kiss goblin recap

Writing a kdrama

Kdrama Kiss Goblin Episode 12 Recap and Analysis

- Marie Cole 2 Comments

This is the very last episode of Kiss Goblin. If you missed any of the recaps you can find them here.

Let’s get to it!

The Goblin appears and apparently, he had the magical power hidden within him the whole time. Exorcist drops our heroine, the goblin’s power surrounds the Exorcist with this green blob of can’t move and then he punches The Exorcist and knocks him out. 

In the restaurant where they were working part-time together, Goblin asked her if she believed in fate and she tells him she does but she doesn’t want to rely on fate. She wants to rely on them. So she grabs him and pulls him in for a kiss and says “I want the future you and the future me to worry about finding each other again. We’re not going to leave it up to something else outside of us like fate.” He says he knows why he fell for her because she’s so cool and she says “it better be because I’m pretty” and he says “the future me will fall for you again for sure because you’re so cool.” 

They kiss. A lot. 

Time Hops One Year

He’s at university and she passes right by him. She takes a seat in class. And then he comes in and sits down. The teacher assigns a group project with two team members. The Goblin Queen comes by and swaps names so that they are paired together for the project. 

Their relationship begins, they meet in front of the library and she pulls him out of the way of a bicyclist, saving him. She says she knows immediately that she’s going to date him. He says she’s cool and thanks her for saving him. She asks if they’ve met before and he says he’s not sure. Maybe…

Analysis

So super cute ending where both fate AND Goblin magic come into play. If this were a full length drama perhaps we would have gotten a more solidified ending where we could watch their romance unfold for a second time.

Below is the outline for the whole series where we can see the progression of the romance, the breakdown of our characters.

Kdrama Cure Outline – Kiss Goblin

HEROINE

• Quirks – She speaks her mind, hits people on the face a lot

• Hobbies – None. She works and goes to school. 

• Problems – needs to earn money, get good grades at school, recovering from a break-up

• Work – Works in a restaurant part time

• Contrasts – Human/Goblin, Clueless emotionally/very emotional, Student/Adult

• Motivations – School, Work, Helping Goblin complete his mission

• Wound – Cheating ex

• Need – Real love and honesty

SECRETS

• From Each Other: She was cheated on, (Midway) she is falling for him

• From Her Friends: She is helping a Goblin become a human, She is dating a Goblin

• From Her Family: N/A

HERO

• Quirks – Stoic 

• Hobbies -N/A

• Problems –  Needs to earn money, Exorcist is trying to kill him, Needs to kiss 10 humans to become human

• Career/Job – Works in a restaurant part-time

• Contrasts – Human/Goblin, Clueless emotionally/very emotional, Student/Adult

• Motivations –  Work , To not be lonely – become human

• Wound – None

• Need – Real love

SECRETS

From each other – He’s a goblin

From their friends – He’s fallen in love with a human

From their family – None.

SIDE CHARACTERS

• Sounding boards (Her Best Friend, Goblin Queen) 

• Put the main character into action (change of motivation catalysts/moves plot) – Goblin Queen, Exorcist

• Matchmakers (Her best friend to the second male lead)

• Defenders (her best friend defends against the ex)

• Love triangles (second male lead)

PLOT

TROPES USED

• Wrist grab

• Against a wall

• Heroine hurt – band-aid scene

• Ass kicking heroine

• Stoic male lead

• Crude man talk (not from leads)

• Love triangle

• Unrequited love (second male lead)

• heroine grabbing hero for kiss

• Knight in shining armor

• Princess in shining armor

• Kimchi slap (w twist – fried chicken)

• Head on the shoulder

• Falling asleep, head in lap

• Playground setting – vulnerability? Innocence? 

• Heroine in danger

SETTINGS

• University

• Restaurant

• Her apartment

• His apartment

• Place they go to eat 

• Goblin Queen’s Lair

• Flashback setting: Hanbok Korea in the woods

• Playground – swing set

• Second Male Lead’s work

• Tunnel (danger scene)

• Underpass (danger scene)

ROMANCE PROGRESSION

1. Eye to body.  

(Ep 1)

2. Eye to eye.  

(Ep 1) 

glancing at each other at work after confrontation (Ep 8)

gazing while holding hands in bed (Ep 9) 

shy gazes (Ep 10)

3. Hand to wrist. (Kdrama special) The male grabs the female by the wrist, to keep her from fleeing usually.

(Ep 2, 5) 

4. Accidental Bumps and Brushes 

(Ep 4)

5. Back to Wall. (Kdrama Special) The male boxes the female in against a wall. Sometimes to intimidate her and get his point across, sometimes to protect her from danger. 

