I'm not sure if I understood correctly. Why did Tae Soo kill that woman's husband? Did he tell her that…
Not sure if it's just terribly translated, but my subtitles amounted to "I couldn't forget you so I killed him and made it look like an accident"; I guess they realised that in a previous episode he portrayed him as a perfect guy with no enemies so the writers didn't know how to get out of that hole?
Really good production (comics/anime), excessive attempts at being funny, weak plot. I feel the kid's rap talent could have been used more. Feels like a webtoon about a webtoon.
The filmmaking / directing quality is really inconsistent, like 20% of the scenes were shot by the fourth-rate director's cousin's dog. The worst is when there's a face closeup on FL with sudden cuts in-between her sentences. Really bad.
Perhaps it's in part because I watched Bong Joon Ho's Memories of Murder right before, whose masterful filmmaking…
Shin Ha Kyun is great in his role, but in hindsight his character too spends about a third of the show being suspicious for the sake of it. As others pointed out, there's just not enough story for this many episodes, and it shows by virtue of various characters being forcefully presented as suspects for maybe an episode or two each. The idea of course is to reveal (peel) the truth like an onion, but suspecting Lee Dong-sik and Nam Sang-bae in the murder of Lee Yu-yeon, as well as suspecting Oh Ji-hoon and Park Jeong-je in the murder of Kang Min-jung in particular are pretty much tacked on to fill time and inflate the story content.
Lee Dong-sik's magical super power is perfect recall (eidetic memory), and without that, the entire story would fall apart. It's so vital that his partner/frenemy Han Joo-won later gets it too. They know every phone number, every number plate, can recite every word of every law, and will of course accurately quote every phrase spoken by any other character. In a similar lack of creativity, one murderer's faking a disability shtick is given to the next one too. Gives a whole new meaning to the term "copycat killer".
As far as things that aren't explained to a degree they would make sense go, and in general questions left open, there's no shortage: - In the very first episode, Lee Yu-yeon is called out, walks down the road, and suddenly the lights go out along the entire country road. Who would even be capable of doing that? (Later it's clear that it "didn't actually happen that way", as the version of events shown is updated several times, but still.)
- In the same first episode, Han Joo-won concludes the family of the man with dementia has something on Lee Dong-sik, but beyond him also having lost someone to murder, it's never revealed what it is.
- What's the point of collecting the fingers of victims? Are they trophies, like their other personal belongings? Considering the real Hwaseong killer seemingly was a rapist first and a murderer second, cutting off the fingers of his living victims before killing them would be a horrifying crime that's more TV-compatible, sure. The idea behind placing Lee Yu-yeon's at her home could be to connect that murder and Bang Ju-seon, and pin both on Park Jeong-je. In my opinion, the nature of the crime and the choice of victims isn't explained at all. What does he do with the fingers as they deteriorate? What would he have done with his daughter's fingers? How long did he pretend to stutter and in general play the village idiot before using it to mask serial killings?
- The deer farm contains many more bodies, yet we never learn anything about their identities or in what context they were murdered. It's like the writers suddenly ran out of names and stories.
- Why is Lee Yu-yeon placed in the middle of the road? I don't get the idea behind it. Also, who actually kills her?
- Han Gi-hwan's in-laws had a near-bankrupt construction company that he relied on to fund his political career within the police force. They were at the verge of doom when corruption got them the lead role in Mujun's big renewal project, but since that ultimately fell flat after the murders, how did they go from certain bankruptcy to being a household name? And furthermore, why would they still finance Han Gi-hwan's career after he locked up his wife to die in solitude?
Perhaps it's in part because I watched Bong Joon Ho's Memories of Murder right before, whose masterful filmmaking contrasted starkly with the ridiculous slow motion shots that are rampant in the first episodes, but my high expectations for this show based on its award wins and general hype were very much disappointed.
Yeo Jin Goo manages to be annoying in the majority of scenes he's in, more so than even in Hotel del Luna (he's alright in Hwayi), and his character's absurd self-righteousness is constantly advertised as a legitimate pursuit of justice in a dark, Old Testament, Crime & Punishment kind of way. It doesn't help that, for some reason, he has to play the role of the unimaginably rich and beautiful chaebol bachelor, which means he doesn't only get to be arrogant while bending the law to be extra-strict with others, but also to be arrogant while coming to work overdressed in expensive designer clothes — in slow motion, as I mentioned before. To be fair he's not the same kind of Mary Sue as for example the Rugal protagonist, but all other characters treat him way too nicely more often than not, and the excuse of them wanting to curry favour with his powerful father isn't believable for long.
