bokminthe

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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Slow burn love story with good story progression but a dose of unrealistic-ness

Overall this is an ok series with a good story progression, good characters and visuals and an okey-ish ending.
But precisely those same points are the problem for me as it ends up being a bit superficial in all aspects. There is a good story progression but there are plotholes and unexplicable decisions, especially towards the end, that could have easily been tackled considering I found the show slow at some points.

Characters are good but I didn't feel like I got to see very deep into them, probably only Soramame we get to see more into her psyche than anyone else. The most frustrating are the side characters, there isn't any progression for any of them, especially I was waiting they would do something with the landlady Kyoko, she was such an interesting character but she's just support role, literally.

Both of their careers are pretty unrealistic, especially hers and we're not told at any point that she used to draw or was into fashion growing up, it's very out of the blue, and then she happens to have connections in the industry, what are the chances... I can let it pass, it's ok. What it's not so ok is that there is a build up when it comes to the mother and such a drama when her ideas are stolen but then when we get to the resolution and she gets what she technically wanted then we get a time jump and all of a sudden she's back and out of it all and it's not really even well explained exactly why she seems so burnt out, her replies are very ambiguous.. Am I to assume it's only because she's not with Oto? Why did she go in the first place then? and why in those three years she didn't think in telling him how she felt at least to move on? (considering she thought he was with Seira). Instead of rushing it, it would have been better to end the show with them telling each other before she went, end it there.

The time jump adds absolutely nothing and only creates more questions and more frustration. I find the time jumps in modern setting dramas to separate lovers completely ridiculous (unless it had a good reasoning, and I still haven't seen one). You want to use that plot device? set your story pre-internet era because otherwise it's just unrealistic (and still, phones anyone???). Who in their right mind loving someone would not speak with them for 3 years at all and hope they're still single and in love with them, especially after a very generic letter and an earphone as a token of love. I get it, it's supposed to be romantic and it would be if their separation had been a few weeks/months long, but three years?
Then what's going on with Soramame in the end, I feel at that point I don't even know if she's still into him or not, she receives the invitation and it's a "yes but no", all that part of the story is like seeing a toddler going to school in the morning half crying, I'm not sure if I have to feel joyful for her or suffer with her because she's doing something she doesn't want. It's so vague and anticlimactic in my opinion.
I don't even know where to start with Seira, she was a mess in the beginning and I'm still not sure of what her situation was, because I don't even know how many layers of lies there are there and her character, like any other side one, is kept mostly superficial. Either way, she started as a bad person and ended as a bad person, there is nothing there that tells me she has grown to be a better one. I mean, she took three years to tell that to Soramame... but I don't even know if I can blame her considering Oto didn't contact Soramame either to tell her what she thought was not true either. They both basically left Soramame to believe what she assumed for three years (and obviously Soramame is also in the wrong for making assumptions without asking). Seira doesn't suffer at all the consequences for her actions, not the first time and not at the end.

The love progression in this one is the frustrating type, so if you're not into very slow burn love stories where characters play very dumb till the end then this might not be for you.
I liked the visuals and settings of the story and I enjoyed the main characters banter and the dynamics of them with the landlady. I could understand that plot twist with Soramame's career towards the end if there was a second season, I can't find info on that so I'm going to assume there isn't one and so it's a bit annoying to see the progression of her career and then she stops but there is no hint on what she really wants to do next, more considering we're only told at the end once they're together that she's just like in a hiatus career wise. There are many things they could have done to bring her back to Japan instead of that out of the blue burnt-out when she's only been in the profession for 3 years. For example, in the lines of what she was saying, it would have been a lot more satisfactory that she had said high fashion is not for her and she's planning to create a small brand that provides to the local community, instead we got vagueness and not enough time to dwell in that vagueness, the motives, the reasons and the progression out of it.

Music was ok, sometimes it got a bit repetitive for me though.

