scenophile

Almost great

This drama started out SO strong. The fake marriage trope is common but this was such a thrilling twist on it with Hee-joo's voice being a secret and the kidnapper — I was on the edge of my seat for most of episodes.

I still enjoyed this overall, but in hindsight it leaves some more things to be desired. A lot of the side characters are underutilized, particularly Heejoo's sister I-na and the second ship, Yu-ri and Sang-woo. Yu-ri being a reporter ends up not really accounting to anything, and I-na's return also doesn't do much. Instead, the main leads are put through the ringer, with the female lead being put in danger over and over again. The tension is there but it does get repetitive.

I also really have to talk the last episode. It was just...bad. (And yes, I know it's in the novel, but I'm reviewing this based on drama only.) The last minute ghosting/separation is a trope that I've long-hated in kdramas, and this drama took it to another level by making this last arc just utterly random, in an active warzone in another country. It not only feels completely out of place, but there's just not enough time for all of this to happen, when I would've preferred that they just leave time for the characters to just talk to each other, and for more character relationships to be wrapped up. Hee-joo's relationship development with her mother is interesting but so rushed. Overall, the ending just doesn't quite hit; I find it hard to believe that the ML and his assistant would be able to get new government jobs after everything they've done and been in the public eye for. It wraps things up nicely but feels lazy.

Ultimately, this was still a pretty good watch, but the last episode hiccup is quite a big one.

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Ultimate yearning

It’s official, the main couple in this drama is going up there as one of my all-time favorites. Wen Yifan is a rare FL that’s quiet and reserved but still straightforward and stands up for herself when the situation calls for it. And Sang Yan is just the most amazing ML I’ve seen — he’s supportive and unwavering and funny, and the way BJT plays him is just so heartfelt.

The drama plot hits the sweet spot between angsty and uplifting. The leads give us really adorable moments, but when it comes to Yifan’s backstory and how her family has made her feel unworthy of love, the drama becomes heart-breakingly relatable and both the lead actors play their characters beautifully, and the amazing OST certainly adds a lot to each moment.

I will say that this drama was a little more dramatic than I anticipated — it’s pretty steady most of the time but there are a few fights and backstories that were extremely intense. To add, I’ve always hated the separation trope, and yeah this drama has it. It lasts quite a few episodes and it is frustrating and depressing, but I think this is one of the few cases where I think it really makes sense, and I like how it was resolved not by the ML finding the FL again, but by the FL realizing there were good people around her, being brave, and choosing to call him again. This IS Yifan’s story, and that gave her a lot more agency. It also makes the conversation they had where she finally lays out all her cards on the table feel earned.

The biggest “blah” part of this drama for me is, unfortunately, the side characters. I loved the SFL in WIFTY, and I loved the SML in Your Name Engraved Herein, and they’re both fine when they’re acting either as Sang Yan or Wen Yifan’s friend, but when it comes to their romance, I really could not care less. They have a few arcs — something with a dog, something with a car accident. I’m sorry but I could not tell you a single thing that happened (lol). For this reason I've been bouncing between a 9.5 and a 10, but I think I love the main couple so much I can't bear to give this any less.

Other than that…folks, this is one for the books, and I mean it when I say I think this drama had the best finale I’ve ever seen. It wrapped everything up beautifully, revisiting all the moments between our leads and capturing their growth. I cried my eyes out.

I also just want to take a moment to say that the cinematography in this show is GORGEOUS. You can tell that there is so much thought put into each shot, and it captures the warmth, the angst, whatever the scene calls for — perfectly.

Watch this to understand real yearning.

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Soft and quiet

Let me just start by saying I was in the middle of this drama when the Kamimura Kenshin news dropped, and unfortunately it really did affect my enjoyment of this show by a lot. I sped run the last half. I'm trying to separate those emotions from my review of the show, but I just have to admit that I didn't like it as much as I think I normally would've.

I think the beginning was kind of rough. While I love the premise of a romance between a misunderstood delinquent and a good student who just tries to keep their head down, the amount of random and unprompted kissing in the first few episodes felt a little abrupt and confusing.