6. Voice to voice. You talk, call, text or email. This should be a pretty long stage. You start emotionally bonding. 

(Ep 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) 

7. Head to shoulder (Kdrama special) One or the other falls asleep and their head falls onto the shoulder. This is usually before feelings are confessed. 

(Ep 7)

8. Hand to hand. You hold hands. It may be an accidental touch that is kept in contact or deliberate. You are special.

full body protection – he is definitely special (Ep 5) 

he takes her hand and holds it while they stare at each other. (Ep 9) 

9. Hand to shoulder. You put your arm around their shoulder. This publicizes your relationship.

10. Hand to waist. Your arms around each other’s waist. You know this person about as well as you know your best friend, and you like what you know.

11. Face to face. 

she leans in close when asking about his feelings (Ep 8) 

the kiss! (Ep 12)

12. Hand to head. 

he touches her face (Ep 6)

she touches his face while he’s sleeping (Ep 8) 

touches his face when questioning his feelings (Ep 9)

she touches his cheek.  she pokes his dimple (Ep 10)

13. Hand to body. 

14. Mouth to body.

15. Touching below the waist. 

16. Intercourse.

Romance Required Scenes: 

Awkward First Meeting: Yes, in the alley he was kissing another girl. (Ep1) 

First Kiss: False First kiss (Ep 4) – She kisses him, but not out of desire. 

Real First Kiss: (Ep 12)

Locking Eyes:  (Ep 1, Ep 8)

Touching:

Wrist Grab (Ep 2)

Embracing (Ep 4, 5, 6) 

Face Touch (Ep 6, Ep 8)

Confession: 

kind of from him (Ep 7)

kind of, from her (Ep 8) 

Full Confessions (Ep 9)

Break-up #1: 

he denies feelings and she goes to drink w another man (Ep 9)

Make-up #1:

in bed after his near-death they confess their feelings (Ep 9)

Selfless Giving: 

she saves him from the exorcist (Ep 9)

Final Test of Relationship:

he has to go back to the goblin world bc he doesn’t want to kiss her to pass his final test and risk them both never remembering or finding each other again in their lifetimes (Ep 10)

Happy Ending: 

Happy For Now – They meet again (Ep 12)

Couple Characteristics

Inside jokes – N/A

Talismans – N/A

Places they go – grocery shopping, work

Activities they enjoy  – Watching TV at home

Food/drinks they share – Breakfast. She likes to drink beer. 

Dating

Use character’s background, career, hobbies to dictate what these look like 

N/A

Showing thoughtfulness

• Goblin brings her chocolate milk after a bad customer experience

• Heroine grabs onto the exorcist to save Goblin

• Goblin touches her and removes her from danger w exorcist

• Goblin protects her and hides her (exorcist)

• Goblin gives her first aid on her hand

• Goblin confronts guys who made her cry

• Heroine protects Goblin from the exorcist 

• Goblin picks Heroine up and walks her home after work

• Goblin puts ketchup on her eggs

• Goblin hides her eyes from the bright new lightbulb he installed

• She allows him to sleep on her lap when he’s scared

• She makes him breakfast

• He offers to do the dishes

• She saves him from the bicyclist 

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Thanks so much for reading along with the Kiss Goblin series! I would love to hear from you! Please leave a comment below or you can reach out to me via email: mariecolebook@gmail.com

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Kdrama Kiss Goblin Recap and Analysis Episode 11

- Marie Cole Leave a comment

We are almost done with this Kdrama! if you missed the analysis for the majority of the season and you want to start over you can find that here. 

Let’s get to it!

Why does the Goblin choose to keep his memories? Goblin gives away his motivation and he tells her that the reason why he wanted to be human was so that he wouldn’t be alone. He said this is the first time in a hundred and sixty years that he’s ever liked someone and not been alone. While he feels bad emotions because of her he’s also happy. And he never wants to forget that. And even if he’s alone for the rest of Eternity as long as he has the memories of her that’s enough for him, because the memories with her are so precious. 

Our heroine tells him that thinking about him living forever was just memories of her is pretty darn pressing and she hopes that he’ll be at home in an hour when she gets there. 

Goblin goes home and starts erasing the Whiteboard that had their project on it. And he realizes that every single one of the times that he kissed someone she was there during the kiss or very shortly after it. Each of those kisses was intertwined with her in some way. So even though they weren’t shared with her they were still shared with her. 

