A masterpiece that could have used a better start

First off, disregard any prior predictions or judgements about the nature of this drama, because you’re gonna be wrong. Coming into this, I was expecting a sweet romance between an author and a psychiatrist. Sure, originally that’s exactly what it was, but the last few episodes of this drama took me completely by surprise in the best way possible. I cried buckets of tears and felt so much pain for the characters, especially our male lead. The topics that this drama discusses are so rarely pictured in film, especially Korean, and I really appreciate that a drama can discuss mental health in such an eye opening and heartwarming way. This drama has really taught me that love, not only the love between the leads, can help us overcome our fears and mental obstacles. Watching this drama was a truly beautiful experience. While I would have loved to give this drama a higher rating, I have to admit that my strong feelings for this drama only really appeared after episode 10. Prior to the climax of the drama, I was quite bored and annoyed by the story. It felt like nothing much had happened at all, and the romance between the leads kind of appeared out of nowhere. Despite the drama acknowledging that Hye Soo is a selfish person, I still hated the way she treated the male lead most of the time. It felt like he was constantly tiptoeing around her trying not to make her mad, and I couldn’t really get into that type of relationship dynamic. In contrast to how she was acting, ML’s declarations of love had me questioning if he and I were looking at two different people, because I would have been done with her shit a long time ago. Despite all this, she definitely redeemed herself as a character in the last half of the drama, but I felt it was worth a mention anyway. If you rewatch the drama, you can really pick up on the hints that the show was giving the viewers about what will happen in the later episodes, especially the visit to Hye Soo’s friend’s sick wife. I can still remember the discussions that the characters had about the beauty of love despite a person’s mental illnesses that might make it difficult for their partner. Overall, if you disregard the slow beginning and the infuriating leads in the first half, this drama is truly a gem that I would recommend to anyone.

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A Classic

Wow, so I finished this drama in less than 3 days, and I have to say that it was one heck of a wild ride. I haven’t watched any other drama that is more than 10 years old besides BoF, and this drama far outshines BoF in my opinion. Still, while I definitely enjoyed this drama (duh, I finished 20 hours of content in less than 72 hours) I still had a few problems with it that I couldn’t really ignore, which I’ll talk about now. First and foremost, I feel like this drama was just too long. When a really long drama has a very quick pace and a narrow plot, we run into a problem where the characters experience one misfortune after the other, leading the drama to become, well, a little too dramatic. The conflicts in this drama felt never-ending, and I would have given this drama 16 episodes at most since some plot arcs were just incredibly cliche and a little out of place, even. I haven’t had this problem with many dramas, but some of the side conflicts were quite boring to me and I had to speed up the video in order to get through those bits a little faster. A couple that stood out to me were the pointless scenes with Han Tae Sun (yeah, I love Lee Jong Seok, but his character in Secret Garden was just not it), mostly because I felt his character didn’t really add anything to the overall plot, and, on a similar note, the whole storyline with Oska’s plagiarism scandal. Just honestly pretty boring and pointless to me. The last thing is not really a complaint rather than a personal preference, but I felt like Ju Weon’s neediness for Ra Im was a little bit ridiculous. Like, come on, it was basically stalker level. I didn’t mind it too much since she liked him back, but it would have been pretty problematic if those two weren’t the main leads, I’m just saying. Overall though, I love the actors (Hyun Binnnnnn!!!) and the extremely wholesome character development and relationships among all of the characters. Yoo In Na acting as Ah Young was a really nice surprise. I swear, this woman doesn’t age! The ending was very wholesome overall - it’s not often that we see our leads have children and get the storybook happy ending, and I was HERE for it. Despite the flaws, I’d say this drama is definitely a classic, and I’m very glad I watched it.

