Sinasina

It's somewhat flawed, but at the same time incredibly dreamy, magical & thrilling.

Let me start with what's bad. Starting around episode 20 the plot & the pseudo science become rather silly. The science thing is maybe 20 times worse than in the Stargate SG1, if that helps and it takes the main stage in the later episodes. I often say that it's nigh impossible to reasonably explain time travel in a drama, so it's better to leave things to the imagination, unfortunately they tried to explain a lot & not only used terms like quantum cracks, Klein bottles, but walked into these things on their two legs. That's not all, many times in the dialog instead of timelines they use the term alternate realities, which does not fit logically & would lead to rather grizzly conclusions. (I don't think the thought process of "It's okay if people died left & right, there is nothing to feel sad about since we are not in their reality anymore" makes much sense) Though I'm increasingly confident time travel cdramas have an absolute limit on how many times the term "time travel" can be used before a show wouldn't pass censorship, so if the narrative demands more they just go with alternate realities or dimensions, even if that makes no logical sense.
The dubbed voices sound too much like studio recordings, there is no believable ambiance.
Finally the main villain's motivations are somewhat ridiculous, but censorship might have something to do with this as well, more reasonable serial killers probably cannot be shown on Chinese television. I've seen far worse than this, it's bad, but at least the writer truly tried to make his character work and it almost does.

That was the all the bad I can think of right now, moving on..


Everything is else is from good to incredible. End of review.. just kidding of course.

The romance is fantastic. Both the main couple & second couple's romances are incredibly magical, I certainly got the feels & the chills many times during the romantic & sentimental scenes that this drama had. In fact I don't think I have ever seen a cdrama with a side couple this memorable, a secondary romantic plot this touching.

The genre of this is Romance + Thriller & surprisingly enough this is probably the best Chinese Thrilling experience that I've had so far, there was even a touch of horror here and there & even a little Squid game influence in the final episodes perhaps. I tend to rant on and on how Asian drams Chinese & Korean alike almost always suck at this, not here. I saw a book on Amazon described as "utterly gripping crime thriller with edge-of-your-seat suspense " and I think that's an apt description of many of this drama's scenes. Impressive!

The plot up to episode 20 is very nice, even though I had a strong suspicion of the villain's identity from the very beginning, which is not that surprising considering that I recently watched "Meet Me @ 1006", but the plot flows very nicely & it was interesting even in the later sillier episodes. If I make an effort to ignore the horrible fake science, then the ending feels rather nice too, it's far more hopeful then what we've gotten in"Your Name", it's not nearly as open ended, you don't need to use your imagination to know what's going to happen in the future. (though checking the ending in advance without context will lead to a lack of understanding..)

The OST is absolutely incredible, right now of the top of my head I cannot think of a single cdrama where the tracks & mixing are both so great. It's not as good as Goblin's, but it's not too far off, if anything the mixing is better here.

The visuals are in my opinion very nice. I have seen a lot of people bashing the bad CG, this is hugely unfair, making a believable cruise ship in CG would have needed the budget of Avatar & even then it would have been obvious it's CG. I think this is the best CG i've seen in a -relatively speaking- low budget cdrama. The environment on the ship is extremely unrealistic, but that's hardly on the CG, but rather the production team went for a really dreamy, otherworldly vibe. I understand why this is a hit and miss for the audience, but for me it's mostly a hit. In fact I had very distinct Final Fantasy 8 vibes while watching some of the scenes on the ship.

I talked about the great visuals & OST, but the amalgamation of these things truly leads to an incredible audiovisual experience. I think the drama would be worth watching just for that, even if the rest was completely trash, which it is not, not even close.

TLDR: Go watch the drama, it's totally worth it! The 7.8 rating on MDL seems unbelievable to me.

edit: There might be an epilogue with the usual "it was just a book" shebang, fortunately I have not had the chance to watch this. The final episode of the drama I watched did not have this.

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The best SubwayTM advert in the universe!

And I'm only half kidding about the headline, Subway is an integral part of the plot.

I had dropped countless T dramas over the years, before this one I had only finished maybe 3 of them. The fact that 1006 has become the 4th is a pretty big deal for me, since the average Taiwanese dramas tend to be unwatchable for me, but at the very least it's almost always fascinating to see how different they are from mainland Chinese dramas & seeing a decent one like this one has been a great experience. So yes, it's absolutely worth watching, but it's very far from flawless.

