Hometown of Legends: Episode 7

by Sevenses

I do apologize for any perceived delays, but unfortunately for me, recaps don’t write themselves (not that I haven’t tried to make them), and I need to sleep as well as study. I also work from the csubs, and this usually adds a day or two to the time between airing and recapping. Hope you all understand. 😀

This one looks really funny, if only because we have our beloved Dal Pyung, random Byun Shik and drag-licious Razor Sis starring as the demon. His real name is Lee Won Jong.

SONG OF THE DAY

Dynamic Duo – “Don’t Say Goodbye” (feat. J) [ Download ]

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Episode 7: Demon’s Story

In the dark of night, across a barren land that abounds cwith creeping mist, two white-faced demons (dressed like particularly snazzy yangban in black) lead a troupe of unresponsive dead. Their next target is Lee Ok Beom, who’s a very long-lived old lady, at the age of 86. The older demon (Lee Won Jong) tells his clumsy subordinate to get to it. By his logic, an old lady shouldn’t be too much trouble (imho the older they get, the more stubborn they tend to be about life).

Well, the subordinate is new on the job (3 months) and a whiny kid at that. He accidentally drops the booklet, which causes the older demon to lose a few marbles – the life of any demon (actually death god) is in their booklet. (Deathnote, anyone?)

Mr. Boss Demon doesn’t show any mercy, and sends Whiny along.

As expected, the old lady beats the heck out of Whiny, and sends him home without her soul. What’s worse for him is that he dropped the booklet in the dust when he was escaping, so now we have a deathnote somewhere at large amongst humans.

The lord of hell gives both of them a tongue-lashing. For mysterious reasons, seven days after the loss of the deathnote, things in the underworld go into chaos mode. As the booklet has been gathered up by minister Lee as a national treasure, Boss Demon only needs to go and retrieve it. It looks like Boss Demon actually wants to quit his job, as he’s been summoning damned souls for three thousand years now. (3000?!)

His pleading doesn’t get him anywhere, and he’s sent on the retrieval job, and he’s landed with the retrieval of lost souls that have been neglected in the meantime. Ahh, bureaucracy.

As he leaves, grumbling to himself, Boss Demon gets a smack in the head from Whiny. He falls to the floor and curses his embarrassment, compounded by a nosebleed.

A busy marketplace freezes as Boss Demon makes his way into the world. He spots a pretty woman and decides that she is to be the special person he first meets in the world. At the snap of his fingers, the peopel start moving again, and he dances rather comically (waltzing and tangoing at moments, I swear) through the throngs of people to get to his target. On the way there, someone dressed like a noble tries to pick his pockets but come away with nothing. (It’s the assassin dude from Iljimae, in case anyone notices.)

Boss Demon sidles up to the lady in question, and nudges her in the … chest area with his elbow as a hello. (Um. He probably wasn’t a human when he was alive, was he?) Needless to say, he gets slapped, are you surprised?

Intro credits tell us that he is death god Kim of the underworld court.

The pickpocket from earlier walks by and resolves to get a bigger haul next time. His name is Ja Yeong. He recalls successful raids earlier which have given him rather convenient clothes and entry tags.

A woman in a flowered hanbok watches from afar (with a telescope, no less) and muses that this heist should hand them untold amounts of wealth (they’re after the deathnote too, though they don’t know what it really is, just that it’s very valuable). She’s a tough business woman who looks out for her own interests, and her name is Cho Seon. Just for reference, she owns the largest gambling den/brothel in Seoul and can knock people out with her skillz.

The purported treasure/deathnote is in minister Lee’s carriage, which isn’t that well-guarded. The guy in charge of the robbery is called Park Yang Su and isn’t easy to mess around with either. OMG LOL. Apparently the writers are not above a little meta-joke, as Park works for his universe’s Iljimae, who was tricked by Ja Yeong and is currently languishing in prison.

Just to make sure we’re well and confused, they also add in the local police chief Kim (depicted below), who is upright only in words.

