bokminthe

Characters are annoying.

I was not sure how to rate this drama to be honest. I did entertain me at times and I was annoyed and bored at others.
Would I recommend? I think there are better things out there and generally I wouldn't recommend.

Firstly, I do think this drama is too long, and there are times when nothing happens and the slice of life being shown is not entertaining enough (and I generally like slice of life dramas). That being said, I found the middle part the worst one, because it became way too melodramatic but I was not feeling it at all, I only felt annoyed at the main character for the way she was handling things.
I give points for it being the most convincing gender bending drama I've seen so far. Sure, there were moments when it was clear she was a woman because of her figure but compared with other dramas I've seen it gets all my points for that.
There are certain concepts in this drama that I feel are now obsolete with the times, especially when it comes to the aspect of the woman having to take care of the household once married and the view on homosexuality.

When it comes to the characters, something I found bothersome is that there are not many women in this drama but they're all terrible, what a way to go... Even the grandmother that seemed just fine in the beginning turns into a classic controlling over protective grandma for a while (but hey, at least she does change).
Eun Chan was entertaining in the first few episodes (even if childish for her age) and then increasingly annoying, selfish and her tantrums ended up making me angry. I found quite insulting how she was not thinking how Han Gyul would be feeling in terms of questioning his whole life and sexuality for her simply because he thought she was a man (the implications of so in a society very against it). She was so oblivious and self-centered, and she continued to be that way the whole show, she was ok for him to give up his life dream but she couldn't make an effort to compromise with him about the marriage and finding a middle ground they could both be happy about. I understood her thoughts in regards to her father, but I still thought that she lacked maturity for thinking that every single situation and people you encounter will be the same.

Han Gyul was more tolerable to me although I despised a lot how he handled his crush for Eun Chan by sistematically insulting her and dragging her to do whatever he wanted during work. Totally not ok.

Yoo Joo is the kind of woman I've met before in real life, keeps her options open and uses men around her (knowing they like her) whenever convenient. She's a prime example of hypocrisy and the fact she hardly acknowledged this was giving me narcissistic vibes. She was love bombing and provoking Han Sung constantly and I would have prefered their story to be one of moving on and healing. Han Sung on the other hand is the classic "nice guy", and they try somehow to convince you that despite his mistakes he's still such a "nice guy". Funny enough, for me it was not the kissing or the crush he had on Eun Chan what did it, it was the way he was expecting certain traditional family dynamics once he married Yoo Joo, in a very "oh we're married now so I can finally control you".

All the princes at the café were also a hot mess. Sun Gi was a stalker, and then he only is nice to a girl in the end because she spoke japanese? Rude!! Also, while it can happen that people swears in their mother tongue naturally sometimes, he (if I didn't hear wrong) was half korean, so although not explained, chances are he was raised bilingual and the chances of that happening are very low. It was done for the funs, but personally I've always disliked when they do that. Ha Rim was background character, he started being a playboy and ended up being a playboy. Min Yeop was the classic dumb-fun character, and it would have been nice if he had grown up a bit, or they had shown to say no to toxic relationships but he didn't progress at all. Eun Chan's sister was the extrovert narcissist type, and so she manipulated, gaslighted and selfishly cared for no one but herself.
Eun Chan's mother was also a piece of work, and I don't even know why her story with the shop owner is shown, it goes nowhere, it was a filler. Han Gyul's parents were the nicest people in this show, they were a lot more grounded, but then again, I guess they must suck at parenting because they raised Han Gyul to be as he is when the show starts so... That being said, I do still think that Han Gyul is the character that changes the most throughout the show.

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Directionless plot, slow, use of tropes and the classic ignorance of how a teen behaves

Before starting this drama I was already skeptical about the deserted island setting. I feel it's something that can't really work much as a plot device if the story is set in modern times, and this show didn't prove me wrong.
Mostly we have to take this whole story as pure fantasy, but even in the constraints of plausibility in a fantastical world, here there are things that simply don't work and that are just left as plotholes and the rest is just a collection of unrealistic situations that will make you facepalm very hard or that you'll have to brush off to move on with the story.

I find with this series there is a lack of a focus in the plot. Sure, we have a FL and the plot seems to follow her from the start mostly, only that it gets sidetracked multiple times along the way and ultimately feels like her story line didn't progress much nor it made much the impact it could have. The abusive father of ML is the only constant linear plot line in this show, even though if still with a dose of unrealistic-ness and quite dragged.

The start was good and overall it was so much more interesting and I was more invested in the story line in the beginning. I think this is mostly as well because I thought the young actors did such a better job at the characters than the older ones. I don't understand why it's a constant issue that if someone older plays like they're stuck in their teen years mentally they have to do some weird overacting that it's just immensely cringe. Don't they remember their teen years? This is becoming a new trope I absolutely despise.
What was the point of her being stuck in that island anyway? This is only used as a plot device in a couple of occasions as flashbacks and any other setting could have been used anyway. It's a small part of the plot and I don't think adds anything. She should be so much more mature precisely because of her life experiences in that island but as it's mentioned in the show itself, she's childish like that because she didn't continue her education.... excuse me what?

The love story in this show is quite anticlimactic and the "love triangle" if it can even be called that, it's unnecessary as always.
A lot of the plot points are just like that because the script said so, otherwise they make no sense, like Ki-ho hiding his identity to her knowing she's looking for him, like so much could have been avoided if he had told her straight away and told her the situation and to keep it secret. It's just so silly. Also he goes from that to then wanting her to be famous like all of a sudden he doesn't care anymore.

The biggest middle chunk of the show the attention is mostly on Ran Joo's character more than the FL, to the point the whole premise of her career as a singer is put to the side. At this point I lost most of the interest I still had for the story. Ran Joo's character is not bad but it's not great either and if I was supposed to feel sorry for her I didn't because her situation could be so much worse, especially when compared with the Kang family whose dynamics, by the way, were of the best of the show.

I think overall for a short drama it didn't have a clear idea of what it wanted to focus on, there were multiple subplots and the execution of them was not done in the best way, the story progressed in chunks of focusing on one thing or another what I get why they did it that way but it just added more to the unrealistc-ness of it all. Moreover, some of the characters would also keep changing from one side to the other what would do or undo the plot as it goes. The worst of all of this is that it makes you lose interest as it changes because most plot lines become very dragged as a result. Points for having so many story lines and characters at the same time and somehow still manage to make it boring.
There were a few conversations between characters that were engaging and I shared their sentiments but most of the others were very uninteresting and added nothing to the story or character development.
FL is cringe, ML is background character, couldn't care for Ran Joo, second ML (Woo Hak) has more screen time than the first and yet his personal story goes really nowhere (and he had more chemistry with FL too), and I have no idea why Lee Seo Joon is considered main character, he spent the series going in circles. Kang parents were great and I wish we got more of Mo Rae since she seemed somewhat interesting.

No more amnesia trope PLEASE. I'm so done with it, let's just leave it back in the past where it should remain. It was annoying at the time and it's even more annoying now.
This is also labelled as "comedy" here but I really don't know why, there are zero comedy moments unless people laughs at FL accent and "teen" attitude what it's actually insulting because it perpetuates this idea that certain accents/dialects mean the person is ignorant and dumb, she even somewhat drops it in the last episode, because now she's a *proper singer*... meh.