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Pretty much what I expected

Um wow lol that was really bad. On a more serious note, I definitely felt peer pressured into watching this drama by the kdrama community, since pretty much everyone and their mother watched this drama at some point or another. It was full of cliches, annoying characters, cringey acting, and lots and lots of drama, but I still found myself kind of loving the whole thing. It got to the point where it was just so bad that it got good, you know? Geum Jan Di definitely made me almost rip my hair out at times because of how passive she was most of the drama with her feelings, and there’s a certain level of immaturity in Gu Joon Pyo that never went away. Still, this kdrama reminded me of the old days when I used to stay up all night reading bad Wattpad romance books just like this one, so watching Boys Over Flowers really sent me back to my early teens when I read these cliche love stories. Because of this, I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy BOF, because I definitely had a lot of fun with this drama. However, by no means was this drama high quality. A classic, though? It for sure is. I thought that the OST was pretty catchy overall, and the only thing that sort of bothered me at the end (besides all the cliches, although I have a sweet spot for the amnesia cliche so I can’t hate that one) was the fact that the conflict with the mother never really got resolved. Like yeah, we see her lovingly watching her son on the television with her husband, but I was hoping for a more direct confrontation where she admitted how much of a jerk she was for putting Geum Jan Di through so much trouble. Anyhow, while I by no means think this drama is good, it definitely has a place in my heart, and I really can’t hate on such a classic without feeling at least a little guilty. Therefore, I will still recommend this drama to anyone because it’s honestly just a classic that was the start of many people’s kdrama obsession.

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So I binge-watched this

I’m not a binge-watching type of person (usually) since I get bored extremely easily, but today I finished 8 episodes of this drama nonstop. It was that interesting to me. “Why the lower-than-expected rating, then?” you ask. I just felt there was a little too much bullshit there at the end. It’s been a while since I watched dramas over 2 years old (excluding Goblin. I’m on this weird “popular drama” kick where I’m trying to watch all the most popular Kdramas since I usually end up picking very unpopular ones to watch) and I kind of actually forgot how trope-y they used to be. To name a few, I saw the long time jump at the end, gunshot wounds, and family drama. I haven’t seen these in a while in a kdrama and boy, was I not excited to see them ever again. The drama itself was wonderful, and (but don’t judge) it was my first Lee Min Ho drama. I loved the whole cast (Ahhhh Shin Hye Seon! I loved you way before Mr. Queen!), and I have always been fascinated with fairy tales and mermaids since I was young, so this drama was totally my thing from the get-go. I laughed and cried so much, and it would be a huge lie to say I didn’t enjoy the experience. I mean, why the heck would I binge this drama in like three days if I didn’t like it? But some things, like Joon Jae trying to control what Cheong wears all the time (this was also a comment I made in 1% of Something), freaking out about her going to THE CLUB with HER FRIENDS, and kind of just blowing up on her all the time in general (I live around a very hotheaded person, so it’s a pretty sore subject), really pissed me off. I understand that the time jump in korean dramas is kind of a staple, but I thought it was entirely unnecessary and kind of killed the mood for me at the end. I mean, you watch these fellas defeat three goddamn villains, and instead of just living out the rest of their lives in peace, Sim Cheong just had to get her stupid heart disease and abandon everyone for three years. I felt like we never got a proper conclusion with her and all of the side characters. I was still left wondering whether or not they remembered her, and I couldn’t for the life of me understand why Joon Jae was being such a dick to her in front of the family when they reunited. All in all, I thought this drama was of very high quality, and while I do have some problems with it, I have to be honest about the fact that I still enjoyed the crap out of it and would recommend it to everyone I know.

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I should probably stop watching melodramas, huh?

The entire time I was watching this movie, I was puzzled as heck because I couldn’t decipher where the plot was going. Instead of building a solid foundation for a love story, this movie seemed to rapidly take me from one timeline to another, with the two leads meeting up in the most unusual ways possible. Now, while the storyline completely disappointed me (just like it disappointed everyone else), I thought that the chemistry between Jung Hae In and Kim Go Eun was TO DIE FOR, and I would love to see the two of them collaborate in another project (hopefully a kdrama. I need more screen time for both of these lovely people!). I will definitely go check out Kim Go Eun’s other works now, because she freaking stole my heart in this movie (No, I haven’t watched Goblin yet as I’m writing this, don’t come for me please ahah).

