Sinasina

Relatively well written thiller, sponsored by RAZER©. (only minor spoilers below)

Okay so 8/10, objectively this should probably be worse, but for a CHINESE crime/thriller drama this is quite incredible, the best that I've seen thus far. Most of the plot is cleverly written and the acting ensemble is up there with the very best cdramas. Also it's extremely laudable that they did not try to explain the magic, how the time travel/loop aspect works, that always leads to unsolvable plotholes that they've nicely sidestepped here.

Speaking of plotholes there are quite a few non time travel related ones though. For instance, it's established that ML's parents exists & also that FL has a "home" to call. Does it make any sense that the police would not rally those people, not even once in any of the loops? Also why was the innocent truck driver held responsible?
The young hot headed police officer really behaved out of character in the last episodes.
Another nitpicky point is related to how the police attempts to stop the bus with cars pushing up against it with their tires spinning so fast that smoke is generated, that's not how physics works in real life :P
I could also talk about how incredibly competent the Chinese police is in this drama. L, L2 & their old master is nothing compared to the reaction time & intellect some of these policemen have. Normally I don't particularly care if Chinese nationalism, or some sort of political agenda shows up in a cdrama, but this was way too much for poor old me.

Besides the nitpicky problems I've highlighted above, I have three major problems why this is not 10/10 amazing.
The first is that in the first 5-6 episodes the police interrogations are way too draggy & it's annoying how the leads willingly walk into them without a plan. (We dutiful citizens must inform the police!)
The second is that the perpetrator backstory is utter garbage, in a bad kdrama-like fashion and not only is it garbage, but also an entire episode is wasted on it.
The third and final thing is that there is no peace for the leads, there is not much intermission. They had the option to chill, to mentally recover between more active, traumatizing loops, at least before they have become aware of a certain issue & they've not taken it once. In other timeloop stories those intermissions are often the best parts. (for example Jack kissing Carter in Stargate SG1 and many other intermission scenes in that episode)

As silly as the ending is & as much as it's not exactly the ending I've wanted, I enjoyed it very much despite how juvenile I felt it being. (I wanted the leads to produce some 40 minute long fluff after everything's over)

Based on reading other reviews before starting this show, I thought that this would barely have any romance. The reality defied my expectations, the romance is actually quite excellent here. Not only is it great how the OTP is bonding during literal life and death situations, but also their progress felt really natural. There was no silly courting & silly confessions, they have just become each other's everything after all that they've gone through. (It goes without saying that there is no time for a love triangle)

Some of the supporting characters were pretty mundane, borderline boring, but "Lu Apostle of Cat, Conqueror of Asthma, Chosen One of the Light, Di" is the absolute best drama side character in the history of dramas.
Then again it would have been way more unrealistic to have 8 super interesting individuals randomly show up on a random (or not so random!?) bus ride.

The rewatch value is low, because there is not all that much fun to be had after completely knowing the plot.

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This is not the worst thing I have ever seen from beginning to end, but it comes pretty close. If I look only at the main romance, then that's a decent 6/10 guilty pleasure with a minor twist, where the woman is the mysterious aloof one, not the other way around. The problem is that there is just too much padding. Later on there are episodes, where the main characters have less than 1 minute of screen time. Overall the part that I wanted to watch took up about 10% of the drama.
Even though the -extremely pretty- actors are okay in terms of acting skill, overall the characterization in the drama is just terribly bad. Most characters couldn't be any more 2 dimensional, I mean sure this is a fluff cdrama so I did not expect too much depth, however the writing is beyond terrible. Each storyline outside of the main romance and perhaps the hacker girl's stuff is dull, boring and uninspiring. The entire drama feels incredibly sloppy. It's like every second scene should have been reshot, but the director decided that it was "good enough" let's go home early today, which is a pretty big shame, considering that the production quality otherwise is quite good, they used high quality camera gear, hired a skilled cinematographer & the 2-3 original soundstracks were also up to standard.
There is also the issue of subtitles. The machine translated subs are enough to understand the story, but there are many fine nuances lost and there were times, when I couldn't make a sense of it.

