Sinasina

Enjoyable, but perhaps a wee bit overrated. (and the Love Triangle is fairly strong)

I've been had. I've read in the comment section that the love triangle is not an issue & so I started watching this with no reservations, unfortunately that is definitely not he case. The triangle is - at least from my perspective - pretty bad, not only is it present throughout most of the drama, but also the plot devices used to keep it going were not great. Okay, it's objectively not horrible compared to some of the worst offenders, like it's nowhere near Jealousy Incarnate bad. Yes, the FL never hesitates about whom she wants, but her rejections were most of the time half-hearted & she got teary eyed due to the second ML way too many times. I couldn't even FF button his scenes, because the second ML is just too integral to the plot.
I'm guessing that people that like this trope would love this though..

Okay with that out of the way, I think the second biggest problem with the drama is that it's quite draggy at times, the same misunderstanding is recycled over and over to make it far longer than it should've been. Also the plot is not very polished or coherent, there are some really weird shifts in the story. For example how we transition from e27's cliffhanger to e28 makes less than zero sense to me. The corporate embezzlement/laundering case in the final episodes was quite bad as customary, but I've seen worse.

So why is it still 7.5? Well, the things that everyone else is saying are true. Both couples had great chemistry, the acting is great, the comedy is on point as well. Also the macro plot is pretty amazing. Annoyances aside it's fantastic how they handled the dream situation. Before watching this I was totally prepared to talk about how cdrama time travel shows always have to be dreams, novels, or just imaginations due to recent changes in Chinese censorship guidelines, but they've really killed it here. The way how the dream ended is just about perfect. The way we transitioned back to real life & how they kept the fantasy going was also pretty great. (I mean While You Were Sleeping is a hundred times better, but for a contemporary Chinese drama this is really pushing the limits of what's possible to be shown on TV) I've recently complained about how in Business Proposal they've cut out my favorite part of the webtoon and the Asian drama gods have heard my plea, because that exact plot is here in this drama. (It's about the FL wanting to turn fake into real & pursuing the ML real hard) The second couple was pretty fun, though their story is 1:1 Toradora.

The OST is not bad, at least as a completely separate entity from the drama. However I think the tracks often did not fit the drama's mood & the mixing is just strange.

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The first 7 or so episodes were really special, out of this world good romance, beautiful cinematography,excellent acting performances by the main pair and annoying, but tolerable side characters. Unfortunately by the time we reached the last episode the writers ruined almost everything & also some really tedious & annoying sub-plots were used.
So in my opinion the best way to watch this is to watch the first 9 episodes & then jump straight to 16. ~~ That way you all will see something truly remarkable.

My disappointment in episodes 11 > 15 is comparable to what I felt watching Jealousy Incarnate, when they all lived in the same apartment...

Still I will remember this show for a long time to come, rewatching the first 9 episodes is something I will probably do, when the pain of what followed has become a faint memory. Objectively I should probably give this something like 4-5 stars, but the first half of the show is good to the point that it's insane, hence the 8 stars rating..


edit: It's been three years and finally I have decided to give this one another go. I followed my own advice, watched the first 9 episodes followed by the finale. My attempt to relive the magic has mostly failed. Probably it does not help that I've seen One Spring Night 3 times.. In my review I said "tolerable side characters", but I had an extremely hard time to tolerate them the second time around, especially the horrible horrible mom and the ex. I have some qualms about ML's sister as well, but I'm sure most of it is bias having seen the actress in EVERYTHING.

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The Good:
⌲ Yoona is very pretty
⌲ There are no love triangles.
⌲ There is a certain amount of enjoyable fluff.
⌲ The secondary fls and sismance (though it’s not exactly amazing)
⌲ The arab prince thing was amusing enough (I cannot imagine getting butthurt over something like this)
⌲ It’s at least a better drama than ‘Forecasting Love and Weather’.

