Twinkling Watermelon (2023)

Cheong Ah and Yi Chan steal the show

A heart warming drama full of cute, fluffy, comedic, chaotic and emotional moments. You will feel butterflies for the cute romance that brews, get teary eyed during the emotional moments of the characters and hate the guts off the evil ones. The entire cast be it the leads or the supporting ones nailed their roles.

The star of the show would be Eun Soo as her acting of a deaf and mute Cheong Ah touched hearts. She was phenomenal not just with the sign language but with emotions she showed through her eyes of a girl who is only looking for some affection which she never got. Girl didn't even have to say a word to bring tears to the eyes of the viewers.

Hyun Wook as the chaotic and dramatic Yi Chan started off as annoying brat whose only goal is to impress his crush grew on to become the greenest flag. A boy who became the light in the dark world of a poor traumatized girl and changed it to something beautiful, bright and vibrant world. Be it his comedic timings or his cute fluffy chemistry with Eun Soo or his loud and chaotic yet sweet relationship with Ryeoun, everything was done extremely well.

Ryeoun certainly knows how to pull off both comedic and emotional moments extremely well. His emotional confrontation with his father in E1 or meeting and saving his mom in the past, these moments were enough to get eyes teary. Seol In Ah was charming as ever, she still looks like a teenager in a uniform.

I would say the show is a must watch if you want to go for some 90s themed cute high school kdrama.

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Heartwarming, tear-jerking and hilarious

One of the best kdramas I've watched in a long time. Everything from the acting, the chemistry between all the actors and the humor was so good. I basically never cry but this managed to get some tears out of me. Of course, I didn't give it full scores as there were some questions left unanswered, such as CA moving abroad and how YC managed to marry her or how everyone reacted after EG left, and other small things ... but its mainly just nitpicking, fate always has a way and not everything needs to be shown. I genuinely fell in love with all the characters and I'm sad that the series had to end, and what a beautiful ending it was. You won't regret watching this, I promise.

Long live Life - Viva La Vida

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One of the best of 2023

There are so many dramas that get made with the intention of communicating some grand message about some societal problem or depict something particularly provoking in the hopes of making ground breaking commentary that sticks in viewers minds for years. I feel that in the hopes of achieving this goal a lot of dramas fail to tell a good story. I think that writers and directors often forget that in telling a great, entertaining and memorable story they will usually end up fulfilling the goal of sending a message that sticks in people's memories for years to come. Twinkling Watermelon is one of those dramas. This drama and My Dearest were the only two truly great Korean dramas I watched in 2023.

I HATE teen and music dramas. This was amazing enough to make me sit through a combo of both.

TW is a typical supernatural time travel, music drama that revels in many of the drama tropes that we are used to. At the same time it has a new and fresh energy from mixing genres, inspiring nostalgia, and introducing less well known actors to us. I usually can not stand to sit through music/band dramas but TW just grips you and does not let go. It's funny and heart breaking and joy inducing all at once. It does all of this while bringing awareness to the plight and strength of the hearing impaired, while tastefully depicting the ignorance and lack of consideration that they have to endure.

I think that the drama does a great job of showing a viewer how they can better themselves and their relationship with other people and easily be more considerate of the hearing impaired.

I love the ending. It's such an amazing surprise.

It's honestly almost perfect. That's it.

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(Be prepared to be rolling on the floor from laughter and also having your eyes bawling out…!)

I love how the series conveys many emotions and realistic situations although it’s about a time travel ! I would recommend it even if you are not a big fan of these type of plots because it deals MANY topics like child abuse, ableism and even depicts CODAs in a right way !
Honestly the whole series was just incredible. The beggining of the time travel was slightly confusing but things quickly gets untangled so just trust the process !
The last episodes (13-16) were really everything for me ! Everything started to be untangled and on top of that I was crying non stop…???
The last episode was THE BEST and got me sobbing, devastated then just purely happy for every single character ! This series is really the best I’ve ever seen until now (then come Vincenzo, Squid game, The Penthouse and Revenge Note !) and had the best ending you could ever have dreamt of for a series ! I really recommend it.

