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There's a lot to love about this
I'm gonna have to review this drama in two parts: before the noble idiocy and after.Before:
It's been a long time since I came across a drama that balanced romance and friendship so well, with so many fleshed out side-characters.
I loved seeing the progression of Miao Miao throughout the years — her glo-up was honestly so natural, both physically and mentally. He Xin was probably my favorite character; I've always hated female-chases-male-first because the girls are always portrayed as lacking independent thought and being so clingy, but He Xin wasn't like that at all and even when it came to matters of the heart, she kept her head and put herself first.
It felt like almost everyone had their own stories, and evil schemes / misunderstandings were never blown out of proportion — the characters believed each other, trusted each other, and even when love triangles happened the characters handled it very maturely, which was super refreshing to see. The same goes for the families — there were the typical parent-child/sibling-sibling fights of course, but it was still easy to see how everyone got along at the end.
The romance was definitely a slow-burn (my favorite) and there were so many jealous scenes (also my favorite, and Kuanlin's eyes are so EXPRESSIVE).
I also LOVED the fashion teacher!
I also wanna say that this drama was a lot funnier than I expected, and I laughed so hard my abs hurt. I gotta say though, that I also hella cried. A LOT.
After:
Look, I didn't hate the post-noble idiocy as much as I have in other dramas and I felt like they explained the reasoning behind it well, but ultimately noble idiocy is still one of my least favorite tropes and I felt like it was rushed.
There are some plot holes that were sort of left out — like how Miao Miao never asked Xiao Yue about the Doraemon flowers, but overall my rating for this is still quite high, and it's honestly because I loved the 'before' part THAT much.
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This drama had the perfect blend of romance, slice-of-life, and friendship, and the ending was happy and yet bittersweet; I honestly couldn't imagine it going any other way. For such a short drama the plot points were hit on perfectly and the rules of time travel were fleshed out well. There are some moments at the end where I wish this could have gone into more depth had there been more time, but overall — this is a great watch.
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The friendship between Na Na and her roommate was one of the best parts of the entire drama and I loved how there was zero unnecessary drama between them; their conversations were touching when they needed to talk about something serious, but otherwise I also loved their banter.
The romance was really cute, without unnecessary drama as well.
Obviously my favorite part was the relationship between the two girls, which was the main part, and I thought everything was resolved super nicely and realistically.
In fact, Na Na was such a likable main character — I love savage moments and she had so many of them. She was overall just super relatable to me, from the way she sort of ran from her problems to realizing who was worth her time and who wasn't.
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One thing that I kept hoping for though, was some backstory for the main female lead, which we never really got, and it felt like she was such an amazing, badass character without any hints as to how she got there.
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With You focused a little more friendships, and the romance was more of the little things instead of the big grand gestures — and that's the kind of relationship that makes my heart flutter. For that reason, I didn't have SLS at all (just like how I didn't in ALSB).
I'm also someone who HATES time skips, and I was honestly dreading the end of this drama. Surprisingly, I didn't hate it as much as I thought I would, mainly because they didn't drag it out. Still, the time jump opened up so many plot holes and lack-of-communication issues — in my head, I'm just gonna pretend that that part doesn't exist.
The time jump also focused a lot more on the romance than on the friendships, and it delved more into melodrama style. Beta was my favorite side character, and I felt like her plot never got closure both in the friendship and in the romance departments.
Overall, With You had a lot of my favorite cliches, and it managed to pull it off swimmingly. The ending was very reminiscent of a lot of other Chinese dramas that suddenly go from wholesome to angsty — but as a whole I still really loved Geng Geng and Yu Huai, especially during their high school days. And lastly, the OST is AMAZING , but sadly super hard to find.
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This review may contain spoilers
Full of emotion, good storyline!
I enjoyed this a lot and they honestly did really well with such a tight budget! The balance between past and present scenes was done really well. I honestly also really appreciated many Shin Woo scenes where he went through with his hard words — it was just a nice switch up from the “antihero” who always ends up doing the right thing anyway.I do wish they had played the audience more regarding which brother was which — which I think would have been more interesting than running around after Drug Lord and I'm a fan of psychological stuff — but at the same time I appreciate that each brother was very distinct.
I’ve got mixed feelings about the bad guy's ending — it kind of frustrates me that it wasn’t Eun Chang or Shin Woo that had the satisfaction of revenge, but at the same time the fact that Drug Lord’s downfall came from someone so close to him he never saw coming is satisfying in itself.
Another thing I would say is that I wasn't a fan of the open ending, especially because I really liked Eun Chang's character.
