Rollercoaster of Emotions!
No drama before has ever made me feel such conflicting emotions before, I feel upset with the ML for the most part probably as FL is in a foreign land and being a female it's easier to relate to her. I feel she should not end up with him. But, at the end of each episode, I again end up back at square one conflicted that maybe they belong together. Because they are not bad people, just humans at the end of the day making decisions that are probably best in their perspectives. Both seyoung and Sakaguchi are portraying their characters brilliantly, you feel their angst and depression and that they moving with the flow rather than living according to their own wishes. Sadly, very close depiction of how people really are.Was this review helpful to you?
Not your typical Star-crossed lovers yet one of the best shows of 2024!
This is a Melodrama, so the story is not your typical fluffy Japanese/Korean drama.The drama started off with a fast pace. The story is very straightforward and no slow-burn trope here, yet the story is mixed with angst. There are misunderstandings too and language barrier and cultural differences are the themes of this drama.
A very romantic couple end up getting separated after harsh circumstances only to find each other again years later because guess what? FATE shows up., but they haven't moved on from each other. The yearning is palpable in every episode.
The leads have an awesome chemistry. The kiss scenes, hugs, them holding hands, everything is done so beautifully. I dare say this is one of the best Asian dramas i have seen where couples' interactions and romance is so natural. Despite the language barrier, they play so amazingly.
This drama's main point is that love can conquer all if couples COMMUNICATE.
The cinematography is artistic. The director of this drama is known for indie movies so cinephile fans will greatly appreciate the aesthetics and details shown.
The OST is amazing! the background music pieces are just marvelous. The cinematography and colors they used truly match the mood and also show the emotions of the leads.
Overall, if you're in for a romantic mature angsty melodrama, this is for you! don't miss it!
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A Moment Is Forever.. Just As Forever Is A Moment..
I put off watching this for so long because deep down I guess I was scared it would be over once I finished it.. I would never get to experience the same feeling again.. This was one of my most anticipated dramas but it was too short and far too angsty.. Maybe I didn’t want to let go of the emotions it stirred in me..I was really upset when they decided to drop only one episode per week.. But despite the wait and I waited too long, my fault, this has been a painfully beautiful experience.. This drama deserves to be recognized as one of the best in terms of strorytelling and acting.. I mean, the acting was just phenomenal.. The casting director deserves a raise and all the glory.. Lee Se Young and Kentaro were perfect.. Their performances made it all the more heartbreaking.. This is going to leave an even deeper memory than I imagined..
"That was the moment when I realized that fate really did exist in this world..
I never felt anything like it before..
It was also a moment that I would never get to experience again.. "
"Up until now, I have never believed in fate or miracles..
I used to think they were nothing more than coincidences..
But there she was.. It was a miracle.. "
"Beni now had the look of someone who had completely turned their back on the past..
Her eyes did not shine like they did on that day..
I wonder if Beni remembers how I asked her out.. "
In the present timeline both leads looked like their souls had died.. Their eyes were lifeless as if true happiness no longer existed for them.. It was a sad contrast to their past which had been so vibrant and full of joy until it wasn’t..
"That day, she shouted at me with a look I had never seen before..
That day, a scar was left on my heart.. The scar on my heart read regret.. "
Her so called fiance knew she didn’t love him.. He knew she didn’t want to marry him.. He knew she wasn’t happy.. If she had been given the chance she would have called off the marriage.. He knew all of this, yet he never gave her the chance to leave.. He was like a chain holding her back..
In the first episode she says "I just wanted to leave the nest and try living a life for myself.. " He was caging her back in that nest once again.. She made it obvious.. She made it so painfully obvious how unhappy she was with the reluctance to even look at his wedding suit.. But he was so selfish, so shameless, that he wanted to keep her no matter how broken she was..One of the worst characters in the story.. If there was an antagonist, it was him.. People might not understand why I see him as the antagonist when he had all the qualities of a great husband.. But that’s not the point is it?? Forced love and forced relationships will never have a happy ending.. She would forever live a lie.. SML knew that if the Jungo made even a 10% effort he would lose her.. The only reason he hesitated to propose for so long, even after marriage talks began was because he knew she might reject him.. And that might end up as the final push for her to realize this wasn’t the life she wanted..
"We met again like a miracle.. What does this mean??
