All makes perfect sense to me. Since the killer has the same face as the ML, would it make sense for him to be…
I don't know, I couldnt notice everything, and you noticed additionnal content I didnt focus enough on. What you say make sens. I don't try to guess too much about possibilities. I just rely on what I watch and can be decyphered with enough accuracy. Let's see what happens next with episode 3. ;-)
Here's a review like I've rarely read on this site! Well done.
I couldn't say if all these points were deliberately desired by the writer. But sometimes the analysis shows what has not been formulated, universal themes. Song Jae-jung says about herself that she's not a creative person. I don't know why, in my opinion, she opened her inner spiritual door. So, the contents of the story appear, enriched with meanings that can go beyond the author, and a large number of intuitive correlations. As a professional screenwriter, she certainly has the talent and the method to be aware of some of these contents, and to arrange them, even before writing the first line of the first episode (structure phase). Fascinating thing about her is that she doesn't produce additional content just for that. Everything is integrated into the hectic plot, without slowing down the action. That's what makes her dramas so addictive.
She's gone on holiday to Spain. This has come together with Elon Musk's biography and the game Pokemon Go. It's this mix of technology and historical theme. Matrix uses a scientific principle, with philosophy, but everything can be explained or made possible. Song Jae-Jung's stories are more metaphysical, because the original mystery has no explanation. It is also the first time that a TV series uses augmented reality (not to be confused with the virtual reality of The Matrix). There is thus superimposition of reality, and that of the other world. It's different from a full dive into another world.
In MOTA, the lenses, combined with a bug, are responsible for the problems. It should work in one direction only, the player influences the augmented world thanks to his vision capacity. Instead, the augmented world influences the player. The feeling of realism of the augmented world is such that perception is deceived, and ultimately the brain. Subjective perception of the world is at the heart of what reality is. It is in the field of consciousness, not physical reality whose nature is, if not illusory, indeterminable. If we look at quantum physics, we see the relationship between consciousness and the nature of reality. But some philosophies did not need this to understand it long before.
Alas, the last episode is too evasive, and few explanations are given, or too quickly, or in a too vague way. There is a potential plot-hole, or at least an inexplicable phenomenon. How could the character take refuge in an instance dungeon, when the whole game is reformatted? The dungeon is part of it. There's a similar mystery. How does the heroine's brother stay for months in an instance dungeon? How does he survive like that? And why can't other real people see him anymore, when they don't play the game and don't wear lenses that alter their sense of reality? Unless there is some other explanation, I suppose that for the one who wears the lenses, his alteration of the sense of reality may become such that he escapes objective reality. The player makes his own reality, which becomes concrete.
I have seen the drama 3 times, but I would like to see it again. Each time I noticed new things that had escaped me before. It's an exceptional work. As is often the case with Song Jae-Jung's dramas, part of the drama is easily accessible, and conducive to producing good ratings. But also, her dramas have a depth that is not accessible to everyone. However, this depth does not need to be explained, as it acts unbeknownst to the viewer, to invisibly reinforce the power of the drama. It is therefore not an artificial or superficial process, but of real use for the emotional power of the story.
I don know if anyone notice but the train always stop at the station where the bodies were found on rainy days…
Thank you! You've managed to pinpoint the exact conditions. Maybe it all started on a rainy day at 8:35? For a reason? Or maybe the schedule matches the train's schedule?
First off - I am super honored that a super fan of W found my review good. Super appreciate it.I can definitley…
Hi, my opinion on your review is sincere, you talk about a lot of things that I didn't mention, maybe for fear of spoiler, or that I wouldn't have had the idea to mention at all. I read interesting opinions and ideas from other people that I hadn't thought of myself. For example, an Internet user said that the whole drama could be seen as a process of mourning for a psychologically unstable girl whose father died. Surely this girl is in a psychiatric hospital or she has hallucinations, lol! The whole drama can also be perceived, in a more compatible way, as the resolution of an oedipal complex, since Yeon-Joo falls in love with the character of her father, and has to eliminate her father from the equation to live her love story with a man who is not her father.