Overall it was still a really interesting watch and there was really good character development considering how little time it had. The drama also used some cliches but it handled them pretty well.
And thus I have concluded my first ever drama special!
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I already loved Junho from clips I'd seen of him, but after watching this drama in full, he's definitely become one of my facec actors. You could feel all the anxiety, the emotion, the trauma, sadness, anger...you could feel EVERYTHING that the character was feeling.
I literally sobbed through the entire last episode — getting my homework wet and everything — but it was so worth it, and I don't know if I've ever felt that much anxiety over how a drama would end.
Another thing that I appreciate so much about this drama — the disabled characters. I loved MS's best friend SO much, and I loved Sang-Man even more — he was a big reason I cried in the last episode, and he was the most adorable character. The way every character was fleshed out in some way really made it feel like I knew them all, and I became emotionally invested in everyone's stories. The only person who I might have wanted to know more about was the best friend's love interest.
This drama just felt really REALISTIC, all around, and despite it having common kdrama tropes, it didn't bother me at all and it was executed to perfection.
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One surprise after another
This is a really different genre from the dramas I usually watch, so I was surprised I enjoyed it as much as I did. However, I did have mixed feelings about how this drama ended. Honestly, I think the ending was very fitting and in line with the rest of the drama’s vibe, and I’m glad we didn’t go through with the miracle deus ex machina. On the other hand, though, I’m kind of unsatisfied with the antagonist plotline — President Oh was such a huge part of the beginning and his storyline just sort of dropped off and was left open-ended. I appreciated the more natural, internal obstacles though.I was also not a huge fan of that epilogue style ending — I felt like some scenes for it like the second ship and Nam’s father could have progressed more naturally within the drama’s regular timeline instead of tacking it on at the end. For the main plot with Anthony + Writer Lee though, I was okay with it and I liked how it was neither tragic nor overly cotton-candy.
Overall though, I still really enjoyed watching this one! Anthony was undoubtedly frustrating at times but he definitely grew on me, and I really liked the main female lead. The ship grew on me as well. A really enjoyable watch nevertheless, and the best part was the way the drama flipped so many cliches on us and yet went ahead with some really common drama tropes, so we never knew what to expect.
I will also say that the OST was much more of a bop than I expected :)
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This review may contain spoilers
It's a lot of eye candy, which I'm sure we all appreciate, and I really liked how the little stories went and how the drama started to make fun of kdrama tropes in some of them — but there's really no overall plot. I was kind of waiting to see how it would play out at the end, but it was really only given a few minutes.I might've been asking too much from an AD, but I was hoping to see one of those things where the main female lead realizes that there had been someone beside her all along, but all we got was another one of those random guys without any explanation as to "why this guy out of all of them?".
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This review may contain spoilers
I wasn't such a huge fan of the previous seasons, but as an avid follower of Playlist Global, it's hard to not continue watching a series when you've already been with it through three seasons.A theme I've started to notice though is that Love Playlist seems bent on going against the friends-to-lovers trope. First Jae-In and Hyun-Seung, then Pu-Reum and Ha-Neul
Surprisingly, I ended up liking this more than the previous seasons, mainly because of one ship: Ha-Neul and Ji-Min. They were adorable and I pretty much watched just for them.
I had loved Yoon in his previous season, but something about the noble idiocy and pining between him and Jae-In in this season made them not fun to watch, and honestly, as the seasons went on I've been becoming less and less invested in Jae-In as a main female character.
Watch for Park Sky and Sseoji. That is all.
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The characters' personalities remained true to themselves until the very end, and for that reason I really recommend watching all three endings just to see how different the relationship dynamics are.
The friendship between Se-Hee and her friend was also a nice plus, which was surprising considering how negatively kdramas portray female-female friendships sometimes.
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And when I finally got around to watching it, that was still a problem, but not in the way I'd expected. There was enough romance—the problem was that it wasn't for the characters I wanted, Yi-Na and Ji-Won.
Those two were my favorites, followed by Jin-Myung, and then Ye-Eun and Eun-Jae. Let me go over my thoughts on each character separately.
Yi-Na: I loved her. Her character was the perfect blend of tragic backstory, badassery, and self-reflection, and her character development throughout the season was extremely strong. I loved how straightforward she was, yet how subtle she could be in her support for her friends. I so wish she had a romance plotline, especially how we were teased with it near the end.
Ji-Won: I loved her too! Her character had a little less depth than Yi-Na's which is the only reason she's second. Otherwise, her personality would be ranked first for me. She was always so adorable and upbeat, yet surprisingly insightful when it came down to it. It pained me that the character who wanted to find love the most was the one kind of left without it—even though there were some hints for this as well that I'm hoping are expanded on in Season 2.
