scenophile

Needed to be longer

I haven't read the original source material but I can feel that it's so rich and really needed more than seven 30-minute episodes. So many things happen that we needed a lot more scenes where the main characters could just simmer and go about their daily life, rather than jumping from one plot event to the next without really showing the development of emotions in between. The non-romantic angst is one of the most intriguing parts of the story and I feel like it didn't nearly get enough screentime. Towards the end, there were a few time jumps that felt very sudden and overall it made the pacing uneven. The final few episodes solely focus on the romance but I feel like it was also scattered and there were a lot of loose ends I wish were revisited.

The acting of the main leads was just okay — it was very obvious that they were rookie actors, and so the more light-hearted and fun scenes were great but I don't think they were able to carry scenes with more emotional weight, especially because the scenes felt disjointed already.

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Messy but pretty to look at

Aesthetically this was different from the first season for sure, but it was still pretty to look at despite the different style, and the sketches were reminiscent of It's Okay to Not Be Okay.

The story was a real mess though, in terms of romance, the traumatic backstory, and the social commentary. It just felt like there was zero continuity with the first season. They completely dropped the ball on Jojo's backstory when it was such a big part of her trauma and decision-making.

Big questions around Love Alarm were about the role of technology in modern romance, privacy, the pressure of being perfect on social media, imposter syndrome, etc. and I had been really excited for it to delve deeper into a society so reliant on it, but they never really did. A lot of characters and plots weren't explained well and everything just felt all over the place.

Instead, the drama focused so much on a love triangle that wasn't really there to begin with, starting this season. The characters had little to no character development and were kind of brushed to the side, with a sprinkle of backstory here or there.

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Messy, but addictive

The premise for this honestly caught my eye, and I've been super excited for it for ages. It turned out to be nothing like what I'd expected, and to be honest it was kind of a hot mess. AND YET, it was addictive and I felt anxious watching it.

It's messy because it basically threw all the cliches into a pot and used all of them—rich man/poor girl, best friend love triangle, characters screaming their emotions into the void, backstabbing best friend, Cinderella's step-family...but the way they did it was completely unexpected and not in the order you'd expect.

I was really annoyed with all the characters' actions right off the bat: Jo-Jo for being a cheater, Sun-Oh for stabbing his friend in the back, and Hye-Young for being a creepy stalker. I felt like people were only rooting for him because they saw his perspective, but from Jo-Jo's point of view, he barely even talked to her and just creepily followed her everywhere.

Because of all the characters' immature personalities, for once I felt like the time skip was in the right place. And as someone who usually DETESTS all time jumps, I really liked how it was inserted, and how the characters changed during that time. I do hate that noble idiocy is such a huge plot point, but the fact that it took place in the time skip made it a bit better, even though I still found myself frustrated with the flashback scenes.

The time skip was also helpful in getting me to not hate Hye-Young, because I liked his character development and how he finally took action, instead of always looking from afar. Even though his character is growing on me though, I still definitely have second lead syndrome and am rooting for Sun-Oh.

The cinematography and visual effects were the best part of this entire thing. I loved the sound effects. how the app looks, how everything was filmed, and how the 10m radius is edited. EVERYTHING.

I really wish there was more sismance and bromance. The bromance was nice, even though it crashed and burned near the end. On the other hand, there was ZERO sismance, and I hated how all the female characters (other than Kim Jo-Jo) were portrayed as boy-obsessed, shallow, gossipy, etc. Honestly, Jo-Jo's minor scenes with her wedding work friend were so refreshing—and more friendship is needed in this entire drama, which would work out to balance all the romance drama.

Because it was so romance heavy, I also found myself loving the scenes that delved into more Black Mirror territory and talked about heavier topics, like the protests, exploitation, suicides, etc. I really wished that that was a bigger part of the story, because there's a lot of potential for the characters to get involved in more than the melodrama cliches.

I also appreciate the lowkey LGBT mentions and how it's addressed with "It's not like you can control your feelings." MORE, please!

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Strong start, but...

I think this drama started out super strong — the show wasn't afraid to be violent and gory, you could clearly differentiate between the classmates and what archetypes they represented, and there was so much intrigue around both who the mafias were and why the gamemaker decided to choose them.

As the drama went on I definitely think it lost a bit of steam — Mafia reveals were interesting but you can only do that a few times before the audience wants to dig deeper and actually find out how and why the game started. Instead, the disorganization of the students lasts for a little too long.

So I think the backstory reveal started a little too late, and it introduced a new character that I couldn't really bring myself to care about so late in the story. The backstory itself wasn't fleshed out very well, never going in depth with some of the things they had hinted earlier about how each student was involved. I still don't understand why students were chosen to be Mafias, Citizens, the Doctor, or the Police, and if it was random it really lessens the importance of every one of them.

