Sinasina

Watchable, if you are REALLY bored!

This is a watchable show. There is enough cuteness to provide some decent entertainment, but there is not much else there. The admittedly talented actors were more than enthusiastic enough, but that's arguably not enough in this format. Then again it's difficult for me to understand what's the point of a 2 hours long romcom to be presented this way. If I look at it like a movie - It should be fair, since I watched the entire thing in one sitting - it does not hold up. I could pick any random Hollywood romcom, or even just a random vampire flick and Kiss Goblin would fall short. On IMDB I would rate this as 4/10. The writing is weak and jittery. The production quality is decent, so it's more than a little sad that they could not find a writer to match that. I mean it shouldn't be that difficult to fill up 2 hours with some semi creative ideas, right?

On a more positive note, it's nice that the writer had no time to further ruin things by focusing on the love triangle, or Sageuk flashbacks..

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I have two minor gripes about this one. Firstly the first two episodes were not only boring, but also the premise is a bit difficult to digest. (Math/statistics major in her final year keeps making REALLY and I mean REALLY stupid life decisions) The second issue is that there is a love triangle around episode 13-15 with the minor love interest acting like a blood hound, still at least they wrapped that up rather quickly. ~

I could nitpick about other things, but ultimately they are not important. This was almost precisely the drama I wanted to watch. It's a very sweet romcom, that is very unusual in how all the problems are solved very quickly in a satisfactory, wholesome manner. It's true that this drama has been heavily inspired by Because This is my First Life. Even though that one has quite a few stronger episodes & objectively way more interesting, more three dimensional characters, I think I prefer Perfect and Casual, because it doesn't have a really really frustrating separation plot and we get a lot more fluffy romance too, with many kisses that still remain meaningful in ways that other dramas with dragged out happy endings can almost never compete with. Other reviewers mentioned that they didn't very much like the side characters & their romances. Personally I think that both of their stories were okay-ish..

I mentioned earlier that this show is very unusual in how all the problems are solved very quickly in a satisfactory, wholesome manner. I have to note though, that there are quite a few heavily teased disastrous plot directions. The creators always dodged these bullets, but binge watching is recommended, because most of the teased bullshit gets resolved in like the first minute of the next episode ^_^

The OST is pretty good, normally I have a hard time enjoying Chinese music, but there were some catchy tunes in this one. The cinematography is very decent too..

TLDR: If you like sugar, just watch this one! If you are easily bored, then just start directly with episode 3.

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After watching the first 4-5 double episodes I was thinking that Angel's Last Mission: Love is just a cheap imitation of Goblin. Many of the major themes in the show are essentially the same (reapers & angels are kind of the same too), which isn't bad, but the execution is worlds apart. I mean sure Shin Hye Sun's acting performance was out of this world good, but that was it. I was skipping scenes featuring sponsor board meetings(?) and I did not like all the stupid scheming and the asshole second lead character. I felt that L had the same acting teacher as Jinyoung and I don't mean that as a compliment. Many reviewers did not like the second part of the show, but to me the second half saved it. They've dialed down on the stupid Chaebol corporate bullshit and instead of meaningless scheming we proceeded with murder attempts that were a lot more interesting really. Also the second lead had much less screen time, which was a huge bonus. Even L's acting has improved, I felt genuinely touched at certain scenes. It was good romance, not much of a comedy though in the second half. At times I was even sitting at the edge of my seat.

Sure the last 5 minutes did not make any sense, it is the same ending as Goblin's, but the context is different. "The Deity is cruel" should've been the main theme of the show, it makes very little sense that the Deity would change his mind like that, then again I'm a sucker for happy endings & a sloppy happy ending like this is still better than tragedy with the conclusion that love is not eternal, the person that survived should move on & forget everything.
(If I were the writer I would have went with exAngel asshole guy sacrificing himself to keep the balance for a more reasonable happy ending.. :P)

The OST does not have too many tracks, but 2-3 of them were really memorable. It's way way above average.
The cinematography was good, though the cinematographer really likes the composition form called "the tilt".

TLDR: Out of all the 50+ kdramas I've watched this is the most similar to Goblin, it's nowhere near on the same level, but it's well deserving of a watch & perhaps a rewatch .. (Shin Hye Sun should get an award..)