The romantic plot is rather nice, I would rate that separately at 9/10, the only criticism I can make about that is that it was a bit draggy at times. The leads had great chemistry with each other, the fantasy added a nice flair to their relationship and I even liked their conclusion. People that think this is not a true happy ending because of what happened in e22 are a bit silly.

Even as a mystery thriller drama 1006 intrigued me from early on, I was genuinely interested about the investigations & where the story would take me. However in this drama the journey as far better than the destination, the villains have baffling motivations behind their actions & it was not fun to see them revealed and especially to see their "end".

Let's talk about plotholes! In time travel related dramas it's extraordinarily difficult to avoid plotholes and I feel like the writer here did not even really make an attempt. The story is not bad overall, but it's not very polished, for starters there are a lot of minor retcons and the writer seems to not know that two phones having identical IMEI numbers won't work on the same network. The one thing that bothered me the most is that Jia La not believing Zhen Yu about certain events from the future happens A LOT and it's been established that verification would've been child's play. She could've just joined on Man Man's wifi (or ask a SubwayTM worker's phone to check the internet) and do a Google search. Also I was totally convinced that she knew about ZY representing Ji Rou, when it was revealed that she did not know I was just rolling my eyes..

Ji Rou is a horrible character. Her lack of correct decision making ability is extraordinary, even by Makjang-kdrama standards. Why is this a problem? Because most of the investigations & timeline adjustment attempts revolve around saving her & her husband, but the truth behind the events related to her is not that easy to accept.

The production values are on the low side, the visuals (lighting, makeup, cinematography) are reminiscent of a 2005 era kdrama. Though I must mention that the sets were rather nice.

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Overrated.

I kept dodging this show, despite it being recommended to me all the time. My concerns were about the toxic things that happen in this drama & that it's the usual break + 3 year timeskip formula that I've never liked made me extremely weary. Now here we are, in a sort of drama drought I steeled myself & got through this over the course of 3 days.

First and foremost this is an extremely unique cdrama, the likes of which I have not really seen before. Disability romance made for Chinese audiences & it's -at least for a while- good too. I can totally see why it has gotten so much praise. Based on just the first 12 episodes I would have rated this at a 9. Sure there are some toxic things, but those did not really faze me in the first half. The acting is really strong too, Wan Peng especially blew my mind, having seen her only in stereotypical comedienne roles before It's incredible how much more authentic she is here. Of course the first part already has some problems. The second couple is quite flavorless & they lacked chemistry, plus their plot was uninteresting during the entire drama. What is bigger for me though is that the production team just couldn't commit to Su Nian Qin's blindness. To me it seems like the script had been revised multiple times in strange ways & the end result, specifically ML's eye condition makes no sense what so ever. He can see shapes & movement, but need to use a stick and needs explained why opening the blinds is a good thing, the sun etc.. Let's just say that his condition & the dialog related to it is extremely inconsistent and this is blatantly obvious while binge watching.

Unfortunately after the first half there are a few absolutely horrible episodes involving rather bad writing, momsters and some crazy makjang-ish stuff leading to a breakup & a 3 year timeskip. This is business as usual in cdramaland, at least compared to kdramas usually they don't do this before a 5 minute long rushed happy ending.

Even more unfortunately what follows after the timeskip is just mediocrity. In fact the last 5-6 episodes can only be described as boring. In Chinese society people with inborn disabilities are barely considered human, so of course Su Nian Qin HAD TO BE cured. So basically the last third of the drama is the most generic cdrama happy ending you will ever see, but worse, because there is a lot of weird toxicity that is difficult to digest for western audiences and there is nothing much happening in general. I like slow burn cdrama romances, but this is really far more boring than usual, there is barely any comedy to be found and the way they go through the motions(pursue>get approval>ring>wedding>kid) is really super bland, especially considering that they already lived together before the timeskip.

The drama has one "big" twist. I did not see this coming in advance, but in retrospect I should've, I may have underestimated the writer a little, so I did not even consider something like this happening. Still the reveal was underwhelming & made no impact to the plot, which is a shame because I really liked the character involved..