Without these specifics, the gamemakers didn't feel much like "masterminds" with a thought out plan, but just some people with a thirst for revenge and instilling suffering in whatever form. I would've much preferred it if the game had been a more direct reflection of what happened in the past, and if it was repeated until each student learned a specific lesson (with Yoonseo being the first to learn that she should've been there for her friend), as opposed to the ultimate purpose simply being "I want them all to suffer as much as possible."

I'm also part of the camp that feels mixed about the ending. While I've seen open endings that are done well, the one here feels too "unsustainable," meaning that I know it definitely can't last forever — there has to be more than the story and whatever it is should have been shown.

Overall, I still had a lot of fun with this. I don't know if there will be another season but I hope there is — there's a perfect set up for one and it would give the show a chance to delve deeper into its backstory and each kid.

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Light-hearted fun

This drama starts out really promising, with lightning quick pacing and really interesting characters. The ML was more stoic but never unkind, and the FL was bubbly but not annoying. The snowboarding theme is fun, and the OST has two songs in particular (one upbeat and one slow and romantic) that really clicked with me and added to the great vibes.

I’m not completely sure the second half of the show keeps the same energy. Both the ML and FL’s arcs seem a little anticlimactic and vague. While I don’t need the show to get in the weeds about the manhua industry, I would’ve loved to see a clearer journey, starting from storyboarding the story, pulling inspiration, actually drawing it, and especially going back to conferences with volumes and merch, since that’s where the first episode started. Instead, it felt like she was just constantly “gathering research” and then the next thing we knew, her manhua was steadily successful. For the ML, I think there also wasn’t much to his snowboarding journey; he was good at it and never stopped being good at it. While 23 episodes is short and doesn’t really allow for a lot of arcs, I think having some more organization and struggle could’ve made their journeys feel more worth it.

The romance is really cute, but it also sort of hiccups in the second half. The leads go on a break (or whatever that was) but they basically don’t interact for a stretch of episodes, which is unfortunate because it could’ve been an opportunity for each of them to support each other in their blossoming careers. The “getting back together” scene is just fine, but I think this is the type of more emotionally-charged scene where the cutesy acting of the FL doesn’t quite work.

The side characters are fine. The ships have their cute moments, but they’re also not that memorable.

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Short and fun, but...

This was overall a fun watch! I really love these type of AU shows and the premise of this one is super interesting.

Considering the premise though, I wish they had been brave enough to be a little more unconventional than just making it a mistaken-gender drama. The main leads could have gone through the entire falling-in-love and questioning-my-sexuality process without the soulmate AU. And that's why I sort of had second lead syndrome too, because I just felt like it would've been a much cooler plot and it would've made use of the soulmate AU if the character had to "go against their destiny" for real. Also, just as a person I pick longtime friends-to-lovers over everything else 99% of the time.

For this reason I also felt myself more invested in the second ship: two people who were unnamed in a world full of named people. Two people who had to find their own love while everyone else's was written out for them. They honestly had a more bantery relationship and I liked how outspoken Sae Rom was.

Overall though I did like the little life lessons — like Reply 1988 anything about getting off your butt and taking action to not miss your timing really hits home for me.

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Frustrating

This one already got off to a rough start for me, and as it went on it only got worse.

I actually quite enjoyed the past timeline. The way the main romance started was a little too easy and full of coincidences for me, but I actually appreciated the conflict in their relationship being about money, and I thought both of them had valid perspectives. The FL did not want to become dependent on someone else, and the ML wanted to take care of someone he cared about. I thought both of them had very good points and it's actually a really realistic conflict for a new relationship when two people are from different financial backgrounds.

But it feels like we just never move on. The characters double down on, and we rehash the same issues over and over again. The leads just take turns doing noble idiocy. The love rivals are all irritating. The leads make up, but it's clear the issue is not actually addressed, especially once we get to after the time jump. The FL is still so tight-lipped and non-communicative, we just get episodes of her getting close to the ML but then rejecting his advances. And the ML is still so stubborn and pushy about rekindling their relationship despite her constant rejections. What the show advertises as his perseverance just looks to me like disrespecting boundaries.

I think the show just tries too hard to convince us the leads should be together, instead of writing actual character development to show so. Each episode is full of lines about how they are fated because they had the same survey response, or because they had the same childhood toy, or because they met again. But the way the characters actually act just tells me the opposite — that they should not be together.

I did not care for the second couple either. The teacher-student trope is already something that I find deeply uncomfortable, and it's weirder because the drama doesn't address their power dynamic at all. Her thing is playing hard-to-get and he gives us nothing.

The third couple, surprisingly, was my favorite. They had very little screentime but they were cute and that was all I needed.

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So close

This one took me REALLY long to get through, and I'm not sure why. On paper it has everything I love — a strong female character, mental health, tragic backstories.

