Slow burn love story with good story progression but a dose of unrealistic-ness

Overall this is an ok series with a good story progression, good characters and visuals and an okey-ish ending.
But precisely those same points are the problem for me as it ends up being a bit superficial in all aspects. There is a good story progression but there are plotholes and unexplicable decisions, especially towards the end, that could have easily been tackled considering I found the show slow at some points.

Characters are good but I didn't feel like I got to see very deep into them, probably only Soramame we get to see more into her psyche than anyone else. The most frustrating are the side characters, there isn't any progression for any of them, especially I was waiting they would do something with the landlady Kyoko, she was such an interesting character but she's just support role, literally.

Both of their careers are pretty unrealistic, especially hers and we're not told at any point that she used to draw or was into fashion growing up, it's very out of the blue, and then she happens to have connections in the industry, what are the chances... I can let it pass, it's ok. What it's not so ok is that there is a build up when it comes to the mother and such a drama when her ideas are stolen but then when we get to the resolution and she gets what she technically wanted then we get a time jump and all of a sudden she's back and out of it all and it's not really even well explained exactly why she seems so burnt out, her replies are very ambiguous.. Am I to assume it's only because she's not with Oto? Why did she go in the first place then? and why in those three years she didn't think in telling him how she felt at least to move on? (considering she thought he was with Seira). Instead of rushing it, it would have been better to end the show with them telling each other before she went, end it there.

The time jump adds absolutely nothing and only creates more questions and more frustration. I find the time jumps in modern setting dramas to separate lovers completely ridiculous (unless it had a good reasoning, and I still haven't seen one). You want to use that plot device? set your story pre-internet era because otherwise it's just unrealistic (and still, phones anyone???). Who in their right mind loving someone would not speak with them for 3 years at all and hope they're still single and in love with them, especially after a very generic letter and an earphone as a token of love. I get it, it's supposed to be romantic and it would be if their separation had been a few weeks/months long, but three years?
Then what's going on with Soramame in the end, I feel at that point I don't even know if she's still into him or not, she receives the invitation and it's a "yes but no", all that part of the story is like seeing a toddler going to school in the morning half crying, I'm not sure if I have to feel joyful for her or suffer with her because she's doing something she doesn't want. It's so vague and anticlimactic in my opinion.
I don't even know where to start with Seira, she was a mess in the beginning and I'm still not sure of what her situation was, because I don't even know how many layers of lies there are there and her character, like any other side one, is kept mostly superficial. Either way, she started as a bad person and ended as a bad person, there is nothing there that tells me she has grown to be a better one. I mean, she took three years to tell that to Soramame... but I don't even know if I can blame her considering Oto didn't contact Soramame either to tell her what she thought was not true either. They both basically left Soramame to believe what she assumed for three years (and obviously Soramame is also in the wrong for making assumptions without asking). Seira doesn't suffer at all the consequences for her actions, not the first time and not at the end.

The love progression in this one is the frustrating type, so if you're not into very slow burn love stories where characters play very dumb till the end then this might not be for you.
I liked the visuals and settings of the story and I enjoyed the main characters banter and the dynamics of them with the landlady. I could understand that plot twist with Soramame's career towards the end if there was a second season, I can't find info on that so I'm going to assume there isn't one and so it's a bit annoying to see the progression of her career and then she stops but there is no hint on what she really wants to do next, more considering we're only told at the end once they're together that she's just like in a hiatus career wise. There are many things they could have done to bring her back to Japan instead of that out of the blue burnt-out when she's only been in the profession for 3 years. For example, in the lines of what she was saying, it would have been a lot more satisfactory that she had said high fashion is not for her and she's planning to create a small brand that provides to the local community, instead we got vagueness and not enough time to dwell in that vagueness, the motives, the reasons and the progression out of it.

Music was ok, sometimes it got a bit repetitive for me though.

Overall it's an ok watch so I would recommend to those that want something to watch, but if you have something more interesting in your list watch that first. Avoid if you don't like slow burn romance, it can certainly be quite frustrating in this one at times.

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Good visuals and nostalgia trip but cliché till the end

I actually rewatched this because I had zero recollection of the plot or anything else and I didn't have it on my watchlist here to remember. One quarter into the film it came to me why I didn't remember anything of it and the whole plot came to my head.
Cliché can be entertaining and enjoyable, I've watched cliché series and films in the past I enjoyed, even cheesy ones for the guilty pleasure, but this film falls in the frustrating cliché category.

This is one is of mixed feelings for me and clearly quite forgettable. I like the visuals and the nostalgia trip, although I would say it doesn't dwell as much on the nostalgia as other titles (like 25/21 does) and some times I felt the filter or post editing they did was a bit on the heavy side. For me this movie would get a higher score if they hadn't gone that route with the ending but I do understand why they thought it was a good idea to put it there to tie it all up into the theme.
This whole film is a big nostalgia trip of overused plot devices in romantic dramas of the period in any media, the plot device of friend asking MF to get closer to her love interest to learn about him... or the plot device of romantic male interest leaving the country or dying is a classic, but it was equally frustrating and bad at the time than it's now (I'm still salty about how many shoujo mangas and animes used this, seriously). It's one of those things that simply shouldn't come back because mostly it's just sad for sadness sake and lazy at this point (like the amnesia trope). This is not the only title in recent years to follow the nostalgia trip by reusing bad plot devices that were not liked even at the time.
The classic of miscommunication among characters is also something that makes this quite frustrating to watch at times (MF with the best friend). And equally tiring is the girl that is thin, eats a ton and it's also socially clumsy and cute without knowing it... but I can forget this last one this time simply for being the classic in a "nostalgia remake".

Here it does have the tag of melodrama, I'm not sure I would classify this as such since only the ending is. It's nostalgic, dramatic and romantic with a frustrating cliché ending.

Would I recommend? Not sure, I liked the acting, the aesthetics, the cute moments, the colours and the story is generally watchable most of the film even with the clichés, but the ending is very frustrating and annoying so if you decide to watch it take that into consideration and watch it for the trip.

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Somehow they managed to make this worse than the manga...