Now you have some very specific questions. You've really dug into the subject. ^^ This will allow me to expose some points and potential weakness of the story. To know more about it, you would have to ask the writer, but I never succeeded in contacting her, alas.
Oh Yeon-Joo played a role when she was a child, she created the character of Kang Chul. But she never did anything else and her father was inspired by her character. Because of that, Oh Yeon-joo is connected to the mysterious principle that I explain as follows: Manhwa is a supernatural phenomenon with a different principle from a dimensional gate or a computer (like in Matrix). There is a part of arbitrariness, like the one in a comic book. For the tablet to work, the manhwa must recognize as author those who draw on it. That's why Soo-Bong couldn't make the tablet work (episode 6) and Yeon-Joo manages to do it.
In an interview, the screenwriter gives more importance to Kang Chul's will (but what she said was a bit blurry). When I had my avalanche of ideas for writing season 2, I did a general check-up on all the fuzzy points of the drama. Either the explanation was in the drama, or it was possible to guess. And ultimately, what couldn't be guessed, I had to find an explanation that was compatible with what was seen in the drama. Now, I don't remember if I found something like that, because it's more than 2 years ago and I rewatched many time the drama, looking for any missing clues in it, and found them most of the time. Luckily, everything was consistent, and I had a whole system that I could exploit (something I couldn't have done with TKEM). I rely much more on a coherent system than on things that fluctuate or depend on a character's will, except when the two are compatible. Maybe I don't have the same spirit as the screenwriter at that level, I studied science. It means that I integrate the arbitrary part into a coherent system. A Manhwa tells stories, it can't be governed by science alone. That makes it even more thrilling. It's what wanted to make the screenwriter, anyway.
One funny thing, for example, the script of episode 17 (episode 16 in the drama) contained a plot-hole (in my opinion), but the director never shot the scene! Either he was smart enough to know that there was a problem, or it was useless to show that, or the screenwriter said him at the last moment to not shot that. In any case, sigh of relief for me, because it would have contradicted what I wanted.
Of course, I reuse this principle of "author recognition" by the manhwa in season 2, and I am not stingy in explanations! You've got tons of explanations all over the place, for example in the flashback of my episode 6. What Song Jae-Jung didn't explain sufficiently, I use twice as much to establish the logic of my own system. I'm quite fanatical about the consistency of a story. But in writing such a complicated story, I realized how easy it is to let plot-holes slip out. Today, I am less demanding or angry with screenwriters who make mistakes. It happened to me too, and I corrected everything I could find. A 16h or 22h script is like an ocean liner, incredibly difficult to maneuver.
I'm going back to Yeon-joo. She didn't know she was a author until she tried to draw under Soo-bong's guidance. She had forgotten the character she created as a child, which her father later reused. We see Yeon-Joo drawing that character as early as Episode 3, in a montage where her father is arguing with her mother about alcohol. Since the rest is not shown, we can assume that Yeon-Joo devoted herself to other things afterwards, and that later (a few years later), her father remembered her drawing and used the character. Maybe Yeon-Joo could have remembered that her father's character looked like her drawing when she was younger? Yes, that makes sense, but in that case, it deprives the drama of a good twist. So it's better that she forgot! It's a sustainable arrangement.
The end of the manhwa. The definitive end implies a choice of the main protagonist. As soon as Kang Chul strongly thinks he's fed up with it, and wants it to end, it triggers the final chapter. This is explicitly said at the beginning of episode 15. Oh Yeon-joo has nothing to do with the end of the manhwa. Before that, Soo-Bong and Oh Sung-Moo wanted to end the manhwa, but obviously that's not the way to end a living manhwa. Kang Chul didn't know that his sincere desire had any influence to end the story, and anyway, even knowing this, he had to save Oh Yeon-Joo first. The only time he could have triggered the final chapter was during Episode 13. Only, at that time, the character hadn't been pushed to the limit, and soon, he had to face new problems. At this point in the story, Kang Chul and Yeon-Joo are going through their love revival, and both characters tend to be a little too optimistic and unaware.
