This review may contain spoilers
Can the romance and comedy be found?
SPOILER:Watched it all. Such a waste of good actors. Rom-com? Rom-com where?! In episode 1-3 and then just traumas traumas traumas. EVEN THE DIMPLES WERE A CAMEO! he barely smile 🥴
THEY EVEN HAD THE FUNNY AHJUSSI (SUNJAE'S DAD!) and he was barely there!
There was too much.
-abusive childhood
-Dead parents
-Mother tried killing her
-He met again his first love when his brother introduce her as his girlfriend
-The whole wedding flop
-The hallucinations
-The Hiro being a diva but liking her but being weak(he was a mess)
-The first love appearing JUST as they were getting close
-The first love having a ONS with the FL assistant
-The ML mother and son drama
-Her "switching" with her hallucination
-Her looking exactly like her mom
-Also her parents were not dead, they both got rescued but her father couldnt look at her EVEN THOUGH SHE DIDN'T LOOK LIKE HER MOTHER AT ALL YET (that was his excuse)
-Her learning that from the ML instead of her family all her lies about what she remembered or not
-Her leaving him IN THE LAST EPISODE FOR WHAT LOOKS LIKE MONTHS TO A YEAR to find her mother AND ONCE SHE COMES BACK WE DON'T HEAR ABOUT IT
They kissed 3 times, one was one sided the other was ep 10 and the other last minutes of last ep.
where was the comedy except in episode 1? Why was she such a loser constantly saying out loud how he just rejected her after they knew each other very briefly. Where was the ROMANCE? Kim Seon-ho was soooooo good with Min-ha and IU, why does it feels so flat here?
At some point I was watching waiting to see ahjusshi🤷♀️ It started fun and quirky but took a nosedive so fast. So disappointing...
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But let’s talk about Go Youn-jung. I’m honestly blown away by how she handles her character’s duality. Playing a "double role" (Cha Mu-hui and Do Ra-mi) requires immense subtlety to make the nuances land, and she nails it, jumping from one facet to another with such natural ease. The dynamic between the leads is electric and feels incredibly organic.
The international addition of Sota Fukushi is a masterstroke. His presence brings a different energy, and his chemistry with the rest of the cast feels very fresh. On top of that, the scenery is breathtaking; the cinematography takes advantage of every location, making the series feel like a constant visual journey.
In short: A tender story, visually flawless, and a cast overflowing with charisma. If you’re looking for something to leave your heart feeling warm and your eyes mesmerized, this is it.
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A completely different show from what I expected
So basically, what I imagined how this show would be was as follows:FL is shooting a reality show with a Japanese actor and in order to understand each other ML has to translate. However, SML slowly falls in love with her and tries to swoon her over while ML has to watch. We did get a few scenes like that but I wanted more. Also I wanted the FL to be more swayed between the two men. I wanted Hiro to be bolder and clumsier to create funny moments and ML to be more tsundere but caring to catch FL’s attention. And I was hoping to see this kind of rom-com style in the form of an adventure across cultures.
Instead we got a psychological-romance 🤯 And no it was not done very well! Here are the reasons why I didn’t like it:
1. It irked me how a very serious mental health condition was treated in such a lighthearted, comedic way. It seriously gave me the ick! Well luckily they ended it well in the last episode, clarifying the reasons etc but throughout the whole drama I was just so confused and it was such a pain to watch.
2. The main couple’s banter was NOT CUTE NOR FUNNY! the constant push and pull was giving me so much unnecessary stress!!! In just ONE EPISODE they would go from fighting to making up and even promising to stay together and back to fighting and breaking up again!!!! I was so frustrated!!! People who find this romantic have a serious problem istg!
3. I didn’t understand why Hiro reacted so extremely negative towards Mu-hee, just because she didn’t know who he was 🙄
Other than his good looks his character was rather annoying…
4. Some scenes were SO CRINGE to me I was getting goosebumps 😖 For example when Hiro and Mu-hee were on a tv-show date in Canada and there was a musician playing music or sth and they were both acting “funny” but I was just getting second hand embarrassment it was so cringe how obviously fake it all was. There were some other scenes like that…
So basically the only things I liked about this drama were the beautiful travel locations that were filmed so beautifully, so props to the cinematographer, they literally saved this drama.