Why I say that? Because the source material is not great. It suffers from lack of direction, lack of character developement (too slow for the lenght of the manga) and plotholes. I never understood why it was popular at the time and it's one of the most boring and plain shoujo mangas I've ever read (and shoujo is pretty much what I've ever read).

One of the biggest problems with this show is that the source material is a romcom/slice of life manga, here though, they have decided to cross the line to drama and even some melodramatic moments becoming something of a terrible mix to me.
Why is this show called Good Morning Call is something I'm still asking myself after finishing it. They took the names and the very general idea but it doesn't follow the manga much and the characters are generally not like the manga either.
Both the protagonists are like the manga ones on steroids, especially Nao. In the manga she's your stereotypical teenager (also to point out they're younger in the manga when in starts than in this show), she likes shopping and looks... and something quite outdated it's precisely the whole girlie obsessions with the looks, weight and fashion. I'm sorry for Haruka Fukuhara, I don't know if she was forced to do it or it was all her, but she was way too over the top, exaggerated and very annoying most of the time. While Nao in the manga can be annoying at times as well, it's 100 times more in the show. Same happens with Uehara, sorry to the actor as well because I don't know if it's just his limitations in acting or the direction, but he had pretty much one single emotion the entire time. Manga Uehara can be cold, serious, sarcastic and rude sometimes but in most cases corrects himself later and he does show more emotions and he can laugh and be sassy. Show Uehara is just a rock, it was ok in the beginning but it got ridiculous pretty quickly.
There are many instances in the show where a situation happens that actually happened in the manga as well, but where in the manga was either slightly different or Uehara reacted in an ok way, in the show they cut before that or they changed the details what ended up making Uehara a lot worse of a person than he is in the manga. One example of this is that night when Nao goes to buy pudding and there was in the news something about some instances of attacks in the area. In the show she watches those news, has a fight with Uehara about the pudding, he shouts at her to buy replacement and later when she's scared he finds her in the bushes. You think, WOW Uehara is terrible! In the manga they fight for the pudding and Nao pissed saying he's like a child goes to buy a replacement pudding. Uehara sees on tv the news of the attacks and he runs down the stairs and catches here as she exits the elevator, uses the excuse of buying milk to accompany her all the way, and they banter and fight-play about who had to carry the bags back home. There are many times in the show that they made noticeable differences that make Uehara look so much worse than he's supposed to be.

I think had it followed the manga it would have been better, here they also decided that every single male had to fancy Nao and every single woman had to fancy Uehara, I would have preferred it to be less focused on the leads and they had explored the side characters more as well. Abe Jun is a very prominent character in the manga and they just put it in the background.
I also noticed there were contradictions in some of the things said in the show, for example, we see Kitaura mostly only talking and interacting with Uehara but at some point later she says to him she has to position herself (on some issue happening) with Nao because it's her friend....hmmmm excuse me? In the show you see them interacting like maybe once. It's not the only time this happens, and it felt like they wanted to link more to the manga but they couldn't remember what they had written before. In the manga Kitaura (and her cousin that doesn't appear here) were friends with Nao first and didn't have as much interaction with Uehara.

Daichi, who are you? Who knows, just created to be one of the interested parties and I learnt nothing about him other than he likes Nao, not even in the second season.
Itchan was cool in the manga, here it's just reduced once again to be another potential lover for Nao. Something that annoyed me the most about his character was that melodrama about wanting to quit the ramen shop, in the manga ramen is everything to him to the point he actually starts dating a girl he met in a queue to a famous ramen restaurant because she also loved ramen, what I thought it was funny. Also, his father is so much more stern here, in the source material he's kind and has health issues what it's also the reason his son works in the restaurant. Moreover, when the bowls were broken in the show the father is scolding Itchan, in the manga the father sends Itchan and Nao to apologise to the owner and the bowls turn out to be not that expensive per se but the old man says they were made by the woman he fancies so they're priceless to him. The woman he fancies turns out to be Nao and Uehara's landlady, and they start dating and even both accompany the young group on a trip, I thought it was hilarious, and had they sticked to a romcom with this show it could have been so much better. Also Uehara has such a cool relationship with the landlady, almost like a mother figure to him.

I could go on and on but it's no point. Generally the frustration is that if you're not going to follow the source material at least make it better, not worse... Here characters are bad and not explored, plot is thin, love triangles are boring and bring nothing to the plot, music is annoying and the over the top acting of the main character is the cherry on top to make this whole show difficult to watch an enjoy, so I can't recommend.

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Good adaptation from the manga but acting and execution are a bit off at times.

I generally recommend this drama, especially to those that have read the manga or watched the anime. If you haven't, I would say it can feel there are some plotholes or rushed parts here and there but it's a good adaptation. If you have read the manga or watched the anime it's a lot easier to fill in the bits missing but also as it tends to happen, this isn't better than the manga because of that same reason.

I came to this drama with low expectations because adaptations tend to be not that good and very rushed, something that clearly happened with the movie version of this same title (because obviously it was impossible to fill the plot of 30 volumes of manga in a 2h film). It was difficult to not make comparisons because despite overall thinking this series is so much better than the movie simply for having most of the plot points of the original work, I also thought that some of the characters were better portrayed in the movie, namely the protagonist. As another review has pointed out, the main character here lacks the uniqueness and creepiness that the manga character is supposed to have. I feel the movie did a better job at this. Sara Minami is pretty by society standards and they didn't try much with the hair or her behaviour and demeanour to look closer to how she's supposed to be, she just comes across as a bit shy.
Also, while I think Rinka Kumada did generally a good job as Yano, I felt she was missing the subtext, in the manga and anime there were always instances where you could tell she knew what was going on, and would work things out before anyone else and she was mature for her age, I don't think this was portrayed very well in this series and I missed those nuances of her character. I also think physically I expected her to look more like a gyaru, more similar to how they did in the movie, that it's how I imagined her in the manga. Also one of the things I precisely liked of the portrayal of Yano was the fact she's fashionable and more adult like but she also has good grades and cares about her studies, what I think it's not a very common portrayal in mangas for someone looking like a gyaru (and smoking!). In this series to me if I wasn't told through the part of the rumours I would think she's just an average high schooler. Maybe they didn't want to portray her as a gyaru to keep up with the times, but they could have done something else to show the contrasts of her character since there is nothing in the way she acts or speaks here that tells me how she is either.
On the other hand, I was happy with the rest of portrayals, and in fact I was very pleasantly surprised by Riho Nakamura as Chizuru, I think they nailed it with her.
(If I'm being picky though I have mixed opinions about the portrayal of Kazehaya's father, it's a difficult one, but I don't think he looks serious and stern, just kind of awkward and forced? I don't know how to feel about him).