So we have four interested parties right now: demon Kim, Ja Yeong, Park Yang Su (above), and Cho Seon.

Lord Lee saunters (well, he’s riding in a palanquin and can afford to saunter – the people carrying him probably aren’t as happy) out of the gates, all looking forward to his nice, quiet vacation in the mountains. Ha. All this finery and the procession catches demon Kim’s attention, who asks Ja Yeong what’s going on. When told that Lee has the supposed ‘Song treasure’ in his carriage, Kim gleefully runs up (oh god, you have to see the man in action, words do not do him justice) and starts flipping through Lee’s carriage. Wow.

Obviously the lord is annoyed, and sets his guards after Kim. Ja Yeong is caught by his instinct to flee from law enforcement, and runs from the guards too. Park, waiting in ambush for the carriage, spots Ja Yeong and runs after him, forgetting his other job.

What a mess.

So we have Ja Yeong and Kim leading the pack, running ahead of hurdles such as random pedestrians and the occasional rut in the road. The police follow closely after, but oh! They fall over and create a merry heap of people at the street-crossing.

In the midst of running, of course, Kim voices his bewilderment.

Kim: They can see me??
Ja Yeong: Of course they can! You think that dressing in black will make you invisible?
Kim: Bu-but they never saw me befooooooooooore!

The overlord of hell watches all this gleefully in his crystal globe. (You know what, just sit back and enjoy the ride. This ep is clearly meant to be random and Chil Woo-esque.)

Aww. They duck into a bunch of stacked baskets, so the guards don’t see them and run by. Ja Yeong orders Kim to thank the little girl who misdirected the guards, and Kim is so socially inept he has to try it twice. Then the little girl ties his loose belt for him. There is a moment of ‘aww’ for Kim (who, let’s not forget, hates humans with a vengeance).

Ja Yeong introduces himself to Kim, who naively tells him his real identity (but is not believed, for the moment). The two go in search for some beer and to discuss specific plans for stealing stuff from Lee’s carriage.

At the brothel, madam Cho Seon is annoyed. With the treasure, she can pay off her debts and kick start other stuff. She isn’t giving up on getting the treasure on her hands. Her underling has been researching demon Kim, but isn’t coming up with any results. (Well, you think?)

(I couldn’t resist – doesn’t the demon like his alcohol? :D)

Both Ja Yeong and Cho Seon are after the entire carriage, whereas Kim just wants to get the book and go home. Ahh, he’ll have lots of fun before doing that. Park treats the demon to dinner (and lots of soju, by Kim’s request) by neatly swindling the head waiter.

Park is fuming. He almost had the carriage in reach, and then Mr. Black Suit Idiot had to come and ruin his plans. Plus, seeing Ja Yeong’s mug around isn’t making him happier. He needs the treasure to ransom Iljimae out. The question of the night seems to be: Who is that guy?

Meanwhile, Kim is demolishing the inn’s stores of alcohol. When Ja Yeong brings up the issue of working together, Kim rejects him again. Well, night has fallen, so his death god powers are back – and he sends Ja Yeong to sleep while he goes off doing, in his words, “Public service.”

(And it appears that these demons are not in the same class as vengeance ghosts, who are ‘scary’.)

The first person he has to fetch is a scholar, who has an old mother to support. Kim is okay with taking him, as ‘There is no lack of pitiful people in the world’, but Whiny feels that he was too harsh on the guy. Kim tells Whiny to go with the other death gods, as he will keep on searching for the deathnote.

In the procession, he sees the little girl who tied his sash/belt earlier in the day, and maybe for the first time in three thousand years, feels something approximating to emotion for humans. He walks by the house and hears her grandmother lamenting. The grandmother turns around and sees him. She grabs his robe and demands to know why they took the younger girl and not her. Then she pleads to be taken along with her granddaughter, so that she wasn’t alone on the road. (This old lady is the one who refused to go yesterday, btw.)