Overall it's an ok watch so I would recommend to those that want something to watch, but if you have something more interesting in your list watch that first. Avoid if you don't like slow burn romance, it can certainly be quite frustrating in this one at times.

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Curious concept and cute fantasy costumes are the only good thing here

To be honest most of my rating went down because of the ending, had they dealt with that differently this would have been a passable 5 surprisingly. It would have been one of those bad movies that are still surprisingly entertaining with its many flaws.

I went with very low expectations and only started watching it to kill some time, only by the preview I already thought it was going to be cringy and bad, and I was generally not wrong, but surprisingly I did find it more entertaining than expected because of the plot.
The whole vibe this was giving me was school play, flashy costumes, everything clean and staged, exaggerated acting or amateur acting and so on, even the premise is kind of weird since it's mostly Cinderella but Red Riding Hood is there just because. It's fine, I could get at some points not even themselves were taking it too seriously, especially towards the beginning. They didn't seem to have high expectations and nor did I have them, so I just chilled and watched.

Plot became interesting with the crime and the changes to the different characters compared with the most known story version of Cinderella but then they just went with a classic detective Conan move of revealing everything at the end instead of taking us with them for the ride. I enjoyed Conan when I was a kid but it would get repetitive and boring after a while because he would only solve everything in the last two minutes bringing evidence that no one, not even the spectator, knew about. This was very similar in that respect and I could still have given it a general pass if it wasn't for that victim blaming right there.
Sure, Cinderella shouldn't have done what she did (especially with her sister), BUT the guy was assaulting her plus everyone else knew that guy had been doing it for a while to other women as well... sure, he was powerful but considering he was not in good terms with the prince either you would think that power would be deminished by that single fact and she would get a sentence based on the nuance of the situation. Either way, I'm going here on details when the movie didn't care much for them at all, what makes that ending as bad as it is. Moral of the story is don't defend yourself when a guy is physically assaulting you I guess.
Although moral of the story is don't judge people by their physical appearance according to them, but they all had thick makeup on (maybe just me but especially the prince, wow, it was not subtle at all), hair with a tone of hairspray and pristine clothing, including Red Riding Hood eventhough she wasn't even a local. I guess at the end we got the message that we shouldn't discriminate against people with face scars and freckles, what is already an achievement considering many people in Japan think freckles are ugly.

I'm only giving it a two because the concept wasn't that bad even with the whole cringe fest of everything, but that ending and its morality deserves a zero.

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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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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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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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I guess I should avoid this director...

Overall I liked certain characters and scenes in this drama but it just misses the mark for me in so many aspects.

After watching a couple of episodes I was having this sense of deja-vu in the way certain characters or topics were presented, it was giving me Lovestruck in the City vibes, so I checked the director... and yeah. I didn't even realise he was the director of other dramas I've watched that I haven't liked much because normally I don't really check who is the director or who are the actors, I look mostly at plot summaries.
After watching this series I guess I get the general idea that I should generally avoid this director because the scripts he picks, and that I assume he resonates with, I personally don't. I get he tries to do some different things here and there, with some characters that are different and many times quite toxic and problematic and it might be the cup of tea of some, but the ideals he seems to gravitate towards, the toxicity of certain of his characters passed as hero/ideal or the ideology that he presents in his dramas I do not agree with in general. Don't even get me started with whatever 'When the Stars Gossip' was. Our Unwritten Seoul is one of the highest ratings I've given to a drama I've watched of his.