Over time, the characters and story definitely grow on you. I think the cinematography is great and the vibes of the show are really warm. The actors have good chemistry and the dialogue is really insightful and thought-provoking, and it's overall pretty well-written, with some really dramatic plot points that somehow manage to never feel over-the-top. The plot unfortunately does fall victim to the break-up and separation trope, and while I don't think it's completely out of left field here, I still didn't love it and I feel like their reunion should've been slower, even knowing that there's limited screentime.

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Great visuals, terrible writing

I was absolutely sat after watching the first two episodes. While “country girl who moved to the city to escape her past but now goes back to her hometown” is a plot that has definitely been done before, something about this one just felt especially raw. The main female lead was carrying a lot of emotional baggage that added this really good heaviness to the drama, and the main male lead carrying a torch for her for so many years promised some really good tension.

As the drama went on though it just got SOOO repetitive. The FL pushing the ML away was understandable at first, but it should not have been 8 episodes of a 12 episode show. Each week, the ML or FL would say something mean to the other, they would separate,\ in anger, and the instigator would feel bad and run back to the other (in slow motion). The episode would end. You’d think that they’d talk it out the next episode but nope, and the cycle would just repeat. This happens so many times where the main leads meet and end up NOT talking it out — even in the penultimate episode — that the entire journey just feels utterly tiresome and pointless.

When the leads finally got together, it did not even feel cathartic, and it felt like they’d barely had one full conversation that was not filled with animosity. As much as I liked the flashback scenes of their younger selves (so cute!) it wasn’t enough of a strong foundation once their present selves had changed so much and weren’t communicating.

The second leads are unnecessary, but I actually did enjoy the smaller side ships — I think this drama could’ve focused less on a love triangle/square that made no sense and instead had more scenes of their friend group and showing more of the town.

The tropes in this show aren’t all that uncommon in dreamland, but for some reason they felt especially frustrating here.

You have the disapproving parent, who had a motive that was so unreasonable it became annoying that the characters didn’t stand up for themselves for so long. And then you have the car accident (two, if you count the one in the past), which is used to dissipate the disapproving parent and make them suddenly empathize (but only for a moment). And then a character having cancer (also two, if you want to count one in the past) and wanting to keep it a secret…leading to our ML still lying to the FL, in the second to last episode.

With all these conflicts, the plot just feels so incoherent. It was particularly frustrating too because we had such an interesting set up in the setting. We had a motel, complete with social stigma and pretty visuals, and then we had an architect lead. Remodeling the motel and dealing with the discrimination from the other townspeople would’ve been an adequate plot so I don’t know why we had to add all that other stuff. It just feels like lazy and unnuanced writing, which is a shame because the leads are really good at showing emotion, and the emotional scenes would have hit me if the writing actually built up to them.

The last episode wrapped things up nicely, but the road to get there felt very bumpy. I also just figured that most people had checked out by then anyway. I certainly did, emotionally.

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Vibes but no plot

This review is coming at you from a non-novel reader, just FYI. But it's another one of these beloved dramas that I ended up just not quite clicking with.

The concept is fantastic. I love a good time travel / isekai type story à la Scarlet Heart Ryeo or Romance of Tiger and Rose. The acting is sometimes good and sometimes a little awkward.

I feel like my main issue with this drama is that so much of it feels unearned and aimless.

There's a sort of "mystery" subplot surrounding a conspiracy reveal that appears for maybe three episodes, and it's all played out so fast from the moment it's first mentioned to the final reveal. We never really follow the story; we just know it's happening in the background, and then the big reveal happens and the story just ends.

The romance, which is the biggest part of the story, gives me much of the same feeling. I am absolutely a hater of insta-love and "destined love," and here it really does show my biggest problem with it. I'm just not understanding why or when they fell in love with each other, and we're given these romantic moments when I feel like they should still be getting to know each other better. It's weird because the potential is definitely there — the massage scene, for example, is A+ — but it would've been even better if it felt earned.

It also feels aimless in the sense of Jom's time travelling not being explained. It's explored at the start when he's so frazzled and trying to figure out what's happening, but he gradually just starts living a normal life. His situation is only addressed when he's forcibly confronted with it, and it leaves a lot of questions by the end. I constantly wished the drama went deeper into this aspect and upped the stakes. I think this is where the conspiracy subplot could've been used, because it could've given Jom a goal, and a "oh, THIS is why I came back" moment.

