This is a masterpiece. Little slow in beginning, but quickly picks up and takes you on a wild ride. Everything from the actors to the music to the writing is just perfect. I am now a huge fan of SHK and YJG. They carry their acting with the perfect amount of subtlety, so theres always a small leak of their supressed emotions without entirely giving anything away. The way everyone purposefully acts with the intelligent writing makes it a truly inventive psychological thriller, where the writers did not have to dumb themselves down for the audience. Perfect conclusions for all characters, and this goes to show what a staff team of women can do!
It needed zero romance. Terrible acting from the ML, and zero chemistry. Her reasons for liking him were shallow at best, considering she's a 500 years old demon who fell in love with a cop cause of his sense of justice. This series lives for the punishment scenes which were the best part of it. I would rate this higher if the ML wasn't even there. He was unnecessary.
Pretty forgettable. YSH and JHC (Jin Jae Gyu) were the best actors by far. The plot gets interesting after Ep 3, but it also drags, introducing too many characters and not resolving a lot of the red herrings. This leaves a lot of plot holes and an unsatisfying ending where not everyone gets the justice they deserve. Twists were mostly predictable. Very entertaining series, though, but I doubt I'll ever rewatch.
Ji Sung really needs to take on better projects. Everything post 2021 has not had great scripts, and his acting talent seems to be going to waste. This was very average overall, but Ji Sung's performance carried it enough for me to watch the entire thing. The rest of the actors are just decent, and I found the pacing terribly slow at times.
Ending wasn't satisfying, and a lot of sections of the plot were bad from a story standpoint. Too many plotholes. One of the few kdramas that didn't live up to my expectations. The actors all did an incredible job, but this wasn't anything special. Culprits are revealed very early so there's not really much of a mystery. It's just a lot of back and forth with the ML finding evidence, and the culprits trying to destroy or discredit it, while miserably failing cause of their emotions or their own stupidity. It only gets better near the end when everything gets revealed to the ML a couple episodes after we find out.
I think Jong just hallucinated killing Mun Jo? How he holds his neck at the end and talks about sparing himself reminds me of his military memories when his girlfriend watches. I think he hallucinated himself killing Mun Jo by combining his military memories with his current situation to make a story for himself where he kills Mun Jo. His mind is just completely broken by that point, and at the end you also see Mun Jo being seen alive by both Jong and the cop, plus it didn't make sense why Mun Jo would be killed once Jong realized he enjoyed killing, but dropped the scalpel. They also never found Mun Jo's body, and some of the end shots with the cop leaving the hospital show that she's being watched.
Why would he go back? He made the hard decision to live forever in 1988, because he's much happier there.
If you look at the events of LOM directly, he supposedly went back to 2018 after he recovered from his coma. The other police at the time saved his prosecutor friend, and then he along with her solved the case in the future. He didn't find his life as happy there, though, so he suicided went back to 1988, and decided to stay in the past.
However, there's theories that say he never woke up from his coma and him going back to 2018 was just a higher part of his dream. All the facts he uncovered and events that happened after he woke up were from his imagination. He was always dead, considering he couldn't feel his heart beat before he suicided. 1988 was his heaven place and he decided to go back to it.
This is now probably my top 5 dramas of all time, and frankly an 8.6 is too low in my eyes. This is perfect in every aspect and made me question many of my choices and morals. At times, I found myself conflicted on whether I should be supporting the protagonists or the villains (if you can truly call them that). Everything the ML and FL go through in their individually different character arcs hits hard and I found myself relating to them on every level. This drama conveys what it wants to perfectly, and has one of the greatest and most satisfying endings with a profound message about the control of our own choices I have ever seen. The actors are all perfectly cast, especially the FL (huge KSA fan now), ML, and the child actors are amazing. My heart really went out to them in the most emotional moments, and I'm surprised to see some have left acting for years now in their adolescence. I absolutely love the instrumental soundtrack, and it had me on the edge of my seat in some very tense moments where the tone shifts completely, and becomes more eerie. Everything made sense by the end of the drama, and I never felt like it ever become too slow or too fast. The cases are not just there for the sake of an episode, but rather they remain in the background behind everything going on with the main storyline, building upon it. It'sperfectly paced and some of the direction is so expertly crafted to make some scenes really come to life, especially the final one. This is a one of a kind crime thriller and profound mystery drama that isn't afraid to force it's protagonists to make mistakes and question their choices and beliefs in the face of what they believe should be done, but they can't do themselves.
