The story begins at the present time where Huang Yu Xuan & Wang Quan Sheng love each other so much, then they experienced time travel to change the situation as death has separated them.
The female lead Huang Yu Xuan went to the past to become Chen Yun Ru, she hoped Chen Yu Ru's fate would change the better future of all of them.
The male lead Li Zi Wei/Wang Quan Sheng went in time travel back and forth to the future and to the past, but found out whatever happened - death was always in the way.
Everything was told alluring and made me unable to guess what would happen from one episode to the next.
The hard efforts of Huang Yu Xuan & Li Zi Wei/Wang Quan Sheng to change destiny and the future, the friendship among Chen Yu Ru & Li Zi Wei & Mo Jun Jie, and the mental illness of Xie Zhi Qi/Xie Zhong Ru in time travel.
I keep on saying WOW when the storyline change dynamically.
I couldn’t predict how the story gonna end up. I was even ready if the ending is bitter sweet after seeing the beauty of the complexity of the story.
I am quite satisfied with the ending, and will definitely watch again.
A very good drama that is hard to find a match.
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A precious drama that makes you glued to the screen to the end
I got into this drama thanks to AvenuX' Youtube channel and the many good reviews on this drama. Indeed this drama has not disappointed me.Story:
While the drama seems to be a dramatic love story at the start, it turns out to be one of many other genres, such as crime mystery, science fiction/fantasy, and life drama - and each of them done so well and integrated into the main story. The characters have the ability to transcend one's consciousness into someone who looks exactly like themselves in the past or the future and this way slowly solving the mysteries that revolve the main couple and their friends.
While the audience thinks that they have finally figured out how the story will develop they suddenly face something completely unexpected which on one hand explains the questions in the earlier part of the story but on the other hand poses many new mysteries. Your brain is constantly engaged while worrying about the main characters' fate. The story keeps the audience at the edge of the chair, esp. the last two episodes blew my mind as it completely surprised me with a final twist that I would have never expected. Despite all the despair, the makers were able to close the drama beautifully and convincingly.
It reminds me of one of these good mystery Japanese dramas with the main storyline being the love story of the two protagonists. And for the first time, I realize that with this technique the creators were able to recreate a dramatic love story of life and death similar to 3 miles of cherry blossom or ashes of love without repeating the same concept.
Another wonderful aspect of this drama is that it manages to integrate many difficult social topics such as school bullying, homosexuality, suicide, mental issues, etc. but they don't feel forced but flow extremely naturally.
Acting:
the acting of the main leads is just outstanding. Keep in mind, the story of this drama is extremely complicated with souls transpassing bodies - if this is not well reflected in the acting, the whole drama would become a failure. But thanks to the outstanding cast, this did not happen.
I am in awe with Alice Ke and her skills. She is 35 this year and managed to play a character about half her age with two different personalities so convincingly. You immediately see which characters she is playing (even when one character is faking to be the other one, you can clearly see that!). Her emotions are always right on spot - not too much, not too little. She won the Golden Belt in 2016 and I am not at all surprised. Greg Hsu was very good too. Esp. well done is his performance playing a high-school student, a young adult, and a nearly middle-aged man. Though I was not so taken by the chemistry of the two main leads I still find their love story very beautiful and their acting superb.
OST:
The music is also a great part of the drama. Both title and ending songs are beautiful, the text perfectly reflects the mainline of the story. They also use a lot of symbols that with a close look you will find they have all their meanings. I also very much enjoy the background songs and Last Dance from Wu Bai.
All in all, a great drama worth your time and I can only recommend to anyone.
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An artistic masterpiece that tugs at your heart strings
This might be the best drama I have watched in the last year. Everything about this drama was perfect.The OST is wonderful (there is one song that I keep playing on repeat since watching this). Every single song matched the mood perfectly and highly contributed to the overall experience.
The acting was out of this world, all of the characters did amazing, but I really liked Greg Han and how he was able to convey the different people and different ages and levels of maturity, it was absolutely wonderful.
The story has so much depth, so many plot twists, it honestly had you on the tip of your toes the whole time. Once I started it I was unable to put it down. I had to know what happened next. I tend to accurately guess how most dramas are going to end and the developments that will happen, but this one kept me guessing which was absolutely amazing.
The side characters are wonderful and it is great to see how they change and develop as the story goes. The "world" is really well constructed. You get to experience how things were back then as the story moves to the past, which was a bit reminiscent of the Reply series.
This drama is a wonderful slice of life mixed in with time travel and a murder mystery. All in all I am extremely surprised that is is not more popular than it is since it might be one of the best things to come out recently.
