มณีสวาท (Manee Sawat) The Third Time Around

22 April 2015, TV = 1141.3 hours

AUA: advanced class = 1145 hours, total class time = 2083 hours

Yesterday I finished my third go-around with มณีสวาท (manee sawat). The first lakorn I’d ever watched, I rewatched it back in November. Fittingly, it is a tale of cyclicity and recurrence.

Lately I’ve been watching mostly non-lakorn TV, plus going to class at AUA and meeting (or, perhaps more exhaustingly, trying to arrange to meet) with various language exchange partners, and I think I just wanted something familiar and easy and fun.

MS didn’t disappoint. I found this story of love, murder, and revenge among a trio of fantastic (i.e. more than simply human) beings whose history together goes back over the course of many lifetimes to be just as much fun as it had been on previous viewings.

Although comparisons across time are difficult, I think I got a bit more of the story — my impression is that more dialogue filled in with less blank or blurry spots, and I definitely picked up on some things that I’d missed the other times around. Sometimes I’d hear a word go by and be like, wait, I know I only learned that word recently, I’m sure I didn’t know it last viewing. And then there were some words or expressions that I was aware of clicking into place, comprehension-wise, as I watched.

My overall understanding of the main action of the story hasn’t really changed because, hey, even on first viewing two years ago with a lower level of Thai, it was pretty obvious.
But isn’t that why I ❤ lakorn?