The Neutral:
⌲ Jun Ho’s acting (I understand why he did not take this very seriously though, I do know he is a talented actor)
⌲ The romance in general (not bad, not great)
⌲ The father (He is bad, but in similar dramas I’ve seen far worse)
⌲ The chemistry between the leads
⌲ Of course it's a clichefest. (though It's not too bad in this regard)

The Bad:
⌲ The plot is just horrible (yes in romcoms it shouldn’t matter, but there are way too many offensive and intelligence insulting things, it’s like a Lakorn)
⌲ The dialog is pretty bad too at times. (and this is a big problem)
⌲ There is a lot of backward crap that is kind of like airing the nation’s dirty laundry, at least in Hollywood as bad as their shows are they are trying to move forward.
⌲ Outside of the leads & their friends almost everyone is a mean bully. (the corporate chain of abuse, see the prev. point)
⌲ The romantic plot itself flows rather strangely & completely falls apart in the final episodes.
⌲ The mother & her reason for leaving her son
⌲ The drama has an incredible amount of bad energy!
⌲ The ML sometimes appears to be mentally challenged, like Dali and the Cocky Prince's ML.
⌲ The fakest smiles you have ever seen
⌲ The older sister (her acts are too juvenile and dumb even for kdrama cheabol-land-u)
⌲ “Double the profits, hit the targets!”
⌲ One long helicopter ride should be something like sub-$10000 in Korea, it’s obviously far cheaper than dealing with the bad press, optics and liability over what happened and they talked about this so forking much.
⌲ .. there are many more things, but I tire of writing this review ..

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Watching the first 3 double episodes I was thinking that this show was hugely underrated, it was insanely fun. However as the story progressed I started to feel bored & by the time I reached the end there were more negatives than positives. The love triangle isn't good, the leads did not really have a good chemistry, once they started a more cordial and friendly relationship. Also the writers kind of given up on the timeloops quite early on and instead we delved into office politics & corporate in fighting. I'm yet to enjoy office politics in a kdrama and the focus shifted onto this way too much. The last few episodes were a clichefest with a lot of "noble" intention. Even though there is a happy ending, it's the rushed 10 minutes long unsatisfying kind.

Thumbs up for it being a time travel drama that does not feature any Joseon hats.

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The Mainland reimagination of Someday Or One Day

This drama is obviously very strongly inspired by Someday Or One Day, but in my opinion it cannot really hold a candle to it. One of the bigger problems is that the foundation of the plot is extremely unsteady. Specifically the time travel phenomenon has major problems. It doesn't really matter whether it's really time travel, or the implied alternate universe thing, things just don't add up, the FL is not making reasonable decisions based on either of those things. (Logically it's gotta be the second one, but if you think about that in detail, it becomes unreasonably dark and cruel real fast)
The first half of the drama is basically an extremely average high school cdrama, with all the problems those typically have and more. As per usual in good old cdrama fashion the "children" can only be "very good" friends and that's almost always tedious, at least when we don't transition to college life in a timely fashion. To add insult to injury beyond that we have ridiculous gangsters, even more ridiculous childhood connection flashbacks and finally an absolutely horrible second ML. Basically it's the same second ML character I've seen in Extraordinary You, but without the plot justifying his bullshit.
As for the OTP romance before the angsty parts started, I did just not feel it. Even if I completely ignore ML's stalker-y tendencies, I just could not get immersed in their romance. Based on the MDL comment section, the problem is probably with me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. On the plus side, had I been more immersed, the events following the 13-14 episode long high school part would have eviscerated me, bullet's dodged there.
The ending is one of the worst endings I have ever experienced and I'm not talking about the largely irrelevant final episode, but rather FL's depressing final attempt to save ML in the episodes preceding that. Just to reiterate again, if it's not time travel, but the multiverse thing, then it's just the absolute worst.

I enjoyed some of the second couple's moments, but they had no plot relevance whatsoever.

The minor sloppy, or silly things in the plot are quite numerous, but ultimately those are quite easy to ignore, except in the last episode. That episode felt like fan fiction. The final scene is once again not great and thinking about that in depth - beyond it being just FL's fantasy - leads to quite silly conclusions.

The production values are through the roof, this is a very pretty show and the OST is up there with the very best cdramas, though they sure neutered Eddy Kim's song quite a bit..