Why does the tablet become a portal? Or even in general, why does the fantasy principle of W exist? There are two ways to establish a fantastic story: - Either everything can be explained. The best example is the Matrix trilogy. It's reassuring for spectators who are very demanding in science. Everything has an explanation! - Either there is a basic principle that cannot be explained. It's just absurd, but it happens. Refer to the series "Twilight Zone". This principle is just as powerful, if not more so in my opinion, provided of course that the story develops a logical system afterwards. Otherwise, it would be like inventing things out of nowhere all the time. So the basic principle of W is absurd. I had a lot of fun trying to get a better grasp of the basic absurdity of the principle in season 2. The characters are aware of this, and Kang Chul still manages to make some assumptions about it. There will never be a scientific explanation, since it's a non-scientific principle anyway. But I will be able to use some ideas that the character has (in my episode 5).
Why the webtoon continued. This is related to the principle of absurdity, so it has a part that will never be explainable. But it happens like this: at a certain point, the webtoon went off the rails. The exact moment is when Kang Chul hangs on to the bridge instead of jumping off. The character's will is compatible with Oh Sung-Moo's desire to survive. To draw an inner strength from him that he didn't have. When he sees that his character has survived, he doubts. He doesn't remember drawing this. Editing at the beginning of Episode 3. He thinks he was completely drunk and forgot that he drew it. Then he sees that the character's survival is the same as his own survival: his desire to be reborn. Before that he had transferred his morbid desire (suicide) to his character instead of assuming his own suicide (this is related in their conversation of episode 5). The birth of the webtoon as an autonomous principle coincides with this.
The publication of the webtoon. In the drama, the webtoon is sent to the publisher automatically. As an autonomous principle, the webtoon writes itself, and according to the choices of its characters when they trigger an end of chapter. The fantastic principle has a grip on the real world, since it triggers this sending in electronic form. But the ultimate choice to publish the webtoon is a publisher's decision, as shown at the end of episode 2, or at the beginning of episode 6. This principle bothered me, and I obliterated this in season 2, I proceed otherwise, or I take less account of the publication deadline. I chose a system with reduced compatibility with drama. But it's a reasonably sustainable choice.
Short explanation, after first viewing.The train takes the Seoul - Mukyeong route. This is indicated because one…
Fiancée or girlfriend or sexfriend, or platonic oppa, who know ? But they lived 10 years together. 5 years without sex is the official record from Starway to heavens drama. ^^
Short explanation, after first viewing.The train takes the Seoul - Mukyeong route. This is indicated because one…
That reminds me of another mystery: by chance, there must have been a moment when a passenger tried to contact someone with his/her smartphone. This is not shown, and we don't know if the communication is cut off, or if the passenger can contact someone in the other world because he is on board the train. In this case, the train is even more mysterious, because even in our world, it would stay in contact with the other world.
I feel like since it’s 12 episodes it should be a little fast paced but it seemed good to me. It all revolves…
Maybe the passageway only opens on rainy days. I haven't solved the weird part about the time. It does seem that there is a difference in the time between the two worlds. In the other world, the train often changes dimensions, but in our world, it's a rare phenomenon. We don't have enough information on it to know more about it.
Short explanation, after first viewing. The train takes the Seoul - Mukyeong route. This is indicated because one of the victims has a train ticket dated 2020 with this route. As the railway tracks are closed since 2015, we can immediately guess that the victim comes from another world, like the other victims. We quickly learn that they are dooplegangers, since one of the victims is still alive in our world. With the same fingerprints. Before arriving at Mukyeong station, there's a strange area. I'll call it the "twilight zone". At this place, there's a junction between our world and a parallel universe. This junction is only activated when a train arrives from the other dimension. And the only way to get from one universe to the other is to be on the train. The signal lights become active again. The train appears from nowhere in this place. Often, the train stops because of the signal lights. Passengers on the train from the other world have no reason to notice anything. For them, it is just the usual place where the train regularly stops because of the signage. The criminal takes advantage of this by throwing bodies. We can assume that he knows that in this place he is in another dimension and can easily get rid of his victims. Bad luck, this criminal is the hero's doopleganger... Worse, he kills the hero's ex-fiancée. But we can assume that later on, the hero will meet the doopleganger of his fiancée, and may have the opportunity to succeed in his failed love story. When the train leaves the twilight zone, of course, it returns to its original dimension. At the end of episode 2, we see the train arriving in a station. I guess it's the Mukyeong station, located just a few kilometers away. But it is of course the station of the other world. One of the shots in the drama quickly shows the state of the two stations, one is rectangular, the other has a rounded ceiling.
