This review may contain spoilers
Incredible performances wasted on a rushed, incoherent ending
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE SERIES, INCLUDING THE FINALE. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.
The Positive:
Let me start with what this show gets right, because it gets a great deal right. The acting is superb across the board, especially in the back half, where the leads are pouring real craft into every scene. The side characters are genuinely wonderful. Lumi and the roommates are the warm, beating heart of this show, the kind of ensemble that makes a drama feel lived-in rather than staged, and every scene they are in is better for their presence. The music is excellent as well. The playlist is fantastic, and the original score does heavy, precise emotional work in the scenes that needed it most.
Which is exactly why the finale made me so angry, because it takes all of that goodwill and spends it on manipulation and lazy character destruction.
The Negative:
Start with the roommate's death, because this is where the ending truly falls apart. He takes his own life, and the show then uses his diary as the detonator for everything that follows. Flora reads his journal and discovers he loved her all along, that he chose to love her by keeping his distance and letting her be in her relationship. And then, roughly four minutes later, she ends that relationship. Think about what that actually is. A man who could not be with her in life reaches out of the grave and successfully ends her happiness. The show clearly intends this as tragic, but it does not play as tragic. It plays as posthumous manipulation, and it feels genuinely icky. Worse, it poisons the very heartbreak the finale is chasing. You cannot devastate your audience with a choice the audience finds morally queasy instead of sad. This isn’t to say that the death was the problem, this is adapted from a much better adaptation anyways. The problem is how they handled the death and the fallout afterwards. It genuinely doesn’t make any sense.
Then there is the breakup itself, which is not earned on any level. This is a couple whose entire arc was built on learning to communicate. They fought, they stumbled, they got better at it, episode after episode, until the finale decided communication was a skill they no longer possessed. The blowup comes out of nowhere, contradicts her character completely, and erases every bit of development both leads accumulated. And she has the audacity to insist she is not running away, that this is a "grand retreat." You packed your bags and detonated your life. That is running away.
The abandonment does not stop with the romance. The male lead's issues with his father get meaningful setup and zero resolution, simply dropped before he leaves for America, which apparently counts as a conclusion. His friends vanish from the last three or four episodes entirely, as if the show forgot they existed. These are not loose threads. These are amputations.
And that is the core problem: the ending is rushed, and a rushed heartbreaking ending is just an unearned one. If you want to devastate your audience, you have to build the road there. This show sprinted to the cliff and expected us to feel the fall.
I have so much more to say but I’ll end it there.
Story: 1. Acting: 10. Music: 8.5. Rewatch value: 1, because I cannot sit through that ending twice. Watch it for Lumi, the roommates, the performances, and the soundtrack, and seriously consider stopping an episode or two early.
The Positive:
Let me start with what this show gets right, because it gets a great deal right. The acting is superb across the board, especially in the back half, where the leads are pouring real craft into every scene. The side characters are genuinely wonderful. Lumi and the roommates are the warm, beating heart of this show, the kind of ensemble that makes a drama feel lived-in rather than staged, and every scene they are in is better for their presence. The music is excellent as well. The playlist is fantastic, and the original score does heavy, precise emotional work in the scenes that needed it most.
Which is exactly why the finale made me so angry, because it takes all of that goodwill and spends it on manipulation and lazy character destruction.
The Negative:
Start with the roommate's death, because this is where the ending truly falls apart. He takes his own life, and the show then uses his diary as the detonator for everything that follows. Flora reads his journal and discovers he loved her all along, that he chose to love her by keeping his distance and letting her be in her relationship. And then, roughly four minutes later, she ends that relationship. Think about what that actually is. A man who could not be with her in life reaches out of the grave and successfully ends her happiness. The show clearly intends this as tragic, but it does not play as tragic. It plays as posthumous manipulation, and it feels genuinely icky. Worse, it poisons the very heartbreak the finale is chasing. You cannot devastate your audience with a choice the audience finds morally queasy instead of sad. This isn’t to say that the death was the problem, this is adapted from a much better adaptation anyways. The problem is how they handled the death and the fallout afterwards. It genuinely doesn’t make any sense.
Then there is the breakup itself, which is not earned on any level. This is a couple whose entire arc was built on learning to communicate. They fought, they stumbled, they got better at it, episode after episode, until the finale decided communication was a skill they no longer possessed. The blowup comes out of nowhere, contradicts her character completely, and erases every bit of development both leads accumulated. And she has the audacity to insist she is not running away, that this is a "grand retreat." You packed your bags and detonated your life. That is running away.
The abandonment does not stop with the romance. The male lead's issues with his father get meaningful setup and zero resolution, simply dropped before he leaves for America, which apparently counts as a conclusion. His friends vanish from the last three or four episodes entirely, as if the show forgot they existed. These are not loose threads. These are amputations.
And that is the core problem: the ending is rushed, and a rushed heartbreaking ending is just an unearned one. If you want to devastate your audience, you have to build the road there. This show sprinted to the cliff and expected us to feel the fall.
I have so much more to say but I’ll end it there.
Story: 1. Acting: 10. Music: 8.5. Rewatch value: 1, because I cannot sit through that ending twice. Watch it for Lumi, the roommates, the performances, and the soundtrack, and seriously consider stopping an episode or two early.
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