While I'm generally pleased with how much they fit in this show of the source material it could have been even better. Some bits felt a bit rushed, while some others, like some of the dialogues seemed a bit too slow. I enjoy slow and I enjoyed the slow pace of this drama in those dialogues, what I'm not so pleased with is this coming as a detriment of other plots or scenes being rushed. I generally would have preferred this drama had been between 15 and 20 episodes long, it would have given the time for everything. Another thing that also was a bit annoying for me it's how they cut out almost every single kiss or show of a more mature relationship that appeared in the manga/anime. I can imagine why, but many people watching this has read the manga or watched the anime, and many others that haven't and liked this will potentially check both or one of them, so why? I could tell even in scenes when that was being cut, and any show of affection between any of the characters was quite awkward in my opinion. The girls dynamics were on point though.
Acting was generally ok, but at times for me it was a bit off, sometimes it felt like they were reading the lines without emotion or like they were doing a theatre play instead of a recorded show. Maybe also like they were trying hard to use the same exaggerated expressions or body movements than in the anime? what could feel forced and cringey sometimes. I think this happens more in the first half of the show than in the second. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either.

Music was ok, some songs were cute, some gave me the vibes of the main theme of American Beauty? Overall it was ok, but I did notice a couple of times in the first few episodes a song would play in the background that didn't necessarily match too well with the vibe of the scene (for example, a scene with serious dialogue and a bit too happy song in the background).

I can't see myself rewatching this, it was entertaining, watchable, cute at moments, loved the scenery and atmosphere but I prefer the intensity and the emotional portrayal of the manga/anime so I'll gravitate towards those before this one. But as I mentioned before, as an adaptation I'm pleased and it's probably one of the best manga adaptations of this genre I've seen despite its few flaws.

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Started out ok-ish and gets worse the more you watch

It started out ok although from the beginning there are a couple of clichés that already made me cringe.
Main Guy character is a classic "nice guy" with stalker behaviour, very frustrating and if pushed can be quite evil even.
Girl has self-esteem issues.
Side characters are side characters, we learnt almost nothing from anyone, it's kept very superficial. I could even say the same for the main characters, the reasons for him to like her are hold by a fine thread until they have more relationship and we're still told absolutely nothing about her, I don't know anything of what she likes or doesn't, what she wants to do or doesn't, she's just pretty.
Writing is mediocre and I feel at points the movie doesn't know what it wants to be or what direction it wants to go, at points it feels like it wants to be a different version of 500 days of Summer, but then it tries to tell me the main characters are meant for each other and there is romance there, even suggested with that ending. Talking about the ending, it's unsatisfactory to the point it leaves me a very bad aftertaste as if everything Guy did was justified and June grew nothing and thought about things 0.01 seconds. There was no growth and no change.

I found some parts a bit funny, but overall not sure I could classify this as romantic comedy, Guy makes this movie go south very early on and I just felt uncomfortable he was so pushy and inactive at the same time.

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Very unpopular opinion

Looking at the ratings of this drama mine is going to be an extremely unpopular opinion, sorry.

This drama felt like a big advertisement for teenagers on how their lives need to play out.
If you're a teen in high school you can have a crush, but don't go further!! focus on your studies and wait. Oh, you're 18 now? it's ok then, you can have a relationship. You finished your degree? you need to get the best job ever immediately and be super successful very young, be able to afford a house and not long after marry and start a family. It's almost fuel for depression.
The timings on when the characters were allowed or not to do something were super on the face, and they tried very hard to make the main two characters flawless in their upbringing, studies and manners.
In fact only Guan Fang has a more nunanced life, but it's put there as an example of what someone that gets into trouble needs to do, but they don't even dwell on how he did it, he just did because he looked at his grandma one day. It's very superficial.

I found the main female character quite annoying at times (some others I enjoyed her sassyness) and overall there is really no character progression for any of them, so as a result even when in the end they're in the wedding they look like 16 year olds getting married, I found it super weird. You also don't get to know them individually, not even the main characters (only Su Zai Zai and Guan Fang a bit more maybe), so you don't really know anything about them, only that they're friends and they're all ok successful people. Their specific traits are quite superficial so they're not that distinguishable ones of the others really, they work mostly as quirks since they don't impact much on how they act or what they do. Even when Jiang Jia didn't know what she wanted to study is solved quickly with very little hesitation. Zhang Lurang tells me in the end he has changed so much, but other than the fact they told the actor he could now smile more, I don't see any other change. He says he had low self-esteem, and while it's shown him not being treated very well as a teen by his mother I didn't see at any point him seeming to have low self esteem, I only saw him being serious and quiet and it's not the same.

As it happens many times I found the friends romantic relationship more interesting, that is until they decided to completely push it to the side and only resolve it quickly after the time jump. Time jumps also mean nothing here anyway, none of them change at all and whoever else they meet they only stay in their lives for like 5 seconds anyway. Very choppy.
Plot was boring at times (and I like slice of life) and most of the dialogue was very superficial, what is not necessarily terrible but then you had more poetic lines in specific crafted moments that were taking me again to the feeling of massive advert.
Many side characters appear only at weird moments and then in others when you would expect them to appear they don't.

Points go for the cute moments here and there, but overall this was a big miss for me.
I've watched chinese movies before but this was my first chinese series, and considering the high rating of this compared with my opinion of it I'm not sure I should try any other series maybe :/

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I haven't watched the original...

