From Best to Worst – Time Altering

Todome no Kiss's time travel system is of the simpler sort. It's easy to understand and it has a pattern to follow. It's always by kissing, always 1 week and only traveling to the past. There is a darker plot twist to it, but the method is still the same. Eight's reason for time traveling is for his own merit, earning money by deceiving innocent people. It's an easy to understand reason behind his desire to time travel, so this drama is very easy to follow when it comes to understanding the time travel aspect.

I really liked the time altering in this drama. It was easy to understand and there were no exceptions to the rules. Our male lead was stuck in the rouble of a collapsed building for 31 days together with our female lead's father. Her dad din't make it, but he was wearing a watch where the time stopped at 10:33 PM. Our female lead is able to contact our male lead through her father's old phone number. The two can only speak to each other for one minute between 10:33 and 10:34 PM. The time difference between the two is exactly 31 days. Everything has to do with our female lead's father. It's like he was helping them. I think it's easy to differentiate between the past and present realities as long as one pays attention to the storyline. Only episode 14 and 15 were a bit difficult for me to differentiate the two realities, but it all came together in the last episode.

The reason for the time altering in Kairos is to save innocent lives and to uncover mysteries and corruption within the large construction company our male lead works for.

Someday or One Day has a very complex time travel system. After our female heroine travels to the past there is no one who believes her, even she doubts herself. But after other main characters experience the same thing, they all share this tangeled bond. The reason and method of the time travel is very simple, yet so mysterious that nothing makes sense. It's so easy that it's difficult, if that makes sense. Hence Someday or One Day's time travel system will always be hard to wrap your head around until you've finished watching the whole drama. I strongly recommend watching this drama at least twice just to make sure that you picked up on all the wonderful details of this complex system.

Reset, it is an amazing time loop drama. Our main leads suddenly find themselves stuck in a time loop, trying to prevent death and disaster using various different methods. It is extremely well done and surprisingly very entertaining despite seeing them relive the same day throughout all 15 episodes. Seeing them trying to solve the problem they are faced with and escaping the time loop whilst dying over and over again...

The movie Tomorrow I Will Date With Yesterday's You doesn't have any time travel. Instead our two main characters move through time on two different time lines. Our male lead moves normally though time whilst our female lead moves forward but in the opposite direction; meaning when she gets older, our male lead gets younger and younger, and vise versa. I think it's done very well and it makes for an interesting story. It's relatively easy to understand too.

This movie has it all; time travel, time altering and a time loop. The time traveling happens through a time travel machine which I like because it's plain and simple, also most likely to happen in real life. The time altering happens through what they call "cold sleep" in the movie. I haven't heard of it before, so idk if it's already a thing or whatever. But the male lead basically sleeps in this capsule for a few years without ageing (have heard of this before). The time loop, is a time loop. Maybe it isn't a time loop, but that's what I want to call it. I think it's easy to understand how it works when it happens through machines and research labs etc. However, it's less creative and personally I find it a bit boring and unoriginal. But from a realism perspective, this is the ideal for sure.

In Melting Me Softly the two min leads agrees to freeze themselves for the improvement of science and what this can do to help humanity in the future. They don't age when they are frozen. They are supposed to be in the freeze capsule for 24 hours but ends up being in it for 20 years due to outside trouble out of their control. So their youth/conscious mind have traveled 20 years into the future from 1999 to 2019 even though their bodies have been in the same place physically the whole time. It's an easy to understand concept. The science is lacking but for people like me who wouldn't understand it anyway I think this is a good time altering method.

There are no people who time travel in Orange, only letters. It's simple; they receive letters from the future them to help prevent something that will happen in the near future to one of their friends. This movie has a reason for the time altering since it's about saving the life of their friend and lover. The method as to how the letters arrived is a mystery, but yeah. It's easy to understand and it's not heavily dominating the story.

This time altering drama is more complex than what it appears to be. He travels to the past without warning and without any way to get back to the present. The reason for the time traveling seems easy and complex at the same time at first, but you find out later that it's understandable. His body remains in the present in a coma state whilst his consciousness alone travels to the past. It's very obvious that the time traveling exists in his subconscious, but there is always a mystery if that's actually true because it all seems so real to him. In conclusion: complex at first glance, understandable when you reach the end.