She comes home and expects that he won’t be there but he is there watching TV in the dark. She goes to him and hugs him and she says don’t leave me and then… she wakes up!

She tries to pretend she’s okay, but she mourns him. 

The friend brings her a piece of cake because she looks so sad. He asks if she got dumped and reminds her that he said that guy was no good for her. She asked if he still likes her and he says no because she’s not interested in him and she said that from the first day that she met him she knew she would never date him because she didn’t want to ever lose him as a friend. 

The Goblin is having a heart-to-heart with the Goblin Queen and he asked her if she regrets her decision because he’s decided to go back to the Goblin World.  She shares with him that she wished she could commit suicide and that even if they didn’t meet in this life perhaps they could have met in the next life or the one after that but starting that journey to become human all those emotions stayed with her and she couldn’t undo them and it was hard for her. The Goblin said she probably made the right choice because there’s no guarantee that you’ll meet the same person in any Lifetime and she tells him about the human world word called fate. (hope restored?)

The heroine is faced with the Exorcist who has come to tell her that he’s so ashamed that the Goblin didn’t die. And he tells her his plan which is to torture her until she almost dies because then the goblin will come looking for her and he can kill the Goblin. He grabs her by the throat (and that’s the hook!) 

Analysis

This episode was all about the break-up. How are these two dealing with it? Yeon Ah, our heroine, is extremely sad and heartbroken meanwhile you can see the anguish on the Goblin’s face as he erased away the white board, reliving all of those memories one by one featuring Yeon Ah.

The writers have effectively torn our couple apart, but! we now need to get them back together. Enter our two side characters: The Goblin Queen, who gives the Goblin a thread of hope that he might find Yeon Ah even if he chooses to be human because of something called fate. And the Exorcist who is still determined to kill the Goblin by baiting him with Yeon Ah’s life.

Ending the episode here with Yeon Ah’s life in danger was an excellent hook. Will the Goblin come for her? Will she die instead? We know the Goblin will come for her but we as humans are curious and so we want to know for sure.

If you’re interested in learning more about romance arcs you can Get the Kdrama Cure Ultimate Romance Arc Cheatsheet for FREE!

And if you’re interested in learning more about how Kdramas can enhance your romance writing you can check out my brand new book: The Kdrama Cure, available on many different platforms.

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Kiss Goblin Recap and Analysis Episode 10

- Marie Cole Leave a comment

This week we are doing Kiss Goblin episode 10 if you miss the analysis for the majority of the season and you want to start over you can find that here. 

With only three episodes left in Kiss Goblin, we should be coming to the big kiss and the last-ditch effort from the writer to keep these two apart and I have a feeling it’s going to revolve around the Exorcist.

Let’s jump in.

We start off with a time jump to the morning so they spent all night laying in bed facing each other holding hands and they fell asleep. 

She leaves the love nest first, touches his dimple and gets herself some coffee. When he comes out there is an awkwardness between them for a moment as they try to catch each other’s gazes and then they both giggle. (So 귀여워요 (gwiyeowoyo)!)

Showing thoughtfulness – she made him breakfast. He says he’s happy to be with her like that and after breakfast he offers to do the dishes. There is sexual tension as he comes up behind her and wraps his hand around hers to turn off the water. She leans back against him and tells him that she’ll tolerate him kissing other girls ONLY until the last kiss. And if he kisses someone after that she’ll kill him. 

He asks her to clairfy if they’re dating. She says nope, not until he’s human. He smiles and says he can’t wait.

Their happiness won’t last! He gets a text from the Goblin Queen. Kiss number 10, his last kiss: the heroine. 

He leaves in a rush, lying to her about where he’s going and leaving his phone behind. 

He goes to the Goblin Queen, he’s angry, which is an emotion he can feel now, and he asks why it has to be her. And the Goblin queen says that’s the way it is it has to be someone who loves you. And he says what if I kiss her… she won’t remember me. The Goblin Queen tells him that she told him it wasn’t going to be easy and that no Goblin has ever been able to become a human before, though many have tried. Most problems come to the last kiss and they can’t do it and they choose to keep the memories instead of becoming a human. And if he chooses not to kiss her then he has to leave the human world immediately. (The author raised the stakes. He cannot keep the status quo, a change will happen. Which path will he choose? Also, he now has a big massive secret.)

We finish up the Goblin Queen’s arc, seeing the rest of her past. Her last kiss was with the exorcist and she chose not to kiss him and instead has kept her memories of him.

