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The only good part: the FL
I'd been waiting for this childhood-friends-to-lovers drama to come out for the longest time, but after watching it...I think the only good thing about it is the FL.She's the very typical type of FL you see in Chinese youth dramas — not too bright but really optimistic and bubbly, but I absolutely love how Zhang Miaoyi plays her. She's endearing, chaotic, lovable, fun, but most importantly, stands up for herself when it counts. Which is why it was very disappointing that none of the other characters really matched her energy, and it was even more disappointing that the drama gave up on developing her character in exchange for tropey romantic scenes. For example: the FL is apparently good at martial arts but this is suddenly forgotten so that the ML can come and save her.
Just in general, the plot felt choppy. A lot of youth dramas have cookie cutter scenes; the better ones link them together well and make it seem like they're memorable moments in someone's life. In the more typical youth dramas, they remain recognizable tropes and it just feels like one scene after another, which is what this one felt like. In terms of the side characters, they were also very cookie cutter and I didn't really care for the friend group as a whole either. The plot and the characters all just felt like they were going through the motions.
Additionally, this is one of the dramas where the dubbing really negatively affected it. It was very obvious and made lots of dialogue seem off. For the FL, it was best when we got ZMY's original voice, but there were some lines that were dubbed and it was very jarring to see the mouth and sound suddenly not match up. For the ML, the voice didn't match the acting at all.
With that being said, the acting of the ML was...not good. He had very few expressions (and basically no microexpressions) throughout the show, and I just felt like it was very flat and bland.
And so: I don't think I really felt the romance. The hardest part about doing friends-to-lovers is transitioning from the platonic relationship to a romantic one, and that transition was very confusing and random. I wasn't sure when it happened and because of the lackluster acting and lack of well-paced plot progression, the leads felt better off staying friends.
My advice? Watch When I Fly With You instead. It's one of the few recent coming-of-age dramas that did everything right.
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Fizzles out but stays cute
I’m kind of surprised by the glowing reviews on this one, because as cute as the main couple is (and not only are they cute, they’ve got an AMAZING kiss scene)…I really think this is one of those dramas that starts out strong but ends up fizzling out.The first episode is extremely strong; the heart-wrenching tragedy of the male lead’s death gives our female lead a purpose in her time travel journey, and the added layer of her being able to walk after being in a wheelchair for so many years adds is also great. There’s commentary about disability and inaccessibility, which I really appreciated. I also really loved how we saw Im Sol getting back the will to live.
The next few episodes were still promising; it was the right balance of funny and heart-wrenching, and I was also pleasantly surprised that the FL already went back to a changed future.
The first thing I didn’t really like was the mystery element. The recent trend of inserting a random serial killer into a rom-com drama is something I really do not enjoy, and this was no different; it felt like a lot of the profound commentary we got at the start about living with a disability or depression and suicide became reduced to “actually there was a villain, so our ML was never depressed, and our FL shouldn’t have been disabled anyways.”
As the drama went on it felt like the story focused more on the mystery, with the second lead randomly popping in to fulfill his police officer role, while our main couple also got more repetitive: Im Sol was always sad because she had seen a sad future, while Sun Jae was in a perpetual state of ignorance, or even amnesia. The actual state of the future switched around, sure, but their core characters were always the same.
Ultimately, I think this was still a very cute watch; there are funny, chaotic scenes and the male lead is one heck of a green flag. I just wish it kept all the substance and momentum it had at the start.
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This review may contain spoilers
Give me more of the original cast
So I was sort of middle-of-the-fence about season 1, and I feel similarly about season 2.To start with the good things — the vibe of the show is on point. The cinematography and set design give, and the effects do a nice job of tying it all together. I particularly love the look of Hyun-su's monster form.
The characters that had survived S1 were all my favorites — Ji-su, Eun-yu, Hyun-su, Yi-kyung — so I was really excited to see how they stories would continue and who they would meet along the way, but I tuned out to have a bit of mixed emotions on this.
I liked Hyun-su's story but I felt like we barely saw it. There were a few episodes where he was completely sidelined and just in general the subplot of him being experimented on ended really fast, which was disappointing because it would've been a much different plot than the "humans running from monsters in the wild" situation we'd seen before.
