Sinasina

I'm genuinely surprised by the raving reviews!

This is not a drama, but a sitcom, that should've been fine, I generally like the sitcom genre, but this one is way too average. Jo Sok+Ae Bong moments were great & lee GwangSoo's solo scenes were quite alright too, but these are like half of the drama. The parents are played by my least favorite veteran actors ever & the brother's character is just bland. There is a lot of cheap humor that feels almost insulting to the viewers intelligence, there were poop & fart jokes everywhere and those weren't even the worst part.
I looked at the webtoon, that's all over the place too, but it feels slightly more interesting, not that I'm going be following it.

(Kim Jong Kook apparently sucks at acting...)

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It's massively overrated, people are mesmerized by the cute ML!?

The romance is kind of fun in this show, but it's excruciatingly slow. The drama is filmed beautifully & the actors did a great job, but the plot is super weak from relatively early on & if I wanted to be a bit mean I could call the final episodes simply trash. Sure the ending is not quite as disrespectful as in `Who Rules the World `, but it's not that far off, it's a random mess.

I like the enemies to lovers trope, but the delivery felt jittery to me & it does not help that the ML has gotten some complete character rewrites without dealing with some of the deeper issues their relationship had.

I could go into more detail & talk about some other things such as some of the social messaging the show has, but ultimately I feel like I have wasted my time & don't want to spend more than 3 minutes writing this review.

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I'm not impressed.

The first half of the show is quite good, maybe just barely a 7-7.5, but it's increasingly bad later on. It's honestly quite difficult for me to understand how the director and the writer of the amazing `My Fated Boy` could produce a drama of such low quality. Sure the leads had acceptable chemistry, but the whole model business is not that well researched or interesting to begin with. While the genetic eye disease thing could have been worse, it's still pretty damn bad. Chinese TV cannot deal with stuff like this. Then there is also the awful aunt/mom, they spent 5 episodes on making her -basically- Cruella & then another 5 on her redemption ark, It's needless to say I'm quite displeased with that. It's a shame, because normally I like noona romances, but it's difficult to enjoy the second couple? here, when I did not like either of the two characters.

At the end of the day this show is mostly ruined by the bad writing in the second half. I wish I had stopped watching around e18, but alas..

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The best makjang I have ever seen!

Well, usually when I start watching a makjang drama by accident, then I end up dropping it almost immediately. Opposed to that not only have I managed to complete this, but also more often than not I found it entertaining. While watching this drama it made me wonder what a "perfect" makjang drama would be like & what are the things that I would change to make that happen if I were the writer. My conclusion is that outside of fixing some of the most glaring plotholes, there isn't really anything that I could change to make this better & still keep it a yelly/slappy/soapy authentic makjang. While on this topic I have to mention `Marry My Husband`, that drama at its core has the same basic plot, but it has fewer plotholes & less overall craziness, so I think it's alright to say that is the somewhat perfected version that came later, BUT it's not a makjang anymore. Makjangs are popular for a reason & this one is the least offensive of the lot, so the high rating on MDL is almost justified. There are plentiful makjang tropes of course, lots of shouting, crying, unexpected family relations and all that jazz, but the most annoying ones are wonderfully absent. Though I'm not claiming that this is objectively good, but the fact that it's a makjang that triangle haters can safely watch is a miracle in on itself.

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I have seen Sung Hoon in several dramas before & I always thought that he is a pretty and hardworking oppa with very little acting talent. I have to admit though that in this drama he's produced the performance of his life. While I wouldn't go quite as far as to call his acting awesome, especially in the final 2 episodes, but this is decent. Hard work does pay off, at least sometimes!

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Grinch has arrived with a less than positive review..

Where do I even start, alright so about the writing. I think the writer had enough well thought out material up to about maybe 8-10 episodes. Come filming they bloated that up to 18-19 episodes & oh boy there is an incredible amount of super boring filler in this one. Of course this drama is getting an incredible amount of praise & all that is not -completely- unfounded, some of the scenes in the aforementioned first half or rather 60% are borderline brilliant, it's just that as a viewer I expect my attention held to some degree throughout the show or at least most of the show & to me 1 minute of brilliance per episode is not enough to forgive how boring the rest of it was. Moving on, come episode 20 the writer has ran out of the good stuff & then decided to just very abruptly transform the drama into a basic romcom with some tragedy baked in, I would have been okay with this had it been a good basic romcom, but it's very light on the com & the rom does not work all that well for me in this one & the filler plots, secondary semi-couples were really not great still. The dialog here and there had some shining moments even in the later episodes, but overall BORING is what I kept feeling most of the time.