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Triangle haters can safely watch this. The secondary love interests are fleeting..

The OST is out of this world good, but after the timeskip the best parts are not used anymore, instead they keep repeating the same track that is kind of like elevator music, but more mysterious.
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As I said this is an extremely unique drama, but the closest one I can think of, especially in terms of vibe is Forever and Ever. That drama however is consistently good, it has some makjang-ish craziness as well -perhaps even more overall than here-, but things are dealt with more sensibly & it managed to keep me interested up to the closing credits. The dialog is just very good, nose to nose interactions are not the driving force of every second scene.
People that liked this drama should check Forever and Ever out, it does not have too many viewers on MDL..

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It's hidden enough & it's almost a gem..

In regular kdrama terms this is about 4 episodes long and that is just the right amount for this kind of story. Had this been extended to 16, I'm sure it would have been an unwatchable makjang show for me.
The acting is good (Hani is excellent), the chemistry between the leads is also fine. There is not much fluff, but the romance is really realistic . The plot itself is quite juvenile & silly, but due to the short length it's quite bearable, though I think the show would've been better if the ex stayed away in the current timeline. The whole bartender thing is quite unique as far as kdramas go and even the toxic sismance is interesting.

XX is totally worth watching!

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Fun, but stupid

The Good:
⌲ The excellent chemistry between the leads (far better than in Love Equations)
⌲ The acting is relatively good across the board.
⌲ The fluff is great & there is A LOT of it.
⌲ The whole pursuing the man thing was a lot of fun most of the time.
⌲ The top tier comedy before the timeskip (It's been consistently funny)
⌲ The love triangle is very tame & fizzles out in time.
⌲ Fun cohabitation
⌲ The contract marriage trope works great in this one.

The Neutral:
⌲ The half brother's ambitions (Seems like due to censorship all that buildup has been for nought, his story has gotten axed & he had only appeared for like a minute after the timeskip)
⌲ The childhood connection (I've seen far worse)
⌲ As cute as their kid was, I've seen better Chinese child actors.
⌲ The side couples

The Bad:
⌲ Episodes 22,23 and 24 are utter garbage.
⌲ The separation due to noble reasons
⌲ The redemption arks are the worst. (father, stepmom, GaoE - neither of these make sense)
⌲ I'm sick and tired of practicing doctor leads needing to go aboard just when they are about to start enjoying life.
⌲ There is not a whole lot of plot, but it's incredibly dumb at times.
⌲ Simon (bad acting, super weird stuff before the timeskip)
⌲ Lu Fang Ning chickening out felt horrible to me. (At one point ML gave up resisting in anger, but..)

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The biggest problem with the drama is that it's simply quite boring.

I guess I can be considered a fan of the leads, but this pairing is just not very good. It was always obvious to me that neither of these two are great actors, but they choose roles very well to cater to their strengths. In this drama though the characters they are supposed to play should have had more depth than what we've gotten on screen & their chemistry is just too weak. No matter how many fluffy moments we've had in 40 episodes, I just had a hard time immersing myself in their romance.

On the positive side there are no love triangles and the leads don't break up. Even the mandatory quarrel/conflict thing that lasted like 2 episodes was quite bearable. I also really liked the second couple.
As juvenile & silly as the portrayal of mental illnesses was in this drama, it's always nice to see this topic talked about wholesomely in an Asian drama.
The OST is very good, it's way better than anything else in this drama.

Most reviewers talk about how draggy it was, 40 episodes yada yada, I think the length was sort of okay, had the drama been just a little bit better written & less hastily filmed, then I think I would have been perfectly fine with the length. Though I must mention air pistol shooting is sure as hell boring to watch. It's like watching pre-fight stares in Dragon Ball Z.

I could talk about how this drama had countless minor annoyances, or that how stupid the villain characters were, but ultimately the biggest problem with the drama is that it's simply quite boring. It's not boring, because the plot drags, but rather it's just not very exciting. Seems like I'm being contradictory here, It's quite difficult to explain what I mean here. For example I really really like the forced cohabitation trope, the way how people adjust to that situation pleases me almost every time. Not in this drama though, the lack of chemistry & the lack of comedy too I guess makes it kind of lifeless.