I was the most satisfied with Eun-yu's story and her screentime. It was amazing seeing her develop into such a badass, and she had really good chemistry with Chan-young, who is probably the only new character that really grew on me this season.
With that being said, I felt like there were one too many new characters that were introduced and I don't think I was that invested in a lot of them. There were a lot of soldiers and some new people who were also just living at the base, and overall I didn't think focusing on all of these characters were necessary. There were several antagonists, some of which I didn't care too much about, and overall with so many subplots I feel like they took screentime away from the original cast. To be honest, I also just found the soldiers difficult to tell apart.
My biggest gripe, however, is with Yi-kyung and how sidelined she felt when she was supposed to be a main character. I've never been a fan of the "special child" trope, and this really reminded me why — a new character comes in and suddenly all our original cast acts like they're the most important and their existing plotlines fizzle out. Yi-kyung was pretty much shown only in relation to her daughter this entire season, and even the other characters like Hyun-su got a bit of this treatment near the end.
It's one thing if we had gotten more time to gradually see the development, but the time jump + flashback method didn't help.
Other than this, this season still ends on a strong note, and I'll be tuning into S3, for Hyun-sun, for Eun-yu, and for Chan-young.
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Wholesome but short
There were some scenes in this short web drama that really hit me hard when it came to insecurity and family, and I was really surprised that this drama was so pure — its really just about two people who found each other and fit perfectly together like puzzle pieces.There are some parts of it that kind of went in over my head though, where conversations were confusing and I wasn't really sure what was going on. And of course, since it's a short web drama, there are some subplots I wish they delved into and side characters I wish they explored but there was no time for. Other than that, though, this was still a really nice watch.
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This review may contain spoilers
It pains me to rate this so low because if the entire drama had been more like episodes 1-8, it might’ve gone into my all time favorites. But it has what you call car crash writing, when you’re in the car and the wind in your hair feels great and then you realize the breaks are broken and then things just SPIRAL.I’m going to start with things I loved:
The entire mood of the show is really nice, and that includes the OST. I know a lot of people hated on repetitive music, but the songs fit the scenes perfectly and I loved the mellow atmosphere of the entire drama.
The chemistry is so good. There were so many scenes where I had to pause and just SQUEAL because they were so cute together.
But this show proves that chemistry isn’t everything. In fact, story probably is.
Nothing feels wrapped up at the end. So much of the drama hinged on Jin-ah needing someone to provide for her future, and that question was never really answered, especially with how annoying and haphazard the ending was.
With that being said, the plot entirely got very repetitive and it essentially ruined Jin Ah’s character. Every conflict was about someone hiding something from the other, and for Jin Ah they felt like nonsensical, selfish decisions.
That’s not to let Joon Hee off the hook — his decision to run away to America without discussing it with Jin Ah first was annoying, and it just felt like another avoidable miscommunication.
The sexual harassment plot was super real and I really enjoyed the heaviness of it. I kept waiting for the cathartic ending and the sismance where they all worked together to defeat the executives…but no, we never got it. It felt very open-ended and almost discouraging with the way everything played out — and though there might be an aspect of realism to that, it added to the feeling that we had watched 16 episodes and gotten hope, just to be told “why bother?”.
The sismance thus had so much potential, but because of the office plot, I never got what I wanted from it. The same could kind of go for Jin Ah and her bestie, who started off adorable and then became victims of the melodrama and had over ten years of friendship dissipate into thin air.
And lastly, the worst part: Mom. I’m already a hater of Disapproving!Parent trope, and I had braced myself for overbearing parents, but nothing like this. It honestly pissed me off that the drama treated it as parental love from beginning to end. At some point a middle-age woman should be able to make her own decisions and recognize the toxic people in her life. Every line out of the mom’s mouth was about marrying into a high-status family or about how worthless Joon Hee was…and honestly she just never got better. Her ending was out of the blue and by then she had gone too far for any redemption. She could’ve dropped dead and I would’ve thrown a party.
So. Long review, I know, but I had a lot of thoughts watching this.
