My Demon is a fantasy romance about a demon (Song Kang) who loses his powers and enters into a contract marriage with a prickly chaebol heiress (Kim Yoo Jung) who doesn’t get along with most people.
Song Kang plays Jung Gu Won. He is a powerful demon who prides himself for being a predator as he makes deals with humans where wishes are traded for going to hell. That begins to change when he meets a woman named Do Hee, and he loses his powers.
Kim Yoo Jung is Do Do Hee. She works for family’s wealthy company but has led a difficult life and is jaded towards love. Things get complicate when she gets involved with a demon and needs to enter into a contract marriage with him.
My Demon fits well into what you would expect from the fantasy romantic comedy genre. There’s a supernatural being at the center who gets involved with a human. We get a classic bickering-to-lovers, contract marriage type of romance that mixes in humor as well as dramatics. The fantasy elements add to the interest and complexity of the overall story.
The romance between Gu Won and Do Hee has a nice progression. As individuals, I found them both a bit off-putting in the beginning, so I needed some serious warming up to them just as they needed towards each other.
It’s a bit of a slow burn, but eventually the switch flips, and we get a very in love couple with lots of sweet moments. They face a lot of challenges along the way though. This really tests their relationship on multiple levels. They have individual journeys to move through as well as their journey as a couple.
Villains abound in this drama. Do Hee’s family is mostly terrible and cause varying levels of difficulties throughout the series. The question becomes how bad is any one person? There are some baddies outside of the family too, so there’s never a shortage of people causing issues for our couple.
Adding in a bit of humor to the drama are some of our supporting characters. Gu Won’s right hand man, Bok Gyu (Heo Jung Do), and Do Hee’s secretary, Da Jeong (Seo Jung Yeon) add some needed fun in the midst of the more serious parts of the story. Their interactions kind of bordered between zany and cringe.
For me, the drama had a lot going for it, but it also fell short in a lot of areas. As I mentioned, I had trouble warming up to both of the main characters. That’s never a good thing for me. As they both softened up deeper into the drama, I eventually was able to start connecting with them though.
The drama did seem to suffer from wanting to be grander than it was, and it felt like it was imitating other dramas. It was just trying too hard. The writing was also pretty messy in this series. There were a lot of plot elements that felt forced as well as things that would be very obvious to the audience that were drug out too long.
The pacing was off the further we got into the series, and this resulted in some draggy parts. Back story wasn’t revealed well which could have served to develop the characters and add to the main story but was instead given as an info dump late in the drama.
Now, it is a fantasy drama, so some grace is usually given to unbelievable things, but there were so many times that the story just didn’t make sense. The rules and use of magic wasn’t logical which resulted in characters making dumb or confusing decisions on numerous occasions. People survived things they shouldn’t have. Everything just felt messy all around.
So, in the end, My Demon was a decent watch for me. It was disappointing though that it felt like the drama had all of the pieces needed to make for a great series, but it just couldn’t quite fit them together.
It had enough good elements that I wasn’t bored with it, but it had a lot of negatives. This drama can definitely work for you if you really enjoy fantasy rom-coms and just roll with what it dishes out without thinking too deeply about it.
My Rating: 6.5/10
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