I'm a bit baffled by some of the other reviews, perhaps ppl are just a bit too mesmerized by beauty? ^
If you are interested in watching a fluffy Chinese romcom look elsewhere. A Love So Beautiful, O2O, Put Your Head on My Shoulder are all infinitely better in almost every way.

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I'm almost speechless..

Someone in the comment section said this show is so bad that it's good, while I wouldn't quite go that far, the script really does surprise again & again at how bad it is. Even in the last episode where I thought they couldn't possibly make it any worse, I've gotten surprises.

Normally I would bash the writer for this ehm "performance", but upon further thought I don't think it's humanely possible for a professional to write something like this willingly, without external influences. Surely a sponsor of the show or someone similar must've interfered with the writing on a daily basis. For example they've retroactively changed the ending of one of the episodes, live filming or not that is an incredible new low in my kdrama history.

To say something good about this drama, it's still better than `Forecasting Love and Weather`. Even though the second ML here is a strong contender with the two leads in that, I still think Dynamite Kiss is lacking a bit of an X-factor to become the worst kdrama I have ever finished / not dropped.

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I really did not like the plot of season 1, but did not really have anything better lined up, so against my better judgement decided to pick this up. The previous season's final 3 episodes were basically trash & I have to give it to the Hong sisters, at least they managed to recover from that quite gracefully in the early episodes, it must have taken quite a bit of creative effort to somewhat -obviously not perfectly- untangle the mess they've made.
I enjoyed watching the first 7 episodes, more so than the first 17 episodes of season 1. The pacing was much better & the new actress did a reasonable job as well.

While I don't regret watching this, it's quite a shame that the final 3 episodes of season 2 are also a jumbled mess with incredible asspulls left and right & that's out of 10 episodes now, as such obviously I'm unable to give this a very good rating.

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40% sports, 60% romance

The Good
⌲ The top tier noona romance
⌲ The nice romantic plot in general
⌲ The chemistry between the leads
⌲ The lack of breakups
⌲ The high jumps were filmed very well, they looked very authentic to my eyes.
⌲ Jumping was more interesting than I thought it would be.
⌲ There is a lot off fluff.
⌲ The realistic progress of their relationship
⌲ ML is acting immature even for his age, but it's refreshing that Lou Na just likes younger clingy guys, it's not the usual 30 year old noona with the personality of a high school junior formula..

The Average
⌲ The love triangle (it's not bad, but the sML had a few rather annoying scenes)
⌲ Chinese sports dramas tend to be borderline unwatchable for me, this one may be better than usual, but the sports aspect is at best average. (training and coaching are rather strange..)
⌲ The supporting cast is rather numerous, but most of them faded into the background.
⌲ ML's mom (She is bad, but has so little screen time that I found her character tolerable)
⌲ Shi Yin (token -pointless- love interest for ML that just gave up without wasting too much screen time)
⌲ This may be a romantic comedy, but the comedy is not exactly fantastic.

The Bad
⌲ The party with the childhood photos
⌲ Li Ge (the drama could've been 4 episodes shorter & I would've rated it at 9 without this character existing)
⌲ The discipline switching, twice
⌲ Stealing a kiss from a sleeping woman..
⌲ Episode 24 is horribly bad. (rushed scandal BS to chase away the talented athlete, I'm surprised this passed the censors tbh)
⌲ The ending is less than whelming. (rushed happy ending following a senseless long distance thing)
⌲ The cinematography is fine, but the editing is horrid. (brightness, contrast, color grading)
⌲ Some things about sports & athleticism were extremely poorly researched, or just forcefully adjusted to fit the frame of the story.

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From mediocrity to awful ~

Normally I don't write a review before a drama has finished airing, but I decided that I don't really care about the final two episodes anymore & I have a pretty good idea what's going to happen anyway, so here we go..

