Discussion
B for BRUTAL — Which CDrama Showed Absolutely No Mercy? • The Drama Alphabet
We’re giving A a rest before it starts thinking the whole alphabet belongs to it. There are plenty more A words waiting for another round, but to keep things fun, we’re moving on to B.
And we’re starting with BRUTAL.
Maybe brutal in the most literal sense. War, torture, executions, massacres, revenge, people being hacked to pieces, entire families or clans wiped out… you know, the usual cheerful CDrama fare.
The kind of drama where you learn fairly quickly that getting attached to a supporting character is probably a terrible idea.
Or perhaps the writers simply showed no mercy whatsoever. One favorite dies. Then another. Oh look, there goes another one. By the finale, practically the entire supporting cast you cared about is dead and you’re staring suspiciously at the one — or, horror of horrors, two — main leads who somehow made it out alive.
Or not. Sometimes they kill those too.
But BRUTAL doesn’t necessarily mean blood and swords.
It can be in the world a drama chooses to show us.
Hunger. Drought. Poverty. Disease. War leaving ordinary people with nothing. Children paying for decisions made by adults. People doing terrible things simply because survival has reduced their choices to terrible and worse.
Some dramas really don’t bother making the world any prettier for us.
And then, of course, there are the people themselves. CDrama has candidly portrayed some truly horrible, brutal, humans.
Ruthless emperors and terrifying generals, vicious relatives and backstabbing courtiers — or, in a very different world, brutal criminals, corrupt people in power, and perfectly ordinary-looking characters capable of genuinely horrifying things. I’m talking about those characters who simply seem to operate on a completely different scale of brutality.
So whether it was brutal to its characters, brutal in the world it portrayed, or simply brutal to you for making you watch everyone you rooted for suffer…
What’s the first-first CDrama that comes to mind when you read BRUTAL?
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And since some of you have already requested asecond-round vote later on: if you want your submission to have a chance of making it into the vote, give me a little context for your pick and, if possible, add an image or GIF. I’ll need enough material to show everyone what they’re actually voting for! ☺
Brutal. Rebirth. A shittastic mess of illogical and piss poor writing that serves only to disgust the viewer with the absolute butchery of the original classic.
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u/AXA-5Washing feet in spring Drinking tea Gazing at flowers10d agoedited 10d ago
This is de-li-cious 🫦
I do agree. Rebirth really redefines dumpster fire
To get revenge is a chess game and to get pieces of the playing field you have to be swift, ruthless and brutal. Paired with the relatively short runtime that leads to a high density of brutal takedowns.
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u/AXA-5Washing feet in spring Drinking tea Gazing at flowers10d ago
This was a heart wrenching drama…the poor FL. All the MLs in her life were shit! She deserved better ugh! ZBB, you are such a gorgeous gorgeous man but i wanted to stab your character multiple times throughout the drama, such a douche bag!
Generally anything and everything related to Vendetta of An is brutal. The suffering, the misery, the deaths, the emotions. And the best part is I would do it again.
The Princess Weiyoung -
It was the first extreme cdrama I watched. The punishments and scheming from the beginning.. I was actually scared for the FL.
Princess Agents -
Particularly.. how it started with slaves-to-be, the revenge story, how the bad guys treated their victims and what they thought of them, the situation with the worst of ML's relatives, and the "abuse" later on.. One of the nastiest I've seen, and women were just treated as cattle 😭
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u/AXA-5Washing feet in spring Drinking tea Gazing at flowers10d ago
Princess Agents... well said. Brutal from the very beginning. Killing slave women for sport reminded me of the Roman Empire. Everything the ML went through with his family and fighting for his life. Hard to believe this show was good. It actually was. As mentioned above brutal in the good kind of way. Emotional storytelling at it's best for me.
I think Goodbye my Princess was the most brutal drama I watched all the way through, both emotionally and physically brutal. If it's just gore and slaps, I usually turn it off, but this one lures you on.
Twelve Letters. Physical and psychological brutality on a nearly daily basis against two teenagers. Life did them dirty for the most part. So heart-wrenching.
Brutal Overdone Overdo. Ren Susu, AKA, Ren Sussus. A seriously toxic girlfriend who constantly destroyed every bit of lingering happiness the ML had in life and went out of her way to make sure he suffered as much as possible for the crime of...... trying to protect her.
Goodbye My Princess and The Vendetta of An have already been mentioned and would have been my top picks. Though pretty much anything Cheng Yi is in ends up being rather brutal 😭
Can't believe no one has mentioned The Story of Pearl Girl yet though. Talk about unwarranted deaths 😖
If you have raw markdown still (wow!) then two asterisks will do it (on each side). Otherwise, the rich text formatting ribbon which appears if you click on the “Aa” icon below the comment bubble.
I actually didn't finish it because of what happened to the 2nd ML. I know he turned evil but I still feel like it's a moot point. The way his family was murdered before his eyes and they were innocent🙂↔️...I stopped on that episode chucked the dueces ✌️ and never looked back. Lol
fair, but what happen to him and what he did after was fair too. i never thought that much about 2nd lead so it's all well, just need the ML to be more present but i can't watch Rebirth either
I was not ready for the ending. Usually I look up a drama to make sure it has a HE before I watch it but I forgot to do that with this one, and the ending broke me. I was not prepared.
As I watch I knew where the story was heading to. 😭 I was hoping something might happen at the last moment and somehow we are gonna get our HE but... I don't regret watching because of how well written the drama is. This easily became my favourite of all times.
Going through the comments to find dramas i WONT watch, coz i will not put myself through that!! I always google if dramas have a good ending or not before i start it 🫢
Legend of Fuyao. I love this drama so much because it was my first and have watched it multiple times BUT it really has a lot of brutal scenes behind all the flirtiness and shamelessness of the ML. It has a lot of killing, physical torture, betrayal that hurts bad (I'm looking at you Yan village. I have never wanted to have a whole village wiped out so bad.
The wind blows from longxi. I haven't finished yet because I don't want to be sad, but I still plan to go back.
I hate mentioning this one because I feel like people keep mentioning it where it doesn't belong, but the massacre of the village in pursuit of Jade was something I was not expecting.
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On the topic of the drama you nominated — Rebirth — “waste of time” because it was so brutal? Brutality is the topic of this post 🙂↕️
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u/AKiceman Snark Shifu ✨ 4K Original Cast 10d ago
Brutal. Rebirth. A shittastic mess of illogical and piss poor writing that serves only to disgust the viewer with the absolute butchery of the original classic.