...and this was ok, not great but also not terrible.
I think the premise is interesting at the beginning and the story of her going back to 98 becomes more of a classic romcom what was ok for me.
I think it was around episode 8 when it started to go a bit downhill for me, it started to drag and felt slower at the pacing. Still, the thing I found the most annoying at that point was the overall introduction of him also as a time traveler, and mostly the fact that the story at that point is shown in a very scene by scene way and becomes confusing. Until that point you're wired to think all the time in her going back to the past, but then he's doing the opposite and instead of showing the story in a linear manner like it happened with her, and what would have made this a lot easier to follow, they keep showing things simultaneously and I got a bit confused a couple of times. Later this seems to improve again, but once they show who is the real culprit....well, I started yawning, it became so melodramatic and so cliché. Motive? who needs one when you can just introduce a psycho that just does things because yes.
It definitely got less interesting for me from that point onwards and I found episode 11 the most dragging of all, especially also with Kwon Min Ju. Sure, I felt bad for her and I could understand where she was coming from, but she was using victimism and suicide to hurt others at the end of the day. She "doesn't hate" Han Jun Hee but tries to basically hurt her and everyone else. The reason for her to get better later is weak as well. Overall I was not very satisfied on how that was portrayed and tackled.

Jung In Kyu was very melodramatic at the end of the original timeline, it was just bad in my opinion in taking the blame for something he didn't do. He certainly didn't think enough there and felt like an impulsive regreatable teen reaction and all I could think was "this is lame".
The ending is ok but also leaves many questions about all the other characters since it only shows the main two. Funny enough the main question I had is what happened to Oh Chan Hee, did he go on a killing spree and was never caught in the new timeline? As a child he already was showing an interest in Min Ju because of his brother's photos, did he try to kill her later on? Or maybe no because she was not depressed and so not an "easy" prey anymore? did he kill someone else instead? (obviously I assume even if he tried he didn't kill Min Ju because Nam Si Heon mentions her in the bus like she's still alive). Did his brother become a stalker of Kwon Min Ju? I mean, he kind of already was with the photos and all.

The moments of resolution in this drama generally felt a bit anticlimatic for me, when FL manages to get control of Min Ju's body again before the jump I was not impressed, the way they meet back again in the end didn't impress me either. Maybe they didn't have that much chemistry so it left me a bit flat? Maybe because other than the story we don't get to know much about each of the main characters nor they do share that many bonding moments? not sure if that's the reason, I can't fully pin point why.
Something that also bugs me is the fact that only towards the end we learnt that Jun Hee and Min Ju can communicate with each other, like what? shouldn't this have been a thing during all the drama then? it would have changed the whole thing in my opinion, so to be honest I do count this as a plothole, and if there was a reason only then it was possible they didn't explain it at all. Is it just to be more melodramatic? Otherwise they could have met, communicate, raise concerns and helped each other along the way, what would have made the whole story a complete different thing.

Overall I think this would have been interesting and a bit different if the series had been longer and they had also focused on the characters relationships in the new timeline, or had even introduced the idea of paralel timelines because of the change. I find it a bit unsatisfactory when shows end with a reset.

The reason why they could time travel is not really even suggested either so the whole idea of the time travel is kept superficial, I'm ok with it in general but if someone is expecting more in-depth in that respect this is not it.
The song chosen to be the one for the cassette very annoying after a while.

Generally it's an ok watch but forgettable.
I know people will tell me the original is so much better, it might be but I've also read here in the comments this one generally follows the plot of the original very close, meaning, I'm going to find the melodrama and the culprit as annoying as in this one so I'm probably going to give it a miss for now, I might watch it at some point when I don't remember this one at all.

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Interesting premise but too many plotholes in the world-building

This show was interesting at times and it dragged at others. It's only 6 episodes but somehow they managed to drag it at times and at others it felt rushed.
As other people have mentioned in their reviews there is a flaw in the world-building of the show. There are too many questions left unanswered in terms of how society works and what things are different, especially when it comes to reproduction and what kind of things they were doing to solve the problem of the decline in male population. It gave me the impression that nothing was being done science wise to try and understand why it was happening or how to solve it. I think at one point it's mentioned how they created artificial sperm or something of the sorts? It's just mentioned in passing but it's never explained. In a society like that you would think the few males would be exploited to no end as sperm donors, and would create issues of everyone eventually being related if the pool of men is that small. The artificial sperm would obviously solve this to a certain extent but then if they're capable of making artificial one, shouldn't they also be able to overcome the decline in born males? It brings the question if the problem then it's the mother carrying the child, in which case, and considering they can make artificial sperm, maybe make an artificial uterus? Anyway, I'm getting too much into this, the show just simply didn't care in explaining anything. Even if it had been complete fantasy and surreal, some kind of explanation would have been welcomed.
The premise in terms of the world and the plot itself is interesting but it lacks enough exploration. The lack of it would have been passable if all that had been a background element and the plot had revolved exclusively about the show and the FL's character participation in it, but it does involve the bigger issues into the plot and as such it's not satisfactory as it is.
The show part of it it's also quite a big plothole in itself. It's never really explained why it exists in the first place. It's not like it's giving anyone hopes or anything if also the women usually chosen to marry those men are from rich families. Why are they pushing the marriage thing onto those men? They should be forever donors lol it wouldn't really matter much who they marry as long as they contribute to the whole population lol It's said it's the 7th time the show happens, by this time the whole population already knows it's fixed if all women chosen are from rich families and it would have lost all spectators. Sure, the men themselves would be equally popular like celebrities, but no one would care to follow a show to see who they marry, it wouldn't be them so who cares?

Someone in the reviews said this was a trying to be somewhat of a mix between Squid Game and Hunger Games, and I totally agree. I haven't even watched Squid Game although I know more or less what is about and certainly this shares the looks. The music in the last episode when the female contestants are presented was very close to the Hunger Games one, it was blatantly similar.

Acting is generally ok, some of them are better than others. Characters wise, I feel a lot of them were quite superficial and we don't learn anything from many of them, or we learn one thing and that's just their whole vibe. Almond was an interesting character in his more grey area, but it was unsatisfactory how his motivations and decision at the end is not explored more. FL's character was ok in the very beginning, then it's too silly and cliché (girl that doesn't care much about her looks, it's a black hole eating and is clumsy and can't read the room) to then being a more mature towards the end. It was inconsistent and they could have avoided that cliché phase altogether. I'm generally not a fan of the troupe of childhood acquaintances to adult lovers, here it was worse that in other shows because it was pretty much instant as soon as they recognise each other, and their childhood experience together was very brief, or at least it's only shown in a very summarised way, what doesn't help their case either way. As it happens often I was more invested in the side love story and progression of Chanel and Max than the main characters, they were more unique and they had obstacles to overcome. Sure, it's not really explored enough, but for what it is, it was better in my opinion.