Similarly – perhaps so you can suspect them in a whodunnit sense – many other characters aren't exactly beacons of good and paragons of humanity. You often find yourself without anyone to root for because they're all not likeable.
The plot is full of coincidences, people arriving in exactly the right moment, and 'small world' relations to a degree that you'd think Munju is the secret second capital of South Korea. This may be seen as standard K-drama fare, in the sense that if you don't mind the protagonists in another drama forming a bond for life in a chance meeting when they're five years old that somehow destines them to fall in love 25 years later, it likely won't annoy you here.
On the plus side, if you're triggered by paid product placement, I can't think of any beyond Yeo Jin Goo's designer clothes and car(s).
**The follow-up with spoilers is only for people who've watched the entire show.**
I started this drama on a high note...I watched and got soo consumed that before I realised what was happening…
Park J-J feels downright mistreated & outcast towards the end, by both the other characters – his friends – and the script. After being locked up for several years *and* living in misery for a total of 20, he's sure been punished enough without the extra prison time he gets.
Also, the angle that he "killed" the woman he loved doesn't get any attention.
I think the writer make a really big mistake on the time travel plot. Let just say 1993 hyun jae was blown to…
Normally I get really worked up by time travel plot holes, but there aren't any outside of the ML's notebook (which exists twice, in a '93 and a '94 version, but changes to the '93 one appear on the '94 one even though he never returned to '93 — that's a time travel plot hole!). When '93 ML returned from 2017, he only regained consciousness on the canonical day of his death/disappearance. '94 ML is a copy of the ML, not a "continuation", and lived through the ML's entire life until then as well. So while the future-ML is in the future, his '94 self hooks up and fathers a child and such. The 2017 people did not know that there are actually two Hyun-Jaes, and that's why they assumed he has to return to the past to avoid having his son disappear. Perhaps he also *had* to return because "the past called for him" via the pager, that's resolved.
It's not clear what future time he then ends up in. It could be anywhere from a month to a year from when he went back to the past. It doesn't have to be 2017.
tldr: it's time travel PLUS cloning, and instead of merging the clones back together, or having them switch roles, the '94 ML decides to quietly die/disappear. He was full of regret for how he took the money and ruined the company, and that was the way his sacrifice could help everyone else. By vanishing on June 17 1994, '94 ML ensures the past stays unaltered, except for whatever minor acts '94 ML engages in after '93 ML tells him all about the future.
Okay just read the full thing and leave your comments because this just shook my mind...i guess this story is…
There's also a story arc of "someone close to him" having made him disappear, which turns out to be untrue, but sure seems like a reference to the case as well.
there are two hyun jae, one that continued to live in 1994 and then disappeared because of the illness and the…
The "twin" typhoon duplicates the ML, which is how the main ML can avoid being the SML's *actual* father and the associated bad vibe being interested in the same girl would have. Because it's not one person time travelling and then being gone from his original timeline, and no multiverse, but rather one person existing twice, it's really not as stupid as I feared it would be. Thought I'd be giving this a 4/10.
The plot and writing might be even more stupid than in Rugal — didn't expect that to be possible. Really high facepalms-per-minute score.
Nothing you'd afterwards regret watching.
Full thing on YT with extras:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNnCPe4bYS97ci2E8SXMBAvYjrdYDDXTD
I feel the kid's rap talent could have been used more.
Feels like a webtoon about a webtoon.
Lee Dong-sik's magical super power is perfect recall (eidetic memory), and without that, the entire story would fall apart. It's so vital that his partner/frenemy Han Joo-won later gets it too. They know every phone number, every number plate, can recite every word of every law, and will of course accurately quote every phrase spoken by any other character.
In a similar lack of creativity, one murderer's faking a disability shtick is given to the next one too. Gives a whole new meaning to the term "copycat killer".
As far as things that aren't explained to a degree they would make sense go, and in general questions left open, there's no shortage:
- In the very first episode, Lee Yu-yeon is called out, walks down the road, and suddenly the lights go out along the entire country road. Who would even be capable of doing that?
(Later it's clear that it "didn't actually happen that way", as the version of events shown is updated several times, but still.)