I liked certain aspects of this drama in certain struggles and some of the healing, but overall, as it happened for me with It's Okay to Not Be Okay they're still way too superficial and psychologically speaking very classical, outdated and even freudian at points (what the hell was that with the guy that looked like the father, why is he a copy to start with).
I know this drama has been praised by many for the FL actress and her portrayal of the twins, but I have to say it was one of the main things that annoyed me in this drama. I think some others have also pointed out the fact that not only it was very obvious to everyone who was who and for that alone the premise of the change in the story made no sense, but also the fact that the whole personality of Mirae was having a stick up her back constantly and there is no change or even reflection on this. Miji on the other hand was a 5 year old for... what I can only assume is very classist views. I'll say it, Lee Jae In made a lot of a better acting here playing younger Mirae/Miji than Park Bo Young, and what's more, there was more chemistry between young Miji and Hosu than adult them. It was sad. At points I wished this was set when they were younger.
It already pissed me off quite a bit from the first episode the portrayal of Miji and prejudices against her, not only from her environment what could be realistic to certain extent (if overused) but from the drama itself to portray her as extremely childish because she didn't go to university. On top to keep repeating that she's unemployed but she's working? and taking care of her grandmother? only because she doesn't have a career job. She's way more out and around the world than her sister but she's treated like crap. It probably wouldn't have annoyed me as much if it wasn't because it's not the first instance I've seen of this degrading of people without further education, like if they become stuck somehow and are very childish (more so than ignorant even). Her staying three years in her room was very forced given the circumstances and I feel that it was only presented that way because they wanted to just make very obvious the topic of loneliness and marginalisation (as they did with Mirae's coworker), but there is no real talk there about it. There is in a cheap melodramatic emotional level of it obviously, to serve the purpose of whatever the director/script wants to provoke in the audience (cheap tears I guess), but not an in-depth realistic way on the why. I say it this way because this director has done it other times, he seems to like to use certain topics as props but they're not approached in a very conscious way or even dwelled or resolved in a realistic way either. She left the room when the grandmother passed and pretty much that cured her? It's always some shock exposure therapy of the sorts that cures it all it seems. It's very misleading and honestly quite bad taste to me at this point for repeated offender.

I get swapping them was "fun" and the main gimmick of the drama but it has been overdone in the past and the reasoning for it seemed weak to me, but maybe it's also because I'm tired of seeing bullying issues in companies where the employee just takes it to breaking point. I know it's a big problem in korean society but I think we all know that unless there is a change in education and the view of work as a whole nothing will change, so I would say that specifically for dramas to keep using this just becomes a cheap plot device. Why was the guy a copy of their father anyway? made no sense!!! artistic liberties and whatnot (in the same manner than identical twins never being identical), but even in the story it was so jarring and off-putting.

The plot overall dragged, and it never got to be that interesting, there were side characters that I found more interesting than the main two, and that was Hosu's mother mostly because I guess it was a bit more unique that she just continued raising Hosu on her own after the father passed, and Han Sejin for being a bit more relaxed and flowing around without care, what made him a bit more fun, in despite of the fact that overall I don't think we learn near enough about him.
The FLs' mother is quite bad, especially towards Miji in the beginning but her role as a mother and her actions, or inactions, are pretty much brushed under the rug to then focus on her role as a daughter. It was not satisfactory. This show anyway has once again that very performative showing of filial piety what is something this director has overused in the other dramas I've seen of him. He must have a big mommy/daddy complex and needs to keep repeating it.
As I mentioned there are a few things that it's good they're there, like Hosu's senior as a character in a wheelchair (and not a full time user of it, something not seen much), Hosu's hearing loss or the gay friend (what an achievement!). But I feel these are used as tokens and to get points more than anything. Mostly I feel this way because of the way they're presented and tackled, especially Hosu's hearing loss that it's more central to the story. It's all left very superficial and at points not very realistic, same with the mention of dyslexia. So I have mixed feelings about it because I'm not quite sure the direction on including these topics is done from a considerate and acknowledgement standpoint to have a realistic portrayal of society and they feel at times as cheap melodramatic stunts to be used sparingly throughout the series for points and personal gain of the director/writer and add a couple of obvious melodramatic/conflict scenes.