Things are kind of left there and then there is an "epilogue" 4 years later. It brings many questions, especially of those that were left behind. Then we have the classic evil laugh, almost, because the evil queen has found their location HOHOHO I mean, it's not like they were super secretive in their location, they're not even covered by woods or anything. I don't know... haha Either way, I don't know if they're doing a 2nd season of this or not, and if not, what a silly way to end it.

Despite all of this and other flaws it was surprisingly passable and entertaining in a general way????!!! How is this possible really??? Maybe it's because my expectations were quite low but I thought it would be worse. I think it being 6 episodes also helped it a lot in that respect. It didn't overstay its welcome much.
My rating goes for interesting idea and for the general entertainment it provided, surprisingly.
It's generally watchable but keep expectations quite low and don't question much of anything, otherwise your brain cells will combust, mine are certainly fried at the edges and I'll move on to something else immediately before I dwell too much into the details of this and I see the back of my head and steam out from my ears lol

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Very dragged and uninteresting. This could have easily been a movie.

I think the drama had an ok concept that was made so much worse by the execution/writing of that concept. The original idea was probably two pages long and basically the rest is a massive uninteresting filler.
I've just finished watching it and if you asked me to explain what happened in X or Y episode I wouldn't be able to, because there is so much nothingness that it automatically got erased from my mind as soon as I watched it.

I think one of the main problems is that they decided to make FL and her younger self complete opposites and under a very specific set of circumstances with the accident so it's not something many people will relate to. I could feel connected to the lost present time FL but not to her younger self nor the dynamic they had going on later. If there had been more introspection into the first part of FL's character I would have found it more interesting. I also still don't understand how having her past self there helped her to get anything she managed to get. Her younger self is selfish, spoiled and kind of annoying. The dynamic they have later of mother-daughter also I think made it quite a lot worse because by their actions and words they pretty much worked as such and made you even believe it at times and personally it's not how I would treat my younger self... but then again, my younger self was not that childish nor it was that different to how I'm now so I think the relationship would probably be more like we're sisters or something in those lines, what I think kinda makes more sense and probably would be more true to most people, especially considering her younger self was 17, not a 6 year old.

To this we add an overabundant amount of scenes of side characters that add nothing to the main story nor are they that interesting. FL's sister appears multiple times yet I don't know much about her, also she was quite bad in the beginning yet later is just sweeped under the rug. Anthony's scenes bored me sooooo much, I don't understand what the point of him being there was. It was just a filler since his story was not even that related to hers, not even in the end. I kept thinking there was going to be some connection that justified him there but there wasn't. I don't think his story was bad per se, it's just that it's not worth 16 episodes of a few scenes per each one. He's main character but why???? He really adds nothing to the story. His arc could have been done in like one episode and done.

I always find it unrealistic when a main character starts working in a place and turns out they knew someone in there from the past, like how small is your city? Here it's not only the best friend, but also Anthony and Han Yoo Hyun. Too many coincidences and, at least when it comes to Han Yoo Hyun specifically, very sloppy reasoning.

I enjoyed the character of Han Yoo Hyun but it was very forced how his father kept him out of the business because "he's not interested" but wouldn't even give him a chance when he was the one showing an interest, it was just pushed again just to drag the story more until the last episodes. It also got tiring he kept calling FL "old woman" even when they were closer.

There is no romance here and it's only in episode 14 that Ban Ha Ni mentions having butterflies when interacting with Han Yoo Hyun... so you're just told because scenes we had none and maybe we got a few looks from him that let me know he likes her and him saying it to Anthony, but her to him? zero! She looks like a rock in that sense the whole series, even at the end when they say they're together, the chemistry is zero and I'm again being told and not shown (that kiss was appalling, especially for people in their 30s, what was that!!!!??? hahahaha). This show shouldn't be classified as a romance, it's not.
This brings me to the fact that had they focused a lot more in the romance throughout the series they would have had enough extra content to not have to have so many fillers of people walking here and there, or talking very slowly about uninteresting things and so on.
The main plot is, well, very sloppy. It was ok and interesting in the beginning but it's kind of forgotten for most of the series till the later episodes that it's brought back. Once they know what the mobile phone message with the days meant and they were doing nothing I started rolling my eyes, especially considering I was already fed up with the show at that point. They look at the phone and see D-7, they panic for 5 minutes and then they have some nice meal and go somewhere and then they show D-6, and then panic again and two seconds later they're eating beef. It was so difficult to take this seriously. Also the father gives that criptic message through the old phone "quickly quickly, you're running out of time", but considering where she had to go in the end to go back that it's nowhere related to anything she would have been able to know on her own and "quickly quickly" but the dream message was only received one day before the expire date. Bad writing, that's all.
I'm going to nitpick here as well because I was also rolling my eyes at the whole dream/past sequence, you're in a field of dead grass and you find a lily of the valley there eventhough they mostly grow in woodland, humid shaded areas? I was laughing, even more when in the tunnel sequence they find one and they're holding it with the hands (it's very toxic and can produce rashes) until I realised it was a plastic one, what fair enough, but I mean, there was no reason whatsoever really that it couldn't have been another flower the one picked for the whole idea instead of a lily of the valley...
This also brings me to how utterly useless that phychic was, I get they wanted to make the quirk of him being a modern one what was fine, but he would give half messages even when he knew what was happening. You can't tell people something is very serious and life and death and urgent and at the same time withhold information... he only appears twice in the show eventhough at one point he says to FL that he'll be looking for a way to make her past self back, next scene he appears that matter is not discussed.
Not sure why this is also labelled as a comedy, I only laughed once, and that is when Sung Woo is giving some food to past Ban Ha Ni and his mother, FL's sister, has a go at him. It did make me chuckle, but other than that I didn't find anything funny.