I debated giving this a 5 because I've seen worse and it had some nice moments, but writing this review and thinking about the series really stopped me. It is watchable if there is nothing else to watch and some of the songs were nice but I generally can't recommend. It doesn't know what it wants to be and manages to do everything half way in a dragged and boring way.

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Ideas are there but underused and execution is very amiss

I wanted to give this series at least a 5, there are some concepts and ideas there that are interesting but they're so massively underused or the direction they took was so amiss that writing this review I just couldn't bring myself to. Also taking into consideration I found myself fast-forwarding moments and at some points even nearly falling asleep.

In things I liked there was the fantasy element between younger and older FL as well as the bits of social commentary relating to age discrimination in both groups. The struggle of the FL in the beginning was relatable at times and I was interested in seeing how the story would unfold. The disappearances of the people in the past were also an interesting plot and although the murder mystery was kind of cliché in many aspects from the very beginning it could have made for an interesting plot anyway if they had bothered to properly work on it. Lee Jung Eun's character as Im Sun/older Mi Jin was also the best of the show.

The main issue with this series is the fact that it feels they didn't bother with anything enough to make it stand out in any way, in fact it felt they wanted to make it so plain and average that they ended up not having enough plot to cover the whole of the episodes and as a result it's very dragged and many episodes are very uninteresting, I found myself fast-forwarding bits here and there, especially as the episodes got towards the end of the series. At times it felt like I was just watching FL going to and back from work with the little bells in-between for the change and not much else. And talking about the bells, what were the point of it? You can clearly visually see the change so I just simply don't understand it, and I know it's a very small detail but they started annoying me a bit as episodes passed. I think this series would have worked much better as 12 episodes, even more considering their lack of regard towards developing the story in an interesting or meaningful way.

Starting with the plot, the murder mystery is anticlimactic and pretty obvious from early on. Sadly they didn't bother in making multiple characters suspicious enough and with a possibility of two and knowing that the first one going by the clichés won't be the culprit you know it will be the second. It doesn't feel like they tried or wanted to even try to make that part of the story interesting enough, the small flashbacks of ML's past are repeated multiple times, as are the images of the aunt and so on, but they add nothing to the story, the research is not engaging nor they bring you along for it and the reveal and subsequent developments are very lackluster, with a killer that is because yes, as usual. I'm very tired of watching thrillers were the bad guys are just simply mentally unstable psychos that kill because yes and at random. It's getting old.

On the other hand the "fantasy" element is pretty pointless. It's somehow the backbone of the series but it's massively underutilised and reduced to simply FL is that way during the day and during the night, there isn't even a real exploration of why and the ending of it it's a big disappointing mess. I can't either even start to understand why she would see her older self and talk to her as if it was a separate entity in the last dream. Sure, we could argue she was talking to her subconscious or inside her mind but it's treated too much like a different person, also at the end when ML sees her under the blossoming trees would also suggest this considering FL cannot see her at that moment either. It makes you wonder then if in a way FL was possessed by her aunt more than she becoming old, but clearly that was not the case as she couldn't hear her aunt inside nor we see her aunt in her older self to start with. This actually brings me to another problem I had with all this, and it's the fact that the FL's parents don't recognise her as the aunt physically when she's older but there are other people that think she is her, it was confusing and honestly quite sloppy, as it was the fact that the issue of the parents not believing it was her could have been solved from the start by talking to them when she was Mi Jin instead of Im Sun, or strategically showing them. This could also have been applied to pretty much everyone, including the ML, what makes this hide and seek get old very quickly and makes the FL look quite dumb.
Another thing that annoyed me a lot when it comes to the fantastical element is that when she's changing the time is shown as going very fast, what was that about? They would always fast forward the sunset and the sunrise like if they don't exist. It's almost like they couldn't decide when she actually transforms nor they could bother in animating a slow transformation. The line was more clear with sunrise but with sunset is like they didn't know what to do, so they would fast-forward like an hour of time in one second and we would go from the sun starting to set to completely night sky. It had my eyes rolling.
But anyway....how is the cat even related to the transformation? Who is the cat? Was it all indeed because of the aunt? why the aunt doesn't appear at any point in voice, spirit or in some sort of clue to know? Was she actually an old Mi Jin or was she looking like how they want us to believe the aunt would have looked as old? if the aunt was behind this, why not making it more obvious and make Mi Jin transform as her, why an older her that we haven't ever even seen?
To be honest this is just one more drama in a series of others I've seen in more recent times that use some fantastical element and it's either very underused or completely a background feature. Let's stop please, it only becomes frustrating more than anything and usually they never have a conclusion for that part of the story, it just is.

I found FL's parents pretty annoying towards the beginning, very nosy, big meddlers in her life while also saying some pretty rude things to her. They got better when they became more background characters (I say "they" but here the problem is mostly the mother). When it comes to the FL, I preferred her Im Sun persona than Mi Jin and so many times I just wished they had skipped the whole "fantasy" thing and just made Lee Jung Eun the main character of the story. Mi Jin in her younger self was annoying at times and the writers couldn't decide if she was independent and strong or damsel in distress so they changed as the plot needed, at some points she would be screaming so ML could save her, at some points mostly when alone she would deal with it herself. It's quite expected also that there will be differences between the two actresses portrays of the same character but sadly at times they did indeed feel too much like different people.

ML is a character that almost feels like they wanted to make nuanced but at the same time present as the smart prince in the shinning armor. I was not a fan of him, most of all because he was very rude and abusive in the beginning of employees, very ageist as well and him looking at FL in the kitchen and thinking of his mother was kind of the cherry on top. But overall the worst for me in terms of the character is that duality between presenting a nuanced character but also giving him to me in a platter of gold like he's supposed to be a role model or a romantic interest for the viewer as well as the fact that in the end she was the reason he changed after-all what it's just not real and sends the wrong message . Sure, I'm going into details when in fact his character is not very explored but I feel it still applies. We got more insight of FL's psyche than him. I get his past is haunting him but that can't be his whole personality and even in that sense we don't get a lot of depth into his past, only the same 4 scenes recycled. His mother was clearly not great either but there is no thought, conversation or even mention on his thoughts about his mother at any point. Because of the superficiality of it all, when the remains of the mother are found in the end the scene of him crumbling doesn't have the emotional depth it should for me. People around him keep repeating how much time he has spent on the case trying to find the people but we're always told and not shown the depth of it in a meaningful way so it was difficult for me to relate. I think Choi Jin Hyuk did his best with what he had but that scene of him crumbling has more depth than the entirety of what we have been shown of him, it's very disjointed because the plot didn't care enough up to that point.
In fact, we could argue that until around episode 15 the plot didn't care much about anything and then the whole plot and reveal is dropped in a few scenes because "we got to get on with it". It's just such a sloppy execution.

When it comes to the romantic development of the main leads the plot is disappointing. It's very plain and I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out why they even liked each other since except for a few moments of revelations they didn't seem to share much. I could understand her crush on him based purely on the fact she would see him as this cool and composed prosecutor with a great job, but the other way around? We're introduced to his crush to her in a slow yet weird manner and in general it feels like their relationship is quite detached at the same time. Either way, the worst of it all is the cliché of "ending it" an episode to the end what adds absolutely nothing as always and it was awkward and very pointless. Now, if for example they had decided to go another way with solving the fantasy element of the show then it would have been more interesting he would have helped solve the mystery of it maybe.
The dynamics between them could have been hilarious had they stuck to more comedy throughout the whole series (and if he had found out earlier about her changing even) but the comedy aspect is dropped early on and then the few moments that try to be more comedic just end up being embarrassing more than anything.