As others have also pointed out, it's extremely unrealistic that in that given situation the sisters would communicate that little. You're throwing your sister into a company she knows nothing about and think all be fine because she has to do nothing? I mean you can do nothing, doesn't mean the environment won't do anything to you though.
Either way, this brings me to my overall despise of Mirae as a character. In the past, the little she appears, she seems to be quite introverted and shy what is fine, but in the present her vibe was more like angry and spoiled. Not only Miji swaps with her but then Mirae keeps telling her what not to do while not telling her what to do other than "nothing". She forbids her of doing certain things but she doesn't respect the same boundaries and everything is fine if Mirae does it. She quits the farm without Miji's permission because I guess to her that's not a job? doesn't matter. She barely tries to be her sister or to keep her sister's life going, but she has a fit if her sister does anything on her own, reason for Miji to obviously not tell her anything. This is never really tackled, their relationship and the constant degrading of Miji is never tackled either and overall Mirae really doesn't change in the whole series, her healing is only a matter of the company issue in taking a stance, but she doesn't have a change in her ways in any way.
I would have also preferred Sejin didn't have an interest in her, it felt forced and Mirae as a character is such a stick that it was not really much of anything or enjoyable, but at the end after the year they try to present that reunion like destined and I was just not feeling it. Maybe it was also done this way because otherwise Park Bo Young would have had to kiss two guys and maybe that was a big no, although considering her kissing scenes with Park Jin Young also felt very forced to me independently of the lack of chemistry they had, I would have almost preferred to not have any kissing scenes. This also brings me to the fact that Hosu and Miji in present time together were antic-climatic to watch many times, because she was acting like a child and it was difficult to see why Hosu would be interested in her if it wasn't for their past.

Towards the last episodes it dragged a lot and they were pulling melodrama from under the rocks to fill the time.

So although generally it's just about kinda watchable I'm not sure I'll be recommending it. If you like the director's other works then I would say you might like this, but if you have watched some of his other dramas and didn't like them I would avoid this one, it's not that much better.

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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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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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Had potential but sadly writing is a mess

If I could I guess I would put it more in a 5.75 rating for me.

Things I liked about this drama:

- Acting
- Action scenes
- Cinematography (some truly beautiful landscapes/locations)
- Music
- Ambience
- Premise of the story on paper

Sadly all this kind of goes partially down the drain when the plot and its execution are like in here. Not sure what they were going for. I feel they had enough time to make it way more cohesive and developed. Sometimes I need to remind myself that many films manage to portray a cohesive plot and quite developed characters in way less time than many kdramas, what puts things into perspective every once in a while like in this case.
This is true in this drama considering it was slow at times, especially the first couple of episodes. When I say slow I mean meaningless nothingness or silence ambience scene that adds nothing to the plot, characters or ambience.

This drama was full of ups and downs for me, the first couple of episodes I found them a bit boring and dragged, then it became more interesting from episode 3 to 5 more or less when the Snow Man and the whole mystery of the disappearance of children is introduced, but then it's kind of left to the side for some back and forth plot in the middle and picked up again towards episode 8-10 to then have a quite messy and anti-climactic end in episode 11.
There are too many plotholes. At points I was like "dear Hongrang, who are you?" because at the end of the day it didn't matter, and I feel like I had to endure too much of that kid without any kind of reward in the end, especially for how obsessed FL was about it. I'll be harsh, but I think given the circumstances, we were parting from the baseline idea that given the amount of time it had been that he had disappeared he was dead, but I still expected some surprise that made it more interesting in at least the how he died. It's repeated multiple times of his potential link to the Snow man and the whole mystery but it meant nothing. This was anti-climactic. At one point towards the end I thought he would be one of the talisman guys with back tattoos, and to be honest that would have been quite interesting. Maybe I'm misremembering but ML's adoptive mother seemed to have details and knowledge about the kid that no one else had, so I thought this would pretty much mean he was still alive. At some point during one of the "ups" of the show I thought maybe they could even introduce him as the mastermind behind the plot against the Min household as well considering that detail. I feel now like they had multiple ideas and they just scrapped them all in the end to have a rushed and unsatisfactory end to the kid's story.
Who is the Snow Man? who knows. Who is running the household at the end of the show? Everyone is dead and the mother has gone back to her delusions. We're assuming is FL? Who knows. Why were there so many people on the side of what the painter was doing? he didn't even come across as especially powerful or skilled in combat himself, so why the following and devotion to his concept and orders? it wasn't too realistic to me, even given his power position.