For the first 20 episodes-ish I thought this was a very mediocre, very standard cdrama with nothing but recycled plots, an incredible amount of stalling, but at least it had a decent cast & nothing too annoying happened, so I felt entertained just barely. Though the actress + bodyguard or firefighter? 3rd couple was pretty bad to be fair and there is barely any comedy worth mentioning .

After e20 though the drama turns into complete trash. (it could be e19 or e21 I'm not sure exactly when the writing shifts) Of course the problem is either the script or the original source material, I don't know. Anyway the plot becomes absolutely garbage & it doesn't feel like it was written by a human. The individual scenes are well filmed, but the plot flows randomly & stupidly, very little of it makes sense. Random start dating, random breakup, random this and that. Honestly it reminded me of the AI generated anime show called `Always Breaktime`.
Just for fun I asked Chatgpt to write a 1000 word long cdrama plot outline for me & it was way better than this, though admittedly not anymore original.

The childhood connection is rather weak as well, but I suppose I've seen worse.

I'm alright with mental illness being the main conflict of a romance drama, but this is perhaps the worst portrayal of a mentally ill person I have ever seen.

Had I finished watching this I would have almost certainly called it the worst cdrama I have ever managed to get through, unfortunately I cannot do it.

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It's entertaining garbage.

The Good:
⌲ The acting*
⌲ The chemistry
⌲ The comedy in the first 2/3rds of the show
⌲ The whole double Scooby-Doo crew thing
⌲ Ultimately I was entertained enough.
⌲ There were an endless number of cute/fluffy romantic scenes

The Average:
⌲ The romantic story itself could be better.
⌲ The second ML (It's a weak triangle, but still..)
⌲ The special ability (the drama does not follow its own established fantasy rules regarding how the eyes are supposed to work and it's just a really dumb concept.)
⌲ The corporate stuff is quite digestible until nearing the final episodes. (usually this is far far worse)

The Bad:
⌲ The plot goes from silly nonsense to complete -still very silly- chaos near the finale.
⌲ Typically Chinese fantasy shows get an "it's a novel" ending these days, here the plot is completely packaged in that, so it's the first 10 & last 10 minutes-ish.
⌲ The main villain (I mean what is the end goal here, really?)
⌲ The Police in the final episode (I guess the censors needed a little extra push?)
⌲ The mom wakes up after 15 years of coma & she is like your regular cdrama mom from 1 second onward. (my daughter aged 15 years, but everything is FIIINE)


* I've read many posts about people bashing Zhang Yu Xi for her bad acting. I think you all are just lacking context. Had you ever seen a Chinese romcom comic, you would probably immediately recognize all the "silly overacting" postures & various other things. The goal was clearly doing that on screen & the cast did it as well as I could possibly imagine anyone doing.

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It's okay.

The little over four hours have a lot of educational content, a big chunk of that is sex ed. that Asian women desperately need. (I had relatively recent interactions with an Asian girl and It was shocking to hear how little she knew about her body & sex despite being experienced..) My problem with this is that I think many of the scenes the intended audience will find jaw dropping and very interesting have a lot of commercial intent behind them. The net effect is still very positive, but gosh if only they could've dialed down the greed just a little bit more..

As for me, I'm more than well versed in this topic. I have learned -almost- nothing new, so of course for a normal adult from the western world much of this would be very boring. Outside of education the romances were very simple, but at least refreshingly spicy and somewhat entertaining, but there is not enough time to really get invested. The show is very well acted though, Hani was absolutely amazing in this role and everyone else too. As for chemistry, I'm not sure, but it's certainly not the best for either of the couples.

Still the fact that a show like this not only managed to air, but also featured relatively big stars is great for progress, which Korea desperately needs. Not only the country, but the entertainment industry too, because I think the sale value of deadfish kisses & 30+s shy hand holding is not doing it for many anymore.

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The first 11 episodes were way too slow and boring, I would rate them at 6/10 at most. 12 to 23 were fairly enjoyable, reaching 8/10 levels and then we had 2 episodes of predictable, but still arbitrary separation for noble reasons & then we had the usual short happy ending in the last episode, followed by 10 minutes of weirdness aimed at the Chinese censoring body.
With the above in mind a high rating is impossible.

