Kiss Goblin is a fantasy romance about a goblin (Bae In Hyuk) who wants to become a human. To do so, he must kiss 10 humans and receive a different emotion from each of them. Things become complicated though as he acquires new emotions and gets close with a woman (Jeon Hye Won) who is helping him on his quest.
Bae In Hyuk is Ban Sook. He is a goblin who wants to be human. He thinks his mission of kissing 10 humans is straightforward, but everything gets complicated as he develops new feelings.
Jeon Hye Won is Oh Yeon Ah. She’s a student and part-time worker who discovers that Ban Sook is a goblin. After a rocky start to their relationship, she starts to help him but soon develops feelings for him.
Kiss Goblin is a short web drama with just 12 episodes that are about 10 minutes each. I’m pretty hit or miss with web dramas as there just isn’t a lot of time to develop the story. I was pleasantly surprised with Kiss Goblin though as it makes pretty good use of its short run time.
The overall production quality is good as is the acting. The characters are also well done with a bit of depth and a chance to explore their motivations and journeys.
I would say the main selling point is the story though. It’s an interesting twist on the goblin becoming human trope with Ban Sook’s mission of kissing humans. It also adds some depth to his journey as he is sort of a blank slate at the beginning, but as he slowly acquires human emotions, he becomes a well-rounded character.
I enjoyed seeing him grow and experience the array of human emotions. This was also woven into the story so that his emotional growth had some impact from time to time.
Yeon Ah is also a solid character. We explore some of her heartache from past relationships and watch her grow closer with Ban Sook. I liked seeing this couple’s relationship develop, and they had some wonderful moments together.
We have a couple of supporting characters with the Queen Goblin (Lee Jung Min) who is giving Ban Sook missions as well as the Exorcist (Jang Eui Soo) whose mission is stop Ban Sook from becoming human.
As our main villain, the Exorcist was a bit laughable as his attempts to get Ban Sook were pretty pathetic. He looks intimidating, but the execution of this character as a villain was not the best.
Really my only main critique would be that it is short, so things move quickly. While I think Kiss Goblin did very well for a web drama, all of the story developments are fast and sometimes abrupt.
This is one of those cases where I think this web drama would have been really great as a full length drama of maybe 10 episodes or so. There is definitely enough to work with in the story and character development. It would be so nice to see this story really fleshed out and get to go deeper.
But all in all, Kiss Goblin is a very well done web drama. It’s got an interesting story with a nice twist, decent production, and solid characters. It was a fun drama that I quite enjoyed.
My Rating: 7/10
Check out more Korean Drama Reviews.
Leave a Reply