But I really just couldn't connect to the female lead. Insecurity is something I understand, but when every other line out of her mouth was "did you do this with all your girlfriends?" or "are you breaking up with me?" or "are we even dating?" it just made her very overbearing and unlikable.

I really liked the main plot about JJY dealing with his abusive childhood, but it really could have come earlier. There were some subplots that I felt didn't really add much to the story, and more time could've also been dedicated to Hae-soo's sexual fears, which I thought was never addressed as much as I wanted it to. The second ship was also kind of out of nowhere for me and didn't make much sense.

Because of all those criticisms, I was pretty much stuck on episode 8 for months and just never felt the urge to watch. Once I did, it was the last few episodes where we really fleshed out JY's plot that really had me buy into the drama.

Ultimately, this was still a pretty good watch, though I'm surprised it's rated so highly. My favorite part is undoubtedly the OST.

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Forgotten plotlines, Frustrating people

I was a pretty big fan of Part 1. The large cast really grew on me and I quickly felt emotionally attached to the entire class, intrigued to see how they would face the "new world" together. Part 2 really dropped the ball on a LOT of plotlines, and they did it in exchange for shock factor.

Sergeant Kim, who I thought would have a vital role to play after the events at the end of Part 1, isn't in this at all, and there's not even a name drop or throwaway line that explains why. The lovelines are kind of fun to watch at first but it devolves into nothing. The characters never get anywhere physically, which means you never get to see how the larger society has changed and how our characters would fit into it. It feels like aimless wandering. The hints from Part 1 about the spheres getting more intelligent is not addressed at all — in fact, the aliens are barely a part of these episodes, leaving you with more questions at the end.

Instead, it's a lot more about in-fighting and worst of all, doubling down on that one annoying, selfish character.

Don't get me wrong, I think that character is necessary in survival shows because it reveals the worst of human nature, but here's the thing: you need your OTHER characters to adapt and push back. If you don't, you just get one really annoying person dictating the plot. Essentially, they made the most unlikeable character even more unlikeable, and then they gave this character everyone else's screen-time. Evoking empathy only works if that character is going to develop or at the very least have some redeeming qualities. Without that, it's just frustrating.

The second issue is that shock factor is always temporary. What happens once all the adrenaline wears off? What are the consequences of being alive? That's always the most interesting part of survival shows; I can forgive the drama for starting off with a time jump but I can't forgive it for ending with one. We never got to see how characters might get their strength back after the worst days of their lives. That would've been the most powerful character development, had we gotten to see it.

And part of that is really just an issue of personnel; some of the survivors are the most random, unimportant people (I promise you, there were much more worthy characters to keep). Combined with all the other issues of the time jump and misplaced screen-time...the ending just feels abrupt and you finish the show feeling unsatisfied.

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My god. The acting was SO bad in the beginning. Everyone was speaking rhythmically, and it just sounded like they were reciting lines. The acting got better for most characters, but there were still a lot of scenes later on where I felt like the acting was robotic. When I watch shows I love to pay attention to the little gestures by characters who aren't at the center of attention in the scene to see how they play off the script when they are only reacting. In this show, that was all very unnatural; the "little gestures" looked awkward and TOO scripted and exaggerated.

The cinematography also got better, but the first few episodes had so many internal monologues, even by characters that I didn't care about, and not only did it make the plot move super slowly, but it just felt like they were trying to cram in all the tragic backstories at the start so that we didn't hate the characters.

I was super excited about the plot at first, but the way dramatic irony was implemented meant that I was just constantly frustrated because I knew about secrets maybe even TEN episodes before the characters would figure them out. I was also super annoyed by the "problems" that the characters were facing—most of them were caused by the characters not trusting each other and miscommunicating.

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Cute but could have been more

This was overall a really cute and wholesome watch, but I can't shake the feeling that it could have been more, even if it was just given hour-long episodes instead of 45-minute ones.

I'm a huge fan of the friends-to-lovers trope, but I can't help but feel like the pacing for things was kind of fast. I wanted more domestic scenes where we saw them just talking to each other and doing things they liked — it doesn't have to be related to archery or about Chi Chi's parents or reminiscing about the past, I just wanted more of their banter. That was one reason I had a soft spot for their high school flashbacks.

The problem was that they tried to fit a LOT of years into not a lot of screentime, and there weren't enough markers in the plot — holidays, year-end competitions, summer trips — that let me know how much time had passed. In essence, it felt like everyone acted and looked the same, and I while I thought only days had passed between events, it was actually months.

While I also liked the student-athlete addition, I felt like Skate Into Love did it better in that the sport felt so embedded within every character's personality. Their paths to becoming better wasn't always smooth simply because they had things to learn, and not just because they got a disorder (which honestly feels too much of a noble idiocy trope for me to appreciate).