TLDR: If you are REALLY REALLY bored you can watch this, but make sure you have watched GGS2 & Put Your Head on My Shoulder first.

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It's a relatively well done cliche-fest romcom!

This drama is full of silly & full of stupid, but somehow it has never become unbearably annoying for me. The comedy is good, the fluff is there, ultimately the entertainment is on a fairly high level. As bad and ridiculous as the plot is, it has never gotten in the way of the romance, or the comedy. There were some moments, when I felt that the writer is insulting my intelligence, that's why I decided to rate this lower than 10/10, but otherwise this is worth watching. Also this is safe for triangle haters to watch, just barely.

To say something good about the story, I suppose it's nice that all the adversities and BS roadblocks have gotten dealt with in minutes, there are no breakups either, it's a completely relaxing experience.

The actors have done a pretty good job, there were no major chemistry problems either I think. It's worth noting that the FL looks like an oldschool sports anime heroine. (wide angular face + ginormous eyes!) I found her very amusing most of the time and not just visually.

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It's a cute show with enough substance to remain interesting till the last episode.

The Good:
-All three couples were interesting.
-Everyone had good chemistry with everyone.
-The lack of dental procedures (I hate seeing that on screen & I have delayed watching this solely for that reason)
-The near complete lack of conflict
-The fluff (though there could have been more of it)
-I liked how the characters joked about ML having mild prosopagnosia.
-There were quite a few epic scenes. (Cats that catch mice don't meow, haha)
-Second lead noona romance was totally awesome, wow.
-Fairly unoffensive product placements

The Neutral:
-The love triangle may have been resolved beautifully, but it was still arbitrarily conjured out of thin air & they wasted 2 full episodes on it.
-FL's annoying mom (as annoying as she was, luckily she had very little screen time)
-The Africa thing (I've read about this in the comments before, but it had very little plot relevance & it was not nearly as offensive as I thought it would be.)

The Bad:
-The pacing has not been adjusted for a 22 episode series. (Episode 17 felt like the 17th episode from a 40 episode long drama)
-There were so many missed opportunities, I wish this was at least 5 episodes longer, see previous point.
-The ending is really rushed, then again I'm just repeating myself now.

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It's somewhere between almost boring and enjoyable.

The Good:
-The noona romance was great, at least when it finally started.
-The chemistry between the leads
-ML's airhead mom
-A "strong independent woman" character that actually works.
-The 12 years younger ML
-Non romance focused Asian office dramas almost always suck, this one is not great or anything, but better than anything else I've seen in an office focused cdrama.
-Even though there are quite a few nonsensical things, most of the time the show is pretty down to earth.

The Neutral:
-FL's low key horrifying mom
-The show has been extremely slow, borderline boring most of the time.
-The whole show is an advertisement for the electric car business. (It's not addressed, where the electricity comes from to charge them, just that they are AMAZING)

The Bad:
-The preschooler level solution that solved all the office problems in ep28.
-The juvenile & universally petty villains
-The invader in the last few episodes
-It took 3 forevers for the romance to start.

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Unreasonable in-law galore!

Five Again is probably the third highest rated family drama on MDL, after having enjoyed Once Again & My Father is Strange I have decided to give this one a go.
Overall I don't regret watching this show, but it's been quite difficult to reach the rolling credits. The previously mentioned two family dramas are much better, I guess it's not a coincidence those two hold the top two spot in this genre.

The Good:
- The wholesome main romance, office romance
- Shin Hye Sun & Im Soo Hyang
- Some of the child actors
- The happy ending
- All the couples were somewhat entertaining to watch.
- The production team has not gone to extreme lengths to please all demographics equally.
- The lack of real love triangles

The Neutral:
- The story is not that coherent. (There were some strange character adjustments)
- Even the kinder, seemingly more reasonable elders went pretty crazy at seemingly random times.

The Bad:
- The whole in-law situation. (this is by far the worst thing in this drama.)
- FL's cheating ex & the time wasted on his trashy new family
- Sung Hoon is not a good actor now, let alone in 2016 when this has been filmed.
- The secondary couples had too many minor breakups, there's been way too much push-pulling for me.
- The drama had 10 bad episodes in a row, following the marriage of the main leads.

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Memorable drama with significant frustrations!