Heroine gets dressed up and goes out looking for Goblin. She finds him at the park. She’s smiling and happy and sits in the swing next to him. He shares that he is there to think. He notices that she’s dressed up. He flirts with her calling her pretty. Then he tells her that he has to leave, to go back to the Goblin world. He tells her that he’s giving up on being a human. And she asks if he can come back if he leaves. He says nope, never. She asks “What about me?” He looks away. She confronts him. “You don’t like me anymore?” He says quickly that he does like her. She asks if he’s stopping because she’s the last mission… (Her secret: she saw his phone). He says it’s not that easy. She tells him that if he tries it’ll be easy for her to fall for him again. Does he just not want to kiss her? He looks up quickly again to deny. He does. She eggs him on, just do it, man! 

He shares the Goblin Queen’s last Rule: not only will the human lose her memories but the Goblin will also lose his memories when he turns human. So he tells her that he’s decided instead of losing her altogether, he’s just going to keep liking her so he can remember her forever because he doesn’t want to risk never finding her again in his life. 

Analysis:

In the short little episode A lot happened.  We had a plot twist which basically is going to cause The Break-Up of these two because like it seems like a dark night of the Soul, what can he do?  He can’t stay in the human world or else he totally forgets her and she forgets him, and if he goes back to the Goblin World they still can’t continue on their relationship because he’ll be in a different world altogether. 

In this episode we saw how the secrets moved from one person to another so at the beginning of this episode The Goblin Queen had a secret that the last person he needs to cast with someone that he loved and when he kissed her he would lose his memories as well.  That secret done was the Goblin’s secret to keep which he didn’t hold on too long before the heroin showed up and he told her that he needed to leave and she asked him why and he confessed the secret. 

If want to learn more about romance arcs you can Get the Kdrama Cure Ultimate Romance Arc Cheatsheet for FREE!

And if you’re interested in learning more about how Kdramas can enhance your romance writing you can check out my brand new book: The Kdrama Cure, available on many different platforms.

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Kdrama Analysis Kiss Goblin

Kdrama Analysis Kiss Goblin Episode 6

- Marie Cole Leave a comment

Today we are going to dissect episode 6 of The Kdrama Kiss Goblin. if you missed the other breakdowns you can find them here.

Yet again the writers started the episode off with a teaser of the future where the Goblin is kissing a girl and the heroine is standing back, watching. 

Back to the scene at hand, the Exorcist tells the heroine to get out of the way and asks why she’s protecting the Goblin. She asks The Exorcist why he wants to kill the Goblin and the Exorcist explains that killing Goblins and protecting humans is his job. The heroine says “Well I don’t know about other Goblins, but this one helped me today so he’s not harmful. Leave him alone.” The Exorcist reveals that he cannot harm the human.

The heroine smiles, snuggles closer to the Goblin, looks the exorcist in the eyes and eggs him on to try to kill her. There is romantic music as the Goblin looks at the heroine. He must have just fallen for her. 

The exorcist relents and leaves. 

The heroine is happy and asks if he’s happy too and he just stares at her. Her smile fades as she realizes that look of love in his eyes and she tries to get up. He pulls her back down and asks her to protect him by living together. 

“What?”

#tropealert living together/cohabitation

The heroine agrees to protect him, support his mission of becoming a human, and live together as long as he pays 100% of the rent, and does all the chores, and has to do what she says. 

At her apartment, she sets up a whiteboard with the mission objectives and shares it with him. He listens attentively. She says as soon as the GQ identifies the person they’ll go together so she can protect him from the exorcist. 

Morning 1 of living together. He gets up off the couch, cooks a very nice breakfast. She gives him a thumbs up and a huge smile. She watches tv while he cleans. He does laundry (including her bra and panties. She snatches that from him, mortified). 

Mission 5 comes in. They go together. She watches him kiss the girl… for a long time.

The new emotion is happiness and he’s giggling at everything they see Including the exorcist when he appears. As soon as he does the heroine presses her body against the goblin and smiles in victory. Exorcist frowns and walks away in distress. 

Later, it is nighttime and heroine is being followed. She hurries and so does the perp. She stops to huddle in fear and the guy, who is exercising, goes right past her. She pulls out her phone and hesitates to call The Goblin. but that doesn’t matter because when she looks up he’s there. He smiles at her and says he’s there to pick her up. She smiles back and comments on his smile. 

Cut to the next kiss. She’s uncomfortable. He gets the emotion desire and tells her he wants something – a friend. Goblin asks her to be his friend. Exorcist shows up and they hug. Exorcist gets mad and goes away.

They’re grocery shopping. Couple activity. They fight over what to buy in a playful way, you know… a cute way. Not like how it happens in real life with your husband or your kids. 😀 She looks around and sees other couples shopping together too. 