Someday Or One Day has one of the most beautiful romances I have ever seen, it's written much more cleverly, the plot is sequenced much better and that show has much more charm across the board, it feels like a work of art as opposed to the TV equivalent of pulp fiction.
This month has been dominated by time travel dramas for me, but this is the worst one of the 4 that I've seen(Shining, Someday, Rainless Love, Reset), still I don't regret watching Shining for One Thing.

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This is everything I want a romcom to be. It's really funny, it's heartwarming, there is no angst whatsoever and the ending is beautiful. The leads have good chemistry and the show does not have a stupid love triangle, the second ML gives up fast enough not to be a bother. Although the supporting cast was not important in this one, they were nonetheless all excellent. Simply put this drama is fun from beginning to end.

The cinematography is very good and even though the OST is a bit repetitive at times, it's still above average.
All the actors are extremely pretty too, although that's no surprise considering how large a pool China has when it comes to selecting actors.

For comparison's sake, this one is much better than O2O. Comparing it with "A Love so Beautiful" is a bit harder, but I would say that this one wins, because a.) There is no Wu Busong b.) There is no stupid separation plot.

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edit: Today, nearly a year after writing this review I have learned that there is a special followup episode that every fan should watch. On MDL it can be found as the "Put Your Head On My Shoulder Special Episode".

edit2: The webnovel has been recommended to me, so I have read that today in 2022. I was told that it's completely different from the drama etc. It was actually quite a surreal reading experience for me, I think "Put Your Head on My Smug Shoulder" would be a fine title for the webnovel :-). Largely the same events happen to people that have the same professions, interests & names, but have COMPLETELY different personalities. The drama is basically a cute fluff, with the leads having really mild personalities. Not in the novel though, the leads are basically cats & dogs quarreling all the time, it's actually quite funny and the novel becomes rather raunchy reaching the later chapters. The only thing that I disliked about the novel is how much worse Fu Pei's character is than in the drama. I don't know which one I like more, probably the drama, because of Fu Pei & the studying abroad thing was handled worse in the novel. Still it's an apples and oranges comparison, it's quite fascinating, how much of a difference the dialog can make, even if the plot is the same.

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The writer did not bother to write a well thought out ending, why should I give this a high rating?

Okay, so the ending is just horribly bad. It's not just that I did not get the happy ending that I have wanted, but none of it makes any sense. BYJ leaves the sports department to be with her love NHD, joining the New York office is the bestest idea -also BYJ. I hugely dislike watching shows that are about first loves failing amicably, but I don't think this show ever wanted to be that. (otherwise they would've set things up differently) What I think happened is that the writer had no idea how to finish the story, so she kept procrastinating until the last two episodes & then just went with this knowing that no matter what she does, the commercial success of the show is not in danger anymore. Behavior like this is fairly common in Kdramaland, but this ending is truly one of the worst ones I've seen, in my opinion it's far worse than How I Met Your Mother's, there should be a blowback, right? Unfortunately I cannot do anything else other than writing this review & giving the show a low rating, so here we are!

If I want to be entirely honest, the ending is not the only problem with this drama. Yes, up until episode 10ish, up until HD made up with Go Yurim this was a 10/10 drama for me(Episode 9 was probably the best kdrama episode I've seen since IOTNBO's episode 3.), however after that, much of what made the drama so great has been toned down several notches. For example it would have been possible for me to partly ignore what happened with the OTP, if we would have gotten more fencing. Like I don't know, HD at the Olympics, HD at the Olympics for a second time. Could have even gone with some fairly standard plot with Evil Foreigner injuring GYR & HD having vengeance with her saber, there were endless possibilities to end this sports drama respectfully as a sports drama. Fencing was more than just cool up until episode 7-8.

So if you have have yet to watch this drama, should you watch it? Well, if you are not obsessed with getting closure, then yes you can watch the first 9 (perhaps even 10) episodes & then stop. Treat it like it's the American TV show Wonderfalls and just enjoy the ride. (Speaking of Wonderfalls, I should watch that again sometime soon)

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it's the best slice of life cdrama I've seen, but with some heavy political undertones.