Some of the editing also took away from some emotions I wanted to feel — for example, fading to black before revealing competition results kind of took away from my ability to stress about it while watching it happen because you already knew what the result was going to be. They honestly could've used some more people sitting in the crowd as well just to have the sound of cheering. Energy goes a long way towards hyping up these competition scenes. I also hated the fast forwarding that they used to zoom in on faces.

I appreciated the heaviness given to Chi Chi's family situation, though it meant that her parents were some of my least favorite people even though there were attempts to give them redemption arcs.

Ultimately, I did like that there weren't any overblown misunderstandings, and the side pairings were really cute as well. The side characters were given enough background but not too much (though second lead could've used a LOT more development, and he just sort of fell off the face of the earth), and it was a fun friends-to-lovers watch.

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It felt like a majority of me watching this drama was just waiting for things to start happening — the pacing of it is a LOT slower than I expected, and part of that is why I never could full get into it. A lot of people have hated on the ending saying it was chaotic and rushed, but I actually found that I really enjoyed those episodes and the episodes where there were big reveals. Other than that, every one-hour episode felt twenty times as long.

The antagonist that started to be introduced near the middle of the drama was something that REALLY intrigued me, especially given the parallel storylines — but it felt like the character and tension was never really explored fully. It was solved quickly and seemed to be used more as a plot device for separating the main couple.

Speaking of the main couple — I don't think I was ever fully on board with them. The relationship always felt more familial, and age gap aside, I just didn't feel any chemistry between them. I also didn't like the secondary ship as much because the relationship just seemed to lack any content and connection aside from them being fated. Overall the arcs for both ships felt repetitive.

There are a few things that I appreciate about the ending. but other things that I don't like. I'm also a time-skip-hater, but for some reason, I didn't dislike it as much in Goblin, but I'm not sure if it has to do with me not being emotionally invested at all or if it felt more in line with the way the plot was going.

(Full disclosure: I've got some basic philosophical differences with the themes of this show, so that might have to do with me not clicking with it — more specifically, it's the idea of romantic destiny that I kind of scoff at.)

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I felt like I had higher expectations for this. Having watched #Alive and Train to Busan in the past year, I had gotten used to zombie movies with fast action — TtB set the bar super high with its social commentary, and I kind of thought Kingdom would have combo of emotion and action. But it had a lot of politics in it, with a lot of administrative characters that I found hard to tell apart and just wasn't that interested in.

Ultimately, I still really like the aesthetics of the show, and there's a twist that I enjoyed quite a bit. I really like the main characters of the Crown Prince, Gun Guy, and Physician — but didn't really click with anyone else. I also liked the zombie plots in general, but overall it was too much politics, too many side characters who I didn't care about.

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Character-driven social commentary

One thing I've noticed about these Taiwanese mystery thriller dramas is that it's not necessarily about the whodunnit or about blowing your mind with plot twists. It's about making social commentary through the eyes of different characters. Copycat Killer did a really good job of that.

Don't get me wrong, I still really enjoyed the mystery element, but I realized I shouldn't overthink the actions of different characters and waste my time trying to figure out who did it. Instead, the drama made me think about the killer's motivations and psychology, and most of all how the media and the rest of the public enabled it.

This is a really character-driven (as opposed to plot-driven) story; if someone keeps those things in mind, I think they'll really enjoy this one.

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Slow burn excellence

I was a little nervous about the leads' relationship — after all, the characters have a TEN year age gap. But this turned out to be one of the sweetest, healthiest, most mature relationships I've ever seen and I can't put into words how much I loved seeing their feelings slowly develop. The chemistry was absolutely there but even individually, both the ML and the FL were given equal time to shine. They were such well-rounded characters with their own stories, and their relationship was built on supporting and caring for each other during those journeys. There were no stupid misunderstanding tropes and the honesty was just so refreshing. The FL is exactly how a strong female lead should be written, and the ML is respectful and kind.

The second and third couples were okay; I liked them as characters also and think the relationships also made sense, but they weren't as fleshed out and sometimes there were developments I wanted to see that I feel like the show skipped over.

But they were still good additions to the cast, and plot-wise the subplots of all the side characters were intertwined with the main one relatively well. It's interesting too to realize that there are really no clear-cut villains in the story. There are some people that are selfish and money- and power-hungry, but ultimately they didn't become "evil" and things were never that black and white. It made the drama very relatable and true-to-life.

I know some people complained that the drama started out slow but the pacing of the entire show was just perfect for me. We got to see what the characters' original lives were like, what traumas they had, who and what was important to them, how they handled conflicts, etc. It makes seeing their development at the end mean so much more.

Whether you typically watch sport dramas or not, this is one I will 100% recommend.

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