Thanks for the honest recap quirkycase. 
I was waiting to see what everyone thought before giving this a go.
I'm not a fan of the female lead but would try if it was halfway decent.
I might wait until all the episodes are dropped as I'm annoyed with this current trend of breaking up a series.

The human experimentation the Axis committed is some of the horrific things I've read in a war full of horror. I don't think I'll be able to stomach such a grim story, but I might consider watching this drama in its entirety once the second part drops.

I think you've summed it up really well quirkycase - by no means a bad drama but it's not as good as it could've been. It does feel like it's lacking something on the emotional front and I think the underdeveloped characters and odd pacing are the reasons why. By the end of the episode, I feel like I still really didn't know much about our leads and though a lot had happened, it didn't really feel like much had happened at all. And because of that I feel like I've got not much to say meaningfully insofar as plot goes because I just watched things happen and didn't have any thoughts beyond that.

Overall though, I am a little disappointed because I wanted to really love this. It doesn't help also that I kept comparing to Sweet Home 2 while I was watching - I know it's super unfair & I shouldn't compare since that's like comparing apples to oranges, but it's the most recent Netflix 'webdrama' I watched and some very slight overlapping themes meant comparison became inevitable in my mind - and unfortunately it just only further highlighted some of the flaws in this drama.

That said, like you, and I assume others as well, I'm curious to see how we 'end' this in the last three eps (or if we even 'end' it at all if rumours of a second season are true) so will be tuning in for that!

Thanks for the review @quirkycase.

I tried to get into this. I really did. I gave it one episode, quit, the decided to give it another. Suffice to say that, after two episodes of it failing it to be as awesome or decent as I'd hoped, this drama is not for me.

I find neither of the main characters compelling. I hate the romance aspect and find it unconvincing. The fact that he's smitten with her so quickly makes it feel like a run of the mill kdrama instead of something more.

I was hoping for something dark and mysterious. Instead it's almost silly at times. And once again, I'd like to point out how much the romance annoys me, and how unnecessary it is.

Chae-ok is your standard prickly but scrappy heroine who's unreasonably antagonistic toward the male lead based on a single somewhat negative interaction. And he's in love the moment her cap comes off in the street when they come face to face for the first time. Really??

I'm probably being to harsh, but I spent months looking forward to this, hoping it would be one great drama in a year of mediocre kdramas, but no.

I won't be wasting my time with this one any further.

Since I already completed the first 7 episodes (Part 1) during Christmas hol recently (because I have nothing -kdrama- left to watch) I can confirm that @quirkycase has covered everything needed to say about this drama. Thank you for the recap 👍

I'm not a fan of HSH too and it didn't help that bad reviews about her keep popping out in socmeds but I'm glad that it wasn't that bad like what the amateur reviewers mentioned. Just take PSJ as your motivation for watching this drama and it will be less stressful and scary. Oh I forgot to mention, other than action and funny PSJ, its also a horror drama.

I watched most of this first part of the drama this week, so I've been turning it over in my head. I thought, "What if this had been a fictionalization of Nazi human experimentation, would I be OK with it?" The answer is, probably not. Except we have had literally that fictionalization in some of the Marvel comics mutant stories. Also, aren't some very popular Japanese animes a fictionalization of these war crimes? Maybe I'm wrong to find this uncomfortable.

Your point, quirkycase, "Horror is a natural medium to explore this dark period of history, making the stripping of humanity literal through the human experimentation at the core of the story," is a good one.
Except that I'm not sure that I now agree that these war crimes and atrocities are a reflection of dehumanization. I remember reading The Half Has Never Been Told, a recent book on chattel slavery in the US. The author, Edward Baptist, makes the point that you can't torture people with anxiety about their families if you don't understand them to be humans who have such feelings. The book shocked me in that the author seemed to feel he needed to defend the humanness of enslaved people to readers in the present (2015!) more than he would have needed to assert it to the enslavers of their own time.

I guess I'm getting hung up on the issue of evoking dark history in popular fiction. I wonder whether Korean show-runners have avoided treating these themes in dramas in order to avoid offending a Japanese audience that eagerly watched their shows.

I watch this as a historical (take-off) action horror drama. Love Han So-Hee's athleticism (she was fantastic in No Name!), but you are right about her character not being developed. We see her going from all business competent woman to weak, emotional barely functioning mess. Hopefully, she pulls it together in remaining episodes. Having read about Japan's war in SE Asia for the past 8 years or so (Unit 731 is in the mail from Amazon!), the cruelty and dehumanizing of the Korean ppl is not surprising. One of the few dramas that keep me engaged and fully awake.

@quirkycasee Thanks for the recap. This has been on my watchlist for months and for several reasons - the vintage era, Park Seo-joon (purely due to WWWSK), intriguing teasers/cinematography.

But I can't handle cruel violence and gore (horror) - especially if there is some basis in-real-life. Once all episodes drop, I might try it with a very heavy finger on the FF button - because it does appear that there are intriguing characters and an intriguing, albeit shallow plot.

Thanks for the summary!
I had nothing else to watch so I caved and gave this show a shot.
Its just as everyone else said, interesting but didn't pack the punch it should've, making it quite easily forgettable.
For me, it got interesting from ep 5 but by then we only had 2 episodes left.

Acting wise it was okay but the only thing I found weird was how calm the leads were upon seeing the monster. I don't know about yall but I'd be losing my mind. Even the captives had a better reaction than our leads. I could actually feel their fear.
Seojun's character felt a bit like his previous roles & Sohee was quite bland but by the end I was rooting for her survival as I got tired with Tae-sang lol.
One thing I didn't expect was how involved tae-sang's friends were on the outside. Usually once the leads enter the place we hardly ever see the side characters so I was pleasantly surprised with how much they helped our leads.

Most of the story & challenges faced by our leads felt really plot contrived and could've been easily avoided. (Tbh why did tae-sang have to stay behind lol could've been someone else or even Sohee, seeing that her character has a direct link with the monster)

Anyways, keeping my expectations for the last three eps low.

Oh this is really interesting. I just finished episode 7 tonight so I could finally come here and see what others thought! I totally disagree that Jun-taek is a better developed character than Chae-ok - I legit didn’t even know his name until I read this. It’s cool that he and Tae-sang are friends, and I loved their flashback because of what we learned about Tae-sang’s past from it, but we didn’t really learn much about Jun-taek, and I have a hard time sympathizing with him at all. When he was crying about selling out his entire organization I was just wondering what kind of drug they injected him with to make him cave like that. Maybe he’ll improve in the last three episodes? I hope so.

I honestly totally bought the romance. It didn’t seem like too much too quickly to me (as Soon-deok from the Matchmakers says, it only takes a moment to fall in love), rather it felt totally normal for Tae-sang to become attached to the first person who was 1. Not immediately interested in him and 2. More sincere than anyone he’d ever met. Add in a dash of trauma bonding and voila! A classic kdrama romance if ever I saw one.

I kinda disagree about Chae-ok’s characterization too. I don’t think it’s strange or bad that so much of her personality is wrapped up in her connection to her mother. That’s what she’s been devoting her whole life to for the past decade, and I really felt for her when she confronts Sachimoto about the drawing, when she finds the message in the cell, and when she finally has to face what her mother has become. Maybe I was just ready to buy into it more? It was working for me.

I’m bummed not many people seem as enthused as I still am about this show, but I was so looking forward to this and it has been really fun so far! Hoping the last three eps finish well. Fighting!