Mr. Queen's time travel system is very simple. A player chef that cooks for the Blue House becomes a Joseon queen when he falls from his hotel room and lands in a swimming pool. Similar to Life on Mars; our main character's body lies in a coma whilst the consciousness alone travels through time. He now has the real queen's consciousness in the back of his head whilst he's living that queen life ^3^ So there isn't any body switching involved. But similar to Someday or One Day; he isn't in his own body. The reason for the time travel doesn't exist, there is no reason in it for him. It's a random occurrence that he doesn't have any control over. I love this drama, but the ending kinda sucks, ngl, because of the time travel.

In Time Renegades our two male leads aren't time traveling, instead they are communicating with each other through their sleep and working together to stop a murderer. Together they change things about the future so it's considered time altering. It's simple to understand how they are able to do this. Both were in a very similar accident that could've killed them. They are also each other's (spoiler) reincarnations. Being able to communicate with your past/future self in order to change the future for the better isn't a very hard concept to wrap your head around. 

Triage is a time loop drama where our main character has to save this young man and solve the mysteries within the hospital in order to escape the loop and regain his normal life. In the beginning we feel a lot like our main character; it feels random, why him? But the reason behind why it's the two of them becomes clearer as the story progresses. As for the method of time traveling: he just fails to save him, falls asleep at a certain place and then wakes up at the time where he last slept at that specific place. It tries to make sense, but it's still a bit...? yeah. And similar to Someday or One Day, towards the end of the story, the roles are reversed. It provides a very entertaining story where you almost forget to think about the details of the time travel methods etc.

The time travel method in Seishun Cinderella is quite nice. A love curse is put on a photo of the female lead, male lead and their female friend. All 3 are unaware that it's a curse, only the friend knows it's been tampered with but believes it's a love spell which she asked her other friend to cast on the female lead and male lead because she loves them both. But her friend put a curse on it/the female lead instead. Then 12 years passes since the curse took effect and the female lead is still hopelessly in love with the male lead who rejected her back then. She finds the photo and rips it in two. This causes her to time travel back to the exact moment when the photo was taken. The only way to travel back to her time is to get a "yes" to her love confession. I quite like this method. It's creative enough, simple and easy to understand. But there is a twist to it that I didn't like as much.

Our female lead in Shining For One Thing travels back and forth in time, unintentionally, by deleting old messages on her old phone. At first glance the time traveling makes little to no sense as we see our female lead travel to different points in time in her past with no visible patterns. She also gets thrown back into the present time unintentionally when she receives a notice about a boy falling from the lighthouse. But we learn later on in the series that there is in fact a pattern to this time traveling and that some things we (inc. the female lead) assumed turn out to be untrue. So while the time traveling appears complicated in the larger first half of the series, it makes sense when we gain more information as the story progresses. The time traveling method is nothing unique; creativity 20%, maybe. 

I have yet to complete this drama, but 55:15 Never Too Late reminds me a lot of 18 Again, for obvious reasons. The main difference is that in this drama there are 5 people (instead of 1, like in 18 Again) who become young again. I consider this a type of time manipulation, even though there is no actual time travel happening, because their bodies are going back in time and this offers them a chance to change their future in ways that would've been impossible as adults. I think that when it comes to the time manipulation, 55:15 Never Too Late does a little bit of a better job than 18 Again mainly because there are 5 people instead of 1 person going through this. 

As for the method of this change, I would like to compare it to Go Back Couple because they changed in their sleep. In Go Back Couple they both throw away their rings during the evening,  but they don't time travel until they wake up the next morning. In 55:15 Never Too Late, our 5 main leads does a similar action on the same day, the day before they become young again, but it isn't until they wake up that they experience the change.