What is the meaning of this?? Is this a chance to start over or is this a sign that we need closure?? "
"You know it too right?? That I suck at remembering things.. But why can't I forget my memories with Jungo?? "
"Honestly, I didn’t write this novel with the intention of telling a grand story..
I wrote this novel simply because of my regret toward one person and the memories I couldn’t forget..
My true feelings were written down.. It was with the faint hope that if that person read my book they would understand my foolishness and immaturity back then.."
"Life doesn’t really unfold the way you say it should.. And there are times when it’s better not to say anything..
Thanks to my mom, I learned these things when I was still a little too young.. "
"Reading your book made me wonder.. Does love actually have an ending??
There most definitely is a beginning, but there doesn’t seem to be an end.. "
One of the best scenes of the drama, where it potrays her love for Jungo was when she said
"Even if I was dating you before I met him.. Even if we were married and had three children..
Had I met him, my heart would have sunk like this.. "
"I remembered Jungo’s face.. His face, still in pain because of our clumsiness and recklessness.. Made our love more beautiful because it stopped midway.. Because there was no proper farewell.. "
I love how What Comes After Love incorporates color symbolism in its visual storytelling.. Beautifully reflecting the emotions and dynamics between Choi Hong and Jungo.. In most stories love wins no matter what but here it’s the harsh realities of life that decide the fate of those who love blindly..
Sakaguchi Kentaro.. What an exceptional actor.. With every drama and film of his I watch he continues to impress.. Lee Se Young's career has been filled with ups and downs.. Her previous two dramas were below average.. And the one released after this was also really bad.. I hope she chooses good scripts in the future.. She proved in The Red Sleeve what an exceptional actress she is.. She deserves a much better career..
Most people might not understand why I loved this drama.. No matter how much I try to explain.. It wasn’t just the story.. It was the way it made me feel.. Some feelings defy explanation..
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Heart-wrenching Anticipation
Severely underrated and beautiful drama. What comes after love is the story of a cross cultural romance between Choi Hong (Beni), and Aoki Jungo (Yun-oh). It starts years in the past where they are both college students, when Hong first ran away from home to travel to Japan and escape her family, only to find more than enough of a reason to stay. She meets Yun-oh and it's love at first sight, believing it to be fate as they continue to collide paths in their every day lives. They fall in love and start a relationship, one filled with firsts, happiness, and laughter. It's beautiful how they portray the start of their romance with the lingering glances, the brushing the hands, and the gentle opening of each other's hearts. Fast forward to 5 years later, Hong is back in Seoul and helping run her father's business, where we discover they've broken up. This is a short drama of only 6 episodes, with each episode revealing more of why their relationship fell apart. With their reunion in Seoul as Yun-oh is now an accomplished writer, it leaves the viewers in anticipation of their story - will their history together be enough to restore their love, or will life, other admirers, and unresolved feelings get in the way of a happy ending for them?This is a beautiful drama with the scenery, the build up of their feelings, and the happy flashbacks - the actors do an amazing job with their respected parts portraying how people fall in love and fall apart. This is definitely an underrated drama right now and not enough people are talking about it! More story and feelings are conveyed through one episode than it does through half of a typical romance kdrama. Definitely give it a chance if you're looking for angst and tension - something more raw and real, and perhaps something that might break our hearts.
Edit: Just finished watching all episodes! I still believe this is a beautiful drama, however, I do have to say I am a little disappointed in the ending. To me, it was just a bit more underwhelming and less emotional than I thought it would be. However, given how this this isn't really a typical kdrama, I supposed I shouldn't have had my hopes up for anything grand or extravagant either. I think what I had in mind was just a little more fulfilling than what it ended with. I really needed something that could convince me of their love, and that in reality they would have really ended up together, because it really did seem like they were about to have ended with an open/sad ending. I'm happy they're together, but I really needed both of them to fight more for their love! I feel like they had so much more they needed to talk about!! I guess it wouldn't have fit within the hour episode. I needed to see just a bit more of the after - didn't Beni tell him she got proposed to? Does Beni's mother approve of them? I suppose all of this doesn't technically matter at the end, and what mattered was that they had regrets and longings that they were able to let go of and start anew with the love they still have. I WANTED EMOTION!! I WANTED TO FEEL LIKE THEY TRULY WOULD HAVE MADE IT TOGETHER IN THE END!! Anyways, one of my favourite things they mentioned in this drama is that a moment can last forever, but forever could end in a moment. Their moments together were never forgotten by one another, which is what filled them with such deep regrets they could never truly let go of one another. It was the fact that there were so many moments where they could have understood each other and take the time to heal their relationship rather than slowly let it blacken, they didn't make it to forever the first time. Aside from this, I also wanted to just mention that the ost is so good!!! Love listening to it - super calming and somehow makes my heart hurt.