- In the same first episode, Han Joo-won concludes the family of the man with dementia has something on Lee Dong-sik, but beyond him also having lost someone to murder, it's never revealed what it is.
- What's the point of collecting the fingers of victims? Are they trophies, like their other personal belongings? Considering the real Hwaseong killer seemingly was a rapist first and a murderer second, cutting off the fingers of his living victims before killing them would be a horrifying crime that's more TV-compatible, sure. The idea behind placing Lee Yu-yeon's at her home could be to connect that murder and Bang Ju-seon, and pin both on Park Jeong-je. In my opinion, the nature of the crime and the choice of victims isn't explained at all.
What does he do with the fingers as they deteriorate? What would he have done with his daughter's fingers?
How long did he pretend to stutter and in general play the village idiot before using it to mask serial killings?
- The deer farm contains many more bodies, yet we never learn anything about their identities or in what context they were murdered. It's like the writers suddenly ran out of names and stories.
- Why is Lee Yu-yeon placed in the middle of the road? I don't get the idea behind it. Also, who actually kills her?
- Han Gi-hwan's in-laws had a near-bankrupt construction company that he relied on to fund his political career within the police force. They were at the verge of doom when corruption got them the lead role in Mujun's big renewal project, but since that ultimately fell flat after the murders, how did they go from certain bankruptcy to being a household name? And furthermore, why would they still finance Han Gi-hwan's career after he locked up his wife to die in solitude?
Yeo Jin Goo manages to be annoying in the majority of scenes he's in, more so than even in Hotel del Luna (he's alright in Hwayi), and his character's absurd self-righteousness is constantly advertised as a legitimate pursuit of justice in a dark, Old Testament, Crime & Punishment kind of way.
It doesn't help that, for some reason, he has to play the role of the unimaginably rich and beautiful chaebol bachelor, which means he doesn't only get to be arrogant while bending the law to be extra-strict with others, but also to be arrogant while coming to work overdressed in expensive designer clothes — in slow motion, as I mentioned before. To be fair he's not the same kind of Mary Sue as for example the Rugal protagonist, but all other characters treat him way too nicely more often than not, and the excuse of them wanting to curry favour with his powerful father isn't believable for long.
Similarly – perhaps so you can suspect them in a whodunnit sense – many other characters aren't exactly beacons of good and paragons of humanity. You often find yourself without anyone to root for because they're all not likeable.
The plot is full of coincidences, people arriving in exactly the right moment, and 'small world' relations to a degree that you'd think Munju is the secret second capital of South Korea. This may be seen as standard K-drama fare, in the sense that if you don't mind the protagonists in another drama forming a bond for life in a chance meeting when they're five years old that somehow destines them to fall in love 25 years later, it likely won't annoy you here.
On the plus side, if you're triggered by paid product placement, I can't think of any beyond Yeo Jin Goo's designer clothes and car(s).
**The follow-up with spoilers is only for people who've watched the entire show.**
After being locked up for several years *and* living in misery for a total of 20, he's sure been punished enough without the extra prison time he gets.
Also, the angle that he "killed" the woman he loved doesn't get any attention.
Was he identifying him as the rapist and murderer, or talking about him in reference to those, or was it all entirely unrelated?
Surprisingly funny. Laughed a lot.
Way fewer plot holes than time travel shows usually have.
When '93 ML returned from 2017, he only regained consciousness on the canonical day of his death/disappearance. '94 ML is a copy of the ML, not a "continuation", and lived through the ML's entire life until then as well. So while the future-ML is in the future, his '94 self hooks up and fathers a child and such.
The 2017 people did not know that there are actually two Hyun-Jaes, and that's why they assumed he has to return to the past to avoid having his son disappear. Perhaps he also *had* to return because "the past called for him" via the pager, that's resolved.
It's not clear what future time he then ends up in. It could be anywhere from a month to a year from when he went back to the past. It doesn't have to be 2017.
tldr: it's time travel PLUS cloning, and instead of merging the clones back together, or having them switch roles, the '94 ML decides to quietly die/disappear. He was full of regret for how he took the money and ruined the company, and that was the way his sacrifice could help everyone else. By vanishing on June 17 1994, '94 ML ensures the past stays unaltered, except for whatever minor acts '94 ML engages in after '93 ML tells him all about the future.
Because it's not one person time travelling and then being gone from his original timeline, and no multiverse, but rather one person existing twice, it's really not as stupid as I feared it would be. Thought I'd be giving this a 4/10.