Jin-Myung: This character really had to grow on me, but when she did, I grew to love her a lot as well. Even though she was a little bit of the cliche, tragic character, I thought she was extremely strong and her character development was great to watch as well, especially when she was connected with Yi-Na. Her romance plotline was nice too, but predictable.
Ye-Eun: I'm sure a lot of people were annoyed with this character, and I was too. She was very whiny and shrill. I will admit though that I really appreciated her plot and development, and she was surprisingly strong and logical about what a healthy relationship should be—which I'm glad wasn't dragged out.
Eun-Jae: Ugh. My least favorite of the five, and the one who got the most screentime and was the MAIN MAIN character. She was frustrating to watch at first because she never spoke up—understandable. But as the series went on, something about Eun-Jae just never sat right with me. I kept feeling secondhand embarrassment, the acting was a little awkward, and her entire personality was just the least interesting. Because of her, I couldn't really enjoy her romance plotline, which sucked because the love interest was the kind of teasing, playful male that I'd been looking for in kdramas. One scene that I did enjoy, though, is the one where she finally calls out her mom—another character that annoyed me to death. I know that the actress for Eun-Jae is different in Season 2...I'm partly thankful, partly worried that it'll throw me off.
Overall, it was still really refreshing to watch a drama with strong sismance, which kdrama doesn't usually have a lot of.
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I also wish it was more of a slow-burn, because the progression of the main relationship turned from enemies to lovers SO quickly, it honestly felt sort of out of the blue. Something similar could be said for the second pairing—I felt like the writers were rushing to get the characters together and didn't really spend enough time developing the characters' feelings before then.
Overall, though, I'd still consider this a pretty light drama, and I liked the fact that there weren't any one-dimensionally evil antagonist characters. Still, though, it feels like they TRIED to make it into a melodrama by adding a lot of obstacles, but I never felt frustrated or even emotionally invested in the story.
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But the only two characters I cared about were Kim Na Na (who was a badass) and Park Kyu Dong (who broke my heart on multiple occasions). Eun Ha was probably my least favorite—she served no purpose and many things she did just made zero sense.
I started out actually really liking the main female lead, as she was quirky and weird, very different from the typically k-drama female lead. She sort of gave me Luna Lovegood (from Harry Potter) vibes, but I liked how she stood up for herself as though it came naturally. But her character went a little downhill,: she started not saying anything and letting misunderstandings continue, and overall at some points she was just unbelievably STUPID.
I couldn't get myself to like the male lead either, as he just seemed to get more and more obnoxious and self-centered as the drama went on. I'll admit that he gave us some silly laugh-out-loud moments though, but it wasn't enough. And so I honestly found myself rooting for Seon Woo more, even shipping him with both Se Yi and Na Na.
Even though Seon Woo's character had so much more depth, that didn't bode well either, as they REALLY dragged out the love triangle in this. Every time I thought it was over...it was brought back again, with the exact same reasons. This got super tiring after a while, especially since the plot didn't have much happening anyways.
There was definitely a lot of stuff crammed into the last episode, but still, a lot of things weren't explained or fleshed out. Sometimes one thing would happen in an episode, but then nothing would happen for that sub-plot until MUCH later. I don't think it's too far off to say that the plot was pretty predictable overall.
The OST was also not really my style of music. I think the only song I really enjoyed was the first battle performance, though I will say that the actress for Na Na really had a beautiful voice no matter what song she sang.
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Full of miscommunication, but I still enjoyed it
Let me start by saying that I usually HATE time skips, and I was so terrified of this one that I watched up till the time skip and paused the drama for four months because I couldn't bring myself to continue.But I liked this a lot more than I expected. For someone who usually hates noble idiocy and lack-of-communication as plot points, the storyline was serious enough for me to really empathize with Mu Cheng and understand why she did what she did, especially considering how fleshed out her backstory was.
There were a lot of scenes that were really heartbreaking, even frustrating to watch, because it felt like nothing ever went right and the story was just so tragic and angsty. At the same time, however, there were really adorable and pure scenes between the main leads, and like everyone else, I grew to love Xiao Le as well, who quickly became one of my favorite characters ever.
Yes, part of me wished the characters were just more open and honest with each other, as it felt like ALL the characters did that "lie for someone else's own good," but Autumn's Concerto managed to pull it off. I also commend the drama for tackling sexual assault/abuse AND how perpetrators often get away with it—it felt too REAL.
I won't lie, some of the things Ren Guang Xi did were REALLY problematic, but considering how much character depth he actually had and the other ways sexual assault was addressed, I'm willing to let it slide.
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