The whole drama in the company was ok but kind of cliché and I don't like how they dealt with ML's aunt in the end, she's kind of forgiven and it's not only what she has done with the company but the fact that her son never addresses the way she treats Oh Ji Eun. She had been said horrible things multiple times and yet nothing happens. In fact I don't even know the point in terms of plot of Oh Ji Eun getting pregnant since we didn't even know until that second that she had been trying nor she has a change of character at any time that makes her stronger or more confident or stopping taking that kind of treatment from her mother-in-law.

Points go for FL having freckles and having scenes when later on she has started using makeup for work but she's still shown with the freckles at times when she's supposed to not be wearing makeup, I thought it was a realistic touch I appreciated.

Overall is just boring and dragging and writing is not great. The message is there but you don't need that many episodes to tell it.
Considering as well that there isn't really a progression in terms of work, romance or much else of anything, this could have prefectly worked as a movie and it still would have given the same message.

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Pointless

It was such an achievement to somehow make this even worse than the first season, mainly because it's completely pointless. Characters have zero developement personally, you don't learn anything new about them, side characters of the 1st season are not as much in the picture and the only plot device used in the whole series consists on chucking some new characters to the main couple to create drama.
I'm not sure if they actually used anything from the Good Morning Kiss manga (the sequel to Good Morning Call) to make the 2nd season but generally it's just nothing like the manga, at least not the first 4 volumes (the only ones in English), where they are mostly planning to get married and they have already been together for about 5 years.

I found most of the characters introduced very annoying, especially Saeko and especially when she was having a tantrum. Generally they all acted very childish for being university students, and in fact in the manga there is progression in terms of maturity with the characters at that point, they could have explored that in this series but they just decided to keep it as superficial as the first season, or even worse. I don't get the point of Nanase, totally plot filler. Thing is though, they had the chance of exploring the crush Ota had in Abe in the manga, but instead they just did whatever that was between Nanase and Daichi.
When Natsume started having the feelings for Nao I rooted for him really, he was so much nicer than Uehara with his single emotion face and paired better with Nao. I knew it was not going to happen at all, but I almost wished. Sadly though, they couldn't even do that well and made Natsume super pushy later on. How is it that basically Natsume and Saeko push the main leads to break up and suffer absolutely no consequences for their actions, they're all super dupey friends in the end like nothing happened. It was so weird to watch the whole thing.
This whole second season was a plotless filler of bad writing and main leads are exactly the same than when it started, Nao has evolved zero and Uehara only managed one smile.

I can't recommend, even worse than the first season.

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Strong leads, social and political issues but suffers from pacing

I generally recommend this drama, it has good leads, an interesting story and some funny bits (Seol Ji Hwan's soap on tv was so funny!! as well as Scarlett's reactions to it).

The story and the social issues mentioned in the drama might be more interesting to you if you have a bit of background info about certain things in Korea. I liked the gender swap roles and commentary, as well as the fact they tackled the thing of korean women changing their views on marriage in more recent times. Even in the western countries it's still frown upon not wanting to marry out of convictions and morals. As the FL said, she didn't believe in the institution of marriage, and I applaud this drama for tackling this. I don't know exactly how it's in Korea in terms of civil partnerships but I can imagine is not great, it's not even perfect in the western countries eventhough generally accepted. I would have liked more social commentary on the aspect of other women not wanting to marry because of the societal pressure of quitting their careers, as well as the family pressures (although I guess it can be seen a bit through Song Ga Kyung's character but I would have liked for it to be more clear). But overall I'm very happy this drama tackled the marriage thing, I've never seen any other drama do it.
Corruption and politics on the internet was also interesting. As usual, I would have liked more in-depth commentary but I'm still satisfied.
The sismance in this show is strong and I loved it, it was so cute and so much fun. Scarlett was great as a character and sometimes I wished she was the main one, but at the same time I think I got enough of her to not be annoyed she wasn't the main FL. Some of her fashionable outfits were so cute! and me saying that is a lot because I'm not usually into the trendy styles they wear in dramas. Her romantic story with Seol Ji Hwan was fun as well.
Talking about Seol Ji Hwan, I loved that he had a flip phone!!!
I'm usually not a lot into the OST of kdramas either, but I have to say this is one of the few ones where not only it was tolerable but there were certain songs I liked, especially the game one that Park Morgan makes and it's used at different points throughout the series.

Now, for the things that didn't make it a 10 for me.
Main thing is the pace, it dragged at times and it was a bit boring, mostly I think they spent too much time in certain scenes. That actually brings me to the second problem it had since I think that the scenes that dragged the most were the ones with the main couple. I totally get why the story is there as I mentioned before (and very glad it's there) BUT they dragged it way too much and the ending for the couple is not satisfactory to me. Their romance should have lasted half the show max, and they shouldn't be together by the end, the excuses given to continue together are unrealistic, no one is going to commit to a serious relationship "for now" well knowing it will inevitably end because they want different things. Their back and forth became tiresome quite quickly despite the cute scenes here and there. It would have been a lot more satisfactory that in the end the FL had met someone that matched her views, I would have been happy even with a tease at a new relationship.
The product placement in this drama is very on the face, and it broke the immersion for me every single time.
The adopted trope was also annoying and way too overused at this point. I can't care anymore because usually it's copy paste from one drama to another, especially in more modern times. The adoptive parents are great but the kid still mostly favours the biological ones because being adopted in Korea is a curse. In this case it made less sense considering he had foreign adoptive parents and lived in Australia, I think naturally and more realistically he wouldn't have had those views as ingrained in his mind. Either way, the bio mother passing away was an uninteresting dramatic filler as well.

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Repetitive, dragged and not funny

I feel the need to write this review to offer a bit of an alternative opinion to what seems to be the general consensus that this is a great drama.

I'm not sure what this was trying to be or what message is trying to convey. I didn't find it very entertaining either.
It started with an interesting premise but it went downhill very quickly.

One of my main problems with this drama are the plotholes. There is really no explanation on how things work, the main character is the one deciding what things are to be left or changed and we have to take it at face value. Who knows, maybe her friend Fuku-chan was actually not supposed to have a child, we'll never know. But that's the main problem, who decides what has to happen and what not, who decides what is good and what is bad. Maybe she saved her annoying teacher from being wrongly accused in the train situation but maybe later he killed his wife. We don't know, we just have to accept FL is somehow omnipotent and her choices are the best course of action. Somehow she also knows what to do or not to get shiny points for her next life.