Basically I said everything important already, just to add a few more things, I think this show had a great cast, it's a bit of a waste really. I like both Shen Yue and Lin Yi, but together I think they were not the best, though admittedly their chemistry was not terrible or anything. Mei Xia is a great character, her final ehm appearance was certainly very surprising and impactful, though I still cannot tell how I feel about it, on one hand I could call it almost trashy storytelling, on another it certainly carried a surprising amount of punch, I don't know, I have never seen anything like this before.

ML's illness is not very well explained & his behavior is not really consistent with what explanations we do get about his mental condition. I think if I try to look at this drama as a show largely about portraying mental illness as its main conflict there are several problems with the concept, though admittedly in the earliest episodes (1-5), the directly related scenes were quite interesting. Anyway coincidentally this drama is almost exactly the same genre as `It's Okay, That's Love`, which would be romance+mental illness+ comedy, but to me that drama is a real 10 out of 10 & this is so much worse in almost every aspect that I feel bad about even mentioning them in the same paragraph.

The standup comedy in the show is awful & most people probably agree with me just on that one point, I want to add that it's not just awful because the humor is lost in translation, it's just awful period. I speak a wee bit of Chinese & oh my god It's so bad. Throughout the entire time I felt that Shen Yue agrees with me on this one, she was so awkward in some of those super cringy standup? scenes, that must have been a torture for her too. Sure censorship is a difficulty, but decently funny stuff still passes it sometimes, there are countless safe topics to ridicule etc..

TLDR: Of 25? hours maybe 14 is extremely boring & the rest is barely 7 out of 10 on average. (yes there is 10 minutes that's 15 out of 10 brilliant, but that's hardly enough in a 25 hour show)

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I have conflicted feelings about this movie. While I -a fan of the drama- have somewhat enjoyed watching it, it did feel redundant & a bit messy. In all honestly I have extreme doubts that someone who has not seen drama could even understand let alone enjoy this. The plot is about as complicated, if not a bit more so than the original drama's main plot (it's the same with complications basically), but all that is presented in 100 minutes, It's a bit like imagine Back to the Future 1-2-3 as one 100 minute long movie, would we even root for our heroes with that little buildup to the various time travel events that happen there.

Oh well, Wu Bai is still a legend & Last Dance is still one of the best songs I have ever heard!

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This is mostly a very satisfying watch.

Generally I don't like revenge-makjang stories, but I like Park Min Young. I thought, let's just give this a go, worst case scenario I'll just drop it after a while. Overall this is a very pleasant surprise. The whole plot works a lot better than anything else I've seen in this genre before, mostly because villainous transgressions get quick -and smart- paybacks almost every single time and these are very satisfying & overall well written. Outside of Boa's questionable acting the cast did a phenomenal job as well and the whole thing is just very decently done, the production values are really up there with the best. So why is it not a 10 you might ask? In the second half there were 2-3 weak, messy episodes where the plot fell apart a little bit, though the drama managed to recover from these & wrapped up nicely too.

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This show is of course quite good, there are literally no love triangles, misunderstandings or angst, but there is still fun content that's enough to fill up about 25 episodes, unfortunately we had 33. Still the filler is not so bad either, overall it's full of chill swoony stuff. The couples were all great pairings with excellent chemistry. I just feel a bit annoyed how little -meaningful- screentime the side couples had. (especially considering how much filler their scenes could've replaced) One thing this drama did exceptionally well is portraying new couple awkwardness & progress into becoming comfortable with each other. (but then they just had to make several "sleep together in our day clothes prim and proper" scenes to annoy us with)

I've said this before in other cdrama reviews, but saying it again, it felt like I watched an amazing show twice in a row, that's why the rewatch value is low, because I feel I already did it..

Also there were quite a few epic moment opportunities that were intentionally missed. I was really looking forward to some of them too, so that stings a bit. (for example ML meeting FL's cousins, I mean could they have made that any tamer?) Censorship makes dramas like this possible so here it could be considered a net positive, but the blunting effect on the excitement is a bit too much for my taste.

(Also we could talk about how incredibly offensive to women some of these acts of "classic" chivalry are, but hey what else is new? This is still a Chinese drama)

I really liked the proposal scene in this one. I usually cringe whenever I have to suffer through proposal scenes, not here...
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Overall this is one of the better Asian dramas I've seen this year, but it's very far off from the best ones in the chill-conflictless genre. (in fact 'Meet Yourself' is a 2023 cdrama as well that I think is much better)

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It's somewhat flawed, but at the same time incredibly dreamy, magical & thrilling.

