My Royal Nemesis review: Heo Nam-jun may be K-drama’s best male lead in years, Lim Ji-yeon is gloriously wicked

There’s something distinctively magical about time-travelling Korean dramas, with a dash of soul-swapping and reincarnation. The story is rarely linear: It might begin with a seemingly regular quest, only to end in a far more different way than you imagined. In 2024, the sleeper hit Lovely Runner began as a woman running back into time to save her favourite popstar, only to discover that they had been in love all along.

The ordinary quest of a crush suddenly turned into a tale of two lovers ripping apart the space-time continuum and fate, to be with each other.

And now, My Royal Nemesis, another time-travelling tale has nabbed the spotlight, and perhaps for good reason. It's a wildly entertaining tale with lofty themes of time-travel, reincarnation, soul swapping messiness, which all get knotted towards the end. But well, if the romance is this good, then can these flaws be forgiven?

Well, depends on what you're looking for. Starring a delightful Heo Nam-jun as the  cold chaebol heir Cha Se-gye and mesmerising Lim J-yeon as Kang Dan-Shim as well as Shin Seo-ri, the K-Drama turns all the K-Drama tropes that you would expect, on its head. Kang Dan-shim, a cunning, powerful and manipulative woman from the Joseon era is sentenced to the present day, and finds herself in the body of Shin Seo-ri, a struggling actress.

Dan-shim can’t quite come to terms with being a nobody in the 21^st century. As she mutters darkly, she was one of the most feared women back in her day. Nobody is bothered by her archaic orders; no one rushes to her beck and call. Lim Ji-yeon, who has already shown her acting prowess as a demonic bully in The Glory, is thoroughly entertaining to watch here, with her cocked eyebrows, commanding, booming voice and sneer at the men around her.

Ji-yeon delves into the acidic, biting personality of Kang Dan-shim, a refreshing change from the usual K-Drama leads, who are often well-written but slowly lose their verve along the course of the story. But not Dan Shim. She confuses, as well as impresses everyone around her with her antics. The struggle to fit into present-day Korea is exhaustive: She catches up on the latest K-Dramas, brushes up on her Korean history, and celebrates the Independence Day, and even attempts to slap a man back to life during cardiac arrest, convinced it counts as medical expertise.

But more than anything else, Dan Shim is also bitterly human, in the best and the worst ways, possible. In a rather rare turn for a K-Drama lead, Kang Dan-shim is aware of her own power games, and self-preservation. The rise towards the top is defined by complicated choices, and she hasn’t been afraid to make them in her past,-though unfortunately, this fact is more of a ‘tell, don’t show’ in the flashback scenes. We don't quite know exactly about her ascent, and the nature of the punishment that led her to be trapped in the 21st century

And this batty, nervy lead will fall for one of the best K-Drama male leads ever written: Cha Se-gye. At first, he does seem like the stock cliché of a cold, calculating businessman, but truly that man has out-yearned the rest of the K-Drama leads without even being problematic as they normally are. That’s minimal of course, but remember the world we live in: The distant and emotionally unavailable male leads are usually so grating with unresolved issues, from Boys over Flowers to the troubling When The Phone Rings, where the show worked overtime to justify the lead’s cold and abusive nature to his mute wife.

Well, thank goodness for a change. Cha Se-gye is just gruff and rough around the edges; the cold thaws as soon as he sets sights on Dan-shim,

Cha Se-gye, much to his own amazement, is entranced by this strange specimen of a woman. He is attracted to her wily, hard words, while also equally repelled. Yet, he rewrites the unwritten K-Drama laws of ‘cold, uncaring’ leads; he cares so much that it physically hurts him. Two people poles apart, immensely disliked yet at the top of their professions in different eras, trudge their way to be with each other.

One of the most heartwarming love confessions, is a moment on the beach, a day after he has almost lost his nerve trying to track her down in a forest. She demands an apology for his scolding, but he responds that he would. “Even if I could go back in time, I would still search for you like a lunatic. And after searching in vain alone, I would still lose my temper. Even if it disappoints you, I would feel better as long as you were okay.”

At the same time, he cannot move on, despite numerous rejections. But the romance that follows is endearing and worth the wait, and the good news is, the two leads never lose their frenemy-like banter, even when they’re deeply in love.

It’s this kooky, whimsical, comedic yet consuming romance that is the heart of the show: The story does tie itself into pretzels and tries to serve too many storytelling elements, business propositions, soul-swapping, dopplegangers of the past and present.

It's confusing enough for the audience to rewind and play again, to understand who exactly has swapped souls with who, why, and moreover what are all the various web-like connections between the past and the present. The same evil people are present, of course and it’s up to our leads to traverse between the fluid timelines and right the wrongs that have been done.

Nevertheless, despite all its flaws and glitches, My Royal Nemesis has been one of the most fun, entertaining K-Dramas of late. It serves the romantics the taste of the K-Dramas of yore, but fresh, new, without stumbling into problematic territory.