The Good
⌲ The overall top tier acting
⌲ The excellent OTP romance
⌲ The outstanding side characters
⌲ The out of this world good cat actors!
⌲ The fantastic OST
⌲ The incredible mood
⌲ The incredible visuals
⌲ The Fantastic sismances
⌲ Li Xian is far more authentic here than in anything else I've seen him in before.
⌲ There is a lot of peace, healing and wholesome in this drama.
⌲ The outstanding child actors
⌲ The dialog is rather incredible at times.

The Average
⌲ While the village looks incredible, it feels very artificial.
⌲ Nana's unreasonable netizen backstory
⌲ Hong Dou's homestay has some weird plot issues. (it's admittedly not too important)
⌲ The plot itself is very simple and predictable. (also not that important)
⌲ I'm being nitpicky here, but I think that plum? harvest episode was a bit poorly done.

The Bad
⌲ There is a lot of political content in the drama. (the cdramas I typically watch are better in this regard)
⌲ This relates to the previous point, but there is abundant cleverly done & some rather blatant social engineering in the show (and this bothered me quite a bit at times)

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Just watch the original if you have the opportunity!

This is a hard one to explain. Obviously 'A Time Called You' is the adaptation of something amazing, that much is probably clear to most MDL users by now and what makes hard writing this review is that it really is in many ways a fantastic adaptation. They have changed the ending, but that was literally the weakest point of the original, most other things are incredibly faithful to the source material. Most of the time when a kdrama is not an original work, the writers try to add their "personal touch", which more often than not leads to the ruination of the script. Recent examples that come to mind are 'See You in My 19th Life' and 'Kiss Sixth Sense'. Both of these are webcomic adaptations & all changes the writer has made from the source material made the scripts worse, pretty much every single one of them. However as I said this drama is different, the plot most of the time is identical to the original, with the dialog being identical as well, the changes are extremely minimal up until the later episodes. One could even say that this is a far more authentic adaptation than the Harry Potter, or Lord of the Rings movies.
As for the casting, most actors fit the original Taiwanese casting down to a T, the similarities are quite eerie actually, I have never seen something like this before. I may not be a big believer in Ahn Hyo Seop's acting ability, but he tried more than hard enough & he is visually a very good fit as well..

So then it begs the question, why is this not amazing?
I think this is the first kdrama I have ever seen where the script was -in a practical sense- perfect, yet I did not really like it. I'm just going to list the big issues one by one:

⌲ The cinematography is too pretty and vibrant, it does not fit.
⌲ The 'song' is a terrible pick and yes this is VERY detrimental in this drama. (if you have to listen to the same song 20 times in a drama, they gotta do better than this, is there even a melody?)
⌲ The OST outside of the cassette song is completely lifeless & could be described as 'nothing'.
⌲ The FL may have had the same lines, but the production team has somewhat ruined her characterization, there's not enough contrast between her two roles, the "switch" is not impactful enough! (YeoBeen acted amazingly well, this is not on her)
⌲ The chemistry could've been better.
⌲ Some of the most impactful scenes of the original are very inferior and some of them are missing, which is weird, because of how closely the adaptation follows the plot. (I think it's not a FF button malfunction, the Piano scene & the bullying of the bullies scene are missing from this? Please do tell me in the review comments, if this is a problem with me falling asleep at those critical moments and I'll just adjust my review & apologize for being stupid)

Ultimately it comes down to this adaptation being redundant, it's just unnecessary! There is no Korean touch here worth mentioning, It's a pointless adaptation. (perhaps it's all about the new product placements within a show that should be a guaranteed success, since it's a copy of something very few ppl know in Korea, but is already proven to be amazing?)


