scenophile

For everyone who's looking for a typical romance cdrama, this is NOT that. I think this show did a really good job at showing ALS's physical AND mental effect on the person diagnosed with it, as well as on everyone who cares about them. It's a really interesting to think about what you'd do in this situation — both if you'd want to put your loved ones through the pressure of caretaking, and also if you would be willing to become one if someone you loved was diagnosed. Lin Yi does a really good job at showing the progression of ALS, and Landy Li also does a really good job with emotional scenes.

Other than that, I actually found this drama to unfortunately be not as engaging. While I understand that the romance and "getting together" part wasn't the point of this show, I felt like the leads got together too early and quickly for me to connect with their love story, and the second couple was also a skip for me — I found them more irritating than anything else and their tone really clashed with the seriousness of the ALS plot. The second male lead also did not really add much. It's weird because all of these characters were great when they were reacting to the male lead or interacting with the ALS plot, but their love lines were not fun to watch.

Ultimately, while I like how this tackles a heavy topic pretty well, I don't think I actually really connected to the characters and story as much as the disease just being sad. For a similar plot, I'd highly recommend One Liter of Tears (jdrama) instead, though that one is about SCA and not ALS.