Maybe adding 18 Again to this list can be a bit controversial since there is technically no time traveling involved. But I decided to add it anyway (at least for now) because our male lead alters his own time by becoming 18 years old again. One could see it as his body time travels in the present time. As for the method, it's quite meh tbh. 18 Again is my favourite Korean drama, but I have to say that the method that he uses to become young again doesn't make much sense and lack a lot. It's very moving when thinking back on it after completing the whole drama, but looking at it from a more practical, and uhum logical perspective, I have a hard time being convinced that a method like this could be possible. 

In 365: Repeat the Year, our main leads gets mysterious phone calls eerily at the perfect timing. It's a woman who offers them the ability to travel one year back in time. She doesn't disclose the exact method and instead, when the majority agrees to do the time traveling, she makes them risk mass su*cide by driving a limousine off a cliff. It's a success tho...

The time travel system in Twinkling Watermelon is not to be taken too seriously. Someone they think are a stranger just suddenly pops up in a music store and lets them sell their instruments then just sends them on a time travel journey. Turns out there was a reason to it of course, but the metod of time travel was a bit random (but not in a bad way).

Since this is only a 6 minute ad, there are many things that seem confusing because of its fast pace, for slow people like me. Still, if you pay good attention then it will not be hard to wrap your head around this time loop short film ad. Our male lead goes on a blind date (instead of his friend) and meets this girl that he falls for, but he keeps making mistakes during the first date. But the next morning he wakes up he gets an ad on his phone for this do–over drink. As soon as he pays for it, he travels back 1 day in time. He is now able to redo the date and try not to make the same mistakes as last time. He does this over and over again until he is finally satisfied. Then a secret is revealed.

Tunnel's time traveling system is lacking something compared to other contestants on this list. The method is running through a tunnel trying to catch a criminal and then mysteriously just time travel. It provides good comic relief and details to his case, but it serves less of a purpose compared to other dramas on this list. He's the only one who time travels and the only person who knows how it's done. It's a good addition to the story, but I feel like something is missing to properly pull off the time travel trope in this drama. 

Go Back Couple's time travel method is simple yet complex. I don't think that we are supposed to get hung up about the method very much. Basically, the couple decides to get divorced and in separate locations they throw away their ring. When the ring hits the ground, both of them experience an earthquake that only they can feel. But it's not until they both go to sleep that night that they time travel. (spoiler) In the last episode we see two Gods that look like them having a similar fight like they had on Earth, hinting towards that they time traveled by the will of the Heaven's.

Our heroine in Don't Disturb My Study travels back to her high school years by reading a book that her best friend wrote about our heroine from that time period. When reading she falls asleep and then she time travels to the past. She gets to be with her mother again and she does learn some important things, but except for comic relief, I feel like it's a bit plain. It isn't the main focus of the story, it could as well be just to add something extra so that more people would watch it. It's a drama worth watching for sure, but when it comes to the time traveling, compared to other contestants on this list, it isn't the brightest.

Tiger and Rose is a cute drama, but I think that the time traveling was an unnecessary addition and that the drama could've worked just as well without it. The time traveling is barely even mentioned. Our heroine travels to the past by passing out after falling ill from overworking. She is confused for like 2 seconds and then everything is fine. Then at the end of the drama she wakes up and returns to the present. Too simple and absolutely unnecessary.

I did not enjoy Queen In Hyun's Man as much as I had hoped. This was largely due to the disappointing time travel aspect of the drama (the historical incidents weren't very interesting to me either, but that's another story). The time travel method is kind of meh. I mean, I could see it work if there was a body switch to the future instead, but not actually traveling to the future in physical form. It's a really risky method to have to be close to death to be able to time travel. I guess one could compare it with Todome no Kiss on that matter. But my main reasoning for favouring Todome no Kiss over Queen In Hyun's Man is because of our male lead's reactions to the occurrence. Otaro (Todome no Kiss) have an actual reaction to the strange time traveling whilst our male lead in this drama seems so indifferent to it all. His reactions are so boring. He doesn't seem shocked at all. It's too bad because I had hoped to enjoy this drama, but sadly I wasn't able to keep watching (I've seen 8 episodes). Todome no Kiss also has a rule: they always travel one week to the past. But in this drama he just travels to the future to the exact same time as our female lead every time. Why? How? Disappointing.