And I really liked the second couple a lot! They had much more chemistry than the main couple 🥲🥲🥲
This is it! I hope the rest of the upcoming netflix dramas will be better…
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Opposites attract
This KDrama feels like a series from 2015, but with a much more expensive budget. The travel part was lovely, but I feel like it could of still worked if it were filmed only in Korea and Japan. It has a slow romance, crazy family background, great leads and has a "one of the leads falls first, but the other falls harder" type of story. I loved the love story, honestly I don't remember a KDrama from recent years which made me feel like I was actually watching a couple falling love (great chemistry is not the same thing).The Hong Sisters are mostly known for darker stuff, and there is a storyline here which was hidden from the trailers, and may surprise some viewers. It is not exactly a rom-com, so be warned. So I would recommend it, but not for those who expect a fluffy rom-com, this is a romance drama with some comedy and horror elements.
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Can This Plot Be Translated??
What is it with kdrama writers and self-sabotaging their own story????!I’m asking this as someone who wanted this drama to win. I didn’t come in with knives out. I came in wrapped in a scarf, holding a warm drink, ready to settle into what felt like it could’ve been the romcom that set my emotional tone for 2026. And for six glorious episodes, Can This Love Be Translated convinced me it knew exactly what it was doing. Then episode seven happened, and the whole thing drove itself straight into a ditch, set the car on fire, and insisted the flames were actually a metaphor for something profound.
Let’s get this out of the way first: the two leads were excellent. Go Youn-jung as Cha Mu-hee and Kim Seon-ho as Joo Ho-jin did everything right, even when the script actively betrayed them. Their early chemistry wasn’t loud or gimmicky; it was lived-in, observational, and deeply human. Kim Seon-ho’s Ho-jin, a polyglot who could translate every language except his own emotions, was quietly devastating. Go Youn-jung’s Mu-hee, all bravado and humor masking abandonment trauma, felt fragile in ways that never begged for sympathy. Even when their characters devolved into narrative nonsense by episode seven, both actors kept trying to ground the scenes with sincerity. You could practically see them holding the script at arm’s length, whispering, “Are we sure about this?” while still committing fully.
The first six episodes were precision strikes. Every interaction felt intentional. The ramen shop meet-cute in Tokyo wasn’t just funny, it was character work. Their banter wasn’t flirting for the sake of flirting; it was two lonely people circling each other cautiously, testing safety. The show understood the beauty of emotional intimacy before romance. Trauma wasn’t unveiled with dramatic violins and monologues, but slipped into ordinary conversation while driving, walking, eating. Mu-hee casually mentioning her family never liking her. Ho-jin explaining he doesn’t express pain because he doesn’t want to burden others. This was carecore at its finest: gentle, respectful, observant.
And that Calgary separation scene? That was the moment I fully bought in. No histrionics. No overwrought music cues. Just two people standing at an emotional crossroads, saying exactly enough and not a word more. It was autumnal storytelling, quiet ache, crisp air, feelings suspended like breath. For a hot second, I thought, oh wow, this might be a top-tier romcom that actually understands adulthood.
Then episode seven rolled in like a writer’s room panic attack.
Somewhere between episodes six and seven, this drama lost its identity like it misplaced its passport and decided to reinvent itself at the airport. Ho-jin and Mu-hee didn’t evolve; they devolved. They started talking in circles, saying a lot of words that added up to absolutely nothing. Conversations that once felt organic suddenly became riddles masquerading as depth. The emotional clarity that anchored the early episodes evaporated, replaced by vague philosophizing and dialogue that sounded profound until you actually tried to connect it to anything that had come before.
The drama completely lost its identity. The emotional logic that once guided every interaction evaporated. And then came the catastrophic decision: introducing Do Ra-mi as full-blown Dissociative Identity Disorder.
This was, without exaggeration, one of the stupidest plot developments I’ve seen in a while.
Do Ra-mi worked as a hallucination, a manifestation of Cha Mu-hee’s self-sabotage, fear, and inner critic. That’s relatable. That’s grounded. That’s human. Turning her into a front-and-center DID personality this late in the game didn’t deepen the narrative; it obliterated it. Instead of exploring Mu-hee’s trauma with nuance, the show externalized it into a gimmick and then acted like this was always the plan. It wasn’t. You can feel the pivot. You can hear the writers convincing themselves this was clever.