Why does the chief of police look so much like the D.A.? They could have chosen another random ajumma during the…
The psychiatrist look like the D.A. too.... arrrghhhh whhhhy ?!! Why all women look like the same in this drama ? Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?§§N?§???§??.??.!!!,?.
Why does the chief of police look so much like the D.A.? They could have chosen another random ajumma during the…
Or maybe not... aaggggh... Wake up, drama ! You have only 12 episodes, here it drag on stupids lies making lies worse than truth, where is this damn train ? Come on, bring the train into FL house and move on !
1 
I couldn't say if all these points were deliberately desired by the writer. But sometimes the analysis shows what has not been formulated, universal themes. Song Jae-jung says about herself that she's not a creative person. I don't know why, in my opinion, she opened her inner spiritual door. So, the contents of the story appear, enriched with meanings that can go beyond the author, and a large number of intuitive correlations. As a professional screenwriter, she certainly has the talent and the method to be aware of some of these contents, and to arrange them, even before writing the first line of the first episode (structure phase). Fascinating thing about her is that she doesn't produce additional content just for that. Everything is integrated into the hectic plot, without slowing down the action. That's what makes her dramas so addictive.
She's gone on holiday to Spain. This has come together with Elon Musk's biography and the game Pokemon Go. It's this mix of technology and historical theme.
Matrix uses a scientific principle, with philosophy, but everything can be explained or made possible. Song Jae-Jung's stories are more metaphysical, because the original mystery has no explanation.
It is also the first time that a TV series uses augmented reality (not to be confused with the virtual reality of The Matrix). There is thus superimposition of reality, and that of the other world. It's different from a full dive into another world.
In MOTA, the lenses, combined with a bug, are responsible for the problems. It should work in one direction only, the player influences the augmented world thanks to his vision capacity. Instead, the augmented world influences the player. The feeling of realism of the augmented world is such that perception is deceived, and ultimately the brain. Subjective perception of the world is at the heart of what reality is. It is in the field of consciousness, not physical reality whose nature is, if not illusory, indeterminable. If we look at quantum physics, we see the relationship between consciousness and the nature of reality. But some philosophies did not need this to understand it long before.
Alas, the last episode is too evasive, and few explanations are given, or too quickly, or in a too vague way. There is a potential plot-hole, or at least an inexplicable phenomenon. How could the character take refuge in an instance dungeon, when the whole game is reformatted? The dungeon is part of it. There's a similar mystery. How does the heroine's brother stay for months in an instance dungeon? How does he survive like that? And why can't other real people see him anymore, when they don't play the game and don't wear lenses that alter their sense of reality? Unless there is some other explanation, I suppose that for the one who wears the lenses, his alteration of the sense of reality may become such that he escapes objective reality. The player makes his own reality, which becomes concrete.
I have seen the drama 3 times, but I would like to see it again. Each time I noticed new things that had escaped me before. It's an exceptional work. As is often the case with Song Jae-Jung's dramas, part of the drama is easily accessible, and conducive to producing good ratings. But also, her dramas have a depth that is not accessible to everyone. However, this depth does not need to be explained, as it acts unbeknownst to the viewer, to invisibly reinforce the power of the drama. It is therefore not an artificial or superficial process, but of real use for the emotional power of the story.
The whole drama can also be perceived, in a more compatible way, as the resolution of an oedipal complex, since Yeon-Joo falls in love with the character of her father, and has to eliminate her father from the equation to live her love story with a man who is not her father.
Now you have some very specific questions.
You've really dug into the subject. ^^
This will allow me to expose some points and potential weakness of the story. To know more about it, you would have to ask the writer, but I never succeeded in contacting her, alas.
