Pure and real love
For me the ultimate romance/sad drama ever.The acting is so good, and the characters fit the actor like a snug globe.
I also like that is about a type of love that no one talk about, that love when you don't need or demand anything from the other person, when you just love.
There really no words to express how much I love this drama, for me is in a different level just because is makes you feel something so pretty.
Kim Tae Ri and Nam Joo-Hyuk are such amazing actors, that it doesn't feel like a drama or like a super production, instead it feels real, as the series develop you fall in love with them in a wonderful way.
Plis wacht it
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Can love stand it all?
It was one of the series that made me think a lot about the end of my adolescence and the beginning of my youth, my expectations for the future and my dreams.I think anyone who is already in their 20s may even realize that history connects very strongly to our lives.
And not just in love, in everything.
Our friendships are different from the ones we had in elementary school, in high school, in college...
Life is an eternal farewell and an eternal encounter (of new people) (and reunions)
We let people go, and we accept new people into our lives.
I think the main lesson of Dorama is to remember with affection each stage lived, and that moment that yesterday is difficult, tomorrow will become a brief, or beautiful memory.
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Made me cry my eyeballs out but would do it again cause its bloody good
Firstly this drama is so freaking amazing 😭😭😭The way the rs grew between the 2 main leads was so pure, adorable and beautiful. I invested my heart and soul into their rs. They supported each other and became a pillar of strength to each other. It was so cute i cried every episode(im not very mentally ok as you can tell)
The bg music was very well picked cause it made me cry harder during the sad scenes like it really broke me down yk 👍🏼👍🏼 (give the sound director a raise tbh)
The entire cast was so adorable and they are really good at their jobs. i was straight up convinced kim tae ri was 18. There isnt much to say except they did an amazing job
Overall, The drama was really beautiful and such a pleasure to watch except the last 2 eps when they showed the downfall of the main rs. I cried for 3 days straight and no longer believe in love. However i would still totally rewatch and go through the pain again cause its really worth it 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼 yall should watch it but prepare urself
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A story about coming of age and the relationships that will shape you
I finished this almost a month ago and I still think about some scenes. This story is more than just a youth drama about romance, it is a story about life.This is going onto my list of GOATs. One of the best shows I've ever watched (ignoring episodes 14-16 lol), this has the nostalgia of Our Beloved Summer and the spirit of Haikyuu in the best way.
It's a story about an unforgettable summer of youth - coming-of-age, looking forward and moving forward, with the deep camaraderie and friendships/relationships that will shape who you are as a person in the years to come.
I loved every single relationship and moment, so full of joy and nostalgia and warmth. I could write essays about Na Heedo and Bek Yijin's relationship. The ending was controversial yes, but their relationship moved me so much. It's my happy place. Regardless of how it turns out, the fact that they had such a relationship is what mattered the most.
Kim Tae-ri and Nam Joo-hyuk shone in their respective roles, especially Kim Tae-ri. It's worth watching just for her alone.
(Can't believe I found f/f kagehina in Ko Yurim and Na Heedo's relationship 🤣)
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the ending?
would’ve been a 10/10 if it weren’t for the ending. it was rushed, the characters were acting out of character, and the message the writer was going for was poorly executed. eps 1-14 were literally perfect, but then the finale undid so much of it. first of all, the ending made the present-day storyline pointless. what was the point of having it if minchae was yijin’s daughter and we wouldn’t get to see present-day yijin and heedo meet again? second of all, why give everyone else but baekdo a happy ending with a nice little bow on top??? that’s just unfair. third of all, why does heedo not even seem over yijin twenty years later? her atelier is named 2521, her reaction to her mom meeting yijin, and the fact that she talks like the life has been sucked out of her at times??? also the joke about how breaking off an engagement is easier than getting a divorce that she makes WHEN SHE’S A NEWLYWED??? does she just hate her husband???anyways, i don’t care what anyone says, the ending completely ruined the story. the only reason my rating for it is still on the higher end is because most of it was amazing, it’s just that the ending undid all that hard work. i will say that the acting in is absolutely impeccable, especially kim taeri and nam joohyuk. their chemistry was so good, i hope they work together again some day.