This really would have benefited from more episodes, unlike most other dramas. The ending was rushed, with so many unanswered questions and plot holes for the sake of wrapping things up. Many things didn't make sense by the end, no matter how much you try to understand them. Even small questions weren't addressed, but overall, it's very worth watching. The parallel worlds part of it is written super well, and the direction is superb. The actors are perfectly cast and play their roles to perfection, although I did find Hang Na overacting at times. It's a very tightly written plot, so no pacing issues, and the twists are great, although it's pretty easy to predict who is the main villain based on their acting alone. Unsatisfying and sad but hopeful ending, but I feel like it couldn't have ended another way.
Masterpiece of a drama. I wish more people knew about it like Vincenzo, which I find much less good. There's no comedy in this, but plenty of dark gritty action. This one deserves so much more attention. I didn't really find any issues finishing it, besides very few plotholes. Acting and story development is on point, so is the pacing for majority of the series, and I thought almost all the plot twists were really well-written, without making it too convoluted. Some were badly placed in the second half, but it never takes away from your enjoyment. It has such a great 90s dreary atmosphere to it that I really enjoyed and the Wound OST is now one of my favourites. JKH kills this role just like always, and so do all the secondary characters and other main leads. I especially loved Hyung Min, Soo Min, Soo, Safari, and Jin Sook. They're all perfectly cast, and there's such a strong theme of love, family, and friendship in this despite all the betrayal. The romance is also perfect, and I found ML and FL had perfect chemistry with one another. I found Shi Hyun (JKH) really pitiful and easy to sympathize with, and a certain moment of his with Jin Sook at the end made me burst into tears. That's not to say almost everyone else in this drama doesn't have qualities that made me sympathize and understand them too, which is why the ending of their arcs hits even harder. I truly wish they could have all had a happy ending, but this is a cruel city after all.
Overall, the good far outweighs the bad parts of this, and I highly recommend it to anyone. Both this drama and the quote below will forever live rent-free in my mind.
"The world is like a mirror. If you spit and curse at it... the world will spit and curse back at you. If you laugh... I'm sure the world will follow and laugh with you, too. "
How is this a fail? If anything imho it surpasses the OG one, and I REALLY liked the British one.
Why dismiss something you haven't even watched? As far as I've read, many people found that the kdrama does certain things better than even the OG, especially with pacing and plot developments. I just finished this for the first time, and this has cemented in my head as one of the greatest crime thrillers I have seen.
Solid 8/10. It got too cheesy and lackluster in the last two episodes for me. I also preferred the fight choreography in the beginning. Music is still really catchy, but gets stale from overuse. Overall great non-serious show to watch.
However, there's theories that say he never woke up from his coma and him going back to 2018 was just a higher part of his dream. All the facts he uncovered and events that happened after he woke up were from his imagination. He was always dead, considering he couldn't feel his heart beat before he suicided. 1988 was his heaven place and he decided to go back to it.
Overall, the good far outweighs the bad parts of this, and I highly recommend it to anyone. Both this drama and the quote below will forever live rent-free in my mind.
"The world is like a mirror.
If you spit and curse at it... the world will spit and curse back at you.
If you laugh... I'm sure the world will follow and laugh with you, too. "
So don't be so serious... and laugh....
-Shi Hyun
internet archive has it. Enjoy!