Ultimately, the ending also feels quite rushed. I know there's a sequel though, so maybe it'll help. Nevertheless, I think the vibes are still there, and I know the novel probably explains more, but from a drama-only perspective, that's what I felt.

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Fun & heart-fluttering

This show seriously shot its way up my list of favorite web dramas so fast. It's a travesty this couldn't go on for longer because I'm such a huge fan of this enemies-to-lovers (or more specifically annoyer & annoyee relationship) trope and I feel like this drama did it absolutely flawlessly.

The plot was straightforward and it had its cliches, but the drama didn't feel recycled at all — it was so refreshing, the leads absolutely killed their roles, and I just really loved how the story and relationship developed between the characters, who were simultaneously polar opposites and like two puzzle pieces that fit perfectly together.

The cinematography was also really good; it's not high production by any means but I really loved the symbolism of different colors as well as how the show edited SW and JY's scenes to parallel or contrast them.

It's also rare we get to see side characters get their due in these short shows, but Semantic Error really did an amazing job on the minor characters revolving around the leads; they not only had their own personalities and lives either, but I also just felt like their scenes were just as interesting and fun.

Overall, such a good drama with the perfect balance of fluff and tension. Definitely one I would return to watch.

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Heartwrenching at certain points

I honestly have to say that Jang Ki Yong totally stole the show for me. From his first scene, I knew that he and Ji-an would have some sort of history, and indeed he turned out to be the most layered and gray character. He had one of the best development arcs I'd ever seen, and the acting was top-notch.

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the development between the leads as well, but it just didn't captivate me the same way, save for a few scenes that were actually really touching.

I wish I could rate this higher but it actually took me so long to get through this drama, and even mid-way it was hard to find the motivation to keep going. I think part of this was the amount of time dedicated to the side characters — while some did grow on me, especially when they interacted with Ji-an in later episodes, for most of it I didn't care much for many of their scenes and it just very disjointed from the main storyline.

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Potential

My 5.5 is not to say that I didn't enjoy this — it was a light-hearted watch and the aesthetics of it are so beautiful. I was even okay with the weird documentary format that worked in some places but didn't work in others because somehow they got "footage" from before and in weird, personal places, and somehow they were indirectly talking to each other as interviews bounced back and forth.

The part that turned me off the most was the plot and character development, which needs a lot of work. It was like they had 4 pairs of characters but only thought about 1 of them, and even the story for that main pairing was dragged out and very thin. I was more invested in all of the other ships and they either didn't get a storyline across multiple episodes or just didn't play a role in the story at all.

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Messy ending, but characters are intriguing

So yep, I really don't think this drama should be thought of a romance. But if we do see it that way, then yep — SECOND LEAD SYNDROME IS REAL. I've always been a bigger fan of the playful, comfortable, easy-to-talk relationship and how comfortable Baek Inho and Seol were with each other and how she made her laugh and how he actually had such good advice about how to live life...I LOVE him to death.

Everyone who says that the ending of this drama is a mess...they're pretty much right, but if we DON'T think of the drama as a romance, I actually loved all the characters on their own:

Yoo Jung: I've always wanted to see a main lead like Yoo Jung — cunning, resourceful, with a thirst for justice and yet he goes about it in the coldest, cruelest way. Slytherin to the core. Loved it, and honestly the end of the drama felt more about his way of thinking than anything else.

Seol: So relatable in how endlessly hardworking she was and I loved how chill she could be with her friends. It was frustrating to see who she had to deal with, but I felt like the ending scene with her in the office and seeing colleagues who mirrored her college classmates...it tied everything up nicely.

Baek Inho: I've already said I loved him and he's one of my fave character archetypes — the estranged bad boy with a temper who goes WAY soft for the girl. His character was way complex and the backstory was heartbreaking, and there was so much tension between all his emotional turmoil vs. the emotions he wore on his sleeve.

Baek Inha: If I knew someone like this in real life, I'd be endlessly frustrated with them and hate them, but in this drama she was both annoying and hilarious. I can't help but feel like her character development was way out-of-the-blue and she got the short end of the stick with how crazy the drama's plot went, but ultimately she was still interesting.

Bora + Euntaek: Loved them. I wish they got a little more screentime but they gave me the friends-to-lovers that I always crave.