Now let me break down how I felt and on specific points but honnestly just overlook those negative details !

Before we get down to this, I want to say thank you to the writers because they made me like se kyeong again in the last episodes !


The OST are just incredible. I keep listening to them. I also love the fact they play iconic songs like "tears in heaven" by eric clapton or even "Sunset Glow" by BigBang.

The series is really realistic in the way it's told though there were some anachronisms but who cares right! Overall, they really respected timelines and even for small references like the calgary jersey yi chan wore or the airports name !

The cast did so good with the Sign Language ! I love how natural they looked like. Then they embodied so well their characters especially Ryeoun and choi hyun wook <333. I've always loved the latter and got to discover more of him and ryeon and I'm definitely not gonna stop looking for their future projects. Btw, I'm still waiting for Weak Hero 2 lol ! I can't forget about it ofc.

The only bad things in this series (and these just small details here) would be the way writers forced too much the romance between se-kyeong's daughter and ryeoun... Like they don't have the chemistry, she is so annoying (btw I had to take a break of one month from the series at episode 7 because of her, she was being SO annoying but with her background being unveiled afterwards, I got to hate her less lol -I still hate her tho-). At this point, eun gyeol had more chemistry with everyone except her.

EDIT : AS I SAID IN THE BEGGINING,I GOT TO LIKE HER AGAIN AFTERWARDS. SHE GAINED MY HEART BACK BECAUSE IN THE FIRST EPISODES SHE WAS ONE OF THE BEST CHARACTERS OF THE SERIES ! Now she has gained back that place !

A quick shoutout to how open-minded the kids were for that period (1995) even assuming and joking on the fact he might be gay and/or having a crush on Lee Chan.

Now I gotta say this, we need a BL with Ryeoun and Choi Hyun Wook because they have THE chemistry we don't have in every BL ! But in this series I could definetely not imagine a relationship between them because of their situation cuz we're not seeking for a sweet home alabama series yk. Tbh Se-kyeong and Cheong-ah had SO much chemistry until writers f*cked se-kyeong's character (not gonna spoil so I'mma stop here lol).

As I went through the whole series,I also hated three things :
- How dumb se kyeong and eun-gyeol were when they wanted to because how come things didn’t click when he wore a squid game outfit and she mentionned the series ?? Other things like this continue but they continued to ignore all this and writers stretched that ep13..
- Why did writers made cheong ah character only centered around her romance with lee chan at some point (for 2-3eps)? To the point she would only talk about sekyeong’s choice btw Lee chan and eun gyeol with her ? when she meets her eventhough she could have spoken with her much more and deepen their friendship since sekyeong (I knew it’s not really her but no spoil !) knew sign language.
EDIT : Fortunately, she stopped that at ep14 and was genuinely sekyeong’s friend from then on !

- Then once again ! The romance between sekyeong and eun-gyeol sucks and was boring asf. The worse was that because of their unwanted romance, sometimes (especially starting at ep11) the plot was stretched out just to see them whimpering over each other and their lives ?This could be what really dropped the rate a little imo.

But don’t get pushed away from the series by the beggining of my review because it was really incredible. The cast and the acting was sensationnal,emotions were perfectly delivered, the cliffhangers were just on point. I went through so many emotions : from joy, thrill to sadness, empathy. Lee Chan is definetely the best character ever because he is very complex. Cheong ah as well and her background is really heartbreaking…
Afterwards both couples were funny to watch but still main couple had chemistry, what eun gyeol and se-kyeong still didn’t have.

This series will and has to become a classic !

SHOUTOUT TO THE BAND MEMBERS. They were gorgeous, funny and so kind❤️. Hope to see more of the cast ! Halmeoni/Grandma is so precious as well❤️ !

