njjang

i also have to admit, i am a little thrown about yang se jong being cast for joon. i really like yang se jong as an actor! but joon is supposed to be almost 10 years younger than he is & i'm interested to see if he can capture his personality, which is such a key part of the story. but i'm open minded!

i can understand holding off on watching the show until it airs, but it's so strange to me that people are automatically assuming the ending will be the same as the webtoon. i'm having a hard time thinking of a romance k-drama or movie that actually matched the webtoon exactly....

i logically understood the webtoon writing & felt it was a very realistic & understandable path the writer took. but i was definitely a little disappointed anyway! i think it will be kind of weird if they match the ending of the webtoon for this, because it doesn't seem like there's enough time to develop the plot, but i guess we'll see

i struggled through the first two episodes, but your comment is what made me continue. i'm glad that i did! it was definitely a much better show from episodes 3-12.

the message showed that do ha put the keyboard up for free in an ad & the impersonator contacted him asking if he could have it. do ha said yes & asked for his address so he could ship it to him. then when he recognized the keyboard in the video, he went to the address the guy sent him. they didn't show the message long enough for anyone to read lol that scene was way too fast

i interpreted that as the woman wasn't lying about her health. it was when she saw how much money was in the account that she started lying. because sol hee assumed the lady would take out the money she was owed & give back the rest, but the woman got greedy & took other things from their house as well.

haha, the webtoon wasn't perfect, but i would definitely recommend it! and the ending of the webtoon is definitely better than the ending of the drama.

i've seen her instagram posts. have you seen something else?

1. *sigh* the whole ending ???? what a ridiculous drama trope that they had to give ji eum amnesia?! i also hated the catalyst for her decision is that everyone she loves will get sick with a mystery illness. what??? ugh. it also made no sense to me why min gi & han na were so secretive about what ji eum had to do. min gi literally knew ae kyung was DYING & just kept being like "she needs to figure out this process completely by herself even though only i can tell her step by step what to do" -_-

2. i was particularly upset that there were barely any scenes of ji eum bickering with do yun. their relationship in the webtoon was hilarious & i actually really loved the end of the webtoon plot twist where ji eum initially believes do yun & her were married in her first life, only to discover they were sisters.

3. adding the characters of yeon ok & han na did not enhance the plot in any meaningful way. i’m so confused why they kept implying yeon ok had an affair with seo ha’s dad while his mom was sick, but when talking to his uncle, seo ha said his dad was also devastated by her death & needed consoling. i also didn’t get how we’re supposed to believe that seo ha’s mom, who was clearly VERY attached to him & loved him so much prior to her death, mostly stayed away from him as han na? ji eum spent her entire next life getting closer to him but his mother just decided to be a dancer? lol.

4. they changed the uncle’s reasoning for staging the accident, but i actually feel like both the webtoon AND drama explanations for his motivation were weak. both boiled down to “grief makes people do crazy things” but way too extreme.

5. the fact that ban ji eum’s father was driving the truck of doom & that do yun’s dad was driving seo ha & ju won felt like a makjang plot lol. i can’t say it was necessarily a bad choice, but i also thought this meant they would delve deeper into do yun’s arrangement with the chairman because his family was DIRECTLY involved with that accident. but then they didn't even explain how that started. one of my favorite parts in the webtoon was the fact that do yun agreed to spy on seo ha for the chairman, but he just flat out told seo ha he was doing it from the beginning & said he'd tell seo ha everything he reports to his dad LOL

6. the chairman/seo ha’s dad felt a lot meaner to me in the drama than the webtoon. i liked that they had the scene where seo ha tells him he was wrong to cover it up, because they’re only left with scars. but in the webtoon, the most impactful line for me was in this scene, so i was sad they left it out: “i know you did it because you were worried about me. & that i had misunderstood some of it all this time. it was just your way of showing you cared about me. but father… it i couldn’t see that you cared about me, that’s not just a different way of showing that you care… it’s just a bad way to look after someone, period.” this really resonated with me, because it made me think of all the times in these stories & dramas where parents who made terrible mistakes in the name of “protecting” their children, get to just say that & be forgiven. i do think the scene in the drama was going for the same vibe (as in, seo ha didn’t absolve his father) but it was still lacking for me, personally.

7. DO YUN’S MOM DIDN’T EXIST. this made me SO upset because her relationship with seo ha was one of the cutest things in the webtoon omfg. plus it provided more backstory/explanation for why do yun would even consider working for MI group. the bromance between seo ha & do yun was weaker in the drama, & i think that was in part due to do yun’s missing mom.

even though the webtoon had certain plot lines that could have been improved, i was a bit sad with many things that were changed or added to this drama. i have a lot of thoughts lol. too many.