The old lady decides to hang herself, but before she does, Kim comes up to her and takes her peacefully. However, it’s hard for him, because he’s seeing the people he takes away as human now, and not just names in a list. Yay, sort of.

Ja Yeong gathers his little gang of helpers (containing one ballistics expert, one fighter, and one other impersonator) and sets the plan in motion. First, the impersonator goes to see Lee in the countryside to spur him into coming back. That part’s easy, as noblemen tend to many demons, of the competitor variety.

Well, thanks to the incompetent guard, soon everyone knows that Lee is on the move.

One of Cho Seon’s gisaengs get the altered route out of Lee. Cho Seon is happy at the news and goes forth to prepare. Unfortunately for Kim, Ja Yeong’s gang fall for Lee’s ruse of sending a fake procession back by the public roads.

The swap is made and madam Cho Seon now has the treasures in her possession. (Iljimae, I suppose, gets to stay in prison for a while longer.)

Kim knows that bad things will happen once the week is up and is determined to steal from Cho Seon. The other men are like, “You are crazy. No.” Ja Yeong does formulate a new plan – leak the news that Lee’s political rival is back in town, visiting madam Cho Seon’s place. It’s complicated and will involve the other gangs in chaos while they steal the treasure out from under everyone’s noses.

(My bad, there is no Iljimae, there’s a Sanjimae. Righto.)

So Kim is dressed up and introduced as the brother of the king, which entitles him to any amount of fawning. Madam Cho Seon is going to serve him, Lee waits to save him in case anything happens, and thus erasing any sort of ill-will toward him.

Kim and Ja Yeong lose a small fortune, gambling against Cho Seon, but anyway, it’s slow going until they can settle their people and plans.

Ja Yeong and Cho Seon play cards, one betting a lot of money, the other betting the results of her recent raid. Hmm. Then madam Cho Seon catches Ja Yeong cheating (he meant for her to, I think). Her guard holds Kim at swordpoint, while Ja Yeong yells for people to rescue the king’s brother. Lee wakes up in a random corner of the house and rushes in.

Lee sees his treasures by the floor, and angrily confronts madam Cho Seon. She is perfectly unrepentant. Then Lee gets held at swordpoint by Sanjimae’s associates, who believe that Lee has killed their head honcho. Guardsman Kim sees the situation inside and rushes in to the rescue, confusing the issue even more.

Demon Kim reads them all the riot act, once the guards outside are fooled into believing him to be the king’s messenger. Lols. He confiscates the stuff, locks up Lee, Cho Seon and Park, and leaves with his fellow plotters. Huh. 😀

At night, the gang celebrates their success, though Kim really only cares about the booklet. At least, until he sees that Ja Yeong is one of the souls that he is supposed to take. Oooh dilemma time. And I don’t know if Ja Yeong is being sincere, but he certainly is talking a lot of brotherly mush.

Kim is also having his moment about how people are actually nice for a change. Adorably, he doesn’t admit to crying either.

Time freezes, and Whiny comes out. He’s glad that Kim has the deathnote again. Kim, on the other hand, is not at all happy to see him – and he makes a quick change to Ja Yeong’s age in the book – from 31 to 3001. (UM. Living forever is not that fun either.)

Once Kim makes it back, he hears from the overlord that his replacement is Ja Yeong. Yup. If he hadn’t lengthened his life, then Kim wouldn’t be here working for the next three thousand years. Lol.

Ja Yeong has no idea what just happened and keeps on with his friends. In the distance, Kim screams for Ja Yeong to come back.

End episode.

Commentary/Rambling:

– Um. Not scary at all. But then the director/writers were working with what they had, which was one hell of a comedy actor, so there we go.

– Thanks to Luv for the screencaps!

Sevenses

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• Hometown of Legends: Episode 6
• Hometown of Legends: Episode 5
• Hometown of Legends: Episode 4
• Hometown of Legends: Episode 3
• Hometown of Legends: Episode 2
• Hometown of Legends: Episode 1
• Hometown of Legends / Legendary Hometown