When it comes to side characters Ko Won is extremely pointless and the attempt to make him second romantic interest was laughable. They actually had great chemistry as sidekicks but they obviously HAD to try and cross the line, it was very awkward, especially considering Ko Won had most of his interactions with Im Sun and not Mi Jin. Yet at the end they try to refer to it in flashback as friendship and camaraderie like if he confessing his feeling hadn't happened. Weird.
Why didn't they pair Ko Won with Do Ga Yeong? I get the not wanting to cross the line of fan to lover or something but it would have made for a cuter story in my opinion. The love story between her and Ju Byeong Deok tries so hard to be comedic relief but it was quite embarrassing and unappealing and not going to lie a lot of it has to do with both the age gap and also that Ju Byeong Deok as a character came across a bit as a perv at times in his buffoonery ways.

I'm not sure I can recommend this drama even to pass time if you have nothing to do because of how draggy and slow it is, I generally found it boring. It's watchable yes, Lee Jung Eun is great in her role, has some endearing moments of camaraderie and the murder mystery although very cliché and predictable is not exactly unwatchable, but 16 episodes it's just too much in my opinion and there are better dramas out there to pass the time.

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What nonsense is this?

I seriously thought that they would actually focus on his journey and it would be more introspective but this, I just don't know what the point of it was.

I'm getting real tired of shows using Europe as a country, like if the differences between one country and another were at the level of between states in the US. It was very clearly not Brussels and it was annoying they were trying to sell me it was. I don't know, the ML could have actually gone to Budapest and the story could have been set there, but I guess it would sell less? Maybe many people don't know where Budapest is?
This movie was way more melodramatic than it needed to be, or at least the melodramatic bits needed to be in other moments not the ones chosen. At points it keeps dwelling on it but I just couldn't care, meanwhile things like the fact his mother's corpse was sold is mentioned a few times for shock value but doesn't have the emotional depth that other less interesting moments have, for example.
I started to roll my eyes when he kept finding locals and would get beaten up for the stupidest things, it was so unrealistic and even the lighting changes between those rough moments and the end of the movie. Now he made it I'm sure he won't bump into anyone that will beat him to nearly death... *logic not found*. Once ok, but he was beaten up so many times or pushed around like a pathetic box of potatoes too many times in a short time span to be realistic in my opinion.

As other reviewers have mentioned as well, that's not how the process for refugees works, not only in Belgium but also in other European countries. If they wanted more realistic melodrama they could have tackled for example that there has been cases of abuse and terrible conditions in refugee centres.

Then he finally has the court meeting and he just runs out because of the girl and somehow he still gets the refugee status? Excuse me? I guess he didn't even need to go in the first place then, "this court case could have been an email".

The female lead was a very unlikeable character and I still don't understand what her deal was. She was a spoiled brat. She clearly comes from a family with money and she rebels against the father because her mother passed and I guess she's against assisted death but it was not her decision anyway but the mother's? So she has a tantrum that gets her into trouble and that kind of life. I still don't understand why the gangsters would care so much about her in the end, and if they did to that extend they would have found her in whatever country she went to. Equally unrealistic is that she used drugs but didn't suffer the consequences of any of it.

The romance here could have been a side story and I thought it would, but as a main plot it's just not there. Their love doesn't grow in a realistic way nor it was realistic that he would risk so much for her. Two minutes prior he was telling her about the razor and how he and his mother were ready to end their lives than be deported, the next he's leaving the court to run after her even though, from his knowledge and perspective, he doesn't know what or if anything has happened to her. Also, call the police or something? I don't get it. He's the masochist type I guess, he didn't have enough hardships that he decided to put her baggage onto his shoulders too. Sorry but I don't think many people would do that for a fling. Sure, they say they love each other but I felt nothing other than "boy, you have a problem".

The "airport" at the end was the cherry on top, and the FL in that ending was quite puzzling until you remember that she has daddy's money I guess.

Acting is good but it can't save the mess it's the writing and the overall execution. I don't know how different the book might be but I'm zero interested after watching this movie I'm afraid.

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Melodrama only, can't catch a break, no romance here

I feel like I was totally lied by the description of this drama. First of all it shouldn't be labelled as romance because there is bare minimum of it, but more than that, the way the plot is described it's very misleading. If you're expecting some sort of introspection, self-discovery and warmness this it not for you. This is most of all a MELODRAMA, and not much else (Netflix labels this as intimate and romantic, WHAT? NO). I wasted too much time watching this and being disappointed because even as a melodrama the execution and plot were very annoying and a big miss. It wants to be way too many things at the same time and manages to do none right, romance? nope, crime? nope, mystery? nope.
To answer "What will happen when these two lost souls meet – and will a spell of “doing nothing” in this small town really cure their ills?" Nothing will happen when they meet, and their ills will just magically disappear by the end just because the drama ran out of time.

Girl goes to the countryside to try and heal from her life in Seoul and somehow manages to move to the most toxic town she could find and ends up living in an unlivable place that also has history. What are the chances...
I really got lost in the cost of things in this drama. I get she didn't have many savings but, she was most likely paying a small fortune for her apartment in Seoul and you're telling me she couldn't find a decently priced apartment or even room in a small town? I know it was because of the plot, but it had my eyes rolling.
I'm still mad at how many situations were solved in the worst way possible and how mostly none of the characters had much growth at all. The main character is considered weak and manipulated and used in various ways and there is not much indication she has changed anything in that regard towards the end. Dae Beom did change some maybe, but all I could think was how it feels like Yim Si Wan is now typecasted as the shy guy that runs or something... (and I say this as someone that loved Run On).
It's very unrealistic how by the end she stays and somehow they try to tell me she moved to a good place and will have a pleasant life, the girl didn't catch a break since she put foot on that place, I'm sure there are amazing towns all around Korea, I wouldn't have stayed in that one...

If the drama had focused on her moving to that town, the connections with other residents and more of introspection it would have been so much nicer for me. Had I known it was classified as a melodrama I wouldn't have bothered. There are some nice moments here and there between the characters but for me it was not enough to justify the watch. The toxicity of many of the side characters and the situations that arised continuously made this hard to watch.
"Making time for the important in life", what I guess means dealing with violence, abuse, toxicity and having your place destroyed... hmmmm... ok.

Special mention to Dae Beom's friend Jo Ji Young, what a piece of manipulative work. Somehow they're trying to tell me she's lovesick and "oh poor her". She was selfish, manipulative and plain awful as a friend and as a person.
Also, what was the point of Jae Hoon going back to the US for two minutes and coming back? What was that waste of screen time for?

I'm quite puzzled by the high ratings of this drama. Unless you like melodrama I can't recommend, there are many other dramas a lot nicer than this one so I wouldn't waste the time.

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Full of clichés and the looks of a rich style magazine

This show is for some reason very overhyped.
This drama was a chore to finish for me, but I'm the completitionist type and so I endured. Otherwise I would have dropped it around episode 4 or 5.

The plot in this show is laughable. It had potential as a premise if they had gone on a different direction but as it is, it's just pointless and it doesn't even bother in explaining how things work in the fantasy of this world. One of the main things that annoyed me so much is how they decided to include once again the super cliché of main leads knowing one another from previous life (hers that is) while completely ignoring the core christian believe that the whole series wants to portray. Nothing is really that explained anyway, even his powers as a demon are mentioned superficially. Actually, the fact he's a demon is just overall brushed over and it's a background prop to be used in some scenes. It could have been cool and more explored but it wasn't.