At home, she’s drinking and he’s cooking. He presents her with dinner and comments that her face has changed. She used to look sad and now she smiles a lot. He stares at her with adoration and says it looks better that way. She tells him to stop flirting with her. She tells him why she hates people (because they are selfish). He tells her he won’t be the kind of human she hates. He reaches out and touches her face and tells her that he likes her smiling face. 

Cut to the next kiss… the heroine thinks: she likes being with him and that’s why they can’t be friends because she likes him too much. 

Analysis: 

Lots of plot moving forward quickly, he only has four more kisses to go. We are halfway through the drama. 

They are now sharing moments together as a couple, like grocery shopping, walking home at night together, eating meals together, etc. 

He tells her that he likes her smiling face, which is strengthening the intimacy between them. She is feeling it too and we can tell because she can’t watch him kiss other girls anymore. 

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Kdrama Analysis Kiss Goblin

K-drama Analysis – Kiss Goblin | Ep 4

- Marie Cole Leave a comment

K-drama Analysis – First Kiss!

If you missed any of the Kiss Goblin episodes before this one you can find them here. I am going through each episode of Kiss Goblin and breaking it down so we can see how the screenwriter crafted this delightfully fun mini K-drama.

The screenwriter again teases at a future scene – a kiss between goblin and heroine. (This gives the viewer a taste of what’s to come!)

Then we go back to the present with the exorcist. The exorcist has the goblin pinned against the wall by the neck and the heroine comes over and grabs onto the exorcist. The goblin touches her and magics them out of the situation and then they run. Fleeing together and then there is some sexual tension when they have to hover together and he makes them disappear. 

Then they are in the bar together and she is recalling what he said earlier. He is cleaning a wound on her hand (another trope – fixing w a band-aid). She’s realizing what he said was true and is trying to rationalize it. She then leans forward and kisses him, hoping that by kissing him she’ll wake up from the dream. 

She grabs him and kisses him. (First kiss) 

She pulls away and when he doesn’t disappear she starts freaking out because that means it’s all true. And then she asks him to forget that she kissed him. She asks him details about his kiss mission and discovers that it can’t be any random 10 humans, it has to be the ones that the goblin queen picks for him to kiss and then explains that when he does that the emotions are passed to him. 

She asks more questions about his world. (intimacy building – getting to know him better) Goblin answers and then asks her if he’s handsome. 

The scene cuts to the morning. She was dreaming about the kiss. She wakes up hoping it was a dream but then sees her bandaid and grumbles. 

Goblin is w the queen and asks about the exorcist. Goblin queen explains the origin of goblins. He learns that no goblin has ever been successful in their quest to become a human. (foreshadowing) She warns him again to make sure he leaves right after the kiss. (more foreshadowing) He asks her if she wanted to be a human and we flashback to her a long time ago. She did, at one time, want to be a human.

At work he is sweeping and she arrives. They look at each other for a moment and he seems unaffected by their kiss. As they go about their shift they bump into each other. ++Sexual tension. 

Second Male Lead (SML) friend is asking advice from the best friend about the heroine. The best friend urges him to go to the heroine and confess his feelings for her before it’s too late. 

The restaurant is closed and the SML comes in, brief glance exchanged between the two studs, and then the heroine comes to greet the SML. He tells her that he’s taking her home because it’s not safe. She calls him out on his weird behavior but he ignores her and they leave together. 

Goblin stares after them curiously. 

SML on the way home talks about how good-looking Goblin is. The heroine calls the SML out on his weird behavior again and he gears up to say his confession: “I….” (Hook- Scene Cut)

Further Analysis

This episode was mostly background and facts gathering. There was a little sexual tension mixed in. Overall, not much revealed in the way of character traits. The couple do connect in this episode, revealing their personal secrets, raising the trust and intimacy levels between them. 

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Kdrama Analysis Kiss Goblin

Practice Romance Writing by Digging Deep!

- Marie Cole Leave a comment

Kdrama Analysis | Kiss Goblin | Episode 3

In case you haven’t been caught up on the blog, I’ve been analyzing the very short 12-minute long episodes of Kiss Goblin, a k-drama which is available on Rakuten Viki. 

We are on episode three! If you missed episode one and two you can find them here: 

Episode One, Kiss Goblin
Episode Two, Kiss Goblin

The episode opens with a future scene: the goblin and heroine are standing on the sidewalk crying while looking at each other. 