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The Pinnacle of Youth Dramas
Oh my god. I really don't know what I'm going to do with my life now that this show is over.At first glance this might seem like every other Chinese youth drama — sunshine FL/quiet ML, some grade-obsessed parents, sports day, a playful second couple — but so many things actually made this drama shine above all others.
The first thing is just how the plot really feels like a coming-of-age drama, without being overdramatic or sugary. I know it might be fun and inspiring when we watch a youth drama and a friend group is depressed when they find out someone's transferring schools, only to band together to stop it. But in real life, there are a lot of things outside our control and the only thing you can do is let it happen, know you can get through it, remember everyone still cares for each other at the end of the day — no matter the circumstances. That's what this drama did: physical obstacles were rarely overblown into emotional obstacles. It might sound bittersweet, but the fact that the plot flowed this way made it ten times more relatable to real life.
It really also meant that each character was given their time in the spotlight. Every person dealt with something themselves and everyone else was there to support them. Each person in the friend group had a distinct personality and subplot and it never felt choppy or random. It felt simply like learning more about your friends over time. WIFTY struck a perfect balance between giving its characters freedom and still making them feel inseparable that I don't think I've seen done so well in any other show.
I need more drama writers to take notes from Su Zai Zai, who seems like a typical bubbly FL on the surface but was actually really straightforward, stood up for herself, was smart in her own right, and had her own goals and was realistic in chasing them. She's absolute proof that giving an FL a crush doesn't mean it has to become her entire personality.
Zhang Lu Rang was a fantastic ML too. Once again, he might seem like the typical quiet and smart ML, but he was never mean or rude or overly perfect, and he had his flaws too that SZZ perfectly balanced out. This drama perfectly encapsulated why they belonged together. This was one of the rare dramas where the couples didn't get boring for me after they got together.
In fact, the chemistry is absolutely amazing between both couples, who also had their distinct dynamic and plot development.
Between the friendship warming up your heart and the romance giving me butterflies, there are absolutely no moments in this drama that I would skip. The OST fits perfectly and the cinematography is beautiful. The only bad thing I can say about this drama is that it ends.
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Fun additions
This was pleasantly surprising! It wasn't like the specials of other dramas that end up just being compilation of scenes we've seen before. Instead, this actually added more to the story and filled in a lot of gaps and questions that I had. It was also fun to see that they gave us backstory for both the ships and didn't focus just on one.I also really loved their high school days so it was nice to see them all together again, and to see how their classmates interacted with each other because I don't think we saw much of that during the drama itself.
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The writing is a mess. Taking every single trope in the book and just smushing them all together does not give you a story. It gives you needless drama and nonsense. And dumb miscommunications that could’ve been solved with a conversation.
A lot of rich man/poor woman tropes were used, and even though they tried to go for enemies-to-lovers, I felt like the main leads spent so much time arguing over basically nothing. The FL was especially annoying in this aspect as she was antagonistic for episodes for no good reason.
It also tried to do this makeover scene with the FL where every guy suddenly thinks she’s beautiful afterwards. It’s a cliche we’ve seen everywhere, but it flopped so bad here.
And that’s because it felt like the drama itself never bought into the ridiculousness of it all, whereas dramas like BoF did and you could at least enjoy the craziness and suspend your disbelief. This drama used all the crazy tropes and made them tedious to watch.
The characters are all very stereotypical and one dimensional. There’s practically no natural character development, and it feels like they’re just paper cutouts, going through the motions and the plot points the writer put them through.
It also relied on this lack of character development to reuse the same conflicts and have characters do things over and over again.
The only character I really enjoyed was the second lead (Ye Xing Yu), and the only ship I really enjoyed was the one with Yu Xi (boy-crazy roommate).
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Wholesome and heartwarming
This is the EXACT kind of drama I'd always been looking for — wholesome, friendship, romance, no frustrating evil scheming, and no dumb noble idiocy plot twist.It's true that the girl is the very typical bubbly, bad-at-school type, while the male lead is smart and popular, but the way they did the roles wasn't cliche at all and they were both super likable. Honestly, the ML went soft for the FL very early on, and the FL tried very hard at school, was strong, independent, righteous, and just downright adorable in her optimism.