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GREAT START AWKWARD ENDING
Like many of the people reviewing this drama, i am really not bashing this drama but total opposite I am praising this drama just disappointed with the ending. Don't get me wrong i am not one of those people that necessarily needs a (leads end up together) type of happy ending. I understand what this drama was mainly about. This drama is basically about the two main leads having and relying on each other at a time of their life where they needed each the most. Without each other who knows if they would have been able to accomplish and get out of that slump that they found themselves in at that point in time. For me as a previous post mentioned is that they did not show if they at least remained friends. For me is just hard to explain how the deep love they felt at least on the side of Na Hee Do she was able to marry and have a child with who seems to be the same reasons she and Beak Yi Jin broke up. Never do they show her current husband who apparently is to busy to be around it doesn't make sense how she would end up with someone she always said she would neve be with ergo the reason they broke up.Was this review helpful to you?
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Fantastic Characters
I don't remember why I added this show to my ever-growing "Plan to Watch" list. More likely than not I saw a preview on Netflix after a movie or something, like I do so many, and saw that it had fencing and figured I'd put it on my list, but I can't really be sure.In any case, we actually started watching Twenty-Five Twenty-One by mistake. In my household we pick a series to watch while having dinner, and when our last series finished up I gave my teenager the pick. They had previously suggested a series, which also exists on the "Plan to Watch" list, but we couldn't remember which show it was. When we reviewed the list and saw the title, not remembering what it was, we thought that must be it and started watching.
I loved the series immediately. Na Hee Do's never-give-up attitude and largely sunny disposition especially made it enjoyable to me, but there were plenty of reasons to love the show. I loved that the rivalry didn't become a bitter feud with Go Yu Rim and instead became a close friendship. The level of humor was just right for me. The main characters all had development as they grew into adults.
While I understand a lot of people were unhappy with the ending, it was telegraphed from the beginning. While I avoided such endings (or anything short of super-happy) for a long time, this wasn't what I'd call a bad ending. I think a lot of people just weren't ready for the ending they surely knew was going to arrive.
Twenty-Five Twenty-One is a coming of age drama, and part of that experience is learning that sometimes life doesn't go as planned. Sometimes you have to drop out of college because you need to support your family, like Baek Yi Jin. Sometimes you have to give up all your hard work to maintain your integrity, like Ji Seung Wan. Sometimes you have to leave everything you know behind because of circumstances, like Go Yu Rim. And sometimes you have to accept that a relationship isn't going to work out regardless of how you feel about each other.
The only real issues I had with the show were some of the way flashbacks were handled, and that Kim Tae Ri was fine playing Na Hee Do at around 30, but for some reason they had Kim So Hyun play her in her 40s. This just seemed weird to me, especially given that Kim Tae Ri is actually in her 30s so I don't think it would have been that hard to "age" her for her older self.
An important thing to note about how my family watches the shows we pick is that we only watch 30-45 minutes at a time, and we never watch if one of us isn't here to watch with us. Due to various circumstances, and the holiday season, this means we started watching around December 9th, and just finished on February 8th. So Na Hee Do and Baek Yi Jin have been part of my family's lives for two months, and I can honestly say I will miss these characters.
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It was so good, totally worth watching, but it is not what I was expecting.
When we're young, everything we experience feel so big and consuming. Growing up teaches us perspective and how life never quite works out how we want and a single moment in our life will not destroy us forever. This is more or a slice of life type of story. It is not a romance. It's a beautiful, heart wenching, and brilliantly told story of an amazing and entertaining group of people. I would definitely recommend watching this to anyone who enjoys a good coming of age story. This is one of the best of them.Was this review helpful to you?
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I laughed my heart out and bawled my eyes out too!!!