Both main characters did have a bit of personality at the start, something that made them more individual, but this is dropped very early on as soon as they start being together, they become baseline neutral with nothing unique. Their quirks are completely dropped . Rich girl meets rich boy and they fall in love, how refreshing. She also becomes damsel in distress and he's your average "bad boy" that is actually not bad but that it gives him the edge to be appealing to viewers. Whether he was bad or not it's not really explored, because except for a couple of grey area situations the show always wants to portray him as good.
In other clichés we also have here, we include two forgettable side characters that are interested in the main two (and mid show they were almost unbearable, especially Jin Ga Young).

All scenes and environments are very fabricated as if taken from a photo-shoot of the actors for a fashion magazine, and so it happens in outdoors scenes too, the little magical details are very on the face put there purposely, some little fireflies, some bubbles, some water droplets...etc.
This also brings me to the fashion. The whole show is basically a catwalk for upper fashion trends and their hair and makeup is always ˖⁺‧₊˚✦perfect˖⁺‧₊˚✦ Not even when they are in bed there is a hair out of place nor they stain the bed sheets despite having a cake of makeup on.

Continuing with the clichés we also have the funny side character couple that while it made me chuckle a couple of occasions and overall I think they were better than the main couple, some others it crossed the line too much into second-hand-embarrassment territory.
Side characters are just very superficial and add nothing to the story nor we learn much from them either despite sometimes having longer scenes than they should for that amount of pointless dialogue. This is the case of all office workers for example as well as some of the family members of FL.
The villains here are very cliché and their motives are just plain bad, and they all had itchy rashes because... they're sooo *evil*. There is a bit of a motive for their actions but then towards the end it crosses the line of absurdity. The cherry on top was main villain falling from that tower and surviving, eyes rolling I saw stars✧˖°

Some of the moments with more tension, like for example that moment between the end of episode 15 and beginning of 16 are solved in such an anticlimatic and fast way that you wonder why they even bothered. Clearly the whole idea of this drama was creating those ˖⁺‧₊˚✦perfect˖⁺‧₊˚✦ moments where they hug, kiss or look at each other and they filled the rest of the episodes with things in-between so it looked like something. But it seems they didn't even manage enough fillers to do this since after the beginning of episode 16 when they already solved the main issue they still had so many minutes to fill the episode with little bits of secondary characters that no one cares about because the plot didn't care for them before anyway. Also, Jin Ga Young spent half the series saying she was going but didn't lol and then when actually something interesting happens to her in the last episode that could have been explored as a small side plot and it's just left there. What the actual hell is this writing lol

There is not really a discussion on anything obviously, like morality for example. At one point FL is taken aback by the reality of the ML's work as a demon, but then it's brushed off because the script said so and because they have the lame excuse he saved her mother when she was pregnant with FL. It was as weak of a plot point as expected.
The most interesting character in this show is God, but obviously is a background character just so she could save him in the end. I liked the detail of her hat.

Overall I think that while there are shows that can be entertaining and use some clichés, this one almost was playing a bingo to see how many of them they could include in this show. For me personally what makes this one worse than some other shows that also use clichés is that overuse of very crafted scenes, fashion and hair/makeup that make everything look so much more fake rather than fantastical. Even their more intimate moments are just so on the face "we're doing this now" that it was taking me out of it and I didn't find it cute. This is paired with the fact I didn't think the main actors had that much chemistry and specifically ML actor was so stiff at times.

Something else that I found extremely annoying in this show are the recap scenes. Sometimes you would have a recap of scenes two minutes after some of the scenes in that recap had happened. This was so overused that I started skipping them. As I said, they simply didn't have enough material for this show and they reused as many scenes as they could as recaps of cute moments between characters or to reminisce about some character.
Product placement is also quite on the face many times.

Music is also very annoying, they reuse the same couple of songs continuously to no end. Also the song that one of the bad guys in the beginning was using and that becomes a trigger for FL, who in their right mind would say to their partner "now it's our song". Like, excuse me sir? just because you say now it's our song it doesn't mean the trauma is going to disappear. But here it does because script said so. I didn't suffer what FL had and yet every time that song appeared again it was irksome to me as a viewer so imagine someone that has nearly died and associates that song with a psycho. I would knock my boyfriend's head with a saucepan if he told me that song is "our" song now. No thanks!!


If you want to watch because of the ML, or you don't mind extremely thin plot and very fabricated everything then you might enjoy this. If you care about plot AVOID this, it's not worth the time I assure you. If you care about certain level of realisticness even in fantastical settings then avoid this too, there are no explanations for almost anything and the main focus is put in the main leads intimate moments and them walking from one place to another in ˖⁺‧₊˚✦perfect˖⁺‧₊˚✦ fashion.

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Somehow they managed to make this worse than the manga...

Why I say that? Because the source material is not great. It suffers from lack of direction, lack of character developement (too slow for the lenght of the manga) and plotholes. I never understood why it was popular at the time and it's one of the most boring and plain shoujo mangas I've ever read (and shoujo is pretty much what I've ever read).

One of the biggest problems with this show is that the source material is a romcom/slice of life manga, here though, they have decided to cross the line to drama and even some melodramatic moments becoming something of a terrible mix to me.
Why is this show called Good Morning Call is something I'm still asking myself after finishing it. They took the names and the very general idea but it doesn't follow the manga much and the characters are generally not like the manga either.
Both the protagonists are like the manga ones on steroids, especially Nao. In the manga she's your stereotypical teenager (also to point out they're younger in the manga when in starts than in this show), she likes shopping and looks... and something quite outdated it's precisely the whole girlie obsessions with the looks, weight and fashion. I'm sorry for Haruka Fukuhara, I don't know if she was forced to do it or it was all her, but she was way too over the top, exaggerated and very annoying most of the time. While Nao in the manga can be annoying at times as well, it's 100 times more in the show. Same happens with Uehara, sorry to the actor as well because I don't know if it's just his limitations in acting or the direction, but he had pretty much one single emotion the entire time. Manga Uehara can be cold, serious, sarcastic and rude sometimes but in most cases corrects himself later and he does show more emotions and he can laugh and be sassy. Show Uehara is just a rock, it was ok in the beginning but it got ridiculous pretty quickly.
There are many instances in the show where a situation happens that actually happened in the manga as well, but where in the manga was either slightly different or Uehara reacted in an ok way, in the show they cut before that or they changed the details what ended up making Uehara a lot worse of a person than he is in the manga. One example of this is that night when Nao goes to buy pudding and there was in the news something about some instances of attacks in the area. In the show she watches those news, has a fight with Uehara about the pudding, he shouts at her to buy replacement and later when she's scared he finds her in the bushes. You think, WOW Uehara is terrible! In the manga they fight for the pudding and Nao pissed saying he's like a child goes to buy a replacement pudding. Uehara sees on tv the news of the attacks and he runs down the stairs and catches here as she exits the elevator, uses the excuse of buying milk to accompany her all the way, and they banter and fight-play about who had to carry the bags back home. There are many times in the show that they made noticeable differences that make Uehara look so much worse than he's supposed to be.