Oh Yeon-Joo played a role when she was a child, she created the character of Kang Chul. But she never did anything else and her father was inspired by her character. Because of that, Oh Yeon-joo is connected to the mysterious principle that I explain as follows:
Manhwa is a supernatural phenomenon with a different principle from a dimensional gate or a computer (like in Matrix). There is a part of arbitrariness, like the one in a comic book. For the tablet to work, the manhwa must recognize as author those who draw on it. That's why Soo-Bong couldn't make the tablet work (episode 6) and Yeon-Joo manages to do it.
In an interview, the screenwriter gives more importance to Kang Chul's will (but what she said was a bit blurry). When I had my avalanche of ideas for writing season 2, I did a general check-up on all the fuzzy points of the drama. Either the explanation was in the drama, or it was possible to guess. And ultimately, what couldn't be guessed, I had to find an explanation that was compatible with what was seen in the drama. Now, I don't remember if I found something like that, because it's more than 2 years ago and I rewatched many time the drama, looking for any missing clues in it, and found them most of the time. Luckily, everything was consistent, and I had a whole system that I could exploit (something I couldn't have done with TKEM). I rely much more on a coherent system than on things that fluctuate or depend on a character's will, except when the two are compatible. Maybe I don't have the same spirit as the screenwriter at that level, I studied science. It means that I integrate the arbitrary part into a coherent system. A Manhwa tells stories, it can't be governed by science alone. That makes it even more thrilling. It's what wanted to make the screenwriter, anyway.
One funny thing, for example, the script of episode 17 (episode 16 in the drama) contained a plot-hole (in my opinion), but the director never shot the scene! Either he was smart enough to know that there was a problem, or it was useless to show that, or the screenwriter said him at the last moment to not shot that. In any case, sigh of relief for me, because it would have contradicted what I wanted.
Of course, I reuse this principle of "author recognition" by the manhwa in season 2, and I am not stingy in explanations! You've got tons of explanations all over the place, for example in the flashback of my episode 6. What Song Jae-Jung didn't explain sufficiently, I use twice as much to establish the logic of my own system. I'm quite fanatical about the consistency of a story. But in writing such a complicated story, I realized how easy it is to let plot-holes slip out. Today, I am less demanding or angry with screenwriters who make mistakes. It happened to me too, and I corrected everything I could find. A 16h or 22h script is like an ocean liner, incredibly difficult to maneuver.
I'm going back to Yeon-joo. She didn't know she was a author until she tried to draw under Soo-bong's guidance. She had forgotten the character she created as a child, which her father later reused. We see Yeon-Joo drawing that character as early as Episode 3, in a montage where her father is arguing with her mother about alcohol. Since the rest is not shown, we can assume that Yeon-Joo devoted herself to other things afterwards, and that later (a few years later), her father remembered her drawing and used the character. Maybe Yeon-Joo could have remembered that her father's character looked like her drawing when she was younger? Yes, that makes sense, but in that case, it deprives the drama of a good twist. So it's better that she forgot! It's a sustainable arrangement.
The end of the manhwa.
The definitive end implies a choice of the main protagonist. As soon as Kang Chul strongly thinks he's fed up with it, and wants it to end, it triggers the final chapter. This is explicitly said at the beginning of episode 15. Oh Yeon-joo has nothing to do with the end of the manhwa. Before that, Soo-Bong and Oh Sung-Moo wanted to end the manhwa, but obviously that's not the way to end a living manhwa. Kang Chul didn't know that his sincere desire had any influence to end the story, and anyway, even knowing this, he had to save Oh Yeon-Joo first. The only time he could have triggered the final chapter was during Episode 13. Only, at that time, the character hadn't been pushed to the limit, and soon, he had to face new problems. At this point in the story, Kang Chul and Yeon-Joo are going through their love revival, and both characters tend to be a little too optimistic and unaware.
Why does the tablet become a portal?
Or even in general, why does the fantasy principle of W exist?
There are two ways to establish a fantastic story:
- Either everything can be explained. The best example is the Matrix trilogy. It's reassuring for spectators who are very demanding in science. Everything has an explanation!