"Ownership of the intellectual property rights for an adaptation depend on the contract between the creator, platforms like Naver and Kakao, and any agencies in the middle. Payouts can be a single-digit percentage of revenue, a minimum guarantee or a mix of the two, analysts said."

there is no guarantee that an author has "full power" for a drama adaptation, it is a case-by-case situation depending on the contract.

i skipped around a bit - did they address the issue with having kids though? i was confused on how yo actually felt about it...

not many haha. but i think "18 again" is a good one. and i think some people didn't like "the fabulous" but that one was overall nice to me.

i feel like every character jeon yeo been plays, i hate and don't understand in the beginning why they are so annoying... but then i end up rooting for her & feeling like she's so badass lol

for me, the reason they cared about each other was trauma bonding. tae gu's first trauma was learning the terminal diagnosis of his sister & then immediately after he was faced with not only her death, but the death of his young niece. tae gu is clearly impacted when he learns of jae yeon's terminal diagnosis, because it reminds him of his sister.

then jae yeon's uncle is killed in an insane situation. maybe because this is a violent mob movie, it seems like she should be desensitized to how brutally her uncle was attacked, but nothing implies that jae yeon lived with this type of cruelty on a regular basis. if anything, they kept giving us clues that she was only involved with the gang as a child & then her parents were also viciously murdered - which she witnessed. obviously traumatizing & life altering. she explains to tae gu the very thing you asked about... that she doesn't understand why she's so upset about her uncle, when she hated him. but it's not surprising when she also says that she is now completely alone in the world with no family or when you think about the fact that she probably has PTSD from seeing her parents & brother murdered & just witnessed the same thing with her last remaining family member. now the only person who even understands what she's gone through is tae gu.

tae gu also did get her out of that situation when she was emotionally distraught (they fought together against a common enemy to survive) & he didn't "take advantage" of her when she was vulnerable & offered to sleep with him. that's how i understood that situation, because it is only after tae gu rejects her & leaves that jae yeon finally cries thinking about what happened that day.

tae gu knows that jae yeon's whole family was murdered by the gang so he empathizes with her - but why are you also ignoring the fact that he went back for jin sung? i believe they did realize it would not be believable enough for tae gu to ONLY come back to save jae yeon, which is why chief ma said they will kill jin sung AND jae yeon if tae gu doesn't come. that was boss yang's whole plan in the first place, to get tae gu to come using jin sung. jae yeon just happened to be there by coincidence.

then finally, jae yeon gets revenge for her family & the last human connection she had, tae gu.

the bathroom scene in ep 6 was the first time i liked bomi. glad we got to see that side of the sisters! and bora's realizations after that was emotional for me. i was definitely in the camp that felt it was dragging a bit post-breakup. i understand that it was more realistic than some other dramas, but like people mentioned there are only 14 episodes so it was an interesting choice. it felt like 1 step forward 2 steps back, which is not great plot-wise. hopefully that means they dragged bora to the depths of despair for a triumphant comeback?

when natsumi was talking to kazu about how she fell in love & said "i was in despair when you told me about your cheating but i didn't resent you because i fell in love" ... i was like ummmm when? she didn't depict the feeling of despair at any time lol. i want to be more forgiving because like everyone below mentioned, this is kyoko's first show back... but i went in with an open mind and right from the first scene she sounded like someone reading lines off a paper with no emotion.

everyone acted like aliens in this drama & i mean that twofold. the characters actions were... so weird. the way all the characters spoke and the way other characters reacted to them were so strange??

and then like everyone said below - the acting was also off. which was confusing, because i also like kyoko and just recently rewatched hajimete koi wo shita hi ni yomu hanashi, so her acting was fresh in my mind. something was wrong here. i think she tried to make a character choice because of how natsumi was supposed to be kind of outwardly aloof, but it did not work at all. i've seen ryota in a few things too, and he definitely seemed really awkward in this. especially the parts where he had to laugh? seemed really forced.

even though she was annoying, ha ra was a likable enough FL to me until the moment she decided to conspire with eun beom's mom to give him a building in exchange for having a baby?! right in between her lecturing her cousin for stealthing his wife?! if this was ha ra in a flashback before their divorce, that would still be horrible but i could accept it. to have a character pull something like that so late in the drama made no sense. obviously both of them EVENTUALLY had some growth (though i agree with the comments that it was mostly ha ra & eun beom wasn't developed so well).
but i think that less people would be frustrated by the open ending if the pacing was executed better. their growth was like smushed in at the end.
and as a small aside, i was also really frustrated that eun beom never found out the truth from the phone conversation he overheard with ha ra & her mom.

it can be realistic that people are a mess or toxic together, but everyone wants a show to be satisfying even if that's the case. there's ways to make things satisfying even if your characters are imperfect or they don't end up together.

i will give this drama credit for one thing. i've never seen a second chance romance drama where the characters have exactly the same issues as when they broke up the first time...
i watched the first 4 episodes of this drama as it aired then i just came back & saw all the bad reviews which honestly helped me prepare for the rest of the show so i was less disappointed. but there was ONE specific moment that had me done with this show even though they did address it later...

after watching the first 4 episodes...i do understand woo joo's conflicted feelings towards dong jin but to be honest, i don't understand why dong jin would be curious about woo joo at all. is it literally supposed to all boil down to the scene where she "protected" him? it felt confusingly fast that he went from uninterested in other humans to "a puppy" as woo joo's sister said lol.

really interested in hearing others' perspectives on this because i'd love to see their character motivations through a different lens.