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Not trying to bash the songwriter here at all, songs that are basically just poems sang with a soulful voice can be amazing, having an impactful melody is not a requirement, it's merely a bad fit for this drama, that's all.
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edit 1: It kept bothering me, so I rewatched the last 15-20 minutes of the drama in a less medicated state than before. My conclusion is that while I'm not very happy with how the original drama ended, this just feels low effort, I don't know. Considering how one of the few changes they made is related to young Han Jun Hee's story, I sense this might be because they wanted to avoid something that can be considered risque. This I can understand, it's just that the result is much more lifeless & lacking in impact, than the original.

edit 2: There are a large number of positive reviews on MDL that criticize people like myself for not evaluating this drama correctly & that we have too much bias since we watched the Tdrama first. This criticism has merit, however I think even if we ignore the redundancy thing there is just such a huge difference in emotional impact between these two dramas. I have rewatched some select scenes from the original this afternoon & It's fascinating to see how much better those are. (The Birthday Cake scene, This is our First day scene.. generic banter & liveliness etc etc) I think someone has to dislike Mandarin or Taiwan a lot to not see this.

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I wanted to watch something without love triangles & forced melodrama, so picked up this drama having read comments & reviews about SA1%. I ended up being mildly disappointed, the light romcom part lasts for the first 10-11 episodes, but the comedy isn't very strong, nor is the romance that interesting by itself. The leads have chemistry, but the whole dating situation felt, for a lack of a better word odd. The contract kept generating unnecessary tension all "Sword of Damocles" like and following the inevitable breakup we had 90 minutes of pointless melodrama, I'm sure the writers wanted to conjure some onion ninjas there, but I just wasn't invested enough in the characters for that to work. At least the ending was nice, although grandpa giving away his fortune like that made the entire plot semi pointless.

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Avoid!

Imagine the worst plot you possibly can & then spend a month to find more ways to make it even worse. That is the plot of Lie to Love. Romance could have still saved the drama, but unlike in Love is Sweet even the romance is pretty weak in this one. Cheng Xiao should just stick to singing, I wouldn't dare to assume that she has no acting talent, but she does not even seem to make an effort, her boredom on set is almost palpable. I'm sure it surprised no one that she has no chemistry with Luo Yun Xi.

I've read people saying that the first 20? episodes were quite good, it only become bad after, but I cannot disagree more. I'm honestly surprised I have not dropped this, sure things get even worse later, but it was never good.

Originally I was prepared to talk about love triangles, badminton, the randomly found hedgehog, or all the "barging in" that's happened in the drama, but I've decided to just end it here, this drama is not worth a more elaborate review. 3/10 :poopy emote:

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There were some amazing acting performances in this drama. I've always been a big fan of Gong Hyo Jin and she has been amazing here, she has shown (once again) that she has quite the acting range. The rest of the actors were great too, especially Hyangmi, but there are no -acting related- weak points really. It's worth noting that this is a very pretty show, the cinematography is just excellent.

Onto the bad stuff:
One of the biggest problems with this drama is that they've extended it to 20 episodes, all the filler stories that were used to fill up the additional 4 episodes were related to things I usually don't enjoy watching in a kdrama, namely Confucianism crap and an incredible amount of melo. I'm fine with watching melodramatic scenes in general, but this was just way too much, for way too long. There is also a shift in writing after XYZ's death, it's like all my favorite things in the show got dialed down to the bare minimum. Some characters got some personality & intelligence adjustments mid way and then in the finale everyone suddenly changed their world views for a super fast ending that was quite underwhelming. To sum it up the pacing is just off. The disadvantages of live filming were on a honking display here. Oh I almost forgot, the 30 million won thing, I have no words for how stupid that was..

So why do I still rate the show at 7.5?
Well, I enjoyed the first half (more like 2/3rds), there was quite a lot of "Monogatari style" dark moody, but funny dialog. The romance was great up to the point when Yongsik's mother started interfering with them. The balance was perfect between romance,comedy and mystery too up until XYZ died. Even though I'm not happy with the last 6~ episodes, I would feel bad to give a show this memorable a score any less than this.

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The most important things to know about this show are that the leads are really cute together and they have great chemistry. Also the themes shown in the show are nicely balanced, the drama is about 50% romance, 15% music, 15% gaming, 5% school life. I enjoyed the noona romance, the OTP relationship may not be the deepest I've seen on TV, but the apparent shallowness did never reach my nerve threshold (unlike in Intense Love). The fluffiness is on point and entertaining throughout most of the drama. The comedy/fluff ratio is a bit tilted, meaning that the drama could've been funnier, but still there was sufficient amount of comedic relief.