The actors were great. I think despite the comments that I've read, the leads had pretty okay chemistry, they looked adorable together & the rest of the cast were more than fine too. It feels like their efforts were wasted a little. Some of the side characters felt aimless, what's the point of having great actors playing interesting characters if their stories are going nowhere.
The side couple was pretty much all set up, but then it never ended up happening, why bother then?

I think I like the body-swap gender-bender genre. I loved Secret Garden and that drama despite being 11 years old is much better in many ways.(admittedly it has more cliche domineering CEO things) Also I cannot help but recall the movie "Your Name" . Compared to those two, The Day of Becoming You is fairly bland. I understand that Chinese dramas are inherently more relaxed & have less emotional impact, but I just feel that the limits of the genre were not tested in this one, many opportunities for great comedy were missed.
The cuteness and the fluff are the saving grace of the drama, because there is a lot of that!

The love triangle is on the weaker side and it ends early enough, but it still annoyed me. Test dating that guy due to weird reasons & then even agreeing to go to that resort, it was just weird & unnecessary.

I think this drama had the worst OST of any Asian drama i've seen thus far. This is entirely subjective, but I really hated that "I see the light" song and it's overplayed & it has somewhat ruined some of the drama's best scenes for me & that's a first, I can usually just ignore a bad OST..

TLDR: I think the drama could have been funnier, it could've had a much more satisfying ending & there was way too much time wasted early on, before the real story started. 6.5/10

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It's decent, but perhaps somewhat overrated!

Obviously this is a very decent romcom, but it fell a bit short of my expectations already early on. Took me a while to figure out what is the biggest factor limiting my enjoyment and that is the ML, Jang Ki Yong. I've seen him before performing great in Seach: WwW, but in My Roommate Is a Gumiho he just doesn't work for me all that well. It's not even a chemistry problem really, it's just that the aloof gumiho character is something that he kind of failed to pull off in believable way. It might not even be entirely his fault, his character supposed to have A LOT of character progression and probably nobody on the production team cared to tell him to adjust his character a little.

At first I did not like Hyeri in this show either, but after a few episodes I got used to her character & it did not take very long for me to realize that she is carrying the drama, alongside the second couple. Hanna is always a pleasure to watch & she had great chemistry with her partner & their characters were also written pretty well, they had some great lines and admittedly quite a few cliche misunderstandings.

Most kdramas have annoying things that I can barely force myself to watch. This one is better in the sense that the writers did not milk every single conflict and misunderstanding to the max. There are two tropes in this drama that I have always liked, namely forced cohabitation and pretend amnesia. The amnesia thing with the indignant FL was especially fun to watch, the cohabitation could've been done better though, but it was still enjoyable and fluff filled.
I especially loved how nicely they resolved the "student dating the professor" scandal. I really thought that would get blown out of proportion..

The biggest problem I had with the writing is the flea-like second ML, it felt like he is a manhwa character from Extraordinary You, his need to keep confessing, confessing and confessing when they are "on the stage" would have been more funny if they played that certain soundtrack from that show during those scenes. As far as love triangles go this one is on the weaker side of average, since the FL never hesitated, but it could not have been more unnecessary and it only ended at around episode 14. Also the whole red string of fate storyline annoyed me to no end.

There were more minor annoyances than I'd like. Like how the leads separated for a short while THREE times in the drama. I mean sure it was at most for 30-40 minutes each time, potentially not even reaching weeks in the drama's timeline, but if only they could've forgone just one of them, I would be that much more content right now.

I'm not entirely happy with the ending. I love happy endings, but this one is WAY TOO SHORT with a lot of wasted potential. The writers could have explored how he is adjusting to being human at length. I would have preferred if they spent the last 2 episodes doing just that, rather than sticking to the foreshadowed melodramatic things that ended up happening, or almost happening. Just imagine how nice it could've been, when ML was about to announce that he is turning human, he could have just turned human, like there was really no reason to really push for that dramatic ending in this one. (the whole explanation why that needed to happen & the criteria for him specifically to become human were just ridiculous)

This show is obviously very similar to Goblin & Angel's Last Mission in many ways, but Goblin is like a hundred times better. ALM:L should be worse objectively, but I enjoyed that one much more for some inexplicable reason. I rated Goblin as a 10, ALM:L at 9, so with that in mind I can only give My Roommate Is a Gumiho a 7.5.