From there, the drama nosedived hard. Scenes stopped building on each other. Characters spoke as if they were auditioning for different shows. Emotional beats were implied but never earned. Plot threads appeared, tangled, and were abandoned mid-thought. Narrative beats that were dressed up with pretty lighting and scenic backdrops, but underneath it all was nothing. And I mean nothing. No continuity. No character logic. Just pretentious bullshit piled on top of pretentious bullshit. You can put a ribbon on garbage, film it at golden hour, and it’s still garbage.
This is where the Hong Sisters’ worst instincts kicked in. This wasn’t a story taking risks; it was a story spinning its wheels and pretending that disorientation equaled depth. No one was following their own internal logic anymore, not the characters, not the themes, and certainly not the plot. Instead of tightening the story, they spun it. Instead of resolving arcs, they abstracted them. Everyone stopped behaving like the people we’d come to know. Ho-jin, whose entire core belief was about not burdening others, suddenly existed in philosophical limbo. Mu-hee, once proactive and emotionally honest, became a narrative prop. The drama wasn’t just confused about what it wanted to say; it was lost, acting like it knew exactly where it was going, and confidently spewing nonsense the whole way there.
I dropped this at episode ten, not because it was merely bad, but because it actively pissed me off. There’s a difference. Plenty of dramas lose the plot and quietly limp to the finish line. This one doubled down on its own confusion with a level of pretension that suggested the writers genuinely believed they were crafting something profound. Here’s the thing: something that looks overly complex isn’t automatically meaningful. Sometimes it’s just a mess wearing a philosophy scarf. Here, it’s also just spiralized nonsense.
And that’s what hurts the most. This drama could’ve been it. It had the bones. It had the performances. It had six near-perfect episodes that made me sing its praises loudly and confidently. I believed in it. I recommended it. I thought it was smarter than most romcoms, warmer than most melodramas, and mature in a way we don’t often get. Watching it implode felt like betrayal, not disappointment.
So no, this wasn’t just a miss. This was self-sabotage on a spectacular level. A drama about translating love forgot how to communicate with its own audience. A story about emotional clarity drowned itself in performative obscurity. By the end, I wasn’t asking “Will they be together?” I was asking, “Can this damn plot be translated at all?”
Personal note, because this part matters: this drama broke my trust. I don’t need perfection. I don’t even need brilliance. What I need, what I expect, is consistency. Respect for the universe you built. Respect for the characters you defined from episode one. I was ready to invest twelve hours of my emotions into this story. Twelve hours of believing in its voice, its rules, its promises. I thought one of the beauties of having a singular writer’s vision, especially compared to Western writers’ rooms, is supposed to be consistency. A clear throughline. Instead, what I got was a story that betrayed its own foundations and asked me to pretend that was intentional artistry.
Verdict: A stunning first half undone by narrative arrogance, late-stage gimmicks, and writers who mistook confusion for depth. Go Youn-jung and Kim Seon-ho deserved better. We deserved better. I’m blacklisting the Hong Sisters going forward, not out of spite, but out of pattern recognition. A drama that had gold in its hands and threw it away with confidence.
This one didn’t just disappoint me. It broke my trust.
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Failed to meet my expectations after a steller first few episodes.
The longing tone, cinnemetography, soundtrack and performances by GSY in particular are excellent, but the direction the drama takes, especially in the middle episodes, make me wish it were a simpler by the book love story focused on travel, culture, and life experiences told in half as many episodes without romanticizing a serious psychological condition of dissociative identity.Was this review helpful to you?
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Well excuted example of how too much cream can topple the cherry on the cake
This pretty much two dramas with the first 7 episode being a romantic melo-comedy with a sad ending followed by the final 6 epsiodes being a pychological romantic thriller with a happy ending but it is actually a very good excution so the genre shifting(similar to the many locations they go to) will keep you hooked and not annoy you. The two lead actors are the icing on the cake as they are the reason why why this has a high rewatch value for me espcailly seeing Go Youn-jung act in multiple unique personas. Kim Seon-ho role is simple but keeps us glued and is the glue in the push-pullesque chemistry. However this story did not need the Second leads to have such prominence. Their subplots where'nt just unrcessary but they were elongated and frankly with way too much screen time than what was required, although both the second leads did what's asked acting wise. This is one of the best examples of what happens when a production has way more budget than what it needs. Despite having a 9.5 level story, adding stuff for the second leads in teh screenplay dropped it all the way to 8.0. It is a huge potential wasted cause this could have been a 9.0+ rated kdrama easily, and probably an amazing and unique example of how to excute a genre switching screenplay perfectly.Again you still get an amazing cake but its got too much cream for the cherry to sit on it. Most people are just going to skip the cream like I did in which case the last few epsiode where only 20-30 minutes long.
