L13

This sounds like pure trash. Do Japanese viewers really find these endless stories about insecure female teachers defying the dictates of adulthood to have sexy affairs with TEENAGERS thrilling or romantic? I find this kind of female protagonist irredeemably repulsive and the “domineering 18-year-old gentleman” male type absurd.

18-year-old boys smell bad, are stupid, walk everywhere in groups and laugh at older women behind their backs! To suggest a boy that age could be suave, faithful, mysterious, and deeply in love with a grown woman (as these stories always do) is such a distortion of age-appropriate characterisation it's practically a pedophilic fantasy.

They need to stop helping fr

Oh FFS, it was her first time having sex ever and she was insecure and unsure. Sex is messy and people sometimes do and say things they'll regret later in the heat of the moment. She didn't press charges against him or try to ruin his life; that whole thing wasn't about him and her trying to harm him, but about her not knowing how to navigate such a new experience with her baggage. They talked it out, she apologised, they moved past it. Get over it!

You guys should watch Will Love in Spring, which was airing around the same time as Lovely Runner IIRC. The contrast in how these two shows treated the FL's disability was staggering. (Also WLS is drama of the year for me so far, in general, so I recommend it everywhere.)

A fun first episode lubricated by good editing that made the fast pace of the backstory sequence feel smooth instead of disorientating. Even though the narrative didn’t linger on the FL’s father, his funeral was touching enough to make me feel bad for both him and his surviving family, and the FL’s mother in particular was very well established as a complex and sympathetic character. The comedic touches here and there were fresh enough to make me laugh for real, especially the leads’ two crosswalk encounters. (The ML making a show of checking his pockets for money while the FL paid for their room in the love motel using her disability welfare card was my favourite gag.) The ML really was a scumbag eight years ago, but in a realistic and hopefully redeemable way. I’m curious about the aunt’s precocious son and the ML’s family. The small bedside moment with the lighter between the ML and his mother felt authentic and cute.

I’m in!

The age gap tag is not appropriate here... They're only supposed to be one year apart! That's the whole premise of their romance: that due to Chu Yu's status as Wei Yun's eldest sister-in-law everyone acts like there's a massive difference in seniority between them, but they're in fact the same age and nature takes its course when they start living together.

Both leads are totally miscast too.

You know you’re dealing with a Mango TV production when even the synopsis of the show can’t get the leads’ genders right.

I don't need to justify or defend fictional relationships between fictional people? I like the drama because I like watching strong characters with incompatible interests for whom romance is not a consideration find themselves inconvenienced by love. There's nothing to justify. What do you even think I'm trying to say here? "Actually, stabbing women is fine because..."? Obviously stabbing women isn't fine, just like torturing prisoners for information isn't fine. But these aren't real people, so no one was actually stabbed. The ML is not a problematic idol who needs to be boycotted; he's a fictional character!

If you find yourself unable to distinguish between fiction and real life, simply don't watch dramas that make your brain hurt. I promise, no one will care.

Dude, it is an enemies to lovers story. There's no international trope law that says your restrictive definition of enemies to lovers romance as necessarily being between equals is correct.

If I was victimized by a man who had power over me, he'd be my enemy. Enemies don't have to be your equals.

You don't have to like it. You're just wrong about what "enemies to lovers" means.

I don’t think his violence toward her is being “romanticized”; it’s pretty clearly NOT why she falls in love with him nor is it part of a romantic relationship. I also don’t think MDL users need a reminder to avoid men who’ve tried to kill them multiple times.

I’m kind of tired of people not understanding what the “enemies” in “enemies to lovers” stands for. This is a guy who kills and tortures people and the FL was in the way of his schemes. Obviously he would treat her like an obstacle. The romance happens from here onward, and it’s more interesting for starting from such a low point.

In fairness, they used to have hour-long episodes. This new trend is a bit much. The total runtime is enough for 48 60-min episodes, which would be a regular family drama run, so I'm not sure why they decided to squish the same amount of footage/plot into fewer episodes.

This premise has a lot of solid makjang ingredients. I hope they lean into that instead of making it boring like so many recent family dramas.

It's not historical at all, no.

I'm on episode 4 and so far the ML is barely present, the FL has spent most of her screentime in confinement, convalescing or unconscious, and the whole show is about the annoying Marquis Pei whom I don't care about. It also icks me out how he's always hovering over and around the FL's bed while she's sick! I wouldn't want some pushy stranger to be handling my unconscious body and getting all up in my business while I was sick and sweaty.

When do we move on from this arc and stop seeing his face constantly?

Having read the novel, I'm neither surprised nor disappointed. Basically nothing happens in the first half except for the FL, a reincarnated adult in a child's body, waiting to grow up and then five different annoying dudes trying to force her to marry them with thirty different annoying aunts and in-laws helping or hindering their schemes.

They could easily cut 4-5 of the inner courtyard soap opera arcs without affecting the overall plot.

Kdrama makers haven't evolved as much as they struggle to finance drama productions nowadays. Every year there are fewer and fewer kdramas aired on Korean TV, because of the market consolidation led by foreign investors like Netflix and Disney+. When there's less money to go around for everyone who isn't Netflix, there are fewer episodes of television being produced.

Yes, that's the point. It's a psychological drama that's supposed to make you hate everyone around Jeongwoo, not a go-go-go whodunit.

Forensic analysts usually draw up a list of people who have handled the evidence in question and know to exclude their footprints/fingerprints/traces. In this case, it's true Jeongwoo is assumed to be the murderer, so they would be looking for his DNA or fingerprints anyway, but there's a massive difference between a fingerprint from yesterday and a fingerprint from 11 years ago (if one can even be lifted at that point). There's no way they'd use a fingerprint that's clearly brand new to prove he touched her name tag 11 years ago. Even if fingerprints are junk science (and they are to a large extent), that would be a clear case of malpractice and easily dismissed in court.

I like that almost everyone in this drama except for the protagonist is a piece of shit in one way or another. (Even Seol pisses me off with how pushy and insensitive she can be toward Suoh.) It's very realistic.

I do like Detective Noh, though, even though he's an asshole. He's self-aware about it to an extent, and doesn't let it dull his investigative instincts. I kinda like Seol as well, and feel bad for Suoh. Everyone else can get in the sea, including Jeongwoo's mother, who was too busy kowtowing to public opinion and acting fragile and sanctimonious to notice how the whole town got together to ruin her child's life right under her nose. Oh, look at me, I'll endure the victims' anger in my son's stead because I'm such a classy person! I'm a martyr! People from good families should handle even a total fall from grace with grace! Fuck off, lady! Where were you when they beat a false confession out of Jeongwoo and stitched him up with planted evidence and no bodies? You were hiding at home pretending you didn't know him! She doesn't deserve the feel-good redemption speedrun I'm sure she'll get after she wakes up in the final act.

Boyeong's father seems the most detestable so far, but I know it's still early days and we haven't seen most characters at their worst yet. Still, the fact he was the world's most useless father while she was alive and even abused her physically but still has the nerve to act out and expect everyone to accommodate his violent impulses to the point of excusing assault and attempted murder truly repulses me. In a way, Boyeong's death was a blessing for him because it gave him license to behave like an animal without being judged for it.

It was there to piss me off with Ziyu’s delusional nonsense. The fact he thought for one second she was interested in giving up her revenge and her way of life to be sealed inside a palace and manage his concubines was insane.