Let me start with what's bad. Starting around episode 20 the plot & the pseudo science become rather silly. The science thing is maybe 20 times worse than in the Stargate SG1, if that helps and it takes the main stage in the later episodes. I often say that it's nigh impossible to reasonably explain time travel in a drama, so it's better to leave things to the imagination, unfortunately they tried to explain a lot & not only used terms like quantum cracks, Klein bottles, but walked into these things on their two legs. That's not all, many times in the dialog instead of timelines they use the term alternate realities, which does not fit logically & would lead to rather grizzly conclusions. (I don't think the thought process of "It's okay if people died left & right, there is nothing to feel sad about since we are not in their reality anymore" makes much sense) Though I'm increasingly confident time travel cdramas have an absolute limit on how many times the term "time travel" can be used before a show wouldn't pass censorship, so if the narrative demands more they just go with alternate realities or dimensions, even if that makes no logical sense.
The dubbed voices sound too much like studio recordings, there is no believable ambiance.
Finally the main villain's motivations are somewhat ridiculous, but censorship might have something to do with this as well, more reasonable serial killers probably cannot be shown on Chinese television. I've seen far worse than this, it's bad, but at least the writer truly tried to make his character work and it almost does.

That was the all the bad I can think of right now, moving on..


Everything is else is from good to incredible. End of review.. just kidding of course.

The romance is fantastic. Both the main couple & second couple's romances are incredibly magical, I certainly got the feels & the chills many times during the romantic & sentimental scenes that this drama had. In fact I don't think I have ever seen a cdrama with a side couple this memorable, a secondary romantic plot this touching.

The genre of this is Romance + Thriller & surprisingly enough this is probably the best Chinese Thrilling experience that I've had so far, there was even a touch of horror here and there & even a little Squid game influence in the final episodes perhaps. I tend to rant on and on how Asian drams Chinese & Korean alike almost always suck at this, not here. I saw a book on Amazon described as "utterly gripping crime thriller with edge-of-your-seat suspense " and I think that's an apt description of many of this drama's scenes. Impressive!

The plot up to episode 20 is very nice, even though I had a strong suspicion of the villain's identity from the very beginning, which is not that surprising considering that I recently watched "Meet Me @ 1006", but the plot flows very nicely & it was interesting even in the later sillier episodes. If I make an effort to ignore the horrible fake science, then the ending feels rather nice too, it's far more hopeful then what we've gotten in"Your Name", it's not nearly as open ended, you don't need to use your imagination to know what's going to happen in the future. (though checking the ending in advance without context will lead to a lack of understanding..)

The OST is absolutely incredible, right now of the top of my head I cannot think of a single cdrama where the tracks & mixing are both so great. It's not as good as Goblin's, but it's not too far off, if anything the mixing is better here.

The visuals are in my opinion very nice. I have seen a lot of people bashing the bad CG, this is hugely unfair, making a believable cruise ship in CG would have needed the budget of Avatar & even then it would have been obvious it's CG. I think this is the best CG i've seen in a -relatively speaking- low budget cdrama. The environment on the ship is extremely unrealistic, but that's hardly on the CG, but rather the production team went for a really dreamy, otherworldly vibe. I understand why this is a hit and miss for the audience, but for me it's mostly a hit. In fact I had very distinct Final Fantasy 8 vibes while watching some of the scenes on the ship.

I talked about the great visuals & OST, but the amalgamation of these things truly leads to an incredible audiovisual experience. I think the drama would be worth watching just for that, even if the rest was completely trash, which it is not, not even close.

TLDR: Go watch the drama, it's totally worth it! The 7.8 rating on MDL seems unbelievable to me.

edit: There might be an epilogue with the usual "it was just a book" shebang, fortunately I have not had the chance to watch this. The final episode of the drama I watched did not have this.

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The best SubwayTM advert in the universe!

And I'm only half kidding about the headline, Subway is an integral part of the plot.

I had dropped countless T dramas over the years, before this one I had only finished maybe 3 of them. The fact that 1006 has become the 4th is a pretty big deal for me, since the average Taiwanese dramas tend to be unwatchable for me, but at the very least it's almost always fascinating to see how different they are from mainland Chinese dramas & seeing a decent one like this one has been a great experience. So yes, it's absolutely worth watching, but it's very far from flawless.

The romantic plot is rather nice, I would rate that separately at 9/10, the only criticism I can make about that is that it was a bit draggy at times. The leads had great chemistry with each other, the fantasy added a nice flair to their relationship and I even liked their conclusion. People that think this is not a true happy ending because of what happened in e22 are a bit silly.