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For all the melo lovers!
Few ep into the drama: The story is carried by two people setting in japan. They eventually fall in love and we see them after 5 years of break up.The best part of Wcal is that the female is strong and independent who carries herself as her first priority and the ml is like a puppy who just cannot get over her. As they meet again the ml refuses to lose this opportunity. The rest you can continue.
The story is pretty fast paced and yet it still gives you butterflies. It has both pov thus making it even better. It would be a perfect melodrama for me.
Completion of the drama: it was good but not as good as it was initially. The later parts are a bit elongated and it kinda gets boring in the middle. It was fun to get into their relationship but this could have been better if it was more merrier. the overall mood of the drama was gloomy and sad. Its safe to say it worth watching it once.
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Cross-cultural love
I'm a sucker for cross-culture love dramas. Usually they flopped because the leads couldn't understand each other. Particularly bad have been some Japan-China or Japan-Taiwan tie-ups. It was pretty clear the leads didn't understand each other.Most recently there was another Japanese-Korean drama called Eye Love You which was great too because the leads understood each other. However, it soon became draggy and tried to achieve too many things, probably because it had more episodes than were needed.
In this drama, I read that FL learned Japanese for the role and it shows as both clearly understand each other and can react accordingly. This is a simple sweet and short love drama! Fast moving too. Loving it!
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The bilingual story is a sadistic tale of masochistic romance
A slow love story starts when Korean student Choi Hong bumps into Aoki Jungho. They start living together at a very early stage, and every moment they spend together is full of oh-so-love. But one day, Hong asks for a breakup, and she leaves.One of the biggest perks of a slow-burning love is that it takes time to build. In the case of this love, the continuous travel between past and present sometimes made the audience wonder. Sometimes the past seemed too happy, thus confusing the audience about the demeanor of Hong in the present life.
The performance of Lee Se Young after donning the marvelous The Marriage Story of Park is quite gloomy and nonchalant. Maybe it's the character graph that drags her more down. Every time she came on the screen, I felt more sad than hers. Kentaro Sakaguchi in the role of sad Jungo is less expressive than he was needed. His calmness made everyone around him uncomfortable.
For the first time in my life, I really wanted a sad ending to make the love less bulletproof and more logical...
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Raw, painful, slow-burn love story where love is not enough
I absolutely love separated lovers/ second chance romances because I feel like you get so much angst, longing, yearning, regret, hate, love, and resentment that you just don’t get with a straight laced love story.There is just something special about two people completely in tune with each other who life turns into strangers and then, time brings back together.
They don’t know who they are anymore but they know a part of each other nobody else does and when they are together, immediately everything that they were, everything that they lost and everything they could be bubbles up between them.
It’s that bubbling angst pot of love and loss that I NEED to see.
✔️ What comes after love nails all of the above. Hong and Jungo meet in the most natural of ways, they fall in love the most natural of ways and they fall apart in the most natural way.
✔️ The chemistry between the two leads is outstanding and you believe every emotion. From the initial puppy love, to the gradual soul deep connection to the budding frustration to the heartbreaking separation and then, the deep, fathomless longing - these two make every scene believable.
✔️The acting is excellent and I think this might as well be Lee Se Young’s best role. She is such a relatable and lovable character. A girl who left home to reach her dreams in another country only to meet the love of her life. A woman who realises she has to give up her love for her sanity. A human who is flawed and hurt and so she withdraws into herself.
Her portrayal of young innocence, chronic isolation, loneliness, hurt and disappointment are all brilliant.
✔️Holding his own against her is the absolutely gorgeous Sakaguchi Kentaro. This was my first time watching him and I was pleasantly surprised by his expressive eyes and very nuanced acting.
Jungo is closed off and doesn’t know how to show his love. The way Kentaro wears his regret and yearning is genuinely moving.
✔️The skinship in this show is very real and mature. The way they interact makes their love believable and the kisses feel electric.
Ultimately, this show doesn’t really have a plot. It’s a character driven story that captures the entire beginning, middle, end and rebirth of a cross barrier love between two people.