Second lead was very likable as well and I was pleasantly surprised at how respectful he was of the FL in the love triangle. It's honestly one of the best-executed love triangles I've ever seen and although I wouldn't say I had SLS, my heart hurt for him.
The second ship was honestly amazing and I was LIVING for it. It's the perfect friends-to-lovers kind that's my favorite trope, and they were adorable from start to end, with the way they teased each other and fought, and yet knew each other so well.
The romance was overall pretty subtle, and I was surprised that they pulled off the "childhood connection" trope so well.
The overall drama is so soft, which I loved, and the pacing of the entire show was really good and there was no unnecessarily dramatic drama. The friendships were really great and I liked how they never fought over dumb things. The only part that kind of tripped this part up for me in the middle was when the other girl returned from abroad and the main leads sort of miscommunicated, and it kind of annoyed me that the two main leads never learned how to deal with their feelings and balance friendship — the lack of ability to get the two girls to co-exist was kind of problematic for me.
But ultimately they resolved things naturally and I really liked how they didn't turn any second lead girl into a terrible person in order to push the romance through and make things angsty. The same could go for any character and it was really refreshing how even the guest characters were pretty good people who might've gone astray sometimes — much more realistic and relatable. Even the families weren't overly frustrating, which has happened a lot in school kdramas.
I definitely felt super nostalgic and cried while watching this — I honestly connected to the characters so much and I will forever be sad that I never grew up in such a tight-knit high school class. This is honestly the kind of drama I'd rewatch over and over again in my free time because it just makes me THAT HAPPY.
And the OST is honestly so good. It took me a while to actually start watching each episode because I'd just replay the opening sequence over and over.
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Better than BOF, but crappy ending
I had watched Boys Over Flowers before this—but none of the other versions, and right off the bat I knew I was going to like this better. ALL the characters were more likable, and that even includes FL's parents.Of course, there were some things that were so ridiculous—like the parts where a bridge/poker game determined who got to stay in school—but there were dumb scenes in the original story, so I guess I had to let that go.
Compared to BOF, I felt like everything was more dimmed down, from the scariness of the mother to the social situation in school. I liked this, as it definitely felt more realistic.
Meteor Garden does suffer from something a lot of Chinese dramas seem to suffer from—the inability to focus on multiple plotlines at the same time. For the side characters, it felt like we were learning about one ship, and then moving on to another one after it had been wrapped up. Also, I didn't give a crap about Terence.
Sadly, the last few episodes of this show were just kind of a mess. Random drama was added in at the end, there was a sudden musical number, and I was so confused and disappointed that that was the ending we were going to get. Either way, I still quite enjoyed watching this.
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This review may contain spoilers
The first half was better, but I will forever love Dan-oh and Haru
The beginning of this drama was definitely the best part of it, but saying that I was disappointed with the second half is much too harsh, because I still love Haru and Dan-oh so much together. But it's true that there was a lot of mystery and intrigue in the beginning, and that our questions were answered as we asked new ones. The pacing definitely slowed down near the middle and there was a lot more fluff and repetition — but it's understandable considering the nature of the premise. Even so, I felt like there was a lot of meta and fourth-wall-building that was hinted at but never truly explored, which is sad because I had got so many theories in my head about the writer and about the outside world and we never got to see it.Something about the ending is both satisfying and really unsatisfying again at the same time — I DESPISE time jumps, but I appreciate that they both knew what was about to happen before Haru disappeared, and that they remembered each other at the end and it wasn’t one of those open-ended “let’s stare at each other, I think I know you from somewhere” scenes. Still though, I wanted something with more OOMPH. Maybe something to break the fourth wall more in which Dan-oh and Haru interact with the portals and the writer of the comic directly, some sort of confrontation. I thought that was the strongest part of this drama: the beginning, when they both actively pitted themselves against the writer. There was a lot of opportunity for something more meta, but the drama never explored that.
Ju-Da’s storyline also kind of tapered off for me, I thought there was so much potential in the contrast between her weak stage character and vengeful shadow self, but in the end she never did anything to break out of it. I know reasons were given, but it really just feels like lost potential. Going off of that — for a main role (in the drama), Nam Ju’s character did a whole lot of nothing. Even so, I’ve never found myself so invested in the first, secondary, tertiary, AND QUATERNARY ship.