ANOTHER SHOUTOUT TO CHEONG AH’S FATHER ?❤️. Eventhough he wasn’t there for her when she needed it the most, when the time came he started to redeem himself. You could also see how caring he was. Glad he made the step-family stop the abuse! That witch step mother really was annoying and ableist at that…

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youthful, romantic, comforting.

I'm not the biggest fan of time travel dramas, but this was one made me reconsider my opinion of it. I mainly watched it because of choi hyun wook as the other characters were slightly unfamiliar to me and it also included a hearing impaired character which always intrigued me whenever they appeared in dramas but I stayed until the end as the presence of the other characters made it even enjoyable.

The mixture of friendship, high school, family and love was nicely potrayed. The most I enjoyed was the chemistry between yi chan and cheong ah. I loved and adored them very much!! Learning about cheong ah's past was aslo very interesting.
All the characters, especially the students were refreshing and heartwarming to see.

Honestly, I loved the setting whenever it took place in the past rather than in the modern days. The modern day scenes just seem a bit awkward to me for some reason. Maybe because I'm such a nostalgic person ^_^. So if you are one, you should definitely give this drama a chance.

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It is a good drama.

It's a good drama; it's funny and quite entertaining. I liked the acting of little Eun gyol. it was refreshing to watch it. The visual, acting and OSTs are the best. The relationship between father and son. It was a reality check that our parents too have gone through tough times , it is us who are taking them for granted. There are things that they did not get but tried really hard to give us the love and safety. They are willing to do anything for us, they too try hard to be a good parent. But there are many things that remain unanswered and kind of feel like a plot hole for me.


Spoiler alert:-




1. Eun Gyol, the fact that he knew he was in the past and kind of accepted it, but still, he called Se Kyoung "ajumma" and wanted to hear answers from her about the things she did in the future. Like, bro, how is she going to answer it?

2. On Eun Yu, She got into time travel after finding out that her dad was cheating on her mom. First of all, she wasted so much time on finding 'her mom's first love'. After finding out that her mom's first love is her dad, she never even tried to know her father or follow him; she saw him flirting and all, but never checked what her father is doing. It was as if her whole point of going to the past was pointless, except for being a love interest of Eun Gyul.

3. If Eun Gyol and Eun Yu were supposed to go to a place together to meet the master, But for Eun Gyol it was the same bookstore from where he came from the future, If that was the case, then wasn't Eun Yu supposed to go to the airport since she came to the past from there?
 
4. The ending was so rushed that many things just got lost. Eun Yu never found out what her father was doing with the women. What happened between Choi Se Kyeong and her biological father? 

5.Yoon Cheong Ah's father said that they are never coming back to korea, so how did they ended up in Korea? Where and when did Yi Chan and Chung Ha meet and get married?

6. We know what Eungyol's life is like at the end. But what about Eun Yu? How is her life going?

7. The fact that Ha Yi Chan and Yoon Chug Ha's love story starts after 10 episodes. when they are supposed to be the main couple.

8. What about Eun Gyol's brother? Does he still like Eun Yu?

These are my opinions. I liked the drama, but the fact that there are so many questions that are not answered and it made the ending really rushed and forced. The whole drama revolves mainly around Eun Gyol. We did not get the story of the other side characters.

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WATERMELON....SUGAR!

Surprisingly this is a good drama, the best of this drama was the casts. Everyone had genuine smiles and great collaboration between them. I would give credit to the main actors who made this drama special.

Ryeoun as Ha Eun-gyeol
The only hearing person in a deaf family (Mom, Dad, & older Brother). Eun-gyeol was a perfect model student by day, but at night he lead a double life as a talented guitarist in a band. After having an argument with his father, where his father learned of his musical interest, he time slipped to 1995 and met his parents when they were Junior in High School. He surprise to know that his dad wasn't deaf but a hot-blooded youth whose in love with a girl from Seowon Arts HS, Choi Se-kyung: a student major in cello not his mother. Eun-Gyeol also learned there's accident causing his father lost his hearing and stirred his attention to the deaf girl Yoon Cheong-ah as he knew her as his mother. He strive to create a different outcome of his parent's future and to avoid the accident. ***Ryeoun was a delight to watch, he's not only great play guitar but also sign language, it wasn't fake sign language - no! He knows it well. His expression was excellent & great smiles, speech deliverance is awesome.