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Considering the makjang premise this show turned out to be a huge surprise. The typical tropes did not really come into play. The secondary love interests didn't cause too many problems & their existence was a meaningful part of the show, which almost never happens with these triangles & squares. I loved the main love line, it was awesome from beginning to end, although at its core it's quite similar to the love story in Goblin. There was an unusual amount of honesty at unexpected times! The 2 secondary couples were also fun to watch, especially the noona + lawyer pairing. The supernatural element was okay too( not great), it did make the show more interesting, especially early on. The pacing of the story was surprisingly good, almost every episode had some melodramatic parts with a good amount of comedic relief in between. The OST was perfect at creating the mood for almost every scene. I usually don't comment on sound quality, when it comes to kdramas, but generally they use budget microphones and there are a lot of pops & clicks that I can clearly hear with my higher end headphone gear. It's nice that in a drama that touches upon sound engineering I can enjoy the sound & music without those usual annoyances.

Naturally this drama isn't perfect. The plot has some weaker points, such as the way our MC accepted death, or how pulling the investment has led to jail time, I mean that is pretty outlandish if you think about it. The sound engineering procedural parts looked awesome, but this is not how they do it in real life, they do make the sounds in a similar way with all kinds of props, but the scenes aren't reenacted in real time, but rather if there are 20 seperate sound sources they record those 20 sounds separately & then merge/edit them in post, plus the step sounds are looped, there is no need for sound engineers to run for minutes on end during recording.

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Having watched Memories of Alhambra first, I did not expect much from this. Here the writer does a much better job in every way, but ultimately at its core this drama suffers from similar problems. The setting is obviously much better, instead of a super boring MMO world we have a manhwa world, with some interesting spaghetti western elements, a subtle noir vibe is also present. With the premise that magic is real, sometimes nonsense stuff kind of makes sense in W, it's not like Alhambra where everything is a jumbled mess. With that said W is a mediocre drama at best, yes the cast had some amazing actors, the OST was mostly great at setting the right atmosphere and the cinematography was very pretty & the darker lighting was also very fitting most of the time, but all these don't make up for the fact that I just wasn't that interested in the villains & their deeds. The romance was fine, but this is probably the worst chemistry that I've seen Lee Jong-suk have with anyone, it's by no means below average in kdramaland, but I've expected more. A nicely wrapped up happy ending would have improved my opinion of the drama a lot, it's a shame that it did not happen, it's nice that they got together for the last 5? minutes of the drama, but for all we know Kang Chol would just end up in prison again for not having a legitimate identity... (in the fantasy genre normally I wouldn't care much about this, but in W the plot device of not having a proper identity is brought up again & again...)

This writer really shouldn't work alone, if she could just be responsible for the world building & maybe the characters, while pairing up with someone that knows how to keep the audience interested.
I think she also wrote Queen InHyon's Man, I like that drama quite a bit, but the writing is not very good there either.

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I enjoyed this a lot, but there are plenty of issues.

I watched this after Would You Marry Me and Dynamite Kiss. So maybe it's recency bias after having gone through those 2 horrible shows, but I really liked this despite some glaring problems. Maybe part of it is that 2025 had been a rather weak year for dramas..

I have always liked noona romances & Sniper Butterfly's leads are much more amazing than what's the norm in this genre. Despite the actors having a 20? year age gap, they had wonderful chemistry & were most probably very fond of each other. Also Michelle was amazing in every way possible. She is so chic, lively & charismatic that is super rare for Chinese TV & also I really love how fit & healthy she is, my heart breaks when I look at actresses like Lushi -and many others- being pushed into malnourishment.. ML's great too, he is super tall & young providing the perfect contrast with the FL.
Anyway this drama is the prime example why in romance if the casting is strong, then many flaws can be forgiven.

E23 is a really odd episode, feels like 50% of the entire dramas plot happens in it. On one hand it's good that they get the past timeline breakup & the present timeline reconciliation into the same episode minimizing frustration, however there were a great many boring episodes early on, there would have been time to make the plot a bit more even, I don't even know.

I strongly dislike love triangles & this drama has one. However this secondary love interest only gets like 30 minutes of screen time total, so it's bearable. Though there are some rather bad moments involving that guy..

As for what I did not like:
❌ The nastiest noble breakup in my cdrama history, the FL really went out of her way to make it as bad as possible.
❌ The past timeline plot about ML's catchup repeat exam prep school is super boring & oftentimes weird.
❌ About one third of the drama is very boring, especially from ep9 to ep 17 or so.
❌ ML's makeup in the present timeline is crazy thick, though I understand why they did that.
❌ The super boring corporate plots
❌ I loved the younger secondary couple, but hated how little screen time they've gotten and most of their romance happened during the time skip. It's a shame, in the 30 episodes format they have done them dirty.
❌ There were several very forceful kisses & one of them was so bad that perhaps there are fellow MDL readers that dropped the drama shortly after. Yes stealing kisses & being assertive is what the Chinese audience loves to watch, but this was too much for me, even though normally I'm okay with this.
❌ While there is plenty of fun fluff in the final 6-7 epis, I'm somewhat unhappy with the ending, mostly it was just a very mediocre boring way to bring this to a close. Happy endings should pack more of a punch, even if we don't get a wedding or kids, at least walk off into the sunset or something, anything..