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I'm extremely surprised that this is getting so much praise, nearly as surprised that I did not drop this early on around EP 4-5. I think my biggest gripe is that up till episode 7-ish there was nothing but pain & suffering. I realize that this is a melodrama, but in order for me to feel the value of this genre, in order to feel a sense of loss the characters' lives need to be introduced before everything went to oblivion for them. I'm giving this a 5 instead of a 1, because the main leads had great chemistry and the acting on their part was outstanding and their romance was well written too I guess. The cinematography was decent & the OST is quite memorable too. Usually I like the 16 episode format, because the writers don't have a chance to overdo fillers & they can just freely use their best ideas to full effect, there is no need to hold back for further seasons, but here I felt that 16 episodes were too condensed for all this borderline sadistic writing. That's not all, there were so many characters I felt apathetic about. Mr Shifty-eyes Architect, or that CEO? that always shouts, why did I have to see his pointless attempts at romance, just why? I like Kang HanNa, but her character made little sense to me, so I guess her acting talent might've been wasted here.
I've been reading the comments under the final episode & everyone was like "Thank God it's a happy ending, like this it's 10/10" etc, but I'm just not that forgiving. Literally 5 minutes of moderate happiness before the ending credits isn't enough to forget all the bad things, feels like the writer was pressured into changing her originally planned ending too.. Naturally there is no way that I would ever rewatch this drama. On the upside watching good melos mess me up for quite a while, but since I did not become emotionally invested in this one I'm already over it :-)

edit: For reasons unknown I kept missing the show, so after rewatching it I liked it a lot more than for the first time, so changing my rating to 6.5 stars. :-)

edit2 (a year later): I'm looking at this review that I've written and it feels surreal that I gave this 5/10 the first time around. Changing the score once more! .-)

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The cutest slipper commercial in the universe!

The biggest problem with this drama is that the part I wanted to watch starts only at episode 8~. Until then there were quite a few uncomfortable moments, due to some really weird casting and cinematographic choices. The young FL is supposed to be a 14 year old, but the actress playing her is like a second grader in elementary school, her interactions with ML were nothing bad in terms of plot and script, but the suggestive lighting & framing is really really weird at times. (I had a hard time getting past this part tbh)

Every romance drama has some flair & flavor to give a little contrast to all the sugar. This one has very few scenes outside of the leads' personal world, but what little there is, tends to be rather boring, or just plain bad. (concerns of ML's parents, ML's family things, ML's stalker, stalker's boss friend, workplace things)

Another minor gripe I have with the drama is how much FL is treated like a teenage princess in her relationship. This seems to be a recurring theme in cdrama roms these days, but I'm just not a fan.

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So why is it still 8/10?

Well, we watch romantic comedies for the actual romance and that is really absolutely out of this world good in this one. The chemistry, the visuals, the mood, the acting, the red ears, well really everything pertaining to romance (well other than the princess thing) is 10/10 awesome. I always understood why Lusi is touted by many as THE romcom queen, but personally I did not like a single one of her dramas due to various reasons. I feel she is far better in this one than in anything else before & there is some real acting chops here, beyond just being a top of the line comedienne. (and ML of course is the perfect partner)

I too found the brother-sister relationship very amusing & wholesome, but I don't think it's possible to have such a brother in real life. :-) (I'm talking about FL's real blood related brother here of course.)

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Overrated but still enjoyable.