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Most unrealistic romance

The romantic development of this drama was close to nonexistent, and probably the only reason why Love O2O didn’t get too low of a rating from me is because I actually found myself kind of enjoying the drama in a “it’s so bad it’s good” kind of way. Just let me complain for a little bit, though. The actor playing Xiao Nai was really stiff most of the time. Though the excuse can be made that “it’s just his character,” it still doesn’t justify his utter lack of expression the entire drama. He’s just not a good actor. Frankly, I noticed that lack of acting skill seems to be pretty prevalent in Chinese dramas especially. There’s many problems with Xiao Nai’s character, as well. He seems to completely lack any flaw and is your typical Mary Sue character. It’s boring. Additionally, I found a problem with him declaring Weiwei his girlfriend and then his fiancee ALL without her consent. Pardon, sir, is this not the 20th century? This shit isn’t gonna fly with me. Now on to Bei Weiwei… sigh. I am gonna be honest. I wanted to punch her in the face for the entire duration of the drama. Though the actress seems to at least have a better grasp on acting, Miss Bei Weiwei herself was a completely infuriating character. I won’t go into detail, but her hopeless pranks on Nai and her absolutely ridiculous questions made me face palm many a time. At the beginning, she was also acting very dramatic about her initial interactions with Xiao Nai. Can we also discuss how the entire drama’s plot seems to revolve around random university kids always trying to ruin Weiwei’s reputation and constant misunderstandings? Yeah, it got reeeaally old after the first five times it was used as a plot device. I know I just went off on a major tangent, but overall this drama was pretty decent as far as entertainment value goes. Frankly, I quite enjoyed the video gaming and the video game development aspect of the show. It is what drew me to it in the first place. With that said, I still spent most of my time making fun of the show rather than genuinely enjoying it. Honestly, just go watch Go Go Squid. It’s similar enough to the premise of this drama, and, though it has its own share of problems (see my Go Go Squid review <3) the characters at least have some dimension and personality.

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Healthiest romance ever hands down

Gosh, the leads' romance is so freaking adorable. I couldn't stop smiling every episode that I saw them together. Besides the romance between the leads, there are also a couple other romances that can be seen blooming around in the workplace and made for really adorable side stories. I've never watched a lawyer drama up until this point, despite how popular they are these days, but I was totally shocked at how easy it was to watch this one in spite of the complexity of some of the crimes that were investigated. This makes for a pretty interesting casual watch because it still requires some effort to keep up with the cases, though not so much that it drains you of your energy when you watch it. There is plenty of really well-done comedy that mostly revolves around Oh Yoon Seo's tendency to jump to conclusions and daydream at the wrong times. This created some awkward, toe curling situations that were really hard, but ultimately entertaining to watch. I totally recommend this drama for anyone who loves law firm dramas (and even if you don't, watch it anyway ;)) and romance. This was a great use of my time 💕 I still think about this drama from time to time…

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Most cliche thing I've ever watched

Cold-hearted ML? Check. Dirt poor but really cheerful FL? Check. "Don't go" wrist grab? Check. Clumsy girl falls multiple times and guy catches her? Check. Guy gets into deadly accident and nearly dies? Check. Relatives trying to keep the lovers apart? Check. Lying to the person you love so they don't get "hurt?" Check. Girl chases guy to airport to stop him from leaving? Check. Unnecessarily long time skip? Check. It's got it all, folks. I'm actually pretty impressed they managed to include literally EVERY SINGLE KDrama trope in this. Listen. If you have a sudden urge to watch the most cliche KDrama in existence, this one here is the one to watch. You're welcome. The only saving grace is the soundtrack.

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Great start that just went downhill

So this one started off really slow then suddenly propelled the story forward with a bunch of time jumps, which made me pretty upset. There's nothing I hate more than time jumps in dramas, and this one had a crap ton of them. The characters were really lovable and I seriously enjoyed that love triangle despite my usual hatred of them, so kudos to this drama for that. I think the overall mood of this story was really cute and I freaking loved the romance between the two side characters a bunch, but the main romance went kind of 0 to 100 halfway through the drama and kind of killed the suspense for me too early. I still enjoyed it and would recommend it for a very cute and heartwarming experience.

