and not Lee Yeon or Ji Ah. Else it won’t be a fair drama. What is the logic of waiting 600 years to be reunited only for Lee Yeon to die again (to save Ji Ah)? If he needs to pay for killing Ji Ah, he has already paid the price for 600 years. Let’s keep hoping the writer of the drama will be fair too🤞🤞🤞
@Phoenix I cross my fingers too!
It is my fifth K-Drama so far and I have realized that their endings are either open, sad, bittersweet or happy endings with a silver lining…
I do hope that the ending will be satisfying…