It was generally passable until the friend Mari is also introduced as being in a repetition of her life, at that point I started to question if most people going by that logic are repeating lives or what are the rules on who is allowed and who isn't. Everything was already hold by a very fine thread but when the story line with the plane is introduced it was made so much worse. For starters why did they have to save all that people? They just decided so. Again, there is never an explanation on fate, morality or anything. One could argue that by them focusing all their energy and time to be pilots they missed making so many memories with the friends and enjoying life to the fullest, or that that plane crashing was meant to happen, or, and here it comes the biggest of them all, if the friends died in the plane, shouldn't they also be in their lives repetition or maybe they would have crossed the other door and reincarnated into something else in which case their deaths in the "repetition" timeline of the FL and Mari would be set to die no matter what since they wouldn't exist as humans or as themselves anymore. It's just never explained and it makes no sense.
The writers basically decided some people where allowed to be main characters, meaning people that could repeat their lives and the rest are just the puppets that follow a specific pattern.

If you have watched Groundhog Day (1993) and you enjoyed it you might like this, if you don't like a plot that pretty much repeats over and over I would say avoid this, it gets annoying, especially since the only repeated events in the life of the FL are the same ones EVERY single life with minor differences in general and a different career. It's a chore and the story is not so worth it. There are so many details in her career progression in each of her lives and what is the point? Especially the one where she's a producer.

I found it kind of stupid to go for the capitalistic stereotype of what is considered success when the FL only changes her career in each repetition and that somehow gives her different outcomes of what animal the guy in the desk tells her she's going to be in the next life. I guess we all should be doctors apparently. Equally stupid that something as silly as that guy disrupting the coming of age ceremony was full of comments about how he was going to be a microorganism in his next life. And it's not even the disrupting, is the fact of his aesthetics as well, it was very on the face of "if you don't dress society approved and behave how japanese society dictates you'll loose points at reincarnation", same kind of sentiment was shown when Mari says in her first life she was a gyaru for a while. Excuse me? If it had been done in a very funny way I could have taken this afterlife based on capitalistic success and japanese morals entertaining enough, but it falls way short of that.

It was also convenient that the four of them lived single their whole lives, I guess because the writers knew they wouldn't be able to handle the story if there were partners and children involved, so only the background characters were allowed that kind of progression.

I'm assuming part of the comedy in this show is supposed to be the way they accentuate the roundabouts of Japanese communication, I get it really, but I just simply didn't find it funny, I found it as frustrating as it is in real life.
This also brings me to the fact the FL was not really a very likeable person and there is not much of a change in her all throughout. Sure, she says at one point she started doing the things to be nice not for the points but it doesn't change the fact she's doing exactly the same things and we're not really being shown anything new.

Overall I can't recommend this drama, watching too much repetition already felt such a waste of time, it's only a comedy in the sense it's not a melodrama and the story isn't that engaging. Some might say it's ultimately a story of friendship and while yes partially it is, it's questionable when in most of the FL's repeated lives she didn't spent that much time with the friends (she even complains to them in one of them because they visit her too much) and it's not shown like she misses them that much in the timelines she chose to not have a relationship with them. For this reason as well, I really didn't care much for that ending and it didn't make sense either how they managed all to be reincarnated into the same thing considering they were only given one option every time? Works for cute effect I guess.

Music is fine, they clearly played with the nostalgia trip in that aspect a lot. But it felt like they wanted to precisely get some easy points for doing that. I recognised many of the songs and brought me back in time, but sorry, it's not enough to make this show good, I'll rather just go and listen to the music without watching this.

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A waste of time.

I can't recommend, it's a total waste of time.
I'm not sure what it was trying to be but manages to do nothing right or interesting enough, and acting is generally quite forced and over the top. Only FL was better and her character was probably the most interesting of the bunch but they don't dwell much in the characters themselves. ML wanted to be a butler because he likes to serve? what? haha I'm sorry, it was lame, it would have been more believable that he said something about wanting to travel, see other places in the world or even learn other languages.

The movie is boring, slow (for what is the plot) and the writing is bad. It's difficult to make a movie in a single location and for it to be engaging and entertaining enough, they didn't succeed at all in this movie.
Sub-plots are brought to the front and back depending on what is convenient to the point they feel forgotten (like the murder "mystery"). The "mystery" is one of those that seems obvious but then it's revealed to not be what you thought just for shock value and where they didn't take you along the journey at all, completely pointless. It wasn't even shocking as a reveal though, because they didn't make me care at all about anything in this movie. The crime here it's calling this thing a suspense, romantic, mystery or amateur detective movie. It's just a mush of nothingness in my opinion.

There obviously are also unresolved questions at the end of the movie, like what happened to the mother of the kid, what happened with the will in the end, what happened to the son and wife of the man that died, they might not have ultimately killed him but they were accomplices of murder in a way and of trying to falsify a will. Why are the two kids dancing happy in the end? There is just no answers.
Also, I'm sorry but that's not kissing. If they're going to make the actors "kiss" like that might as well just not have any kissing scenes, it was weird and cringy to watch.
FL arrives in the cruise with absolutely nothing, yet she manages to have a different outfit daily.

If it had been fun and entertaining I could tolerate some of the other negative aspects of this but it really wasn't, it was a chore to finish.

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Entertaining and good pace generally but frustrating FL and I wish for more growth

Overall it's an entertaining drama and acting is good.
Watching it now (2024) was certainly a nostalgia trip for me, I was shocked how similar their university campus was to mine. The cafeteria, the corridors, the classes, the material of the walls, pillars, railings... wow! It was bringing back so many memories.
The story was interesting in the beginning and I enjoyed the slice of life presented here, the relationships between the characters and the development of their friendship. It's not a very different or unique plot, it's very average but it doesn't make it less enjoyable.
One thing of the plot that was a bit more unrealistic was the coincidences when it comes to the ML knowing sign language and how many people around Sae seems to know it, learn it or pick it quite quickly, but could be worse.