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What a toxic relationship

While I never have very grand expectations for any rom-com Chinese drama I watch (they’re just naturally pretty bad, and I always know this when I start a new one), this drama disappointed me quite a bit! Unhealthy relationships aren’t too uncommon in Chinese dramas (sadly), however I was especially concerned when Situ Mo behaved like an absolute child, shut Gu Weiyi out even though he did nothing wrong, and constantly got mad at him and/or expected him to understand her when she explained absolutely nothing. In the beginning of the drama, I wrote that behavior off as them just getting to know each other and going from love-hate to pure love, however she remained pretty rude and childish the whole drama, and I just can’t stand for that type of relationship dynamic. Gu Weiyi also irritated me with his lies when he tried to get Mo to forgive him. Now, what normal person would see that his girlfriend is pissed off for god knows why and pretend to be drunk, hide her food from her so she would beg for him to get it for him, and just kiss her out of the blue for no reason. I don’t know about y’all, but that is the last thing I’d do if my partner was really angry at me. Besides the clear flaws in the lead characters, I also just had a lot of problems with Fu Pei and Gu Weiyi’s scientist guy friend Zhou Lei. Fu Pei reminded me of every single kid from my high school that acted as if he was the coolest motherfucker in existence and disobeyed authorities to impress the girl he likes. That’s all I will say. Zhou Lei would have been fine if he didn’t constantly suspect everyone of doing something behind his back. It was funny at first, but then it just got plain annoying. Overall, the last 4 minutes of the story were pretty enjoyable to watch (despite the lack of plot in the last 4-5 episodes especially, although the entire story pretty much has no plot) and the soundtrack was pretty nice, though I could do with less cat and dog noises. My parting words are: If you’re into bitchy and immature female leads, as well as loyal, devoted boyfriend characters who don’t have enough sense to dump their toxic girlfriends, boy do I have the drama for you!!!

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Cute as heck

Unicorn Girl was the Chinese drama that woke up my inner love for slice of life, comedy-romance Chinese dramas that I didn’t know I had. Now, to be perfectly frank, this drama isn’t actually what I would classify as a good drama by any means, however the emotional attachment that I have to the tropes that were in this drama, as well as the time in my life during which I started watching Unicorn Girl, both led me to develop an unusually high emotional attachment to its characters and its messy but oh-so-sweet plot. Before we go any further, let’s just acknowledge the fact that Unicorn Girl had a few hundred too many accidental kisses slash “female falls over and male catches her *cue slo mo montage with romantic music*” scenes. It was quite ridiculous, but I grew to appreciate the cheesiness after it happened about 10-15 times. Just goes to show that some things can be so bad that they become good. The whole storyline of this drama isn’t what I would classify as original by any means, but it’s not trying to be so it’s totally okay. Both actors had incredible chemistry and the pacing of the drama was very well done. I’m honestly complete trash for cross-dressing dramas, and if there is any drama that involves one of the leads pretending to be the opposite gender, I will EAT IT UP. Frankly, that’s probably the main reason why this drama ended up being rated so high on my list. Now, one last thing: the soundtrack in this cdrama is one of the best I have ever heard. Though it is short, all of the songs sound absolutely amazing and made me super emotional. Now, with all that said, if you ever find yourself in a stressful time of your life with no desire to invest time into a heavy drama, My Unicorn Girl is the perfect stress relief for you!

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The tears I shed could fill up 10 bathtubs

My high rating for this drama might be a result of me watching it over 2 months rather than the usual 3 days that it takes me to finish a kdrama. Because of this, I may have forgotten some things that originally may have displeased me. This drama seems to get many bad reviews, and while I can sort of see why, I invested myself so emotionally in the plot and the characters for the past 2 months that I just don’t have the heart to give this drama the low rating that many think it deserves. While the directing was rather confusing (at some points I had to double check to make sure I didn’t skip like 20 minutes of the drama) and I didn’t care about the 2nd leads all that much, I loved the leads to pieces and just wanted them to be happy. I cried during almost every episode in the second half of the drama, and the days that I would watch Doom At Your Service I felt very melancholy and a little hopeless. The emotional impact of the drama rubbed off on me quite a bit, but I’m not even mad about it. I’d have to argue that the ending for this drama was personally the best ending that I could have wished for them, and I was very glad to see the drama slow down on the doom and gloom and give us the most slice-of-life type ending ever. My last hour watching this drama I just sat in bed curled up with my giant pug body pillow and smiled the whole time. It was perfect. The OST was incredible, and the main leads were perfectly picked out. I don’t know if I could ever bring myself to watch this drama again because I am so afraid to ruin its magic, but I can very confidently say that this drama is one of my favorite dramas of all time nonetheless, flaws and all.