The Good
⌲ I don't think I have ever seen a triangle-less romance drama that involves twins.
⌲ Park Bo Young 's acting.
⌲ The OST songs
⌲ The moms (how rare, especially with these veteran actors)
⌲ There is a lot less loud shouting in this one than what I expected based on the setting, in general the drama is just not very annoying outside of that one predictable hiccup in e11.
⌲ The drama not only has child actors for the flashbacks but they were also rather great! (and the flashbacks in general were also rather okay)
⌲ The office related scenes were immensely more tolerable than I thought imaginable, that considering the initial events that led to the switcheroo situation.
⌲ The gay character (I don't care much about LGBTQ stuff beyond the principle of "live and let live", but this was quite well done, especially for South Korea)


The Average
⌲ The acting (other than Park Bo Young)
⌲ The strawberry couple
⌲ The smarter twin's story in general (and I guess her characterization could have been more interesting as well)
⌲ I feel this drama could have used more comedy. (there is very little of it & it's not a too serious show)
⌲ The drama had some really emotional scenes that felt formulaic & manufactured to me. (Tangerines happened not that long ago & the contrast is clear)
⌲ Dancing around the topic of success without higher education & then still sending M to college even after her failing SATs 2-3 times in a row.
⌲ The excessive use of childhood misunderstandings
⌲ The overall plot could have been more interesting, but I guess it's not really the focus in the show, so it's forgivable.
⌲ The meh ending.


The Bad
⌲ I knew from early on that a noble breakup is 99%+ chance, but it was nearly as disappointing as usual.
⌲ The second worst supercar product placement in my kdrama history
⌲ `Take the spare room once your lease is up` (sure some ambiguity is present in this sentence, but why..)
⌲ Kim Rosa
⌲ The "not leaving the room for months/years" thing (If you think about what all that would imply, then it's clear the whole she has not left the room for a long time thing just doesn't work & being lenient about various aspect of this doesn't work either, because they really went all in with this concept at various parts of the show)

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I'm a cat person, I absolutely adore those little murder machines, so because of that I managed to finish watching all episodes, but I was close to dropping it quite a few times. I like Shin Ye Eun, but she wasn't a good fit for this drama, or maybe just her character was too ridiculous? I don't know. As for L he is still a weak actor, but ultimately the main problem here is not acting, but rather the script. The story is on the boring side of terrible. I mean honestly what qualifications does one need to become a kdrama writer? I'm typically not the type to look at a painting & say "this is nothing I could do better", but in Meow the Secret Boy's case I think I could come up with a better kdrama plot in like 20 minutes. I mean sure plot is not all that important in a cute fantasy romance drama, but even the basic romance is just not done very well here, also "cat life span melo" is like the worst idea ever in a show like this.. As for the ending, it's basically a noneding. The last 2 episodes were especially boring & there is no satisfying conclusion, I don't think. We see a deus ex machina thing with the webtoon & then he is human again! Great, what's next? Is this the cliffhanger for Sabrina the Teenage Witch season 4? The whole point of the kdrama format is to give viewers a proper closure.

Honestly who is the target audience for this? The whole thing feels incredibly juvenile..
I'm okay with silly romance shows, last year I loved watching "The Secret Life of my Secretary", but that show has much better romance, it's much funnier & also it has more charm.

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It's kind of bad, but not the worst.

The only overwhelmingly positive part of this drama is the FL's fun characterization, which Park Shin Hye clearly had a blast bringing to life. In the early episodes this was enough to carry the show, but as the episodes went by the increasingly declining plot with all the asspulls & absolutely insane sequence of events made it very difficult for me to keep enjoying the drama.
Boredom is also a problem, I for one did not enjoy that every other episode had 10 minutes worth of torture scenes/fillers. All the procedural parts were on the boring side as well.

There is not that much romance in this show, but what there is it's really not working for me, the chemistry is not there & the whole romantic plot feels incredibly forced.

As I said before the plot is crazy, but it's not like they suddenly piss off the viewers with something really annoying, it's more of a perpetual eye rolling situation.

As for why is a show that's just barely hitting mediocre so successful? I think similar to Squid Game the audience that is normally watching regular kdramas found all the action scenes & bloodletting a new-ish experience that's still different -in my mind far worse- than now aging American shows of this type. -\_(ツ)_/¯

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