I think had it followed the manga it would have been better, here they also decided that every single male had to fancy Nao and every single woman had to fancy Uehara, I would have preferred it to be less focused on the leads and they had explored the side characters more as well. Abe Jun is a very prominent character in the manga and they just put it in the background.
I also noticed there were contradictions in some of the things said in the show, for example, we see Kitaura mostly only talking and interacting with Uehara but at some point later she says to him she has to position herself (on some issue happening) with Nao because it's her friend....hmmmm excuse me? In the show you see them interacting like maybe once. It's not the only time this happens, and it felt like they wanted to link more to the manga but they couldn't remember what they had written before. In the manga Kitaura (and her cousin that doesn't appear here) were friends with Nao first and didn't have as much interaction with Uehara.

Daichi, who are you? Who knows, just created to be one of the interested parties and I learnt nothing about him other than he likes Nao, not even in the second season.
Itchan was cool in the manga, here it's just reduced once again to be another potential lover for Nao. Something that annoyed me the most about his character was that melodrama about wanting to quit the ramen shop, in the manga ramen is everything to him to the point he actually starts dating a girl he met in a queue to a famous ramen restaurant because she also loved ramen, what I thought it was funny. Also, his father is so much more stern here, in the source material he's kind and has health issues what it's also the reason his son works in the restaurant. Moreover, when the bowls were broken in the show the father is scolding Itchan, in the manga the father sends Itchan and Nao to apologise to the owner and the bowls turn out to be not that expensive per se but the old man says they were made by the woman he fancies so they're priceless to him. The woman he fancies turns out to be Nao and Uehara's landlady, and they start dating and even both accompany the young group on a trip, I thought it was hilarious, and had they sticked to a romcom with this show it could have been so much better. Also Uehara has such a cool relationship with the landlady, almost like a mother figure to him.

I could go on and on but it's no point. Generally the frustration is that if you're not going to follow the source material at least make it better, not worse... Here characters are bad and not explored, plot is thin, love triangles are boring and bring nothing to the plot, music is annoying and the over the top acting of the main character is the cherry on top to make this whole show difficult to watch an enjoy, so I can't recommend.

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Absolutely terrible, one of the worst k-dramas I've ever watched

There are plenty of reviews here about this drama that will tell you more or less the same that I'm going to write, and yet I feel the need to write my own review to get it out of my system, it's the least I deserve after enduring 16 hours of whatever this sh*t was trying to be.
You can make food mixing any ingredients you want sure, it doesn't mean it's going to taste good. Here they just started mixing anything they could think of in a bowl and still wanted people to think it tasted nice because *BABIES*.

Science fiction? More like kick the science into the sun. This is fiction only, and terrible one at that. If you actually think about watching this just forget any science you know.
It could have been interesting really, reproduction in zero gravity/space is actually an interesting topic, but this is not it at all.

I'm not going to lie they got me interested in the beginning with the nice space shots and station and a plot that had certain level of potential as a sci-fi fan. Until around episode 5 I thought it was not very good but somehow watchable and I could excuse certain things if they went in the right direction. But oh boy, they didn't.
By that point I was already very over the side characters (Santi being the most passable one) because they were so unprofessional and I was wondering what the hell were they doing in there, how are they qualified astronauts? The lottery subplot was so astronomically lame that I spent the whole time face-palming very hard. It's only there so ML can use them for his purpose. You'll see a pattern in this show, ML is the centre of the universe and everything changes or works for him no matter what.
By episode six the purpose of this drama was clear, pro-life propaganda galore.
Eve was interesting in the beginning before they decided it was only a tool to be used by ML as needed to prove the point. They changed her from professional and capable to weak and very subjugated to patriarchal ML. It's just such bad writing of a character, who changes to the opposite personality because of some guy seriously. It was such a terrible writing I feel insulted.
Once they have sex in space the plot was extremely predictable and followed the presented agenda.

I can't even start to explain how much I despise ML in this show!!!!! He's a massively egocentric piece of man-child, and his tantrums were so pathetic and such an embarrassment to see (and at points they dwell on it so much... what a drag...). How this guy qualified as a gynecologist is a mystery to me and it's not someone that I would want to have as a doctor for sure. The plot with trying to create a viable morula in space for the the rich was already a plot that I was not going to enjoy at all (and the rich suffer zero consequences in the end, I gotta laugh...), but the fact he would put himself on the line like that for a bunch of cells for a rich family he didn't technically even like had me actually disgusted. What is even the plot here? it was pathetic. Oh, some rich woman that wants to have a kid from the sperm of the dead husband like if she was that desperate to have a child she could have had one on her own or adopted but blood, right? UGH. She wanted to get away from that family but at the same time wanted to have a kid tied to that family? What?
ML getting that ballistic and risking the lives of so many already alive people for a bunch of cells when he provokes the fire (for starters) was rage inducing. And he just goes worse from there.
Anyone that tells me that I'm a "murderer" because I discarded some cells going by the laws and rules of my job and position would be dead to me, zero chances of friendship or anything else (especially when he's not frigging qualified, he spent his time mansplanning her job to her, it was absolutely DISGUSTING). As mentioned, they just changed Eve to his level so the plot could work, it was so weak and sexist.

We're never told why he's so damn obsessed with that morula anyway. I could have understood it if he was going to be paid billions or some sentimental reason that made him forced to do it but he just did it because he passionately loves cells I guess. Thing is that not even his character was consistent because he cared more about that morula that he did for the miscarried baby of Go Eun at the beginning of the show and then later he's way more composed when he asks Eve to go back to earth even though it actually means the death of his precious baby. So which one is it? And the fact that at that point they reversed personalities with Eve being the stubborn one, I can't even!!!! Terrible writing!!
I started despising every moment ML appeared on screen, so you can imagine how difficult it was to finish this thing.
He should have gone to jail, but obviously he didn't, and everything worked out fine for him in the end. I mean, considering how he treats Eve most of the time and how obsessed he's with babies I think the ending was perfect for him. He got the baby he wanted and doesn't have to compromise in any way with Eve. Please, let's not forget he shook her by the collar as well when the morula he was trying to implant was confiscated and destroyed. He showed physical violence towards her and yet they want you to try and sympathise with him? Are you serious? So he has verbally insulted her multiple times and been physically violent towards her as well and somehow he's still the hero and the centre of the story and they want us to understand his point of view. Everyone around him is wrong, he's right! Narcissist much? He doesn't even think two seconds about if what he's doing is right, he only thinks about himself. His ego is the size of a star, that for sure.

I feel like I need to point out that I have no problem with morally questionable characters, grey characters and even evil characters, what I don't want is having them pushed down my throat like they're actually good when it's clear they're not. Here obviously there was a political agenda at the core of the story so I guess they really needed to make people sympathise with him and convince viewers that if those are the laws and rules then they're wrong and need to be changed (I mean, I saw so many people already siding with him when Eve discarded the first morulas). But obviously without much actual explanation of the realities of space reproduction or even pregnancy in general because keeping people ignorant enough stirs the agenda in the direction you want.

Most of the side characters were pretty useless and only added padding there. Dong A cheats on Eve and it's pretty much never brought up. Gang Su had a more interesting character but ultimately not much is done with him other than having him walking from one side to another and small talking. Go Eun was interesting in the beginning only to fall into useless background character that panics when something happens. That scene when ML is supposed to put the morula in the pediatrician and when the people from the space agency appears to stop it she starts screaming and "what should we do" like her whole character and persona were thrown down the trash there.