As other people have said here too, the illness of ML makes no sense. Considering the substances he had been exposed to he would have already died time ago, but conveniently he only starts having symptoms after the romance plot. They even conveniently stop for a bit so he can carry out the last battles to then come back full force. Not a fan.

In the beginning I thought FL would be a bit more independent and strong-willed considering she had been looking for the brother and had people helping her and she showed a certain level of will and temper, but this is very quickly put to the side and she fully becomes damsel in distress and very dumb. Special mention to that moment she leaves the cave to look for him in the night after she had been injured with the poison. Sure, at least here they didn't do the cliché of having that moment as the scene where they're injured, taken back or made captives, but it's the sheer level of cliché dumbness that I'm very tired of seeing.
The motivations for the painter were ok, but very out of the blue, I feel like it would have been better to unfold the mystery over the episodes than having it all condensed. I liked the back tattoo story and I also liked the fact the show was bold enough to have the ML have the fertility tattoo. But also I have to say that for modern audiences as much as I understand the why considering the time and place, it's also no a big deal to me so it was difficult to connect to the expressions and emotions that tattoo was doing to the characters in the story, what I know it's a 'me' problem. Maybe some comment or story or explanation would have helped to bring me to their level of astonishment, but I also understand that this probably worked as intended for most Korean audiences. For me as it was, I personally thought it was a cool tattoo 😂 (maybe not one to be showing around in conservative places but you couldn't even see that much so honestly it was not that bad (maybe I've watched too many tattoo fixers)). But this also brings me to the fact that in all these years he could have covered it? I know that tattoos are seen pretty bad in many east Asian countries even nowadays and probably even more so back then, but if it was for the obscenities he could have covered it with just black ink. Better have a full black blotch in the back than the tattoo, it would have also helped him mentally and emotionally to not have the reminder of his torture so in the face (or rather in the face of others).

The SML... I mean, kudos to the actor, he did a very good job in portraying a very annoying man. I didn't like him from the start but as the show goes on I really was hoping he would die sooner than later. I don't like these type of second romantic interests that are very obsessed, he is a typical yandere and I'm not into the type. But I also despise when the FL just doesn't see anything of this ever, not even when the guy has crossed the line, because she's simply so emotional she can't think straight.
Not going to lie the dynamics of the household were confusing at times as well, at points I was a bit confused on who had done what, if it was the mother again, or the father the SML, or someone on the side of one of them or someone else.

The romance also suffers because of the plot execution and decisions. It's quite sudden and there are a couple of episodes in the middle where they don't even interact much. On the other hand, we can see him being interested in her and a bit more of him falling for her, but we see barely nothing from her side, and it's never truly tackled or shown her struggle, probably because it would be kind of problematic considering from her side she's half-half about if he's her brother. What brings me to the fact I think it would have been better, as it always is in these kind of situations, for her to have known earlier on, join him in the pursue of the painter for example, anything. That would also have allowed for them to get closer to one another in a more realistic way and it would have flowed better in my opinion. I don't think it was the worst per se, but it was not good either. I enjoyed their moments together mostly because Lee Jae Wook is beautiful to me and his character is the perfect hero type so there is not much to complain about in that respect (other than precisely that). But, I feel like he's not doing a character he hasn't done before and I prefer him in Alchemy of Souls for a fantasy period drama.

Overall I guess it's watchable for the things I said at the beginning of my review, but don't expect much from the plot. I enjoyed it mostly for the landscapes and scenery and the action scenes personally, but I wouldn't rewatch it.