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Originality
Ambitious and complex story
Good cast who portrayed multiple characters, time periods and a wide range of emotions
Not using stupid misunderstandings to create conflict
Not dragging this out to too many episodes
I did like this drama, but the back and forth on the time travel wasn’t completely clear (not sure all of it made sense) so I stopped being logical and just watched for the emotions at the end. (They don’t follow the time heist rules for time travel.)
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Wow!
I have never posted a review on here before, but I just had to for this show! First the acting was phenomenal, the story was amazing as someone with ADHD it held my attention all the way through! I literally stayed up all night watching it! Everything about this drama was captivating. Thank you to the cast, the crew, the writers etc… I will definitely be watching this again and again! If you want to watch something that is going to make you think and keep you guessing plus have a great love story this is the drama for you! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!Was this review helpful to you?
Sheer Perfection
I thought I had written a review of this, but I guess not. At the time, I was likely overwhelmed with feels regarding this drama. It absolutely blew me away--the acting, writing, intensity. Everything about it was perfect and for the first few weeks afterward, I kept looking for another drama that could match it.I didn't find anything.
I watched this much earlier in 2020 and I thought then that it was a contender for my favorite drama of the year. I adore time loop / time travel stories, but it's rare that I encounter one as magical as this. I've never wanted two people to be together more, never wanted a happy ending so much. This drama will tear your heart out and step on it, leaving you absolutely believing in soulmates, people who are destined to be together.
This drama is a masterpiece, and if you haven't watched it already, you're seriously missing out.
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beyond words
I will be brief: This was something else. It's a must watch for everyone, romance lovers and people who just love beautiful stories. I adored the main couple and rooted for them so much. The romance was both familiar and epic. This couple were meant to be and your heart will ache for them. The soundtrack and the opening theme were stunning. I won't get into the time-travel aspect of this drama but I also enjoyed this aspect immensely. As the episodes progress you think you have things figured out, you think it's going one way... and then it hits you with another twist and turn and you will be lost for words again. Supreme story-telling with an intricate and profound plot.I swooned, I cried, I felt heartbreak and happiness along with the characters. SO MUCH LOVE FOR THIS DRAMA. I would have to try really hard to fault this drama, and even then it would still be a 10 in my heart. I loved the ending and I recommend watching the extra ending on YouTube but honestly I loved both endings. I couldn't stop thinking about this drama for about a week after I finished it, and even now I think about it and it makes me giddy.
It has raised my standards of romance and story-telling.
Amazing, stunning, heart-breaking. A masterpiece.
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This review may contain spoilers
A love story more than a time-loop mystery plot
I watched this fucking show only for Greg Han Su ("Li Tsu-Wei" in the story) and the first impression it gave was so diabolical I cannot overstate how asinine the first two episodes are (all episodes are an hour long), considering how there are some lingering plot issues down the line aside from a quick fix ending with some loose ends this pacing decision irks me even more than it should, which brings me to my first point of complaintNEGATIVES
(-) Pacing
The show, even with it's literal theme of time looping, felt like it kept looping and reusing the same romantic/thematic beats again and again, "Huang Yuxuan" (Ko Chia-yen) can only come back to the past and have touching moments with her soulmate THIS many times before it becomes an egregious hairpulling annoyance, it's cute until it feels like the story is freezing up because the person at the receiving end of the feelings can feel conflicted to reciprocate the same feelings again and again and again and again
I love Greg and but the screentime that's given to their budding romance almost feels like the only thing the romance ever does is keep budding, the feelings will pace forward but pseudo-reset when she travels again to the past (the momentum of the plot kind of forces them to not COMPLETELY repeat this weird romantic tug of war of loving/not loving)
Despite how I put this issue here at the start, this actually is to be expected, for some reason this does fit Taiwanese show-making it's this really weird pacing that makes different scenes feel the exact same because they are meant to DO the exact same thing, anyways the fact that this is a noticeable issue even though I watched this show at 2x speed just shows how much downtime there is
(-) The ending
The story wrap up is bad, there's always a copium case to be made for "it's not about the end it's about the journey" and that kind of applies to this show because even with my grievances they actually did a lot of effort into the sequence of events that shape it all up,
That being said it's just such a letdown, the actual conflict resolution for the time-based murder mystery plot kind of happens in the last 10 minutes, insane that this is how little time they give to it after 13 hour-long episodes, THAT'S 13 HOURS of set up with 10 minutes of pay off
(-) Loose-ends
The first loose-end is actually related to Wang Chuan-Sheng, him being gay is dropped in here OUT of the blue, there's like a short introduction to the episode where he's shown to be a gay guy who confesses to his crush, gets rejected, outed and bullied........ then proceeds to drown himself, the show genuinely never uses this AT. ALL.