This show has a lot going for it, I do think it's overrated, but it's different from how Crash Landing is overrated. I can totally understand why someone would rate this at 10 stars. One of the biggest reasons I did not love this show that much is entirely subjective, parts of the show felt like the Korean society is airing its dirty laundry and I always had a difficulty watching that kind of content. Another less subjective reason is that the last 2-3 episodes were a mess. We had this healing romance thing with some witty comedy going on there was absolutely no need for the events that went down in the last 2 episodes, not cool! (They could have focused on the queer couple instead..)

The actors were great, the leads had okay chemistry. This is perhaps the first drama I've come across with Oh Yeon Seo in it, but I have not seen anything that would justify the hate that she's been getting for being a bad actress. The main romance & how they dealt with the mental issues was pretty great. Calling it realistic is a bit of a stretch, but I did not find this aspect particularly immersion breaking. It was a more authentic portrayal than in IOTNBO, but the difference is not nearly as much as the comment section would have you believe.

The drama is about as long as 8 regular kdrama episodes, I disagree with the people that wanted more episodes. Anything more and I could not have tolerated all the angsty bullshit backstory and the Women's Association anymore. I'm of the opinion that it's better to make dramas shorter than longer. The show could've been re-edited to 11 episodes & I would have given it a 9/10 rating. (Alternatively they could have filled up the time with Samantha+part timer stuff, but I recognize that would not have been popular in Korea)

In my review I may not have elaborated much on the positive points, but MfEO is certainly an extremely memorable drama for me. Perhaps I'll even rewatch it later, with some intensive fastforward button action it will probably be much more enjoyable.

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If a friend asked me what is the plot about, It would be pretty difficult to put the drama in a flattering light->
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It's a Cinderella story with a mean mother in law. The ML's family has family relations so complex, that Mexican soap operas pale in comparison. There is a brother (who may, or may not really be a brother) who tries to compete with ML for the family business, he is also using underhanded methods to get his way. FL ends up in the hospital very frequently, some supporting characters also lose their babies..
~
So to summarize the plot is just bad. It's like a bad romance webnovel's plot. Despite that I still enjoyed this show a lot. In fact all episodes excluding 28-29 were very enjoyable for me. This is not a romantic comedy, but rather pure romance, so the plot should've mattered, but even though the story is clearly bad the scriptwriter did a great job with the dialog, I could just listen to the leads talk to each other forever, obviously it's not as good as in Before Sunset, but it's up there. Also the leads had great chemistry and uncountable beautiful scenes together. In fact the entire cast did a near flawless job, there are no acting related weak points in this one.

The main strength of the drama is how it portrays the progress of this beautiful romance. Everything is just so great about it. It's not just sugary fluff, though there is quite a lot of that, but rather it's really about two fated people meeting and getting to know each other slowly. This is romance with depth, not the typical shallowness that I'm quite used to in modern cdramas.
There is no real love triangle, no breakups, no misunderstandings and the leads communicate with each other very well. ♥

People talked about the lack of kissing issue to death already. My take is that I think I would've been totally okay with just the one kissing scene early on, but for some reason the production team felt the need to torment the audience with countless "kiss the forehead, kiss the cheeks, kiss the hand and kiss whatever else you name it" scenes. I feel that there was zero need for that. I think just the one kiss scene plus the hugging scenes & their numerous bed scenes were more than enough skinship for my viewing pleasure.

The OST on the whole is not all that impressive, but I found the >Give You Give Me 给你给我 by Mao Bu Yi 毛不易< song quite pleasing to the ear.

The story of One and Only does not appeal to me, so I decided not to talk about that in my review. I think there is no need to watch OaO to enjoy this show.
I have a feeling that I will rewatch FaE eventually.

edit: I decided to rewatch the drama and it feels so incredibly SLOW now, even at double speed. I loved this drama, but rewatching it feels pointless.

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This drama is about 50% sweet romance, which I would rate at about 9/10 and 50% is about working at a publishing house, which is at most a 5/10. I realize that the end result being 8/10 doesn't really compute, but ultimately it comes down to me enjoying the romcom parts a lot & tolerating the business related things.

