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This is obviously very good and as of today there are over two hundred 10/10 reviews on MDL very articulately explaining why. I don't want to waste anyone's time with parroting the same sentiments, so I'll focus on the three things I did not like. ⌲ When I watch slice of life life dramas there is a limit of how many sad, tragic events or emergencies I can take in a single show & this one definitely exceeded that limit. Just because this show has countless brilliant, heartwarming scenes, that doesn't mean it was easy to get through it for me, not at all. Emotional roller coaster-ing is common in this genre, but I feel really too many negative shocking things happened in this one life, sometimes in too quick of a succession.
⌲ In my opinion Kim Seon Ho's guest role is really strange. I could barely believe it that it's really him playing the character in the early episodes & I initially thought they took away a supporting actor's job to give the big star a cameo, but that is most probably not the case. Nonetheless this is really immersion breaking to me, after his character reunited with Geum Myeong he has "become" a completely different person. He has jarringly transformed from an interesting but flawed person into a guy that is -how can I put this- serves a fan service role to women, like how when people accuse various Asian dramas to be pornography for women, this is the kind of main character they are visualizing, I think.
⌲ And finally let's talk about the poet dreams. Poets are extraordinarily over represented in kdramas for some reason, but I think this is really not a great fit here. An extremely poor & smart adolescent girl, who has already gotten many slaps from life would never ever dream of becoming a poet by trade. As well made as the plot around this is throughout the entire show, it's just too absurd to me..
For example imagine that in an alternate timeline Ae Sun's dream had been to become simply just famous & near the end of her life she became a renowned poet due to a combination of talent and her extreme life experiences fulfilling promises made just the same ...
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As for scoring the drama I decided to go with 9. I understand why it's so highly regarded, why almost everyone is rating it at 10, it's just that I think Reply 1988 is much better than it & When Life Gives You Tangerines had moments that were really hard to get through at various points in the show. Of course entertainment means different things to every one of us & it's not really unreasonable that someone would watch this & think that this is the best thing they've ever seen. I just don't feel like giving a show a 10, when I to an extent feel relief that it's finally over.
There is also the fact that this show released at a time when it has been two forevers since another slice of life kdrama came out that could even come anywhere near this level of quality and plot quantity.
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Top tier tomance, but the rest is increasingly not great nearing the finale.
The romance in this one is about as good as it can get within the constraints of Chinese TV. The leads not only have great chemistry with each other, but the romantic plot flows very nicely and realistically throughout the entire show. There are no love triangles or needless complications either & yet they have so many touching and emotional scenes, it's just insane!The drama is not just romance though, there is plenty of billiards related content. In the early episodes I was amazed by the camerawork & by all the effort taking & recording these shots must've taken. Though the games themselves were really really strange to my non-expert eyes. (but I have seen snooker played at the highest level & Ronnie O'Sullivan would be jealous of what's happening on screen in this show)
The first thing I disliked in this drama is fake Finland. Even if we ignore the strategically inserted homeless guys the whole environment is incredibly weird. To me it feels like the the studio shipped all the blonde white actors -based in China- to Finland (assuming they filmed there, I think so~) to act in this show. To add insult to injury the dubbed English is weird too, not because it's bad like in Kdramas, but rather educated Chinese dubbing actors just cannot sell this, every time a white guy opens their mouth on this show it sounds incredibly fake. (Though maybe I'm overreacting. It's just a Finland like imaginary country, not Finland after all.)
The bigger problem I had with this is that the final 7 or so episodes are incredibly boring. The romance in them is still fun, but the focus shifts to various educational topics involving sports, patriotism & self improvement. The sports drama parts, games played were all extremely skippable in this period as well. Having only this much in a 30 episode cdrama would be quite normal in the current era, but pushing most of it into the final episodes made it very difficult for me to finish the drama.
Despite how much I enjoyed at least 2/3rds of this, it's difficult for me to rate this very highly, since it was really and I mean REALLY difficult to reach the finale.
If you are reading this review before watching the show, my suggestion for you would be that after ep20 as soon as you start feeling bored, just straight up jump to the final episode.
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Now that I think about it, I also find it odd that the Cousin had a distinct second couple plot, but the creators forgot to wrap that up.
edit a year-ish later: Decided to raise my score a little bit, since the final episodes don't really ruin anything and are just boring & the parts before were just so incredibly memorable. I cannot even think of another cdrama (well okay I can think of just one) where the chemistry was so palpable.
edit2: Decided to bump it up even more. The boring parts seemed a lot less annoying the second time around and Yin Guo has so many great lines, which is rather rare for cdrama FLs. The OST grew on me as well.
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Typically I don't like watching high school cdramas, because censorship makes it near impossible to portray a reasonable romantic story in them and also they often have content involving parents & teachers that I abhor. This drama is a standout in in this genre in the sense, that they've shown innocent but very sweet high school dating. At times I was wondering how this passed censorship. Then later on ML's momster came and forced a 1 year separation, so everyone could focus on their studies & then I thought "okay, so that's how". There were also various moments in the drama, when the leads were vehemently denying their romantic involvement with each other, but it was never in doubt. It was very strongly implied that they knew each other's feelings and they did everything dating teens would do, other than skinship that is.
(This is the second crama I've seen that is like this, the other one was 'Meeting You')
Basically the show can be split into three parts.
1) The kids getting to know each other. (first 5-9 ep)
2) The friend group of 5 enjoying their best life. (this is very close to 10/10 amazing)
3) College, young adult life (last 6-7 ep)
I would say 1) is not great, initially I found the show to be the most typical Chinese high school drama I have ever seen. I was fully prepared to drop it, but I did not really have anything else better lined up & I needed something to watch during my late night workout sessions.. Upon reaching 2) I was very surprised, suddenly everything started working for me and it felt like I'm watching a different show, where EVERYTHING is better, including the acting, the editing and even the background music inserts. In fact episode 10 is one of the best cdrama episodes I have ever seen, it was absolutely magical.