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Good until the last couple of episodes.

Up until around episode 8 I was really enjoying this drama and it was very entertaining with its mix of supernatural and romcom with certain darker aspects.
The characters were interesting and the banter and relationship between Seong A, Gyeon U and Jiho was fun. I liked the whole shaman idea as a premise and I enjoyed the plot direction until it started to go south. I liked also the plots relating to the classmates and overall it was very entertaining and one of the best kdramas I was watching this year, again, until it started to go south.

First of all I'll go ahead and say that while I've read and understand this might have been planned as a 16 episode series originally, that it was cut short and that, I don't say this very often, this is one of the few occasions that I think the series needed those 16 episodes, I don't understand why they didn't adapt it better to the 12 episode. As a writer, producer and director I would sacrifice the integrity of the original script, even if in sadness, to make a cohesive and coherent story.
Here instead they baked a nice loaf of bread, cut a big slice in the middle and sold the bread to the consumer as if it was a full loaf. But it was so badly chopped that everyone can clearly see where the cut and missing part is.

Things started to go south first and foremost with the way the character of Yeomhwa was tackled, or rather not tackled. Everyone protects her and lets her do as she pleases. While it was ok for part of the drama when you think you're building up the story to a climax, anything she did became a repetitive pattern and quite frustrating to watch when that climax or resolution never came.
The story as planned ended in episode 10. The two last episodes are just a mess of plotholes. We're missing basically 4 episodes that potentially (because we never know) would have closed those plotholes better. The question is why it wasn't adapted to the constraints they had and why it's simply chopped. There might be a reasoning more than simply a problem of the team not wanting to adapt this better given the circumstances, but as a viewer the end result is the same. It was not good.

Episode 11 was a mess, and episode 12 continued on this mess.

How did Gyeon U go on a date with Seong A? Plothole. It's not explained how she managed to make him resurface.

After that Seong A disappears, but it's not explained why exactly, it's not mentioned either how she's surviving wherever she is, apparently she's rich and we didn't know and somehow managed to rent somewhere being under aged, or grass and pine cones are an enough good diet to have for more than two years.

Other things that were introduced earlier in the series simply have a very anti-climatic and weird way of concluding, like the previous classmate of Gyeon U. The girl had basically bullied and tortured him for years only to reveal it was her who started the fire (we don't know why exactly) and for Gyeon U to ignore her from now on, but we're not even told why Gyeon U didn't do this already, apparently he knew she had kind of started the fire anyway and maybe I'm misremembering but I believe he had mentioned to feeling guilty about what happened and why he kept in touch with her, it's contradictory and just left like that.

Flower Master.... what is his deal? it's just the money or what? he just works for whoever and doesn't seem to be that willing to pick sides, but at the same time he's desperate in episode 12 to save Yeomhwa so.... we're missing a lot from his character.

In episode 11 we get Yeomhwa inheriting and living in the General's house, why? why is she there? why is anyone still talking to her? why doesn't she care about her baby and her whole plan after the death of the General at the end of episode 10? why was that death so anti-climatic? not only because of being predictable but also because it's brushed under the rug so quickly. Why was the General so obsessed with saving YeomHwa to the point of willing to put everyone else through the problems she was creating? Motherly love is just not enough of a justification, that's weak.
Yeomhwa could have been an interesting character if she didn't become so repetitive and if they didn't try to redeem her all of a sudden in the last two episodes. All that she caused and in the end she just walks away free with new friends (seriously that moment in episode 12 with Gyeon U trying to connect with her? are you serious? after the bullying since he was a child? NOOOOO).
I guess all her actions are justified because her baby died, even though she was trying to kill underage kids anyway (and she literally let a child die by the beginning of the series in case anyone forgot).

