W

? W: Two Worlds – When Your Boyfriend is Literally a Walking Red Flag… But Also Perfect?!

Imagine falling in love with a guy who is literally drawn to be the perfect man—because he’s actually a webtoon character! W: Two Worlds takes the "bad boy with a tragic backstory" trope and cranks it up to dimensions-crossing, reality-breaking levels of insanity. And we loved every second of it.

✨ The Plot: Oh Yeon-joo, a lowkey chaotic doctor, gets yeeted into her dad’s webtoon and ends up meeting Kang Chul, a ridiculously attractive (and very confused) protagonist. The problem? He’s too self-aware and starts questioning why his life is a hot mess. The answer? Because K-dramas love to torture their male leads. What follows is a wild ride of mystery, romance, and existential crises—plus some of the most unexpected plot twists ever.

👀 Why You’ll Love It (or Lose Your Mind Over It):
✔️ A love story that literally breaks the fourth wall (Reality? Who needs it?)
✔️ Kang Chul is the ultimate boyfriend (Smart, rich, heroic, and drawn to be perfect? Yes, please.)
✔️ *The villain is TERRIFYING (like, I-saw-him-in-my-nightmares level scary)
✔️ The most creative "how did we end up here?" moments (one second she’s in a hospital, next second she’s inside a comic strip kissing the main lead)

This drama is a MIND-BENDING mix of romance, action, thriller, and moments that will make you question your entire existence. Do things make sense all the time? Absolutely not. Do we care? Nope. Because when a drama is this unpredictable and fun, logic is optional.

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A gripping watch and good bland of romance and thriller

It a drama that keeps the viewers on their toes. The twists are really hard to predict. The chemistry between the leads is amazing. And Lee jong suk is a charming male lead with a traumatic past. Even in very serious situation they managed to get some humor in the drama. I personally liked the couple so much I gives you the feeling of something left to be desired. The Father of Han hay joo did a amazing job playing both the positive and negative characters.
The first episode may look a little slow but it's picks up after that and amazing till the end . So it worth of your time. It does seem a little confusing at times but it's fun trying to figure out what will happen

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The Plot Is So Confusing.

The Plot revolves around two worlds. The comic world and the real world. GREAT concept to be honest. At first, I was really against watching this show, why? Cause I wanted to watch another one. BUT. Gave this a try, now, do I regret it? No. But is this amazing? So so. It was good but not mind-blowing.
My problems with the story was the plot, even though I loved the concept of the whole thing. The show made the plot really confusing. The show starts off REALLY strong with the plot! It's weak on the romance though, as I'm a sucker for romance, this main couple's romance was like a 6/10 or 7/10 at most. Not really heart racing at some moments. The connection between the two main characters with eh. Nothing bad but not that good either.
What I also have a problem with was the characters. Yeon Joo seemed to have no personality in my eyes. She's okay but nothing interesting, like funny or badass. Just bland. And Kang Cheol? Same thing. He's introduced as some rich kid in the comic, some what cocky, nice, and a player. All the characters in this show (Even the villain) were just plain. MAD PLAIN. Can't even relate to them or anything. Won't spoiler anything but after Episode 9 I started skipping most of the scenes or just looked away from my laptop.
I also had a BIG problem with the flashbacks, WAY. TO. MANY. Or even way to long! I get some people need recaps from the start and stuff but sometimes the flashbacks were up to 5 minutes. Which wasn't needed.
The Acting was average, nothing special much. Nothing that really makes you cry unless it's one of Lee Jong Suk's scenes. Need to mention that I LOVE his acting! That's mostly why I give the acting so high.
The Music is nothing special to the point where I'm looking up the OST. It's just average.
Rewatch value, I could say somewhat high. Just to really understand the concept of the whole story and why the characters did certain things.
In conclusion, the story isn't bad but after a few episodes the plot is repetitive and a bore to the point where you can predict the ending. Romance is also weak but not THAT weak. If you wanna past time, watch this. But it's not THAT bad so I say give it a shot. One day I'll re watch this JUST for the plot and what I was confused with. Don't make my review stop you from watching or giving it a bad review!

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Great romance, not so great story

While the first few episodes were interesting, the story quickly loses steam and begins to fall apart. It seems like the writers had no idea how to expand upon the original concept and were just throwing in random dangers and half baked villains. By the end of the drama the plot became almost non sensical.
However, the performances and relationship between the leads is the saving grace of the show. Han Hyojoo does a great job of playing a clueless woman who is out of her depth after being sucked into another world. The romance was engaging throughout and the chemistry makes the show enjoyable to watch. Even though I was not invested in the mystery of the show I was eager to watch the next episode just to see how the romance played out.

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Story - 10/10: The plot might be confusing in the beginning but I promise you, it gets so much more clearer. I've watched this when it just came out but it always comes into my mind when someone asks for a drama recommendation. It's a great drama to get someone new hooked. All my guy friends had a prejudice against dramas so I told them to watch this and they thanked me afterwards. The thrill that it gave me was amazing. To be honest, it was a little scary for me but it's definitely worth the while.