After the forced separation we quickly transitioned to college life & adult dating. While I tend to enjoy a simple, fluffy and complication-free happy ending, I felt 3) to be lackluster in many ways. I really liked the second couple & they barely had scenes there. Much of the non romantic plot earlier was involving ML's brother & momster. FL did not meet ML's mom during the adult part of the show, at least other than us seeing the mom sitting there at their wedding there has not been anything else. The brother also only had like one line during the wedding, would have been nice to see what happened to the genius. Also there were at least two occasions when I felt the writer set up some big cathartic faceslap moments and the then things just fizzled out, not cool! Give me my loud slap! To sum it up, in 3) we just went through the motions without enough emotional impact. (well there was a little of that in the finale, maybe)
Anyway despite the negative points this one is absolutely worth watching, perhaps even just for the bromances, but to me 'A Love So Beautiful' -despite that annoying Wu Busong and the breakup- is a much better cdrama that is largely similar to this one, but feels far better overall. It's better acted, has several really epic moments, the final episodes are very satisfying and it's amazing from episode 1 onward etc etc.
Of course if I started to compare it to the best university/young adult cdramas then it would just fall short.
TLDR: It's the second best high school cdrama I've seen, but usually high school cdramas suck, so 8/10.
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I was a bit disappointed at first, I found the first 5 episodes a bit boring . However by the time we reached episode 10 I was over that and I started to dread the moment of the inevitable reveal, but I was pleasantly surprised when that moment came (very late in the series), because the revelation drama/conflict had gotten resolved swiftly and the resolution was very beautiful and unexpected. Throughout the entire show I was waiting for various terrible things to happen, but they were only teased, none of them came to be. (such as extreme love triangle plots, forced separation, or strong rivalry induced melodrama) This is one of those shows that's about enjoying the journey, rather than anticipating the end. I really liked the character interactions, the comedy and the main leads had great chemistry, the entire cast was amazing really. Having watched Legend of the Blue Sea I kept thinking how much better Shin Hyesun could have been at being a hapless mermaid, I like Jun Jihyun as an actress, but that mermaid character was nearly identical to this 30 years old teen character, but it's blatantly obvious whom this role fit better. The OST was awesome, not at Goblin levels, but not much worse really.
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Dreaming of a Freaking Fairytale!? has been -obviously- a lot of fun, despite that I don't think this is all that unique or anything, though admittedly the whole wanting to be a Cinderella openly and aboveboard concept is pretty cool. I think the biggest contributor to success is the short format. A regular kdrama mini series is 16 hours long, as we all know the kiss happens at 8 & then after some fluff complications lead to a breakup & a 2 year separation happening in episodes 13 to 15 followed by a usually rather poorly written happy ending that can be either 1 or 100 minutes long. Opposed to what I just outlined this show is about 7 hours long (40 minutes x 10eps) & almost all of the things that normal kdramas have are there (love square, breakup, gangsters, almost marrying someone else etc etc), however the quick pace makes all these very palatable & since the comedy and main romance are both very strong, I don't have it in me to give a score any less than 8.5. The ending is rather satisfying too and not that short considering the format..Pyo Ye Jin always had been amazing, but it fills me with joy to see her shine so much in a main role, while also having wonderful chemistry with her rather amazing partner. ^ I really wish for this to be a financial success, selfishly just so I could see her in more high profile romcoms :-P
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it's Temu Goblin.
This is by far writer Kim Eun Sook's sloppiest work until now & yet the drama is still enjoyable. To elaborate a bit more on the script, I think they wanted to make a Goblin-like fantasy show & so the writer made a similar framework for a drama that is different enough. Personally I find nothing much wrong with this. A 1000 year romance with some flashbacks & an endless opportunity for corrupting wish stories -instead of ghost stories- could've easily lead to the drama of the year, or the second best at least. The problem is that the show is really not written consistently at all, the writer's self established rules are not respected, often not even within the same episode & the finish is very variety show like in the sense that there were a great many fun skits, but none of the plot makes sense, like at all.Also the Arabic theme is really poorly researched & feels super forced. I don't give a flying monkfish about the religious connotations, but the whole Goryeo Koreans in Arabia felt incredible weird to me, what is even more forced? Korean actors speaking Arabian & doing that a lot. I really don't know why the writer couldn't just come up with a Korean version of the genie myth, or just call genies genies, but don't explain AT ALL what they are in Korea, that would've worked too. Correction, I do know why this happened, probably there may have been a sponsorship deal with the Emirates or something similar..
The most nonsensical part of the show is FL's condition, psychopath or sociopath? or whatever else, the basic concept that she does not have emotions at all is super silly & quickly full of contradictions.
Self-censorship always bothered me in Korean dramas, there are certain themes that cannot be shown on Korean TV & this often leads to really annoying & stupid subplots. In Genie, Make a Wish this manifests in how it's possible for a foreigner to wish for endless riches, but a Korean person cannot do the same & even if they kind of do, they still have to obsessively return the money. In this drama money is returned at least 3 times, though "only" twice voluntarily.
Anyway despite all of the above why is this still a 7?
Well, basically the casting is brilliant, the visuals and the photography are also amazing & the drama is just very funny in general. So if someone is capable of shutting off their brain a A LOT, then I can totally see them loving this. Suzy is not only incredibly gorgeous in this one, but also had great chemistry with Woo Bin & their constant bickering is endless fun. I would watch a 200 episode long sitcom where these actors play an old married couple..
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