When it comes to the characters I liked all of them in the beginning but I wish we got equal development of Keita as the others in the group, he was left more as a secondary character than anything and not much it's done with him sadly.
On the other hand, while I enjoyed the premise and start of Sae as a character, as the show progressed I grew more and more frustrated with her as well as her dynamic with Kai. Sae was very selfish and although she's called out on it multiple times by Kai (I applauded this) she really doesn't change. There is very little progression of her character in terms of personality and maturity. Kai is the naive nice guy that keeps chasing a girl that has too many issues that in my opinion should tackle before dragging him in and out of her life every time she has an outburst. Towards the later episodes it became annoying to watch and I was really hoping they wouldn't end up together, I thought it was the healthiest for both of them.
In my opinion they didn't work well as a couple nor they had that much chemistry to begin with, at points Kai seemed more her therapist than her love interest. Kai kept showing interest continuously for her, but she kept changing her thoughts for him constantly and many times she was just very stiff standing there doing nothing.
I liked more the secondary couple even though their story is not as deeply explored, but it was cute.

Sae's mother was also quite annoying to watch at times. In earlier episodes she was almost treating Sae as she was a guest in her house, saying things like that she could stay X amount of time longer in the house before becoming independent and so on. She came across as the detached mother that wants her kid out of the house as soon as they turn 18 (or university in this case). But then later on she's super clingy, wanting her to go to Germany with her, meddling between her and Kai and trying to marry her off to the guy she likes... It was weird and inconsistent and considering how selfish Sae was, the mother barely receives any of her rude answers or tantrums.

I enjoyed it for the most part because of the nostalgia, the friendships and most of the characters. It's an easy watch and I would recommend if you like slice of life.
The romance here it's not the fireworks/sparkles type if you're looking for that, it's a slower progression generally speaking.

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Overall an enjoyable ride with great acting and scenery but plot and some characters are amiss

I really struggled to decide on a rating for this show. Overall I liked it but there are a couple of things that irked me.

There are two main things I really liked in this drama, one of them was the scenery and photography with such beautiful landscapes. The other one was the acting. I think most of them did a great job, but I have to mention especially Ji Chang Wook, Kim Mi Kyung and Kim Do Eun, their characters and the way they portrayed them are of the best of the show for me.
The relationships between characters were very good and I liked the banter and funny bits in this show.

I like slice of life dramas so it's no surprise that I found the plot interesting and entertaining and I thought they generally did a good job in also including the sisters' story lines, although I do wish Jin Dal's story had gone in a different direction ultimately and didn't end up with her ex, but I give it a pass; and I wish they had dwelled more on Hae Dal's past as well as the present relationship with Gong Ji Chan. Other than that I do not have complains about the subplots in this drama, they were all entertaining. I wish I could say the same of the main plot but alas, I can't.

The main plot, this is what I consider the two story lines of main leads love story and the "scandal" of FL are unnecessarily unsatisfactory. I say "unnecessarily" because they had more than enough time to explore this in detail and have a more realistic and natural progression than the one they chose.
I didn't like how the conflict with Yong Pil's father was tackled and solved. If the change of that man had happened slowly from the start of the show and they had shown the change progressively it would have had a pass but as it is, that man didn't deserve redeeming in such a quick way. He was abusive both verbally and physically to both his son and the neighbours and it had been 20 years of the passing of the wife. He never had the excuse, but with the amount of time it had passed even less so. The man doesn't even stop to think twice about how his wife would feel at the way he was acting. I don't think he deserved forgiveness in the manner it was given considering how that plot line was developed. But I wish the story with Yong Pil's father was less melodramatic if it was going to be tackled like that. The show really made me despise him a lot, and I was very annoyed when it ended like that after all the drama. The script just decided to make him think in the end but realistically a man behaving like that doesn't change that easily or quickly, more so when everyone around him is enabling him and he's playing the victim. His sense of ego was way too big to see the light in that manner but of course we were running out of time in the drama so it had to be done quickly.

On the other hand, the plot with Eun Joo was also solved too quickly for my liking, especially when it was a major plot point in the story. This again should have been solved slowly throughout at least a couple or three episodes. I do also partially agree with some of the other comments here in the fact that FL should have been more active in the solving of the issue and that her character did suffer inconsistency throughout. At some points she was shown as independent and head-strong, and at others weak and very passive. There are a few instances in which I could see or agree with that passiveness, in a way in which when you're being attacked constantly it gets to a point you just want to avoid the drama and sit still and do nothing because you are just too fed up. But if they were going more for this idea I think it should have been done better in terms of execution. Her stance changed and was ambiguous at times so it could get a bit frustrating.
So I do think it was solved too quickly but I'm half half when it comes to the "how" it was solved. A part of me thinks it's realistic that we don't even see major consequences other than Eun Joo reading the new's article because life be that unfair in real life too, or because we can more or less imagine how it continues. But another part of me just wishes we had seen the consequences of her actions because she pissed me off so much lol

As usual, SML romantic interest tends to be very pointless and it's not exception here. He really added nothing to the story and had he been just another friend in the group it wouldn't have made any difference to the plot. Also although I do know people in the characters ages that hasn't had a relationship ever, I still think that having more than one character like that is a bit unrealistic. At least they should have mentioned them dating around but not settling or other things like that. Especially in the case of Sang Do I think it would have worked well. Oh, but you want Sang Do be interested in FL? Easy. Make him a divorced man for example, and he had a crush for her when young and when seeing her again he gets a bit of a crush back. I don't know, there are many ways. As it is, his story line was pretty absurd.

The ending is a bit, I don't know, I'm not disappointed but also not super happy and the cameo of whoever-that-woman-was was pointless. It reminded me of that pointless ending in "Behind Your Touch" with another cameo that added nothing to anything. I'm not going to lie I did wish FL had gone with ML to Switzerland. After being apart for so long I get it was not a deal-breaker to have a long distance relationship for some more time, but at the same time she being a photographer made so much easier in my eyes to move with him for a while and work from there. Either way, it was a cliché of one of the leads going away last second and it could have been avoided entirely, but oh well.

This drama doesn't portray the typical romcom love story with fireworks, so if you're looking for that kind of romance this might not be for you. It's a slow rekindling of a relationship in a more muted and realistic way. Sure, especially FL does act more like a fangirl with the butterflies at times but the progression is more subdued.

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