Acting/Cast - 10/10: I don't have much to say about this because I feel like every character was just meant to be there. It's incredible how each actor/actress embodied their character. The father (artist/drawer) was amazing at his role!

Music - 10/10: The music in the drama gave me chills. Each ost was great. I personally liked the osts they put in during emotional scenes. It really added and gives the audiences the emotion. During the scary parts, they also had sounds in for that. There's really no words to describe how good it was.

Rewatch Value - 7/10: The only reason that this is pretty low is because I feel like if I watch this a second time, the same feelings I felt when I watched it the first time will not be the same. The excitement won't be there since I already know what's going to happen. I feel like if people do watch this though, they might be able to discover things they haven't seen in the first time but I'm the type to focus more on the emotions.

I would recommend this drama to literally everyone I know. It's the type that everyone would enjoy no matter what kind of genre you would like!

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Great start but anticlimactic end

Started off well - really well. I'm very hugely into "isekai" and this drama predates the explosion of Korean isekai webtoons that made the genre itself extremely cliche and repetitive, so I'm surprised I put off watching this for this long. Premise aside, it started off meeting all my expectations and managed to stand out even in the vast sameness of the genre, but somewhere along the way, maybe around ep 10, it started getting repetitive and draggy. And that feeling of satisfaction that you get in a good ending was completely missing - when it finally ended it left me questioning the point of the last few episodes.

Despite the very disappointing and anticlimactic ending, rating it up because I liked the leads and I liked the show enough to binge it through the night (at least upto ep 10) and I wanted to know how it ended badly enough that I finished it.

Ironically, the person I could most relate to post-end was her boss, Prof Park. His expression pretty much mirrored mine when I finished the show.

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Great idea, confused execution

This was a really fun and exciting idea, but although the first few episodes were good and got me hooked, I lost interest after it became clear that it was all style and no substance or solid plot - like a cool dream: feels like you've got a great story going on, until you try to write it down and realize it doesn't make sense. As others have said more eloquently, rules kept being set that were full of great potential, but then were broken or just fizzled away. The FL was kind of a limp noodle: she was given all this agency - like being able to draw new scenes and being invulnerable to bullets! - but instead of kicking ass with that, she just... fainted a lot and sighed and cried. And the ML wasn't much better. I liked him in a few scenes - when he discovers she wasn't lying about the cartoon, and when he meets Dad for the first time and rails against that - but he didn't really work for me as an action hero. He does this cute little corner-smile, because apparently that's the only part of his face that can actually move! - appropriately cartoony, but I wasn't buying why he was so keen to come out of the cartoon world, where he got to be a CEO with a nice car, and live with boring noodle-girl on no money. His secretary pal/almost-love-interest was a lot more attractive, and probably would have given him Option 4 instead of grocery shopping. I wish the side-characters had been developed more: they deserved more airtime than the romance. Overall, full marks for the idea and the general feel of it, but downvotes for the incoherency.

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Interesting at the beginning, but only okay by the end.

I'm gonna try to keep this as short as possible. "W" has a really strong, interesting premise, but I feel it begins tripping itself up between a third and half of the way through and basically collapses once it passes the finish line. I did find many of its ideas thought-provoking, but I feel "W" tried to do too much and too little at the same time, and thus self-sabotaged itself in a truly unfortunate manner.

The acting was alright. Most of the cast was fine (as a side note, seeing Park Won Sang so happy in his photo in the cast list was a huge jumpscare), while the triad of actors I internally dubbed "the Golden Trio" were absolutely excellent and tugged at my heartstrings every time: Lee Jong Suk (Kang Cheol), Kim Eui Sung (Oh Sung Moo), and Lee Si Eon (Park Soo Bong), with Heo Jung Do (Park Min Soo, aka Yeon Joo's boss) remaining only an honorable mention because he never made me cry (though he sure was funny!). I feel that the four actors I just mentioned gave their absolute all to their performances and it showed, worked well, and significantly improved the drama. In fact, I felt an immense amount of respect for Eui Sung Kim by the end, as just watching his face change from scene to scene was enough to make me cry. In his case, I could fully believe he was who he was portraying, and that's without even considering that he played two roles at once... What an incredible actor.

Han Hyo Joo (Oh Yeon Joo), however... I read that she has gotten awards and recognition before, and I have not watched her other work, but man... I don't know whether it was her, the script, the directing, or all three, but in many of the scenes she was in, she was about as animated as a mannequin. (I swear, the red flags started popping up when I watched the opening titled sequence for the first time with a blank expression even as Jong Suk Lee smiled at her.) She did show some more intense emotion at some points, but I really wanted to see her get immersed in the story and yet, somehow, I didn't. It is partially because of her that I think "W" did not leave a strong impression on me.

For this reason, I almost feel "W" should have been not about Yeon Joo and Cheol, but rather about Sung Moo, Soo Bong, and Cheol. They worked great together as a team, and when the action was focused on them, the story flowed much better because they actually moved with it instead of standing stiffly and waiting to be acted upon. For someone who was supposedly a protagonist, Yeon Joo sure didn't act like one.