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It pains me to say that this drama would’ve received a far higher rating...

from me if it wasn’t for the FL...Like genuinely the FL was what stood in the way between the rating I gave vs a rating that was 1-2 stars higher. I simply couldn’t stand her weird dialogue and acting since the very start of this drama. Although the drama itself kind of grew on me toward the end (not enough tbh), I consistently rolled my eyes at her and cringed at least once every episode. There’s a night and day difference between Su Zaizai and Jiang Jia (and I LOVED Jiang Jia) and I genuinely think they could’ve allowed Zaizai to keep her bubbly personality without turning her into a 5 year-old in a 25 year-old woman’s body. The plot here should theoretically be my cup of tea, actually, but for some reason I ran into the same issue I run into with some youth cdramas where for some reason I’m just kind of bored the whole time. I don’t think the drama did anything wrong per se, I might just not be one to enjoy youth cdramas as much as I think. However, I really enjoyed the fact that there was quick and easy conflict resolution and nothing super dramatic that happened. It made the watch very enjoyable and positive and is why I say that it’s technically “my type” of drama. Funny enough, as much as I complain about unresolved misunderstandings, I would’ve been okay with some of them being resolved a little later (the not annoying ones ahah) since they added some entertainment in the sea of “no problems whatsoever the couples are together and happy as can be” eutopia in romcoms that gets boring QUICK if you overdo it. Anywho, I personally don’t really think the drama deserves a 9.0 rating since there were personally quite a few issues I encountered that I’m sure other people have as well, and I felt like there was just little to no emotional impact with the characters for me personally (I’m comparing to how I felt watching dramas like Hidden Love or Someday or One Day who did great in this department). But if you don’t mind an incredibly cringey FL (gahh) and enjoy the youth genre, I would still recommend you watch this one as you’re likely to really enjoy it.

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Screaming, crying, throwing up

I’m not okay, I will not be okay for a long time. This was the most beautiful thing that I have ever watched and to be honest I don’t think I have enough of a way with words to describe just how amazing Twinkling Watermelon is. I was a long-time stan of Thirty but Seventeen and never thought I would find a Kdrama that could even hold a candle to my favorite drama of all time, but somehow Twinkling Watermelon completely dethroned Thirty but Seventeen in a short, short amount of time. In a way, I’m a little annoyed that my #1 Kdrama is, like, everyone and their mother’s favorite kdrama, since as I’m writing this review, it’s the top rated Kdrama on MDL with a whopping 9.2 rating (oh my god). Genuinely though, it’s 10000000% worth the hype and I honestly cannot even begin to explain how wonderfully entertaining, heartwarming, and marvelously written this drama is.
For a drama with such a young cast, I was first and foremost completely taken aback by the quality of acting, since I don’t often see this type of skill in similar youth kdramas. Granted, there was a bit of overacting on the ML’s part but it’s very rare and honestly just adds to the comedy so I can let it slide. The storyline itself very much reminds me of that iceberg meme where what you see on the surface is quite simplified and shallow but as you continue watching, the storyline just unravels before you and you end up making connections you hadn’t even imagined you’d be making. This was genuinely such a fun ride and I will definitely be coming back to this one as soon as I can recover from the first watch ahaha.
I could honestly write paragraphs and paragraphs about this but I’m kind of put into this weird paralysis state where I have so many things to say that I just don’t know what to say at all, so I will just leave this here: Literally whatever you’re thinking this drama is going to be, or whatever expectations you have, leave them behind and just watch the drama for what it is, because while it will likely be so different from what you were expecting, it will probably be far better as well.

PS this is coming from someone who has watched her fair share of kdramas and has become immensely picky with what she watches and enjoys (sadly lol)

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There’s not much to say about this drama except for the fact that I’ve never felt so enraged about the main female character in my entire life. The show tried to play her bad qualities off as something that ultimately benefits everyone, but let’s be real, she just brings everyone down over and over and over again without ever learning her lesson. Besides the main character, this drama lacks in story by making every liar game repetitive and rather predictable. While the situations were resolved in creative ways, which I appreciated, Liar Game’s biggest issue was that there were just not many ways they could add variation to a game about stealing money, and they ended up creating a story that went in circles and rehashed the same issues again and again. Thankfully, the fast pace of the drama made it rather addicting and very easy to binge-watch, so I can’t deny that the entertainment value is definitely there. As long as you keep your expectations low (which I failed to do), you can enjoy this drama without taking any of it too seriously. On that note, I probably won’t be watching the sequels but I’d still recommend the first season since I definitely had fun watching it.

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