✔️It’s very slow paced and realistic and just the kind of show that you want to watch when the mood hits just right and it’s raining outside.
❌ That said, I do think that the plot tended to run a little bit in circles at times, the pacing was too slow in moments and for me, their young puppy love era was the most lacklustre to watch. Especially, the ending episodes with the random misunderstanding, missed timings and them repeating how lonely the FL was in their relationship a trillion times got a bit draggy. Also, I just feel like this kind of story had excellent potential to be a tragedy or have a bittersweet ending, somewhere where the couple got closure but moved on instead of a reunion because there is so much that has happened, so much that has changed about them that cannot be fixed so easily - but oh well, love wins!
✅ Overall, I had a great time just relaxing and vibing with this drama every Friday. Once a week seemed like the perfect pace for it and it felt artistic, emotive and like a little story book with six tiny chapters that acted as a window to the past, present and future for these two.
Overall, a solid watch.
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Not a popular opinion, but I did not like it.
This series tell the story of a couple, that were madly in love, and life happened to them. I might say this is why we do not watch what comes after love. I've been married, for quite some time I must add, I'm pretty aware that the honeymoon phase is not that long, just like anyone who's married or in a long term commited relationship. The problem of this series is the story is told in a very boring way. The only thing one's looking to see is if they're going to get back together, but as of episode 4, I'm not curious even about that. Would have been better if it was a movie. If you've liked this, you might like Now We're Breaking Up. If you're wondering what comes after love AND don't want to be bored I would recommend Between Him and Her.Was this review helpful to you?
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This is pure melodrama
What comes after love offers nothing new. It is about a Japanese man fated to meet South Korean woman and they fell in love. The unresolved tensions and questions only surface when they coincidentally (maybe not?) meeting after 5 years only to leave us, the viewers with why the couple broke up in the first place.However, the execution of the story telling makes this drama well-grounded from the start. Natural and top-notch acting, believable scripts with the subtly in expressions and line deliveries, stunning and great cinematography, amazing supporting roles, great bgm and ost and good pacing of the drama (sadly, we only have 6 episodes).
I had watched Lee Se Young acted in many dramas before and she is always gave her all. (The Red Sleeves left me wounded). I am also a big fan of Kentaro Sakaguchi and liked most of his recent works. (Soshite, Ikiru gravely left me a scar). This drama marks his most intimate relationship in a drama. Bringing them in one scene is truly a bless with neither one of them outshines the other. They are both balances their roles outstandingly.
Will it be happy/sad/open ending, we truly don't know. Hopefully, whatever ending at the end of road will make everyone resolved their misunderstandings and be happy (I look at you Yun oh and Beni).
Thanks for the production and staffs for bringing this amazing drama for us.
p/s: Pardon my english, it's not my native tongue.
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Is there really anything after Love?
A beautiful story about love, youth, and loneliness. A romdrama in its true sense where what is not said speaks louder than what actually is said. A silence so painful it broke my heart, over and over again making me feel stuff.That said this drama also has a whole lot of fluff, there to make sure you see the difference between the joyful past and the numb present. this is also a drama that uses hair to speak to the audience, not only as a marker of time but also something that had me wondering how they could keep their hair that straight or curly for so long...
The OST is one that I will probably remember for a long time, the line: "Hold me in your eyes" in the context of the drama has such great meaning, as the mimics may try to lie but the eyes tell the story, them and of course the hair.
A highly bingebale drama thatI do recommend, and is probably more of an 8.75 than an 8.5
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Not only cliche, but annoying
The first lines she spoke was her self awareness that she's flighty and runs when there's conflict, then she packs up and leaves the love of her life because he "made her feel lonely"? Ridiculous. She claims she's alone in a foreign country and only has him to rely on, but she speaks fluent Japanese? There was nothing keeping her from joining a club or taking up a hobby. They're working to make ends meet, but she doesn't respect that he's working, not ignoring her. She accused him of being self absorbed while whining about HER needs? I literally detest dramas where the lead has a whole blown up melodrama going on inside her head that she barely shares with the one person she should have. It's called COMMUNICATION. I just cannot root for her to get back with this man. He wasn't cheating, wasn't hitting her, but she's walking around Korea being a total coldie to her staff and treating him as if he was the worst boyfriend ever? That's not loneliness, it's needy codependence. Girl needs a pill and a reality check.Was this review helpful to you?