Choi Hyun-wook as Ha Yi-chan
A hot-blooded youth whose worry nothing but so cheerful and confident. He lives with his grandmother who owned an accommodation house named Snail House. He's in love with beautiful Choi Se-kyung: the cello goddess of Seowon Arts High School. Choi Hyun-Wook made a bet with Se-kyung he would be in a band and made her girlfriend. The bet was on, but out of the blue a crazy boy Ha Eun-Gyeol show up challenged him of her heart. With some reason that strange boy Ha Eun-Gyeol kept follow, helping & protect him. He finally warmed-up to him and they became good friend. ***Choi Hyun-wook is full of energy, has beautiful voice, good in play guitar.

Seol In-ah as Choi Se-kyung / On Eun-yoo
Se-kyung was a person considered to be everyone's muse with her beauty, talent and elegant aura, but she would have an unhappy marriage that made her a controlling mother to her only daughter On Eun-Yoo. Eun-Yoo was on the same situation as Eun-Gyeol, she determined to change her mother's love life so she would have a happy marriage, she looked for the man of her mother's first love. Eun-Yoo and Eun-Gyeol had an understanding to help each other shaping different destiny for their parent. ***Seol In-Ah beauty and sunshine character are significant with character she's portraying.

All ends well, great drama.

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It is decent but it could have been better if the pacing was made well.

It is a nice story and up till the end, I have liked it. But for all the hype that it has, it still did not reach the standard that I have expected it will have.

I have heard about this kdrama months ago when a lot of people hype it up in social media. I have watched some few scenes and it really did not interest me. I mainly watched this because it is always in the list of kdrama recommendation for rom coms. So I tried it. It did make me finished it till the last episode which is a rare for me as most of the famous kdramas out there, I did not even finished like Queen of Tears, Crash Landing On You, etc. More likely because I already predicted the end. This one, I still reserved my predictions as there will be countless possible results of how Ha Eun Gyeol's, the Main Character, actions will change the future and there could be so many possible scenarios for it that I just have to see what the writer decided to pick.

It was good, but I am hardly satisfied, The ending is so rushed out when it already suffered some pacing issues halfway through the episodes. Halfway through the story, there are some filler scenes that are not really that necessary, like flashback scenes, dating scenes, casual scenes that indeed has some use for the story but was not integral. The writer in me had already figured that they are just adding scenes to fill out the running time, I find myself speeding up the scenes more and more. Then it came to the end, and even the first half of the last episode was lengthen. The scenes of what happen now in the new future was super rushed that it leaves me dissatisfied, The whole purpose of the time travelling was to change the future but we only saw glimpse of it which is so dumb in my books. The CODA message in the book stating that its meaning was to wrapped things beautifully as it is nearing the end was contrary to how this drama ends, it was not wrapped out well.

Most of the consequences was not told. There are a lot of missing information and how that future came was missing. It felt it needed one episode more which should not have been as the past episodes could have been made into a normal pace, that way we can have more space for the future arc. They should have been tackling the future arc from episode 15 or the very first minute of episode 16, but the writer decided not to which is a major fail for me. But overall it;s not bad and I like it even if it did not reach my standards.

Shin Eun Soo and Choi Hyun Wook's performance was good and they have silent chemistry. I like the way they are casted and they are perfect for the role. Ryueom on the other hand was a good actor but he was overly acting in this, there are scenes that needs mild shocked but his face and body acts like the world ends. He is good on portraying different emotions and he is ver convincing in his acting, too convincing in fact that it made me question if I am just too chill or the character he was portraying was over-reacting. When he is happy. he is super happy; when he is sad he is overly sad; when he is angry he is overly angry . I was waiting for the controlled emotions instead of blatant manifestation of it but I never saw it. Seol In Na was always good in terms of her acting skills but I think she fails this one in different way. For one, she was miscasted for me. She did not fit the image of a teenager, she had played so many mature roles before aging beyond even her real age around 30s that her playing a 17 year old girl despite how young she looks, still will not make it convincing for me. Aside from that, her character was pretty annoying and antogonistic in a way that when romance happens, I was just not convince.