By the end even Chen Yun Ru gets to repossess her body and have a final arc dedicated to her (which I actually liked), but Wang Chuan-Sheng whose body is paraded around for the entirety of the plot, a person who much similar to Chen Yun Ru decides to take his life is not extended the same courtesy of finding peace with himself, given the outcome of the show Wang Chuan-Sheng actually ends up drowning himself.... a not so happy ending I assume
How do they resolve the paradoxical time loop? They kind of......................... don't? The sophistication of the mechanics of the time loop are irrelevant to the plot it's just moreso just in-place for the sake of the story if anything, they never explain what the conditions really are for making it work (idk if the track glitching/skipping is what causes it I could NOT tell),
But then afterwards we don't really understand WHAT happens, the story hints a lot in different episodes that Mo Chun-Chieh and Chen Yun-Ju would end up together but aside from Chen Yun-Ju abandoning the idea of suicide out of the blue (which is just....... wow that was easy), how does Chen Yun-Ju fall out of love with Li Tsu-Wei? What actually informs her change of heart? The "don't kys" speech by Mo Chun-Chieh? (I'm reading these names from imdb god forbid i remember them)
Also Li Tsu-Wei meets Huang Yu-Hsuan when she's a kid, how the hell do they end up together? Don't they have like a generous age gap, they just DID NOT try for the ending it's such a bad send off (don't tell me to watch the movie version)
What actually happens to the class-monitor turned psycho villain? I guess the crime he commits are only possible when the music recorder allows him to go back in time and commit the crime but.... does he then NEVER commit any crimes? What are the logistics of his psychopathy is he a persona that ONLY existed due to the time loop? It's a very strange loose-end
(-) Mo Chun-Chieh
The mistreatment of Mo by the plot feels genuinely outrageous, he's just a TOTAL cuck, he gets cucked and re-cucked so many times it just felt like why was he even there? Just to get cucked into oblivion? He walks on a cuck carpet to sit on his cuck throne with his cuck crown with his cuck scepter adorned with cuck jewels and with a flick of his wrist he can summon a legion of cuck slaves just my god the show HATES this guy.
The way he's put on the poster makes you believe that he has valuable significance to the plot, and not to say he doesn't but his significance is just stamped with the word CUCK, EVEN IN THE POSTER HE ISN'T HEARING FROM THE EARPHONES HE'S CUCKED OUT OF THAT ARRANGEMENT, neither Huang Yu-Hsuan or Chen Yun-Ju want him (until the very end where it's implied Chen changes her mind)
Just some hateful shit
POSITIVES-ish?
(+/-) Plot
I like and hate the plot at the same time, time looping is a saturated genre but elements of the show are able to stand out, there's come crumbs in the distance that made me just want to keep watching, there's a lot of eyerolls, like how many times will Huang Yu-Hsuan spot Wang Quan Sheng on the street before she has to stop the bus only to miss him again and again COME ON,
But despite some of the corniness the idea of this youthful friendship and these 3 friends having these moments in the summer of 1998 just feels right, Huang Yu-Hsuan patching a lot of the issues Chen-Yun Ju experiences by stabilizing her family and social life and then having that back fire when Chen-Yun Ju repossesses her body and cannot fit the mold that Huang Yu-Hsuan left behind, this way Huang Yu-Hsuan leads Chen-Yun Ju to her death the more she effortlessly fixes her life in small ways throughout the show is GOOD writing, the delivery felt too short by the end but it still works,
The romance is repetitive and drags but it still feels juicy every now and then when the setting freshens up, Lee studying up the ladder to get into the same university as Huang and stealing her heart as he originally did, them re-telling the same horrible joke to each other in different timelines, it's this youthfulness that it captures that is really captivating to watch
The mystery is decent and some revelations such as Lee actually being the guy Huang ends up dating in the future are great, the idea of the villain time travelling is interesting on paper but SO poorly delivered it's outrageous with him straight up nonchalantly visiting Huang and just time travelling casually and then we don't even get why he puts Huang to sleep instead of killing her but decides to kill Lee.... well I guess that would end the plot right then and there
(+) Acting
With some glaring misses, I think the main case did a pretty good job and it was pretty easy to tell who was in whose body and at which time because the actors did a good job of channeling some mannerisms that set their personas apart from one another which I actually thought was cool
(+) Greg Han Hsu is insanely hot
(+) Production is actually surprisingly good, there's a lot of different shooting locations, there's some scenes that are repeatedly shown with different new smaller insights and perspectives, some dream sequences that aren't even real are fully shot and put in that really enhances the experience (I particularly love the one with the psycho hall monitor's backstory where they show that he was behind the curtain when Lee came to visit Huang after the "car crash" even though it looks comically stupid it just makes the scene a little bit more sinister than it originally was)
Conclusion
Even with how much critique I've packed into this review, I watched it till the end because I do think there's elements of the show that are very compelling, but the ending is just NOT even there it's such an afterthought and the show feels like it's constantly rehashing thematic beats throughout
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A fantasy melodrama that will have you bingeing in one go
I put off this drama for the longest time because I heard it's very heartbreaking and I was not ready for heartbreak. However, once I started I just couldn't stop, and finished the whole thing in two days.Story and execution:
Due to the time travel nature of the story, its timeline jumps around a bit, but don't worry because the team makes it very clear *who* it is and *when* in time they are at, through the characters' hairstyles/outfits, microexpressions, as well as more obvious plot clues. They also put a lot of effort into symbolism and major motif recalls, making the whole watching experience like peeling an onion... there's always more if you go one layer deeper, and you cry.