Everyday life – second male lead introduced – #tropealert – unrequited love, friend 

The best friend can see that the second male lead (SML) likes the heroine. Through dialogue the SML friend points out the heroine’s flaw: she was cheated on and didn’t confront the ex about it. But with anyone else she’d speak up and go off the handle. 

Meanwhile, Goblin is on to his third kiss. Speaking with his mentor, the Goblin Queen, we learn about the exorcist whose job it is to stop Goblins from turning into humans by killing them. (Connected the bad guy and giving background to his motivation for wanting to harm the hero) The Goblin Queen warns him to leave immediately after kissing someone in order to stay safe. Also, this emotion will be tough. (Sadness, if the intro was any indication).

The goblin meets with his third kiss girl. He talks to her first and finds out that her fiancee died right before their wedding a couple of years ago. While he kisses her he changes form to look like her dead fiancee, giving her a dream of kissing him and holding him. The goblin says she’ll dream of him often. (Good character trait – compassion). 

As the goblin walks away the sadness starts to affect him in his chest. 

We cut to the heroine and she runs into her ex at school who hurts her by failing to acknowledge her as an ex-lover to his newest girlfriend. 

The Goblin and heroine meet on the sidewalk, crying. She asks him what’s wrong and he says he doesn’t know. They stand there, apart but together, crying. Then he takes her for a drink. 

Couple growth: having a drink and talking about emotions. He asks her for advice on how not to be sad. She reveals her thoughts about this topic (he is learning more about her). 

The exorcist comes in and tells him he can smell a Goblin. They stand up and the Goblin says “Exorcist?” -Hook

In this Episode: 

  • We had some couple growth as they opened up and shared secrets with each other..
  • The goblin took one step closer to his goal completion.
  • New obstacle introduced: the exorcist.

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Kdrama Analysis Kiss Goblin

Korean Drama Analysis Kiss Goblin – Episode 2

- Marie Cole Leave a comment

Welcome back to the Korean Drama analysis of Kiss Goblin. We are on episode two of this Korean drama. If you missed episode one, you can find it here. 

When we left off in our Korean Drama, the goblin was being punched in the face by the heroine. The goblin confronted the heroine and asked her why she hit him. She projects her feelings from her act on to him, asking if he thinks it’s fun to play with people’s emotions and make him feel superior. The actress shows the depth of her character’s emotion by the quiver in her voice and the tears coming to her eyes as she talks about this. 

We flashback to see that she’s really thinking of what happened with her and her ex in catching him cheating. 

Goblin reaches his hand up towards her face, but she stalks away, her friend in her grasp. 

We hear the Goblin’s voiceover telling the goblin queen that he feels strange because he wanted to wipe away her tears and pat her back. The goblin queen explains that this is the new emotion that he just received from girl number two, and it’s called compassion. 

When the heroine and her friend are far enough away from the Goblin, her friend looks very confused. The conversation reveals that her friend does not remember kissing the goblin. 

The Korea drama writer then cuts to a scene where the heroine is frustrated because she isn’t finished with her assignment. She has a flashback thinking about the goblin and wondering how it’s possible that her friend doesn’t remember kissing him. 

She needed to be frustrated with her assignment because of what’s about to happen next. Her classmate offers to do her homework in exchange for going on a blind date with one of his friends. 

We see the goblin in everyday life, and we are shown that he has lots of bills and his water has been turned off. 

Now we see the heroin on her date. The guy approaches and is rude, saying that she doesn’t look like her dating profile. He wants to know what photo editing app she uses. She keeps a smile on her face to be friendly and says that she heard that he was pestering her classmate for four days and five nights for them to get together and she’s sorry that she doesn’t look as good as her picture does. 

He said it was a joke, and she must be the type to hold grudges. 

In her head, she says people sometimes confuse being rude with being fun-loving. 

The date continues to spiral downward with him talking about himself and his preferences without her even asking him. She also notes that guys think that having manners is too old-fashioned. 

He then says one last thing asking her how many people she’s gone on blind dates with and how many guys she’s dated in total. 

She insults him in reply, with a smile, and then says, “just joking.”

Through this scene, we learned that she prefers old-fashioned guys with manners. Luckily the goblin is old and, therefore, probably old-fashioned. Check!

She then goes to work and bumps into the goblin (literally), who has taken a part-time job there. She is suspicious that the goblin is only there to get revenge on her for hitting him the previous evening. He reveals to her that he needed a job because his water got shut off. 