Why is there a two year time jump!!!!!!!?????? WHY??! It adds nothing to anything other than making everything so much more complicated and gives this feeling that during those two years nothing was done or achieved (Gyeon U tried of course but we're only shown a couple of scenes anyway). Why is it so difficult to catch Bong Su? Especially when he finally catches him rather easily in the beach at the end of the episode and even goes willingly with him to Gyeon U's house? all that for nothing? Logic not found!

We never see the consequences, even to an emotional level, of what Jiho did, and I guess their way of closing his crush with Seong A had to be shown somehow but to be honest it should just have happened in that 2 year gap instead of actively having an scene to show he closes it. But this brings me anyway to the fact Jiho was pretty absent/background character especially in episode 11, and if his actions in episode 10 were already out of character "that shaman looks scary, let's go talk to her and do what she demands, doesn't matter my best friend/crush is a shaman and I should ask her first", but that it seems very unrealistic considering his personality from episodes 1 to 9 that he would not look for Seong A as well, that he would be so passive and accepting of the situation. But this brings me anyway to the fact that it was extremely weird how Seong A just disappears and everyone just supposedly accepts it as normal and there isn't much care.

Why did the show decide to kill the old woman shaman an episode before the end? weird. She was a background character anyway, so why making her die?

So, apparently they had to kiss to transfer Bong Su around, what in retrospective makes quite puzzling why Seong A would avoid Gyeon U in her dream, just don't kiss him? Why the clue in the blackboard of where she was going to be at the end of episode 11? At the time of watching I thought maybe Seong A was leaving clues because she was losing herself, and while true, it's never tackled what was the intention there, she didn't want Bong Su taken out from her anyway, so I guess just the script said so.

In episode 12 they waste too much time on things that they seemed to have dropped/forgotten in episode 11 what drags the main issue and resolution to then have a very anti-climatic ending to the whole Bong Su drama.
So... it turns out he can just get out of a body when he wants without having to do anything, and the whole thing of looking for his name was a lie since he already knew it? What in the waste of time is this?
What was his deal then? I mean for starters he's supposed to be soooo evil, but apart from sucking the life of his host I didn't see him doing anything that evil, although they really tried to make him look evil just because he was carefree and giggling when running. His whole story is just a repetition of a few scenes but there is never that much explanation and at the same time the fact they kind of wanted the audience to sympathise with him considering the lives he was consuming and that he liked Seong A but he basically kept her away from who she loves. I feel there was a disconnection between Bong Su's banter and words and his actions, and there were things missing there to make it more cohesive. It was overall also dragged way too much as a plot. It was very funny in the beginning and with Seong A and Gyeon U having to hold hands and whatnot, but they stretched it too much. There are of course also plotholes in his story as it is. For starters why was he an evil spirit and why did Yeomhwa picked him? why did she believe that the evil spirit would do as she pleased once she gave him a vessel? what did she want from the spirit exactly anyway? I thought that since her baby had been punished by the deities that maybe only an evil god could change that, but it's never really explained what was the intention. Was it that? did she want the spirit to bring her baby back to life? did she want to punish/kill the other deities? Who knows.

Seong A really wanted to graduate and go to college, and I thought maybe we would get an epilogue that showed her graduating or something but she dropped what she wanted just because? because in her dream she remembered the General's words and that she's a shaman? It was kind of sad to be honest, I feel so bad for her.
The epilogue we got instead seemed rather pointless.

Overall it's watchable and enjoyable until around episode 8, even 9, but the last three episodes create too many plotholes, character inconsistencies and anticlimactic conclusions to the plot points the series had introduced. At least they're together sure, but at what cost! we don't even really get to see the consequences of Seong A's disappearance for two years (everyone looking older, everyone having a life but not her, etc).
If you want only romantic fluff this might disappoint because the darker elements, while present from the beginning anyway, grow bigger in the plot as the story progresses and especially towards the end. Plenty of fluff and cute moments for two thirds of the drama but mixed with some rather darker bits too.

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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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