I want to say Chen Yun-ru probably had the biggest character development line, and the conversations she has with Huang Yu-hsuan are really quotable. The ending also wrapped up the story really nicely, and if it's not satisfying enough, do check out the extra scene they quickly put together as a thank-you to the viewers. That warmed my heart.
Bonus points to the cultural references, relatable for every 90's or 80's kid. Like Wretch.cc, the blog website everyone went on in the 2000's, or the highly-masked SARS times at one point, etc.
Acting:
We have 35-year-old Alice Ke playing a 17-year-old high school student, and there is 0 weirdness to it. When she acts Chen Yun-ru, she looks Chen Yun-ru. For this I gotta applaud her acting skills and the makeup artists/stylists' efforts. This is also Greg Hsu's first male lead role, and he managed to play 17-year-old Li Zi Wei to someone in his near-40's perfectly. Patrick Shih was a great acting find as well. Also, the villain here actually creeps me out.
OST:
We'll all get Wu Bai's Last Dance stuck in our heads after this LOL
I'm not a huge fan of the opening song, but the ending song's lyrics hit me hard every time. It was really made for this drama.
Also, the insert songs are apparently super character-specific, like Mayday's Hug, or Nine Chen's I Hear Your Voice... if you pay attention to where they were played, you'd know they really put an effort into making a good OST for this drama.
TL;DR: A literary masterpiece. Must watch.
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This review may contain spoilers
Love That Defies All Time, Space, and Places
Some Day or One Day is not only about love so strong it defies time, space, and place, but also touches on the importance of friendship, family, and selflessness.The story was amazingly interesting. Although it may come off as slow for those who are more aquatinted with the more fast paced k-dramas, there’s a totally good reason for it and is worth the time. The pacing of the drama is set up perfectly to explain the plot jumping in between time periods. Sometimes I found myself questioning everything and then the next second balling my eyes out because how the story falls into place.
The story is very well written and thought out. For a time travel drama, never once was I confused with the jumps. Each actor/actress portrayed their character accordingly, not to mention the static of the song Last Dance by Wu Bai each time time traveling would happen distinctly let the audience know when time traveling was about to happen.
They had enough of suspense and depth in the drama that would keep you watching till the end.
A masterpiece that makes fantasy feel real.
Side note: What made me extremely sad was that even until the very end it seemed like Li Ziwei and Huang Yixuan were fated to be together, but the world time and time again tried to dispel all possibilities of this fated encounter.
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Hidden gem
This series delivers on all fronts - time travel, body-swaps, romance, love-triangle, friendships and comedy. This is testament to the to plot and actors. I am not surprised there will be a Korean remake, given its widespread acclaim.The good
Compared to big budget k-dramas it feels a lot more indie and subtle. Straightaway the intro gives off these vibes. Rather than this being a limiting factor, it actually helps deliver the fantasy plot-line. The cast and locations quickly feel authentic and familiar. The OST isn't overbearing and you will definitely either learn to love or hate Wu Bai's Last Dance!
The pacing keeps you invested with plenty of twists along the way. After the first couple of episodes I was hooked.
One of the best romances I have seen in a series. It's very much an insight into a relationship rather than just intimacy.
The two leads are very good. Alice Ko convincingly plays two different characters and captures the pain of losing someone you love. Greg Hsu delivers as leading man material who is both the carefree teenager and jaded adult.
The ending is bittersweet but falls on the sweet end of the spectrum.
The bad
Very little. If I had to nitpick, I found that the immediate willingness of the Uncle to believe in time travel was unrealistic. Although this was probably necessary to move the plot forward. It's also apparent that the budget was a limiting factor. The scenes where Chen Yun-Ru is stuck inside Huang Yu-Hsuan head do feel a little like a school theatre production. Lastly, the plot can get confusing so I would recommend using Google to recap each episode if you are unsure.
In summary, well worth a watch.
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