Purpose of this scene:

  • -forced proximity
  • -sexual tension (he grabs her wrist and pulls her towards him to prevent her from running into a table. After interrogating him, he grabs her wrist again and pulls her towards him, trying to be intimidating. She kicks him in the shin in response. She demands to know his reasons, and he motions for her to come closer so he can tell her. He leans in close and speaks into her ear.) 
  • -couple gets to know each other (she asks why he’s working there, why he kissed her friend, and he basically tells her to be respectful, call him by his name and mind her own business. After the kick, she shows her noncompliance with being a soft-spoken woman, defends her friend, and makes fun of his name. She asks again for his reasons. He tells her the truth, and she calls him crazy.)

When working together, there is an altercation between the heroine a male customer. The male customer becomes more and more irate and then tries to hit her, but the Goblin stops the customer. The heroine then slaps the customer across the face with his chicken (Kdrama Trope twist: Kimchi Slap) and has a massive outburst. 

When alone, the goblin goes to her and tries to comfort her by bringing her a drink. He takes her side and tells her not to be upset because the customer was wrong, not her. He tells her he looked up online how to comfort others and gave her a carton of chocolate milk.

In the end scene of the Korean Drama, episode two, we are introduced to the villain who is looking at a picture of the goblin on his phone. This is an example of an external problem for the couple, more specifically for the hero. 

The things the writer integrated into episode 2:

If we are following the Romancing the Beat sheet, then this episode covered Phase 1: Adhesion. 

By putting these two characters together in their part-time job they now have a reason to continue to be in each other’s daily lives. The goblin needs money to pay for his bills, especially since he’s going to be human after eight more kisses. 

We learned that the Goblin isn’t a liar – at least not with our heroine. She asked him twice why he was two-timing her friend and why she couldn’t remember it, and he answered her after the second time. 

We also learned the heroine doesn’t get along well with normal human men. She finds them distasteful and rude. This is a contrast to the end of the episode where she sees Goblin offering her comfort in the form of a chocolate milk. 

Another character trait for her is that she’s faithful and loyal to her friends as evidenced by her inability to let go what happened between the goblin and her friend. 

Tropes Used: 

  • Feisty heroine – she doesn’t stop herself from speaking her mind and she’s not afraid to get physical when someone crosses her boundaries. 
  • Kimchi slap – In Korean Dramas there is a trope where a character gets slapped on the face with kimchi. The writer used a version of it here with the fried chicken (another common food in Korean dramas)
  • Forced proximity – they work together in the restaurant
  • Male knight – Goblin stepped in to keep the heroine from getting hit
  • Man in Black – clearly a bad guy is coming onto the scene – what part will he play?

That’s my analysis for Episode 2 of Kiss Goblin, the Korean drama. I would love to hear your feedback and thoughts! Did I miss anything? Did you find this helpful?

Be on the lookout for Episode 3!

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Kdrama Analysis Kiss Goblin

KDrama Analysis – Kiss Goblin Ep 1

- Marie Cole

I’m really looking forward to analyzing Kdrama’s as a part of my blog and hopefully, I will soon get up the guts to be on camera and talk about it there as well. The first #kdrama I’m going to analyze is called #kissgoblin and I started the show on Rakuten #Viki. If you are not familiar with Viki, It’s a streaming service that streams Asian dramas and movies. You have access to a lot of current Kdrama’s and Chinese dramas and Japanese dramas and Thai dramas that are currently airing in those countries. Usually, the wait time is a day after it airs in that country, and then if you don’t know those languages it takes time for the translation teams to translate those into English so there is a little bit of a delay to watch brand new things but Viki has a tremendous amount of content to watch so you’ll never be lacking something. So let’s start with the drama Kiss Goblin. (You can watch Kiss Goblin for FREE on Viki.com – I get no kickbacks by mentioning Viki – I just love them so much! 💕) I recommend watching the episodes before reading the breakdowns below because they will contain spoilers!

The Breakdown The description for Kiss Goblin mentions a 160-year-old goblin who wants to be human but in order to do so, the goblin queen tells him that he must take human form and kiss humans 10 times. He has the ability to make people be attracted to him. He’s got magical powers so this doesn’t seem like a hard thing to do but after he kisses a person, he learns one of the human emotions and has to then experience it. Once he has all of the emotions he can then become a human. I picked this drama because it has a goblin, which sounds gross if you think about American goblins that are green and short and wrinkly and stuff, but in Korea goblins are immortals, like Gods. He also had this assignment of kissing ten different people and I wanted to see how this would play out knowing that this is a romance. It had me asking questions like… is she the last person he’s going to have to kiss? Or is she immune to his charms and he has to fight to make her fall for him? This is how you know you have a great description. You want your readers (or viewers!) to be asking questions and dying to know the answers! Okay, so let’s break down this drama. Each episode is 12 minutes long and there are 12 episodes with a total running time of 140-ish minutes. It’s episodic versus a movie so we’ll see how the writers decided to chunk the content. Let’s do this thang!