Even as a mystery thriller drama 1006 intrigued me from early on, I was genuinely interested about the investigations & where the story would take me. However in this drama the journey as far better than the destination, the villains have baffling motivations behind their actions & it was not fun to see them revealed and especially to see their "end".

Let's talk about plotholes! In time travel related dramas it's extraordinarily difficult to avoid plotholes and I feel like the writer here did not even really make an attempt. The story is not bad overall, but it's not very polished, for starters there are a lot of minor retcons and the writer seems to not know that two phones having identical IMEI numbers won't work on the same network. The one thing that bothered me the most is that Jia La not believing Zhen Yu about certain events from the future happens A LOT and it's been established that verification would've been child's play. She could've just joined on Man Man's wifi (or ask a SubwayTM worker's phone to check the internet) and do a Google search. Also I was totally convinced that she knew about ZY representing Ji Rou, when it was revealed that she did not know I was just rolling my eyes..

Ji Rou is a horrible character. Her lack of correct decision making ability is extraordinary, even by Makjang-kdrama standards. Why is this a problem? Because most of the investigations & timeline adjustment attempts revolve around saving her & her husband, but the truth behind the events related to her is not that easy to accept.

The production values are on the low side, the visuals (lighting, makeup, cinematography) are reminiscent of a 2005 era kdrama. Though I must mention that the sets were rather nice.

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Overrated.

I kept dodging this show, despite it being recommended to me all the time. My concerns were about the toxic things that happen in this drama & that it's the usual break + 3 year timeskip formula that I've never liked made me extremely weary. Now here we are, in a sort of drama drought I steeled myself & got through this over the course of 3 days.

First and foremost this is an extremely unique cdrama, the likes of which I have not really seen before. Disability romance made for Chinese audiences & it's -at least for a while- good too. I can totally see why it has gotten so much praise. Based on just the first 12 episodes I would have rated this at a 9. Sure there are some toxic things, but those did not really faze me in the first half. The acting is really strong too, Wan Peng especially blew my mind, having seen her only in stereotypical comedienne roles before It's incredible how much more authentic she is here. Of course the first part already has some problems. The second couple is quite flavorless & they lacked chemistry, plus their plot was uninteresting during the entire drama. What is bigger for me though is that the production team just couldn't commit to Su Nian Qin's blindness. To me it seems like the script had been revised multiple times in strange ways & the end result, specifically ML's eye condition makes no sense what so ever. He can see shapes & movement, but need to use a stick and needs explained why opening the blinds is a good thing, the sun etc.. Let's just say that his condition & the dialog related to it is extremely inconsistent and this is blatantly obvious while binge watching.

Unfortunately after the first half there are a few absolutely horrible episodes involving rather bad writing, momsters and some crazy makjang-ish stuff leading to a breakup & a 3 year timeskip. This is business as usual in cdramaland, at least compared to kdramas usually they don't do this before a 5 minute long rushed happy ending.

Even more unfortunately what follows after the timeskip is just mediocrity. In fact the last 5-6 episodes can only be described as boring. In Chinese society people with inborn disabilities are barely considered human, so of course Su Nian Qin HAD TO BE cured. So basically the last third of the drama is the most generic cdrama happy ending you will ever see, but worse, because there is a lot of weird toxicity that is difficult to digest for western audiences and there is nothing much happening in general. I like slow burn cdrama romances, but this is really far more boring than usual, there is barely any comedy to be found and the way they go through the motions(pursue>get approval>ring>wedding>kid) is really super bland, especially considering that they already lived together before the timeskip.

The drama has one "big" twist. I did not see this coming in advance, but in retrospect I should've, I may have underestimated the writer a little, so I did not even consider something like this happening. Still the reveal was underwhelming & made no impact to the plot, which is a shame because I really liked the character involved..

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Triangle haters can safely watch this. The secondary love interests are fleeting..

The OST is out of this world good, but after the timeskip the best parts are not used anymore, instead they keep repeating the same track that is kind of like elevator music, but more mysterious.
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As I said this is an extremely unique drama, but the closest one I can think of, especially in terms of vibe is Forever and Ever. That drama however is consistently good, it has some makjang-ish craziness as well -perhaps even more overall than here-, but things are dealt with more sensibly & it managed to keep me interested up to the closing credits. The dialog is just very good, nose to nose interactions are not the driving force of every second scene.
People that liked this drama should check Forever and Ever out, it does not have too many viewers on MDL..