And so I feel "W" tried to be too many things. It should have stuck to the more serious, intense tone all the way through. I actually really like romance and am not even remotely opposed to it - in fact, I LIKE when it is included - but here I feel that the over-intense focus on it complicated the story far too much. If it was more of a side thing, perhaps it would have worked better.

The music was okay but forgettable, and having to listen to the same sad song about love in every episode actually got rather annoying. Some editing/filming mistakes were left in the final product but that's more of a minor thing. The thing they did with Eui Sung Kim's face was definitely creepy. The characters themselves were mostly interesting (with those like Yeon Joo being the exception), and I feel that Kang Cheol was the strongest of them all. I'm not one to allow myself to obsess over actors, but with how Jong Suk Lee played the role... I mean, I think I really (respectfully) see why "W" may have been the best webtoon in Korea during its runtime. I just wish they'd given him more of a purpose in the latter half of the series because on his own he WAS a good character.

As a side note, the "W" webtoon art was both beautiful and somewhat inconsistent. I wish they'd structured some of the manhwa sections better because sometimes the chapters looked more like spliced-together highlight reels than actual story episodes. Also, I somehow found myself doubting that "W" could've been the top webtoon when much of its runtime seemed to be focused only on Kang Cheol searching for - and repeatedly failing to find - the real culprit.

The series also left some things unexplained, and seemed to bend its own rules at points where it found itself in a tight spot. I had to turn off my brain after about a third to half of the way through because I didn't want to care too much about a series I wasn't 100% locked in to anyway.

In the end? I guess "W" was okay. I probably won't be rewatching this (sorry, Kang Cheol!), but I'm glad I gave it another chance, at least.

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OLD REVIEW: Had to put this on hold.

I will be revisiting this show, but I honestly found it unbearable on the first watch. The female lead was strange and the story was kind of confused and directionless. I thought the initial idea was good but then everything kept getting more jumbled and unintelligible. It's been a few years since I've watched this but that's just what I remember feeling.

Like I said, I will revisit this but for now this is a no from me.

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Exciting Concepts, Messy Ending

Because of its widespread popularity, "W" has attracted lots of criticism. I quickly heard about the drama when I first got into them, but because of such negative criticism, I stayed away from it. I finally decided it was time, though, so here we are.

I don't want to sit on its problems for so long, so I'll just overview some of it. First of all, there are a great deal of plot holes and points of confusion that aren’t really explained (despite the somewhat prolonged ending). Despite this, I would still argue that the pacing of the show keeps you so invested that the plot holes aren’t so cumbersome, merely occurring because “the plot demands it.” The concepts and points the writers are making with the plot points are so interesting as well that it makes it easier to suspend your disbelief.

The second problem for me is the ending. It is very messy and much darker than the more intriguing first half. In fact, it is shockingly dark, in my perspective, which contrasts with some of the themes and purposes of the show. Juxtaposed with the even more confusing story line, the second half and its ending dropped my rating from an 8 to a 7.

As opposed to the popular opinion, I do not find Jong Suk Lee to be the best actor. Despite having an entire character laid out for him, his fake smiles and flat deliveries struck again. Even if you don’t love him as I don’t, this won’t deter your entertainment from the show. But as a side note, shout out to Eui Sung Kim who did a great job.

Because the show is absolutely entertaining. Every episode brings sometimes several new plot twists that you never see coming (mostly because they are never explained, but still). There is a more philosophical take on life that I haven’t seen much in K-dramas which was fresh and enjoyable.

So even though it isn’t perfect and is full of choppiness and “wait, what?” moments along the way, I would say this show is worth watching for its interesting take on writing and life.

Side note: my rewatch value is always my entertainment value because I hardly rewatch dramas. As always, I am so appreciative of the work and efforts of the cast and production team into making this show. It is a lot of work to put together any type of work of art; and we get to enjoy it! So big shout out to them and those making it available to us.

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Mindblowing piece of art, but lacking in the romance section

This may be the first time I have written a review before completing a series, and it's only because it's too good to wait.

I have never seen such an interesting worldbuilding, where there is an overlapping of a fictional world and reality, where danger and characters can cross over both worlds. The first episode has completely captivated me, and the rest of the episodes contains so many twist and turns, I was left gasping or squealing at the end of every one if them. I did start feeling very bad for the choices FL has to make all the time, and for her dad as well. And sometimes, the plot does become a bit confusing, especially for those who actually use their brains when watching a drama series (cuz I don't). But either way, the plot is still interesting enough to grip your attention.

Albeit some parts were a tad scary, but that's only because I am very very easily scared.

We have superb acting from both ML and FL, and I especially love ML's cheeky yet warm smile. I think that the ML may be one of the most substanced male leads I know, if that even makes any sense. While in many dramas, the ML is there purely to be FL's romantic partner, but this is not the case here. We witness ML's growing understanding, sympathise with his situation and actions. And he is not simply an FL accesory.

The only bad bits were that I feel like so much is happening in the plot, there wasn't enough time for ML and FL's relationship to truly blossom. I was slightly disappointed with this bit, as obviously it was the main reason I had started it. That's why I dropped the ratings to 8, which is still a really high score only redeemed but its interesting world settings. The side characters weren't very well developed either, as they were like props to push along the storyline, with only a few being an exception.

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