The romcom part is close enough to realistic cdrama perfection, I guess I would have loved a bit more comedy and faster progress in the OTP's relationship. The production team did a good job maxing out fluff & sugar, no complaints there. It's really nice how the bromance/weak live triangle thing was handled.
The leads are a match made in heaven, I found them a pleasure to watch throughout the entire drama. Also their love story is nicely written and even their short mini breakup felt well executed & timely. I'm extremely happy they did not do that in the final episodes, I hate that!
I did not like the second couple's story very much, there was too much push-pulling. I liked the characters & the actors though..
The cast in this drama is very good overall, right now I cannot recall a single weakly cast supporting character.
Also there was a crazed bitch character trying to take away ML from FL, she appeared nearing the end of the drama. I think that plotline was completely unnecessary, but it was still tolerable, she was rebuffed at 100% efficiency every time.

As for the life at a publishing house, it's easy to criticize many work related happenings, the story is not all that interesting and there are all kinds of villainous, or semi villainous characters. If I look at this having seen many carrier oriented dramas before, then it's still pretty okay. Corporate scheming & infighting are almost always total garbage in other cdramas, here it's not so bad. The biggest issue is that the adversaries had weird & meaningless motivations and they have often done really arbitrary illogical things. The characters themselves are okay, we don't quite reach the cartoon villain territory. The largest annoyance I've had is the biggest crisis plot in the drama, involving ghost writing claims & lots of unreasonableness. I think it would not have been very difficult to come up with a better, more realistic plot involving Asian cancel culture.

I think people criticizing Esther Yu's voice are in the wrong. However around episode 9-11 perhaps there were too many scenes involving childish temper tantrums & fake baby talk :p I don't think it's fair to blame the actress for that though!

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It's much better than Abyss!

This show is a little bit of a nice surprise, based on the comments i thought it would be terrible, nearly as bad as Abyss. Luckily nothing in the show annoyed me in a major way. Doom is a nice fluffy drama with some slight melodramatic vibe. I had a pretty good time overall, I enjoyed even some of the most criticized episodes.
I mean sure, the storytelling is a bit arbitrary and abrupt at times and the second leads do form a love triangle, but the (Beauty Inside) screenwriter has redeemed herself with giving me a nice, easily digestible ending and the second leads were a lot more entertaining than I thought they would be. The triangle did not devolve into a makjang-ish mess and it almost made sense, almost. it goes without saying that I found great that the main leads had no secondary romantic interests.

The two biggest problems I've found with the drama were the somewhat lacking chemistry between Park Bo Young and Seo In Guk and the lack of impact. The chemistry issue somewhat resolved itself by the time we reached the ending credits, it's obvious that the actors have grown used to each other. As for impact, let me explain. The theme of the show and the events that happened between the leads should've felt extremely impactful. Perhaps the writer failed with buildup a little & perhaps there were some acting hiccups in the delivery too, I don't know. The slow pace and all the gazing did not bother me at all, but I cannot help but feel that there was more than enough time to properly build up to those dramatic plot developments & make them less arbitrary, less immersion breaking.

As I have mentioned already the writing is less than flawless, but the frame of the story is really sound. It's properly written, it's not a cliche fest. The one big cliche plot the show had, the memory loss thing was well executed. Then again I always liked it when lovers reconnect after an amnesia situation. it's commendable that no third party with ulterior motives tried to take advantage of their amnesia.

The cast on the whole was really on point. Everyone was pretty great at their respective roles, except Kevin. Not the actor's fault, but good God they should have given him less screen time, nobody involved knew what to do with his character..
I loved the deity. Her difficult to explain decisions notwithstanding the actress did an absolutely phenomenal job, I enjoyed every second of her being shown on screen. (and she did have some great lines as well)

This drama has many similarities with Angel's Last Mission. That drama is better due to Shin Hye Sun's acting & the OST, but that's pretty much it, though that's admittedly quite a lot! Doom has a hugely better ending & a more balanced cast.
Another point this brings up how strong an effect music can have, when it comes to enjoyment of a drama and there Doom certainly falls a bit short.

The line about "writers being technicians" amused me to no end . It could be a fitting motto for the screenwriter. (especially if we consider The Beauty Inside too..)

TLDR: Doom is not the best drama I have ever seen, not even close, but it's been entertaining during the show's entire run and it has wrapped up in a nice way, so I'll go with 8/10.

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