- Either there is a basic principle that cannot be explained. It's just absurd, but it happens. Refer to the series "Twilight Zone". This principle is just as powerful, if not more so in my opinion, provided of course that the story develops a logical system afterwards. Otherwise, it would be like inventing things out of nowhere all the time.
So the basic principle of W is absurd. I had a lot of fun trying to get a better grasp of the basic absurdity of the principle in season 2. The characters are aware of this, and Kang Chul still manages to make some assumptions about it. There will never be a scientific explanation, since it's a non-scientific principle anyway. But I will be able to use some ideas that the character has (in my episode 5).
Why the webtoon continued.
This is related to the principle of absurdity, so it has a part that will never be explainable. But it happens like this: at a certain point, the webtoon went off the rails. The exact moment is when Kang Chul hangs on to the bridge instead of jumping off. The character's will is compatible with Oh Sung-Moo's desire to survive. To draw an inner strength from him that he didn't have. When he sees that his character has survived, he doubts. He doesn't remember drawing this. Editing at the beginning of Episode 3. He thinks he was completely drunk and forgot that he drew it. Then he sees that the character's survival is the same as his own survival: his desire to be reborn. Before that he had transferred his morbid desire (suicide) to his character instead of assuming his own suicide (this is related in their conversation of episode 5). The birth of the webtoon as an autonomous principle coincides with this.
The publication of the webtoon.
In the drama, the webtoon is sent to the publisher automatically. As an autonomous principle, the webtoon writes itself, and according to the choices of its characters when they trigger an end of chapter. The fantastic principle has a grip on the real world, since it triggers this sending in electronic form.
But the ultimate choice to publish the webtoon is a publisher's decision, as shown at the end of episode 2, or at the beginning of episode 6.
This principle bothered me, and I obliterated this in season 2, I proceed otherwise, or I take less account of the publication deadline. I chose a system with reduced compatibility with drama. But it's a reasonably sustainable choice.
Maybe it opened a rift in space-time?
This wasn't supposed to happen in a kdrama. ^^
But they lived 10 years together. 5 years without sex is the official record from Starway to heavens drama. ^^
I haven't solved the weird part about the time. It does seem that there is a difference in the time between the two worlds. In the other world, the train often changes dimensions, but in our world, it's a rare phenomenon. We don't have enough information on it to know more about it.
The train takes the Seoul - Mukyeong route. This is indicated because one of the victims has a train ticket dated 2020 with this route.
As the railway tracks are closed since 2015, we can immediately guess that the victim comes from another world, like the other victims. We quickly learn that they are dooplegangers, since one of the victims is still alive in our world. With the same fingerprints.
Before arriving at Mukyeong station, there's a strange area.
I'll call it the "twilight zone".
At this place, there's a junction between our world and a parallel universe. This junction is only activated when a train arrives from the other dimension. And the only way to get from one universe to the other is to be on the train.
The signal lights become active again. The train appears from nowhere in this place.
Often, the train stops because of the signal lights.
Passengers on the train from the other world have no reason to notice anything. For them, it is just the usual place where the train regularly stops because of the signage.
The criminal takes advantage of this by throwing bodies. We can assume that he knows that in this place he is in another dimension and can easily get rid of his victims. Bad luck, this criminal is the hero's doopleganger... Worse, he kills the hero's ex-fiancée. But we can assume that later on, the hero will meet the doopleganger of his fiancée, and may have the opportunity to succeed in his failed love story.
When the train leaves the twilight zone, of course, it returns to its original dimension. At the end of episode 2, we see the train arriving in a station. I guess it's the Mukyeong station, located just a few kilometers away. But it is of course the station of the other world. One of the shots in the drama quickly shows the state of the two stations, one is rectangular, the other has a rounded ceiling.
arrrghhhh whhhhy ?!!
Why all women look like the same in this drama ?
Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?§§N?§???§??.??.!!!,?.
Wake up, drama ! You have only 12 episodes, here it drag on stupids lies making lies worse than truth, where is this damn train ?
Come on, bring the train into FL house and move on !