ML's mothers don't add much to the story and what are the chances one of them would be FL's mother? Plot said so. The way she treated FL when went to visit her, so the show could teach us how bad mothers that abandon their children are. Zero nuances and a crazy level of bad taste, she's just pure evil, but also the show couldn't commit to something more with that so by the end is just forgotten, I imagine because OBVIOUSLY you're going to forgive your precious blood related biological mother.

Acting might be good? Can't really tell when the characters and plot are so bad really. None of the acting matters because good or bad acting the story is so bad they can't save it.

The ending is the cherry on top of bad, I thought it couldn't get worse but somehow they managed. They also obviously brushed off the more science-y problems of everything shown in the end because otherwise it wouldn't work. Not sure why they didn't just do it from the beginning, just go full on crazy fantasy sci-fi and call it a day. Them "trying" in the beginning is absurd considering how the story follows. I'm sure it would have also been cheaper than trying to make a more realistic environment and whatnot. They keep telling ML how he's risking his life but he of course does it anyway, and because he's the centre of the universe he doesn't die soon no, he's still lucky to be able to rise the kid and be happy he sacrificed his legs and eyes for her daughter even though it could have been prevented.

Kudos to the writer for getting paid for this level of bad writing, that's really an achievement.
The only recommendation I'll be making to people about this show is to avoid it like the plague.

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Slow, childish, plotholes, poor execution of a story that could have been great.

I had seen so many people mentioning how good this drama was that I decided to give it a go having nothing else to watch. I was disappointed and I didn't even have high hopes as I find hyped shows are usually not my cup of tea.

The first third of this drama was hard to watch and I had to push myself to continue, mostly I found the portrayal of a 19 year old girl very unrealistic, she was very childish. Maybe it's just me, but I've never met (nor was I that way) anyone that age to act like that. Then I kind of got used to it by the middle, but also she seemed to slowly get out of it when she turned 20, what was also unrealistic. To top it over, Goblin was doing the opposite and as the drama goes he becomes more childish. Not going to lie it was funny at times, but overall it was mostly cringy.
The age gap of the characters was problematic (without taking into account the 900 years) and to me it made it worse the fact they blatantly tried to make this look better by making him more childish, also because it felt it tainted his character as this important and powerful Goryeo warrior. I feel there was a problem with trying to keep this balance of wanting to be serious and sad and tragic with the romcom aspect, I couldn't take things as seriously.
I think the story would have been a lot better had they started it when she was 29, it could have been way more mature. I did like the relationship of the 3 as housemates though and I found it the best part of the show.

There are too many plotholes and I could give it a pass if it wasn't because they had plenty of running time to address them. For example, the images of their Goryeo lives were repeated over and over way too much but in the end I didn't feel they fully showed well enough how things happened. Despite those images, I'm being told what happened more than shown, what is a shame. A lot of times the show seemed to go in circles not wanting to commit to a path for the story, at least not until the later episodes as usual (I seriously dislike this common thing of not doing anything until two episodes of the end, make a film instead!!), but by the end I was already kind of tired of the story to the point that I couldn't care enough for the consequences that were about to happen to the characters. Talking about characters, so many side characters with lost potential and so many plotholes in all characters.

The ending is... I don't want to say bad because it could have been worse, but... it's bad. Could have been poetic, could have been satisfactory but it's none and it's solved in the most weird, anticlimatic and pointless way in my opinion. So much potential for epic-ness wasted in there.

I have watched worse dramas than this one, but I still don't think I would be able to recommend this one if simply for the fact it's too long and not much happens to justify its run time. If it's because any or all of the actors, then go ahead, but if you don't care about the actors and are there for the story then I would say look somewhere else because this is not it.

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Very unpopular opinion

Looking at the ratings of this drama mine is going to be an extremely unpopular opinion, sorry.

This drama felt like a big advertisement for teenagers on how their lives need to play out.
If you're a teen in high school you can have a crush, but don't go further!! focus on your studies and wait. Oh, you're 18 now? it's ok then, you can have a relationship. You finished your degree? you need to get the best job ever immediately and be super successful very young, be able to afford a house and not long after marry and start a family. It's almost fuel for depression.
The timings on when the characters were allowed or not to do something were super on the face, and they tried very hard to make the main two characters flawless in their upbringing, studies and manners.
In fact only Guan Fang has a more nunanced life, but it's put there as an example of what someone that gets into trouble needs to do, but they don't even dwell on how he did it, he just did because he looked at his grandma one day. It's very superficial.

I found the main female character quite annoying at times (some others I enjoyed her sassyness) and overall there is really no character progression for any of them, so as a result even when in the end they're in the wedding they look like 16 year olds getting married, I found it super weird. You also don't get to know them individually, not even the main characters (only Su Zai Zai and Guan Fang a bit more maybe), so you don't really know anything about them, only that they're friends and they're all ok successful people. Their specific traits are quite superficial so they're not that distinguishable ones of the others really, they work mostly as quirks since they don't impact much on how they act or what they do. Even when Jiang Jia didn't know what she wanted to study is solved quickly with very little hesitation. Zhang Lurang tells me in the end he has changed so much, but other than the fact they told the actor he could now smile more, I don't see any other change. He says he had low self-esteem, and while it's shown him not being treated very well as a teen by his mother I didn't see at any point him seeming to have low self esteem, I only saw him being serious and quiet and it's not the same.

As it happens many times I found the friends romantic relationship more interesting, that is until they decided to completely push it to the side and only resolve it quickly after the time jump. Time jumps also mean nothing here anyway, none of them change at all and whoever else they meet they only stay in their lives for like 5 seconds anyway. Very choppy.
Plot was boring at times (and I like slice of life) and most of the dialogue was very superficial, what is not necessarily terrible but then you had more poetic lines in specific crafted moments that were taking me again to the feeling of massive advert.
Many side characters appear only at weird moments and then in others when you would expect them to appear they don't.

Points go for the cute moments here and there, but overall this was a big miss for me.
I've watched chinese movies before but this was my first chinese series, and considering the high rating of this compared with my opinion of it I'm not sure I should try any other series maybe :/

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Good visuals and nostalgia trip but cliché till the end

I actually rewatched this because I had zero recollection of the plot or anything else and I didn't have it on my watchlist here to remember. One quarter into the film it came to me why I didn't remember anything of it and the whole plot came to my head.
Cliché can be entertaining and enjoyable, I've watched cliché series and films in the past I enjoyed, even cheesy ones for the guilty pleasure, but this film falls in the frustrating cliché category.

This is one is of mixed feelings for me and clearly quite forgettable. I like the visuals and the nostalgia trip, although I would say it doesn't dwell as much on the nostalgia as other titles (like 25/21 does) and some times I felt the filter or post editing they did was a bit on the heavy side. For me this movie would get a higher score if they hadn't gone that route with the ending but I do understand why they thought it was a good idea to put it there to tie it all up into the theme.
This whole film is a big nostalgia trip of overused plot devices in romantic dramas of the period in any media, the plot device of friend asking MF to get closer to her love interest to learn about him... or the plot device of romantic male interest leaving the country or dying is a classic, but it was equally frustrating and bad at the time than it's now (I'm still salty about how many shoujo mangas and animes used this, seriously). It's one of those things that simply shouldn't come back because mostly it's just sad for sadness sake and lazy at this point (like the amnesia trope). This is not the only title in recent years to follow the nostalgia trip by reusing bad plot devices that were not liked even at the time.
The classic of miscommunication among characters is also something that makes this quite frustrating to watch at times (MF with the best friend). And equally tiring is the girl that is thin, eats a ton and it's also socially clumsy and cute without knowing it... but I can forget this last one this time simply for being the classic in a "nostalgia remake".