The acting was honestly amazing by THE ENTIRE CAST. The blinking, tearing up, ephiphanies...you could see all the emotions on all the characters, EVERY TIME, and it HURT me. Extraordinary You tugged at all my heartstrings.
Also: Amazing OST.
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This review may contain spoilers
What could have been
The teasing male lead, the hilarious bickering, the girl pining over someone else while the male lead pines over her before she realizes who's been there for her all along...all this combine to form one of my favorite types of romance, so this drama starts with a winning formula...but it never actually uses it to its full potential.While I enjoyed seeing the female lead deal with unrequited love, it should not have SO. DAMN. LONG. She's deep in it for 25 episodes and it lingers for a few episodes after that, and we're hit with scene after scene of the female lead never taking the male lead seriously. Meanwhile, the second male lead (Cheng Lang) pines for another girl, and those two are given wayyy too much screentime. I never cared about them and they kept getting slow motion scenes.
We sort of have the opposite issue with the third couple, Qiu Le Tao and Huang Jun, who also have a really interesting story, but they get together so fast that I found it difficult to care for them. And I even like the ending of her reconnecting with their childhood classmate, but the show tried to give it shock factor and left the reveal till the very end, despite it being pretty obvious. The result of that was no time to develop the actual relationship, and a situation where her supposed best friend Xiao Ju didn't even know she was marrying until the engagement party.
In fact, the last few episodes are just filled with misunderstandings and time jumps, and I feel like the leads really lose their spark. They're supposed to be grown-up, but they're still written like children, and the show opts for "fun bickering" scenes when a more serious conversation was long overdue. The ending, overall, feels rushed and makes no sense, which is sad because the early high school and even college days were still enjoyable to watch despite the flaws.
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Just fine
I felt like this drama had a really strong start — the female lead's spunkiness made her really likeable, the mystery was intriguing, and the time travel also made for really interesting parallels.As the drama went on, I felt like it a lost a lot of its spark, opting for either humor or a modern-only plot, leaving the saeguk mystery and time travel element both really neglected until the last episode and not really tying the two timelines together well enough. It didn't make much sense what Yeon-woo's time travel had to do with the modern storyline, or why those parallels even existed. I think the stakes weren't established well enough for me to feel emotionally invested: I paid painstaking attention to the modern day characters to figure out how they were tied to their past lives, but by the end it felt like the modern day characters were the far more important ones. I really think this drama could've used a full 16 episodes to balance out the modern and historical plotlines and add some explanation for the time travel.
Other than that, I felt like the side characters were fine and occasionally funny but pretty unimportant to the plot, and the main romance was also fun but generally a cookie-cutter ship. It's a fun watch but for me, not very memorable.
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Fun little extra but not a lot of Totono
The first half was a rehash of the first episode so it was nothing new, and the second half was a new case which was a pretty cute watch and a fun addition, especially since I absolutely loved the original drama. But there actually wasn't a lot of Totono in it.The case introduces a new character — Sagara Ren, who was bubbly and fun and had a really adorable relationship with Totono. I loved the two of them together and I hope we get to see Sagara again.
The case itself was fine, but the detective work was actually done mostly by Sagara and the other characters, and it just didn't have the same endearing awkwardness that situations usually have when Totono is front and center.
Overall, this is definitely not a necessary watch, but it's light-hearted and low stakes. I can see why it was split off into a special and if anyone wants to see Totono again it's still worth tuning in for.
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Great chemistry, odd pace
I wish so much that this drama was longer because the pace was way too fast and all I kept thinking was that I loved the chemistry and I loved the main leads together and wanted the development of enemies-to-lovers to be more slow. I probably could've done without the side characters getting so much screentime, and even more without the string of misunderstandings at the end (even though I know the drama is setting up a season 2). The chemistry is great, the OST is catchy, the acting is pretty good, and the dialogue is beautiful — sometimes it's just a little confusing how the characters got to where they were because we didn't have time to show the "in-between" moments.Was this review helpful to you?