They have no chemistry with Ryueom, I felt that their romance plot was haphazardly made. I did not know what Eun Gyeol sees in her. When their scenes came, it felt like they were siblings instead. I can't feel the tension, longing, care and affection between them. They have no chemistry. I can't even romanticized Ryeoum because my Unnie side will rise up. I can only see him as a teenager guy who was struggling with how life made him mature early and how he needed someone to care for him. He felt minor despite how I am only 24 and he was 25 in real life, it felt violating. When I see him with Choi Se Gyeong, I felt like shouting in the screen :"Focus on school first kid and drink your milk". He was a kid in my eyes. With his romance plot with CSG it felt unsatisfying. Mostly half of the drama, CSG was unconsciously painted as a hindrance and something annoying that stops him from achieving his goal. I fell antagonizing feelings for her. She was not introduced well. Her character was misintroduced as someone annoying and she felt wrong afterwards. It could have been better if they introduce CSG as a simultaneous or synchronous character instead of a surprise one, this way she will be loved more and be understood, we would even cheer for her as we knows what she is doing.

Overall it is good, but it could have been better.

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I feel like I want to eat watermelon too

when I saw the dragon studio logo, I was obviously going to watch the drama. At first I wasn't interested but there are lots of videos on TikTok showing footage of the drama which looks warm.

Sure enough, when I watched episode 1, this drama was already very interesting. Maybe the plot was a little slow in episode 1 and almost made me distracted, but in episode 2 it started to get more interesting.

I appreciate the acting of all the actors in this drama which is very soulful and beautiful. The sign language they displayed really made me want to remember the sign language lessons I had studied.

I really enjoyed the acting, ost, storyline, production and all the details. I hope this drama will get an award because it is very beautiful and heartwarming.

thank you to all the crew and cast for creating this very beautiful drama.

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Good Enough

Korean Drama '' Twinkling Watermelon '' is a slice of life, music, and fantasy drama.

The drama uses time travel to its fullest, smoothly using it to push the story forward, without forgetting about it once the plot starts unfolding. Rather, it is always there, and spices up the story here and there.

Also, the family drama was at its finest, intense enough to keep things dramatic, but also with sensitivity and sweetness throughout the family interactions.

The music, in addition, was pretty enjoyable, as were the performances by everyone in the cast. And even though the romance was cheesy and not its strongest suit, it was nice enough.

So, overall, seven out of ten.

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A High Quality Drama But The Emotional Weight Is Not As Consistently Strong As You Would Hope.

I’ll start by saying I put off watching this one. I purposely did not watch it while it was airing. There are certain dramas that I know I won’t get the most out of them if I don’t watch them at a time I am most receptive to them.

Disclaimer * I don’t think this was the most receptive time either, even though I enjoyed watching it. I plan to watch it again in the future to see if I can get more out of it.

That said, for now I think it is a 9/10 drama and not a 9.5 or a 10/10 drama. The positives for me are what makes it a 9/10 and not the usual 8.5/10 that I give to solid k-dramas is that it is a heartfelt story, the plot is pretty solid and the acting is pretty good. The reason I won’t elaborate on the positives is because I’ll be honest; apart from recognising it as a solid production, this story did not get me as deep as it ought to have. I’ll go into why I think this was.

Starting from episode 2, although I was aware that time travelling was involved, the abrupt introduction of the time traveling element at the end of ep 2 felt like a sharp turn transition wise. It was not smooth at all. It was like being in a race car and suddenly making an extreme turn with little to no preparation, except this was done with the theme. Usually in dramas that include fantasy, they sprinkle a little bit of the fantasy elements in the lead up to the full blown reveal of the fantastical part of the drama. With this one, it was almost two full hours of a slice of life family drama that seemed rudely interrupted by the fantasy element suddenly being dropped in. And this was my reaction as someone who WAS waiting and expecting the fantasy element.