Here it does have the tag of melodrama, I'm not sure I would classify this as such since only the ending is. It's nostalgic, dramatic and romantic with a frustrating cliché ending.

Would I recommend? Not sure, I liked the acting, the aesthetics, the cute moments, the colours and the story is generally watchable most of the film even with the clichés, but the ending is very frustrating and annoying so if you decide to watch it take that into consideration and watch it for the trip.

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Good adaptation from the manga but acting and execution are a bit off at times.

I generally recommend this drama, especially to those that have read the manga or watched the anime. If you haven't, I would say it can feel there are some plotholes or rushed parts here and there but it's a good adaptation. If you have read the manga or watched the anime it's a lot easier to fill in the bits missing but also as it tends to happen, this isn't better than the manga because of that same reason.

I came to this drama with low expectations because adaptations tend to be not that good and very rushed, something that clearly happened with the movie version of this same title (because obviously it was impossible to fill the plot of 30 volumes of manga in a 2h film). It was difficult to not make comparisons because despite overall thinking this series is so much better than the movie simply for having most of the plot points of the original work, I also thought that some of the characters were better portrayed in the movie, namely the protagonist. As another review has pointed out, the main character here lacks the uniqueness and creepiness that the manga character is supposed to have. I feel the movie did a better job at this. Sara Minami is pretty by society standards and they didn't try much with the hair or her behaviour and demeanour to look closer to how she's supposed to be, she just comes across as a bit shy.
Also, while I think Rinka Kumada did generally a good job as Yano, I felt she was missing the subtext, in the manga and anime there were always instances where you could tell she knew what was going on, and would work things out before anyone else and she was mature for her age, I don't think this was portrayed very well in this series and I missed those nuances of her character. I also think physically I expected her to look more like a gyaru, more similar to how they did in the movie, that it's how I imagined her in the manga. Also one of the things I precisely liked of the portrayal of Yano was the fact she's fashionable and more adult like but she also has good grades and cares about her studies, what I think it's not a very common portrayal in mangas for someone looking like a gyaru (and smoking!). In this series to me if I wasn't told through the part of the rumours I would think she's just an average high schooler. Maybe they didn't want to portray her as a gyaru to keep up with the times, but they could have done something else to show the contrasts of her character since there is nothing in the way she acts or speaks here that tells me how she is either.
On the other hand, I was happy with the rest of portrayals, and in fact I was very pleasantly surprised by Riho Nakamura as Chizuru, I think they nailed it with her.
(If I'm being picky though I have mixed opinions about the portrayal of Kazehaya's father, it's a difficult one, but I don't think he looks serious and stern, just kind of awkward and forced? I don't know how to feel about him).

While I'm generally pleased with how much they fit in this show of the source material it could have been even better. Some bits felt a bit rushed, while some others, like some of the dialogues seemed a bit too slow. I enjoy slow and I enjoyed the slow pace of this drama in those dialogues, what I'm not so pleased with is this coming as a detriment of other plots or scenes being rushed. I generally would have preferred this drama had been between 15 and 20 episodes long, it would have given the time for everything. Another thing that also was a bit annoying for me it's how they cut out almost every single kiss or show of a more mature relationship that appeared in the manga/anime. I can imagine why, but many people watching this has read the manga or watched the anime, and many others that haven't and liked this will potentially check both or one of them, so why? I could tell even in scenes when that was being cut, and any show of affection between any of the characters was quite awkward in my opinion. The girls dynamics were on point though.
Acting was generally ok, but at times for me it was a bit off, sometimes it felt like they were reading the lines without emotion or like they were doing a theatre play instead of a recorded show. Maybe also like they were trying hard to use the same exaggerated expressions or body movements than in the anime? what could feel forced and cringey sometimes. I think this happens more in the first half of the show than in the second. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either.

Music was ok, some songs were cute, some gave me the vibes of the main theme of American Beauty? Overall it was ok, but I did notice a couple of times in the first few episodes a song would play in the background that didn't necessarily match too well with the vibe of the scene (for example, a scene with serious dialogue and a bit too happy song in the background).

I can't see myself rewatching this, it was entertaining, watchable, cute at moments, loved the scenery and atmosphere but I prefer the intensity and the emotional portrayal of the manga/anime so I'll gravitate towards those before this one. But as I mentioned before, as an adaptation I'm pleased and it's probably one of the best manga adaptations of this genre I've seen despite its few flaws.

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Very good but not perfect

Please be aware I haven't seen the original series, didn't even know it existed. Didn't know this was adapted from a book either, so I'm reviewing this as if it was the only thing out there.

I think the best of this show are the way it's filmed, the general atmosphere, architecture, the inclusion of naginata (damn finally) and the clothing.
I have to give kudos to the architecture, atmosphere and scenery especially since, as far as I know, it was mostly recorded in Vancouver area, so to pull something like this in such a completely different place it's amazing work. But, I also have to admit that it took me out of the story a couple of times when I did recognise a couple of landscapes as someone that has been in the area as well as the fact that while certain landscapes can pass for areas of Japan, others were a bit of a stretch.
The plot keeps you invested most of the time, but it does suffer from being a bit convoluted at times and slightly dragging at others when it seems it doesn't know what it wants to do next, as well as that general repetition in the execution of leaving most of the action and interesting plot points to the last couple of episodes. The atmospheric shots and general vibe are amazing though and I enjoyed them a lot.

Acting was generally very good although I do have to agree with another review that Anna Sawai is the one for me that gave the most of a contemporary vibe compared with the others, but it wasn't very jarring as to be a constant reminder.
If you're looking for a Japanese production this is not it, and I do think there are things that are done in the way they did because of budget constraints. This could very well change for subsequent seasons considering the international acclaim.

The main reasons why it doesn't make it a 10 for me are:
- Echoing what I said before, the plot can be convoluted at times.
- I know they're going for the serious stern look but I missed a bit more emotion (other than the ones from John being too much the opposite at times).
- I'm never a fan of shows with the token westerner that is supposed to be the main character and that become the centre of the universe even if based on real life. While I think they did a much better job here than in others I'm still not a fan, plus this brings me to:
- The worst character for me was John Blackthorne. I'm going to assume this is a mix between what was asked of the actor and his acting. He gave drunkard vibes in his mannerisms and way of speaking. At points I was not sure what the point of him was, and I'm still not sure I get it. I also don't remember him being a ship engineer/builder so why it's that task put onto him in the end, I just don't know. I read the real life figure that inspired the book version was indeed a ship builder, but in the show I can't remember ever being mentioned.
- The fact that they decided to go with Japanese language for the majority of the show is absolutely great, but it pisses me off that the times when they're supposed to be speaking in Portuguese they're in English. At the beginning it was very confusing at times and at some point even if you're assuming it's Portuguese you really don't know anymore. We are to assume that when John is speaking to someone just because (even though he knows they don't understand him) he's speaking in English because it's his mother tongue and he's alone so to speak, but maybe he's trying in Portuguese? We'll never know.
For a show that decided to go for realism with the Japanese language it's a big disappointment it didn't go all the way. People are already reading subtitles anyway, what are a few more? I want the whole experience, not only half of it just to please Hollywood.