The story is on the weak side of mediocre. I enjoyed how they dealt with the leads realizing what each other's real identities were, the writers did a reasonable job there, but there is not much else to praise about the writing. It feels like most of the plot follows a template, there is not much innovation or creativity here. Luckily in a romcom the story is not that important, if the annoyances are low & that is the case with Love Scenery, at least for the most part.

The creators could've done a much better job at making me believe the gaming scenes are real, if they had just made the characters wear vr glasses & haptic gloves, then I would've been okay with all the things they supposedly have done in game.
Still compared to O2O the gaming scenes are HUGELY better here, I did not need to use the fastforward button, despite the unrealistic presentation.

It's nice that despite FL working in the entertainment industry they've mostly forgone the typical events that go down when actresses/idols fight each other for resources, fame and whatnot. Sure there was a little of that, but the conflicts were always resolved in a civilized way and even the fans/netizens mostly behaved in the drama. ^

I was not blown away by any of the songs, but overall the OST is certainly above average with a decent amount of variety.

I'm okay with Ma Shen Shen's story. I've read in the comments how people hated this character and blaming drama logic for her unrealistic behavior. I've seen a similar case in real life, so it's not like people never break down in such a manner after a breakup, it's rare but it can actually happen, it's not too immersion breaking. As for her relationship with Sun Bin Yu, I think it was pretty fun to watch. I mean sure it was a bit draggy before the last 5 episodes, but still I had some minor laughs and I was quite happy for them by the time we reached the last episode.

The worst part of the drama is without a doubt FL's secondary love interest. I had the impression that he was not even miscast, but probably the writers wanted to intentionally frustrate the viewers with this creepy uncle character. I am not adverse to age gaps, but the 25 years? age gap between the actors looked quite jarring. Anyway all the mini plots he's been involved in were bad, or borderline annoying. I guess his relationship with the OTP can be considered a pretty standard love triangle. He does not have success and FL does never hesitate or anything like that, but still a woman that wouldn't know what's going on with her so called friend's advances certainly does not exist in real life. To sum it up his relationship with FL is just an overused cliche, made that much worse with all the creepy uncle with a mustache thing. It was almost like a teacher hitting on a 16 years old high school girl.
Now that I think about it, I don't think I have ever seen an FL call someone other than the ML ge or gege and me not ending up hating that character.


The 8/10 rating may be a bit high, but I think this was a pretty entertaining fluff romcom, perhaps even a rewatch is in the cards, eventually.

edit: I ended up watching the drama again. In retrospect I may have underestimated the story a little, I enjoyed it quite a bit more now, calling it mediocre is uncalled for. On the other hand Uncle Ulterior Motive has annoyed me even more than before, despite my best efforts to fast forward button his scenes.

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I feel that I wasted my time!

The Good
⌲ The main romance is alright, though there is not a whole lot of it.
⌲ The friendships
⌲ Muscular Teacher Watermelonface
⌲ No love triangles (though as I said, there is not that much romance to begin with)
⌲ Chae Soo Bin did not disappoint.

The Average
⌲ FL's family (heavy character adjustments here)
⌲ Tak's backstory
⌲ The underutilized Min Do Hee
⌲ Kang Daniel was bad, but I expected worse for his first appearance as an actor, he is not totally hopeless like Lee Minho.
⌲ The cleaning lady

The Bad
⌲ The crime/procedural part of the story is full of intelligence insulting plots. (Windows password 4 digits, copy protected video, lack of food during boot camp & countless others)
⌲ Corruption in kdramas is always portrayed in a really weird way, here it's worse than usual.
⌲ The first three episodes are about abuse by older students, this is no fun to watch, should not have wasted more than 30 minutes on that.
⌲ Assault is a crime, even in South Korea, Uhm Hyuk should be in prison not training cadets.
⌲ There is no satisfying conclusion, the ending is just whelming.
⌲ Dae Il's random romance with Hana
⌲ *'s meaningless death, I did not even feel sad, just confused.
⌲ The cadets investigating stuff.

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