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It's hidden enough & it's almost a gem..

In regular kdrama terms this is about 4 episodes long and that is just the right amount for this kind of story. Had this been extended to 16, I'm sure it would have been an unwatchable makjang show for me.
The acting is good (Hani is excellent), the chemistry between the leads is also fine. There is not much fluff, but the romance is really realistic . The plot itself is quite juvenile & silly, but due to the short length it's quite bearable, though I think the show would've been better if the ex stayed away in the current timeline. The whole bartender thing is quite unique as far as kdramas go and even the toxic sismance is interesting.

XX is totally worth watching!

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Fun, but stupid

The Good:
⌲ The excellent chemistry between the leads (far better than in Love Equations)
⌲ The acting is relatively good across the board.
⌲ The fluff is great & there is A LOT of it.
⌲ The whole pursuing the man thing was a lot of fun most of the time.
⌲ The top tier comedy before the timeskip (It's been consistently funny)
⌲ The love triangle is very tame & fizzles out in time.
⌲ Fun cohabitation
⌲ The contract marriage trope works great in this one.

The Neutral:
⌲ The half brother's ambitions (Seems like due to censorship all that buildup has been for nought, his story has gotten axed & he had only appeared for like a minute after the timeskip)
⌲ The childhood connection (I've seen far worse)
⌲ As cute as their kid was, I've seen better Chinese child actors.
⌲ The side couples

The Bad:
⌲ Episodes 22,23 and 24 are utter garbage.
⌲ The separation due to noble reasons
⌲ The redemption arks are the worst. (father, stepmom, GaoE - neither of these make sense)
⌲ I'm sick and tired of practicing doctor leads needing to go aboard just when they are about to start enjoying life.
⌲ There is not a whole lot of plot, but it's incredibly dumb at times.
⌲ Simon (bad acting, super weird stuff before the timeskip)
⌲ Lu Fang Ning chickening out felt horrible to me. (At one point ML gave up resisting in anger, but..)

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The biggest problem with the drama is that it's simply quite boring.

I guess I can be considered a fan of the leads, but this pairing is just not very good. It was always obvious to me that neither of these two are great actors, but they choose roles very well to cater to their strengths. In this drama though the characters they are supposed to play should have had more depth than what we've gotten on screen & their chemistry is just too weak. No matter how many fluffy moments we've had in 40 episodes, I just had a hard time immersing myself in their romance.

On the positive side there are no love triangles and the leads don't break up. Even the mandatory quarrel/conflict thing that lasted like 2 episodes was quite bearable. I also really liked the second couple.
As juvenile & silly as the portrayal of mental illnesses was in this drama, it's always nice to see this topic talked about wholesomely in an Asian drama.
The OST is very good, it's way better than anything else in this drama.

Most reviewers talk about how draggy it was, 40 episodes yada yada, I think the length was sort of okay, had the drama been just a little bit better written & less hastily filmed, then I think I would have been perfectly fine with the length. Though I must mention air pistol shooting is sure as hell boring to watch. It's like watching pre-fight stares in Dragon Ball Z.

I could talk about how this drama had countless minor annoyances, or that how stupid the villain characters were, but ultimately the biggest problem with the drama is that it's simply quite boring. It's not boring, because the plot drags, but rather it's just not very exciting. Seems like I'm being contradictory here, It's quite difficult to explain what I mean here. For example I really really like the forced cohabitation trope, the way how people adjust to that situation pleases me almost every time. Not in this drama though, the lack of chemistry & the lack of comedy too I guess makes it kind of lifeless.

TLDR: If you are REALLY REALLY bored you can watch this, but make sure you have watched GGS2 & Put Your Head on My Shoulder first.

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It's a relatively well done cliche-fest romcom!

This drama is full of silly & full of stupid, but somehow it has never become unbearably annoying for me. The comedy is good, the fluff is there, ultimately the entertainment is on a fairly high level. As bad and ridiculous as the plot is, it has never gotten in the way of the romance, or the comedy. There were some moments, when I felt that the writer is insulting my intelligence, that's why I decided to rate this lower than 10/10, but otherwise this is worth watching. Also this is safe for triangle haters to watch, just barely.

To say something good about the story, I suppose it's nice that all the adversities and BS roadblocks have gotten dealt with in minutes, there are no breakups either, it's a completely relaxing experience.

The actors have done a pretty good job, there were no major chemistry problems either I think. It's worth noting that the FL looks like an oldschool sports anime heroine. (wide angular face + ginormous eyes!) I found her very amusing most of the time and not just visually.

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