We are introduced to the hero quickly, he is wearing a long leather trench coat and all black. He’s attractive and glances at a single girl at the bar. He pulls her outside and they just start kissing after some green smoke surrounds them. There is an overhead voice of the Goblin Queen telling the rules he must follow: To be human he must kiss ten different humans.

We then cut to the heroine who is bussing tables. She is talking about herself, the writer is introducing her traits: she’s hard working, she wants an ordinary life, and she hates people. We see why she hates people very quickly. She’s taking a guy’s order and he hits on her, demanding her phone number. She then asks him if he’s having fun. This shows that she’s not one to demurely smile and walk away – she’s a fighter. We see more of why she hates people as it cuts to the drunken men in the bar she works in being dumb, vulgar and gross.

Because I’ve seen this all the way through once I noticed the lead in to the forced proximity. The heroine is taking out the trash and asks her boss if he thinks they need another part time worker. She goes outside to take out the trash and this is their meet cute – he’s in the alley kissing another girl like crazy. She stares at him with some longing and then she meets the guy’s eyes and runs away.

We see the wisp of smoke as her emotion passes to him and then he walks away from the girl who then startles, not remembering what just happened.

The goblin touches his chest, and the Goblin Queen comes, teaching him about his first learned emotion. We are learning about the Goblin: he doesn’t experience emotions. “It’s empty, but why is it heavy?” He’s contemplative.

The Goblin Queen warns him that despite sounding easy this GOAL to become a human will be painful and difficult. She then gives him his second target, and asks why he wants to be human. His MOTIVATION is so that he doesn’t have to be alone like the Goblin Queen who has been alone for 1000 years. (This is the Goblin’s mirror. She will be the confidant and guide as he embarks on this journey. She is also the representation of a path he needs to choose between. Becoming human or staying a goblin.)

The writer then takes us to the university where the heroine and her best friend are chatting. Through the convo we see again that she doesn’t like people, men in particular, and that she isn’t dating because of her ex who is the reason why she hates people. Her friend is the person who is telling her “Hey, dummy, you shouldn’t keep hating people or you’ll be bitter and alone.” Not a direct quote, but that’s the gist. The friend is also a medium in which we can learn more about the main character.

The writer then sets up what’s coming – the heroine tells the friend to enjoy dating and the friend says she will because a stranger asked for her number. We see that it’s the Goblin. She describes him as handsome and that he has an aura that attracts people. The heroine says she’s curious about him. And then goes to the library.

While at the library we learn a little about her ex. They were lovey-dovey there, sharing loving flirting touches and embracing each other. She leaves the library and here’s the setup for the hook: she sees her friend kissing the same guy she saw in the alley the night before outside of the place she works. A CHEATER – just like her EX! (The writer cuts to a scene of her seeing her boyfriend in a cafe embracing and flirting with another woman. She calls him and he ignores her call).

She approaches them both and, because she’s a fighter, she tells him that it’s because of people like him that she hates people. She throws down her bag and punches him right across his face.

Further Analysis:

So we have a woman who was cheated on (her wound) and the writer is setting her up with a Goblin (who actually isn’t a human but wants to be), who has to go around kissing ten different girls in order to fulfill his goal, which ultimately is to not be alone.

Let us note here that the hero doesn’t have a presenting wound, just a goal. The heroine doesn’t have a goal aside from working hard and going to school, but she does have a pretty big wound.

She’s attractive and has a temper. He’s super attractive and is not overly emotional (yet). He definitely doesn’t understand feelings.

Hobbies: None

Quirks:

Her – temper

Him – not having human emotions (yet)

Secrets:

Her: She was cheated on and is avoiding relationships (not a secret from her friend) She found the Goblin sexy when watching him kiss initially. (Her own secret)

Him: He’s a goblin and wants to be human so he won’t be alone. In order to get that wish he needs to kiss ten humans of the Goblin Queen’s choosing and after each kiss he takes one of their emotions. (secret known to Goblin Queen, his friend)

Job:

She works as a part time waitress and goes to college.

Contrast:

He’s kind of dark and mysterious and very emotionally dead.

She is the average pretty college girl with extreme emotions (anger).

He doesn’t want to be alone and she wants to be alone forever because of her wound.

Ready for episode 2? Read it now!

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