Another thing was, I couldn’t help but feel like this drama was an amalgamation of several movies, music and popular culture storylines and references, all pieced together. It made a huge chunk of the drama feel like a knock-off, ensuring that I could never really get into it as all I could think was, “they’re copying so and so”. I don’t mind things serving as an inspiration for others but you really have to make it your own and create something new with it, but with this drama, a lot of the concepts and scenes seemed borrowed. Whenever I was drawn into the drama, I’d notice that a scene or concept resembled something else and it would immediately take me out of it.

I have a minor point to make about the way the scenes were cut together. It didn’t affect the majority of the drama much, as it fit that youth-indie style type of film but when it came to the emotional scenes, it felt somewhat choppy aka not-so-smooth transitions. It meant that the emotions didn’t hit hard enough because the viewers weren’t able to sit with those scenes and absorb the depths of emotions before it suddenly changed to another scene. Typically for emotional scenes to work best, there needs to be a build up of emotional tension that is finally released and the cameras should not cut away in the middle of that emotion being expressed. For example, the cameras should not cut away in the middle of someone’s heartbreaking crying scene as it’s like cutting off the climax of emotion right at the top, which results in an immediate plateauing of the emotional weight built up when our focus is shifted to another scene. Instead it should be like a hill with a slow rise to the climatic bump and a smooth decent to the other side of that intense emotion. This must be done in order to properly build and sustain the emotional weight of what the characters are experiencing and their plight, to help forge the bond between the viewer and the character and to allow the viewer to really connect to what the character is feeling.

This fourth reason was the most jarring for me. I have to preface this by saying I’m not trying to assume what’s best for the hearing impaired community, I’m coming at this solely from the perspective of someone who knows what storytelling mechanisms resonate with an audience. That being said, the thing about this drama that made it the hardest for me to get into it was the fact that they dubbed the deaf characters. I can understand from a practical pov why this was done but surely someone in the creative chair should have known how much of the connection and the power of the performances of the actors playing the deaf characters would have been lost by doing this. If you don’t understand what I mean, go watch CODA and tell me that by having the focus of communication solely on the deaf characters’ facial expressions, their sign language and only the silence to convey their lines; you didn’t feel everything they signed just a little bit more deeply. That you didn’t feel the hard hitting angry signing or the soft signing in tender moments that much more. That you couldn’t feel the frustration of the characters through their hands more than with a dubbed voice overlayed on top to explain what they are saying. It’s my opinion that some of the power of the actors’ performances were lost through the dubbing. I’m sure it was useful for Korean viewers to not have to read subtitles but I’d argue they lost something more valuable by doing this. Of course, I understand that having dubbed dramas makes it more accessible for different types of viewers such as vision impaired viewers. I’m not saying dubbing should not be available. Just like I’m not saying subtitles should not be available. I know these are both very useful tools for making dramas accessible to other. What I’m saying is that these should have been optional and the drama should have been released un-dubbed with the option to select dubbing as needed.

If at the end of this you are wondering why I rated it so highly if I found so much wrong with it. It’s because of three things. One, this drama had excellent characterisation. Like truly excellent. Two, I did enjoy watching it. It won’t make it on my favourites list but I really did enjoy it. And three, I like to give dramas and movies their dues. Even if I don’t fall in love with a drama, I still rate them objectively by what they have to offer and what they do well. This drama was a solid, above average and at times, truly above average, drama.

If you ask me what could have made it a 10/10, I’d say, not rushing past the emotional scenes too quickly, not dubbing the deaf characters and finally, trusting the foundation of the story more, which was a story about a boy’s love for his father and vice versa while grappling with the difficulties of being a CODA. If they did this without trying to emulate other films, dramas, music or American popular culture; it could have been a 10/10 drama that stayed with me forever.

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