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It pains me to write this
It literally pains me to write this for a drama that Kim Seonho stars as I am a huge fan of his. But this drama has disappointed me in so many levels... The original storyline from how I had seen it on the trailer seemed amazing! And the first episode also was incredible. After watching it, I felt like I'd found my kind of drama.I was quickly disappointed when the whole Do rami storyline was introduced. The drama changed rapidly after that. From a lighthearted comedy that I was expecting to watch, it became a psychological quest, in which I was wondering the whole time WHY is everyone putting up with the FL and not taking her to a psychiatrist from the first place. I found the side story very annoying and time consuming, ruined all the romance and the originality of the plot.
And even worse, when the FL started to understand that she didn't even remember a whole part of her day or when she was sure that Do rami took control she was completely unbothered, as if everything was normal. Really disappointing... Expected it different... Especially given the fact that I love the cast.
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Lost the magic in the middle
From ep 1-6 this is really good, after that the writers lost it.In ep 6 itself it gets confusing cause both of them confess that they like each other but for some reason they decide to split up. After that we give the fl a split personality disorder to show the fl opening up to the male lead ( instead of her just facing her trauma and trying to heal) and then the disorder suddenly goes away one day?? even the 'reveal' at the end didn't do much. It does not even feel like she truly got over her trauma.
When our leads got together it didn't connect with me emotionally cause so much of the story was taken up by the alter ego- do rami.
The locations and the 'translating' concept were nice
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As many languages as there are people...
I really loved the ear-piece scene in episode 1, seen again in episode 10. It’s such a powerful metaphor for how we hear what we want to hear. The message is conveyed through language but also through voice, espacially when it's about feelings! I wrote a deep-dive analysis about the translation aspect and the 'evil twin' psychology if anyone is interested: https://mariejoncquez.substack.com/Was this review helpful to you?
That hopeful melo fairytale
Do we understand even when we communicate?🩷 Nuanced romance
💛 Timidity vs spontaneity
❤️ FL falls first ML falls harder
🧡 Slow-burn but heartfelt
💜 warm and sad and surprising
This was an ingenuous take on language, translation and how we comprehend others based on whats said but what of those left unsaid. And our leads, both Mu Hee and Ho Jin spoke plenty with just their eyes.
Though the story haf some dip in energy but it was carried through by the strong performance of the actors. They made you believe when 2 beings who approach life very differently found attracted to each other. The tension. The mood. That yearning for love and romance. The scenery, the breathtaking aurora. All made for a very cinematic and memorable watch.
Excellent production. May we hope more of this calibre from Netflix.
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To think this was my most anticipated kdrama
Plot:- I thought it was gonna be a drama about unrequited love at first, but the plot took a really drastic and weird turn. The very definition of “we lost the plot”.
- The alter ego plotline really killed the romance for me. She even got more time with ML than real Muhee in Italy. Felt like he was babysitting.
- The concept of the show they’re filming reminds me of the old korean show “We got married”. Loved those.
- 2nd couple came out of nowhere. Ick.
Production:
- The music, setting, and cinematography were atmospheric. It was good.
Characters:
- Mu hee is such a fun and quirky character. I like her. But Do Rami is the reason the plot took a dip for me.
- Dont get her initial attraction to the ML. He wasn’t even nice to her and personality is so dry. Glad he got more palatable throughout though.
- 2nd FL had romantic relations with 3 men in the span of 1 drama. Cant take her seriously.
Casting
- I think the actors acted really well. I would cry whenever they would lol.
- So happy Kim Seon Ho is back on my screen. With pretty Go youn jung too. But he probably should’ve picked another script for his comeback drama.
- Hiro’s actor’s visuals really be testing my loyalty to Kim seon ho.
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