If you like historical fantasy, politics, power struggles, good atmosphere, retro feel and good costuming I would totally recommend. Aesthetics are on point.

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Very dragged and uninteresting. This could have easily been a movie.

I think the drama had an ok concept that was made so much worse by the execution/writing of that concept. The original idea was probably two pages long and basically the rest is a massive uninteresting filler.
I've just finished watching it and if you asked me to explain what happened in X or Y episode I wouldn't be able to, because there is so much nothingness that it automatically got erased from my mind as soon as I watched it.

I think one of the main problems is that they decided to make FL and her younger self complete opposites and under a very specific set of circumstances with the accident so it's not something many people will relate to. I could feel connected to the lost present time FL but not to her younger self nor the dynamic they had going on later. If there had been more introspection into the first part of FL's character I would have found it more interesting. I also still don't understand how having her past self there helped her to get anything she managed to get. Her younger self is selfish, spoiled and kind of annoying. The dynamic they have later of mother-daughter also I think made it quite a lot worse because by their actions and words they pretty much worked as such and made you even believe it at times and personally it's not how I would treat my younger self... but then again, my younger self was not that childish nor it was that different to how I'm now so I think the relationship would probably be more like we're sisters or something in those lines, what I think kinda makes more sense and probably would be more true to most people, especially considering her younger self was 17, not a 6 year old.

To this we add an overabundant amount of scenes of side characters that add nothing to the main story nor are they that interesting. FL's sister appears multiple times yet I don't know much about her, also she was quite bad in the beginning yet later is just sweeped under the rug. Anthony's scenes bored me sooooo much, I don't understand what the point of him being there was. It was just a filler since his story was not even that related to hers, not even in the end. I kept thinking there was going to be some connection that justified him there but there wasn't. I don't think his story was bad per se, it's just that it's not worth 16 episodes of a few scenes per each one. He's main character but why???? He really adds nothing to the story. His arc could have been done in like one episode and done.

I always find it unrealistic when a main character starts working in a place and turns out they knew someone in there from the past, like how small is your city? Here it's not only the best friend, but also Anthony and Han Yoo Hyun. Too many coincidences and, at least when it comes to Han Yoo Hyun specifically, very sloppy reasoning.

I enjoyed the character of Han Yoo Hyun but it was very forced how his father kept him out of the business because "he's not interested" but wouldn't even give him a chance when he was the one showing an interest, it was just pushed again just to drag the story more until the last episodes. It also got tiring he kept calling FL "old woman" even when they were closer.

There is no romance here and it's only in episode 14 that Ban Ha Ni mentions having butterflies when interacting with Han Yoo Hyun... so you're just told because scenes we had none and maybe we got a few looks from him that let me know he likes her and him saying it to Anthony, but her to him? zero! She looks like a rock in that sense the whole series, even at the end when they say they're together, the chemistry is zero and I'm again being told and not shown (that kiss was appalling, especially for people in their 30s, what was that!!!!??? hahahaha). This show shouldn't be classified as a romance, it's not.
This brings me to the fact that had they focused a lot more in the romance throughout the series they would have had enough extra content to not have to have so many fillers of people walking here and there, or talking very slowly about uninteresting things and so on.
The main plot is, well, very sloppy. It was ok and interesting in the beginning but it's kind of forgotten for most of the series till the later episodes that it's brought back. Once they know what the mobile phone message with the days meant and they were doing nothing I started rolling my eyes, especially considering I was already fed up with the show at that point. They look at the phone and see D-7, they panic for 5 minutes and then they have some nice meal and go somewhere and then they show D-6, and then panic again and two seconds later they're eating beef. It was so difficult to take this seriously. Also the father gives that criptic message through the old phone "quickly quickly, you're running out of time", but considering where she had to go in the end to go back that it's nowhere related to anything she would have been able to know on her own and "quickly quickly" but the dream message was only received one day before the expire date. Bad writing, that's all.
I'm going to nitpick here as well because I was also rolling my eyes at the whole dream/past sequence, you're in a field of dead grass and you find a lily of the valley there eventhough they mostly grow in woodland, humid shaded areas? I was laughing, even more when in the tunnel sequence they find one and they're holding it with the hands (it's very toxic and can produce rashes) until I realised it was a plastic one, what fair enough, but I mean, there was no reason whatsoever really that it couldn't have been another flower the one picked for the whole idea instead of a lily of the valley...
This also brings me to how utterly useless that phychic was, I get they wanted to make the quirk of him being a modern one what was fine, but he would give half messages even when he knew what was happening. You can't tell people something is very serious and life and death and urgent and at the same time withhold information... he only appears twice in the show eventhough at one point he says to FL that he'll be looking for a way to make her past self back, next scene he appears that matter is not discussed.
Not sure why this is also labelled as a comedy, I only laughed once, and that is when Sung Woo is giving some food to past Ban Ha Ni and his mother, FL's sister, has a go at him. It did make me chuckle, but other than that I didn't find anything funny.

The whole drama in the company was ok but kind of cliché and I don't like how they dealt with ML's aunt in the end, she's kind of forgiven and it's not only what she has done with the company but the fact that her son never addresses the way she treats Oh Ji Eun. She had been said horrible things multiple times and yet nothing happens. In fact I don't even know the point in terms of plot of Oh Ji Eun getting pregnant since we didn't even know until that second that she had been trying nor she has a change of character at any time that makes her stronger or more confident or stopping taking that kind of treatment from her mother-in-law.

Points go for FL having freckles and having scenes when later on she has started using makeup for work but she's still shown with the freckles at times when she's supposed to not be wearing makeup, I thought it was a realistic touch I appreciated.

Overall is just boring and dragging and writing is not great. The message is there but you don't need that many episodes to tell it.
Considering as well that there isn't really a progression in terms of work, romance or much else of anything, this could have prefectly worked as a movie and it still would have given the same message.

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Pointless

It was such an achievement to somehow make this even worse than the first season, mainly because it's completely pointless. Characters have zero developement personally, you don't learn anything new about them, side characters of the 1st season are not as much in the picture and the only plot device used in the whole series consists on chucking some new characters to the main couple to create drama.
I'm not sure if they actually used anything from the Good Morning Kiss manga (the sequel to Good Morning Call) to make the 2nd season but generally it's just nothing like the manga, at least not the first 4 volumes (the only ones in English), where they are mostly planning to get married and they have already been together for about 5 years.

I found most of the characters introduced very annoying, especially Saeko and especially when she was having a tantrum. Generally they all acted very childish for being university students, and in fact in the manga there is progression in terms of maturity with the characters at that point, they could have explored that in this series but they just decided to keep it as superficial as the first season, or even worse. I don't get the point of Nanase, totally plot filler. Thing is though, they had the chance of exploring the crush Ota had in Abe in the manga, but instead they just did whatever that was between Nanase and Daichi.
When Natsume started having the feelings for Nao I rooted for him really, he was so much nicer than Uehara with his single emotion face and paired better with Nao. I knew it was not going to happen at all, but I almost wished. Sadly though, they couldn't even do that well and made Natsume super pushy later on. How is it that basically Natsume and Saeko push the main leads to break up and suffer absolutely no consequences for their actions, they're all super dupey friends in the end like nothing happened. It was so weird to watch the whole thing.
This whole second season was a plotless filler of bad writing and main leads are exactly the same than when it started, Nao has evolved zero and Uehara only managed one smile.

I can't recommend, even worse than the first season.

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