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It's not great!

The Good:
⌲ The high school happenings are above average not annoying.
⌲ Adding to the previous point the teachers are adorable & there is no evil teacher which is almost unheard of in the high school kdrama scene.
⌲ As far as high school romance kdrama representations go this is once again above average, the typical annoyances involving parents are not present.


The Neutral:
⌲ The triangles (considering everything these turned out slightly less annoying than usual)
⌲ The shamanism related basic fantasy setting (At the very least the various shaman characters were fun & interesting, even if it's annoying how this drama is sort of advertising a scamming culture in South Korea)
⌲ The plot in the first half (It's quite silly, but in a tolerable anime-like way.)
⌲ Second ML / friend


The Bad:
⌲ The plot fell apart in the second half (There's so many retcons & rewrites. I'm guessing this drama is another victim of the randomness that is live filming)
⌲ The evil entity
⌲ The evil shaman and her awful semi-redemption ark
⌲ The bully is not very annoying overall, but his personality shift and fast tracked redemption is pretty bad.

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The Good:
⌲ The writer had some good & not that mainstream ideas for this show!
⌲ FL's male friend / underling
⌲ The ending, more specifically the final episode is top tier fluff!

The Neutral:
⌲ The comedy could've been better.
⌲ The second FL, Tang Tang (the character & her complete rewrite makes no sense, but the actress acted really well nonetheless)
⌲ The third FL, Ding Ming (a feelgood accessory with no depth or impact)
⌲ The main FL (carrying all the comedy, but see below..)

The Bad:
⌲ The love triangle may have been very short lived, but Bai Yuze's strong courting where the FL dumb dumb ignored all the skinship & semi-skinship sucked.
⌲ I feel FL had been miscast for this role. I get it, this is not a serious show, still there are plenty of Chinese actresses that could have pulled off the sexy javelin throwing athlete. Wan Peng is not it, as much as I like her otherwise.
⌲ ML's acting performance is super bad, this is the single biggest problem with the show. His expressions all look super fake & robotic.
⌲ ML's dad

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The second half is weak!

I enjoyed the first 7 or so episodes, up to that point I felt the ok chemistry & the relatively fun bickerish content carries the show, that despite the lack of a hint of originality. However after that, from epis 8 to 11 we have really hit rock bottom. Suddenly competing love interest are introduced & there is a misunderstanding fueled breakup. Sure everything gets resolved quickly enough, however the *superstrong spoiler* event in episode 11 is just plain weird & their whole relationship dynamic with the new status quo is also a bit of a joke. After e12 everything is resolved of course & we go through the motions. Though as much as love long happy endings, this one is exactly the same as in most mediocre cdramas, presented the most boring way ever, yawn.

There were times when I felt the production team has done a really sloppy job. For instance the show featured yet another $1000 adopted stray cat, gosh is it really that hard to get a perfectly fine and lovable SIC from a shelter? (especially considering the backstory & the name) If the cat is a product placement, then at least don't claim it's a stray, for the love of god this is so dumb. (This is one thing `No Gain, No Love ` did well)
Another is that when they went back to ML's childhood home & they've talked about not finding anything else of value other than a few things in a box, meanwhile the camera has shown tens of thousands of $s worth -or way more- of expensive furniture and other stuff around the house, but dad is losing the house because of gambling woes, ok sure. Also the home itself looked like $3.000.000. It's a bit like how when children put on a play without a set & it's the audience's job to look past the venue's ill fitting features & just focus on the dialog.

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It's a bit bland compared to the Korean version

The leads in this one had great chemistry & especially the ML fit the role better than his Korean counterpart. The production is great, with wonderful cinematography & some very attractive OST songs.

Ultimately why I think the Korean version is better is because outside of the main romance everything regarding the plot is better there. Sure the Japanese adaptation is similar enough, the main plot is still essentially the same, however the excitement & the vengeful plotting is largely toned down in the J. version. The kdrama is a makjang that is unusually tame and tolerable & this one is no longer in that genre. Which is not necessarily negative, but the side characters whether it's the casting or their re-characterization are strongly on the boring side and so is the corporate plot presented this way. So in my mind we went from 50% romance 50% entertaining vengeance plotting to 50% romance, 50% boring filler. Nonetheless this drama is still worth a watch for the leads..

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I regret watching..

From an adult's perspective this drama is very weak. There are lots of dashingly beautiful people on the screen & the cinematography is decent, but everything else is from mediocre to straight up bad.