This drama is so so good. I cannot even explain how much attached i had grown to it. This drama made me laugh out loud at so many instances and in the end made me cry for almost half an hour. This was so fresh. This is by far the best age of coming series. The acting was sooo sooo good. I fell in love with hee do's character, and each and every actor played theit roles very well. This drama was so so good. I just completed watching it and i binge watched it. It feels like i was with them in their journey too ,the drama feels just so much real, even though hee do and you Jin didn't end up together i don't hate the writers,, even the heartbreak was so well written and the build up was so so so much amazing which is why i ended up crying so much in the end as if I was having a heartbreak. This series will always have a very special place in my heart. Everyone needs to watch this series right now.Was this review helpful to you?
“I’ve missed you. But I saw you because you showed yourself to me.”
Originally written on Oct 31, 2022Twenty-Five Twenty-One is a traditional, sappy K-Drama combined with a live-action sports anime. While I know that sounds weird, it’ll make sense once you’ve seen it. I won’t dive too deep into the story, because Twenty-Five Twenty-One is at its best when you go in as blind as possible, but what I thought to be a lighthearted romcom quickly turned me into a broken mess. I’ve seen enough K-Dramas by this point to know what to expect, yet they still get me.
I’ve liked Kim Tae-ri ever since I saw her in Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden, so I went into Twenty-Five Twenty-One thinking her Na Hee-do would be my favourite character of the show, but I have to say I really enjoyed WJSN’s Bona as Ko Yu-rim as well. Seeing her character grow and finding out what blocked her from doing so for the longest time really resonated with me and turned her from someone I actively disliked at the start into a standout character. The rest of the cast, consisting of many great characters and friends to Hee-do, is very likeable as well.
Something I liked less, however, was how slowly the romances developed. Twenty-Five Twenty-One falls into the same trap as many other K-Dramas in that characters rarely say what they really want to say to each other, thereby dragging out character development and the beginning of their relationship(s) for as long as possible. Which, in the case of Twenty-Five Twenty-One, results in people getting into a relationship at the worst possible moments, resulting in frustration and more heartache than I could have imagined at the start of the show. It’s very effective, but it could’ve been paced a little better.
If the shoelace scene doesn’t wreck you after spending so many in-story years with these characters, I’m convinced you don’t have a heart. It is without a doubt one of the most precious moments I’ve seen so far in a K-Drama.
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THE FEELING OF THIS DRAMA
I personally feel that this drama is based on reality. We always get dramas on the unrealistic side but this drama specially shows the bittersweet side of love and how love most of time fails us. Na hee do aka kim tae ri does an amazing job portraying the character no one could've done better than her . All the emotions that we felt during the drama - teenage love , a heartbreak, how beautiful our youth is , and the older na hee do shows that how everything healed her and it was a just a memory from her teenage days. Loved this . A 9/10.Was this review helpful to you?
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I cried a lot
This drama I felt was fantastic from beginning up until episode 14. Like most everyone else, I was disappointed with how it ended. It made no sense, especially considering how much the ML and FL communicated with each other only to end up broken hearted for no real reason. Well I guess taking a job in NYC without telling your girlfriend is messed up and I would be super pissed over that. It made a lot of sense that FL did not want to go through the same thing she went through with her mom. Both people that were supposed to love her the most, almost always chose their careers over her. Clearly there were traumatic events that led to all of that but jeez, how sad is that? At times I felt this story was more about friendship, specifically the relationsoip between He-Doo and Yu-Rim while the romance was more in the background. Anyway, the ending was spoiled for me before I watched it, so I knew it was coming which is why I think I cried instead of being angry. lolOverall, I thought the acting was fantastic, the OST was so good, and the production was top notch. Everyone told me not to watch it but after finishing "Weightlifting FairyKim Bok-joo" I wanted to see more of Nam Joo-hyuk and this is where I ended up. I don't regret watching it though. Just wish it had ended differently. I still think it is worth watching, if you want your heart to get ripped out. :D
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