With that being said, the plot definitely went crazy, but since I watched this years after it aired, I was mentally prepared for it and it turned out to not be as bad as I expected. As a romance, it was problematic because I don't think the leads were good for one another, even from the very start, but if we're looking at the characters individually, I felt like this drama had a lot there.

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I honestly went into this with low expectations, considering the reviews and the blurb, but it turned out to be better than I expected. I appreciated that the characters were dealing with very real life issues like finding a job, being motivated, etc, and some subtle humor was actually decent.

As expected for a short web drama though, it didn't get to explore these things in depth as much as I wished it did, and the ending felt very bubblegum as everything just suddenly started going right.

The more action-packed plotline was also a nice surprise — it's rare that web dramas try to explore a story that needs so much backstory. Sadly though I felt like the resolution was very deus ex machina, and it had no lead-in or sufficient explanation.

I also really didn't like the side characters, and maybe part of it is just that there were way too many, and they all seemed to be dealing with the same issue of not knowing what you want to do in life. And the robot would solve it for them — it all got a bit repetitive.

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I'm a sucker for high school / college dramas, but not ones that span a long time. So obviously I had mixed feelings about this before I even started. To be honest, I had gotten it all spoiled for me, and knowing that the ending was unsatisfying, I ended up skimming the entire drama.

If you asked me to describe this drama in one phrase, I'd scream "SECOND LEAD SYNDROME." Lu Zhi Ang was undoubtedly my favorite character, and it hurt knowing that he wouldn't get the main girl, when he was SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE MALE LEAD. And as much as I liked Yan Mo, I usually never quite like the second love interest as much, especially for a character I was so invested in. I never really cared about the main ship either—in fact, I've gotten a little tired of the "strong and silent" type of boy being the love interest, and I felt like Zhi Ang was just so much more lovable.

I still really liked the first half of this drama. If I wasn't someone who just HAS to finish everything till the end, I'd have stopped at the episode when they graduated college. Honestly, that's what I'd recommend too. Although the high school parts had some cliche plotlines (ex: cheating on a test), I still liked how pure it was.

The last 6 episodes were the worst. Everything was really random and extreme, and the sort of mellow and slice-of-life drama I'd been watching suddenly became a soap opera where everything went wrong without any good reason other than to make things tragic. I also HATED Qi Qi's character arc—she was another one of my favorite characters and she was completely ruined.

Also, I felt like there were so many unnecessary flashbacks. I swear I watched Yu Jian with Qing Tian's interactions a million times, and it was always the same scenes over and over again. There were also so many flashback montages for the main leads and for Zhi Ang and his mom, and they were always the same scenes. I also was lowkey weirded out by the flashbacks of how Xiao Si's parents fell in love: I wish they had gotten actual young actors instead of just doing things like putting the mom actor in a pink doll dress and giving her pigtails.

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Fluffy but mediocre plot

I really liked the vibe of this drama and the fluffiness of scenes — the relationship between the leads and the second leads are adorable, and the bromance and sismance were also really nice.

Though I like individual scenes though, some things just feel really cliche and hard to believe when it came to plot, and development of the story was sometimes lacking cohesion — some things that happen are unclear and led to cliches that I didn’t need. I have to admit that the premise of the drama requires some suspension of disbelief which I had trouble with, but over time I got used to it.

Other than that, most of the obstacles were handled well, but I felt like the last few eps of this drama fall into a melodramatic progression (to be honest a lot of Chinese dramas fall victim to it) but there were the very dramatic tropes of kidnapping, noble idiocy, corporate corruption, etc. All of these are just really annoying and unnecessary to me.

Lastly — I have to say that the OST for this drama is really good, but sometimes doesn't match the scene well.

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Peak bromance

This was a great action drama that manages to hit just the right spot between heart-warming, funny, and dark.

I absolutely adore the ML and his kind-heartedness and care for his mother; the friendship between the two leads really is the heart of the show and it was such a great display of healthy masculinity.

On the thriller side, I'm also really impressed with the show's willingness to kill people off and just be utterly brutal. It makes the stakes feel much higher. On thing that does hamper the plot a bit is the disappearance of Hyun-ju's character, who was such a vital part of the first half it felt weird to not have her in the second half at all. I understand that this was a side effect of the situation in real life though, but it feels — especially in hindsight — such a shame to not have that throughline in the plot.

Other than that, a great drama with great action seasons. Looking forward to season 2 later this year.

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