The show follows the frustrating formula of 15 episodes of high school slice of life where everyone is "friends" followed by a -n awful- transition phase & then university / adult dating in the final 5. While I don't like this formula, I have seen some objectively great dramas based on it. So why is this so much worse? Well for starters the acting is on a very low level, with very little emotional impact beyond some occasional cutesy fluff. 80% of this show is not romance, but that 80% is surprisingly boring most of the time, though the startup related plotline in the final episodes is way worse than boring & it could not have been any less unoriginal. (develop a new kind of fitness bracelet, heavily woo a hermit expert to help you along etc..)
The romance itself is sub par too. It's just difficult to feel the immersion, I'm really not sold on any of it.

The love triangle is not the worst, but it's present for quite a while & all the "let's be friends" talk on the main couple's side made it oh so much worse.

The show has some jarringly blatant social engineering / propaganda messaging. For example there is that scene when the crew talks about what an idol is to them or when ML is repeatedly saying that everyone should follow their on pace, doing that completely out of context, essentially disregarding FL's top level ability & the -oh so dumb & super common- outside factors that led to her having to repeat the final year.

Don't waste your time, compared to I don't know `A Love So Beautiful ` this is not worth mentioning. Yes, censorship limits heavily what a high school slide of life cdrama can be, but here the writers did not even try to thread those limits..

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Feels like a knockoff, but it's not bad.

Another Oh Hae Yong is one of the best kdramas I have ever seen, It has minor flaws, but it's pretty much as good as it gets with some unusual elements for a kdrama.
Unlucky Ploy mostly -especially in the early episodes- is a very accurate adaptation. Most scenes are brought over verbatim, I can almost see the cast watch the relevant Korean scene before each filming session & then trying to mimic as perfectly as possible. There is no attempt at new interpretations here. (they've removed a few scenes related to poop & maybe even pee, it's been a while..)

So why is it a 7? Well it's worse than the original in every single way. The acting is much worse, It's not bad exactly, but it's like amazing acting and chemistry of at least two couples vs. just alright. The music, cinematography, the production & everything else is similar to the original, but clearly worse. Also the second couple's happy ending is mostly missing from this one.
I'm confident that even in a vacuum, where I would only know this show I wouldn't rate it above 7.5..
Oh I'm almost forgot it's not just the meh acting, but also the casting of the FL & second FL are not great. FL is just too radiant for this concept to be anywhere near believable. Second FL is pretty, but the somewhat quirky pretty that the main FL should've been.

Most lakorns are awful, at least in that space this has to be amazing, right?

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It's kind of a Chinese take on La La land with a tremendous amount of filler..

Sure this one is not at all a musical, but the mood, the ambiance and the circumstances felt quite similar to me. Instead of one couple there are two main couples here, but this comparison still fits alright for either of them. What they've shown of Macau is absolutely magical -and probably not all that realistic, but who cares- and in the first half of the show the romance is also mostly excellent.

So why is it only a 7.5? Well the second half of the drama only had like 30-40 mins of what I wanted to watch & there were all kinds of miscellaneous plots. While I knew very early on that we're faced with sort of an omnibus style storytelling & but there was so much there that I found incredibly boring. (Casey + kid | Older Brother + wedding | divorcee parents) The ending here is better than La La Land's, which is honestly not very difficult, however I expected way way more from a show this long & one that had so much filler and I mean SO EFFIN MUCH filler.

The OST & cinematography are top, about as good as it gets in this genre, It's almost worth it just for that.

People compare this to `Fake It Till You Make It`, other than Elvis Han acting in both there are not all that many commonalities I think. Even if we approach this topic with the "mature love" angle, I think everything is just too different..

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It's ok.

This is -contrary to the premise- a very simple feelgood story with very few annoyances. Though at the same time it's super shallow & despite the format it feels too slow as well. Also everything that is typically wrong with Japanese romance content is also present in this show. I watched Shanai Marriage Honey just the other day & that was a lot better, that's what gave me the courage to try another similar Japanese drama after years of avoiding them, but this is super cringe compared to your average c/k drama, which is saying something.

So yes, in a vacuum this okay -not great-, but partly due to my personal biases & jculture fatigue I think I'll continue avoiding these in the future.

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There is nothing new or unexpected here, but the format makes this very entertaining. There is no time for love triangles, or filler, since the whole thing is only like 140 minutes long. The characters are plenty cute looking great together with acceptable chemistry, what else is there to wish for in a show so short?

If you are the kind of drama watcher that is always complaining about not seeing a couple's married life at the end of various shows, this is for you. That's pretty much what these 2+ hours are about and there is also the hide relationship at work trope, which I happen to like.

If I really wanted to deeply criticize this show, I could since there are lots of annoying things in all Japanese dramas that I've seen thus far, but this is certainly one of the good ones.

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