I've seen worse dramas, but not many.

I suppose the best thing I can say about this drama is that I enjoyed the first 4? episodes, up until FL met her mom. Even before that point it was super super silly, but -to me- entertaining. It is thanks to that and my handy fastforward button that I managed to finish this. From then on it becomes a complete mess, where the writer has not even attempted to respect her audience and the things I wanted to watch were dialed down to the absolute minimum as well. (comedy, romance) Naturally as a comic book style thriller of some kind it's still garbage.
So yeah it's trash, just do yourself a favor & skip it.
I guess I should try to be more descriptive, but believe me it's not easy in this case. Okay here goes nothing! Imagine a 50 hour long family drama about a Chaebol family that has supernatural elements and a lot of vigilante justice involving 3-4 couples and a lost daughter. Now take away the BEST 35 hours & what's left would probably still be better than Strong Woman Kang Nam Soon.

Comparing it to the so called prequel, Strong Woman Do Bong Soon is pointless, because fun cameo notwithstanding they have nothing in common at all. (It makes one speculate about some things about the writing process and interns. I apologize for the dumb tinfoil hat moment..)

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Awesome up until episode 13!

The Good
⌲ The unique & fun romance
⌲ The acting
⌲ The subverted tropes (not all tropes though)
⌲ The fun second couple (I wish they had more screen time)
⌲ The pillow fight!
⌲ Most - but not all- annoyances were dealt with very quickly.

The Average
⌲ The love triangle (not bad not great ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
⌲ The ex-secretary club (I don't think the writer knew what she wanted to do with them)

The Bad
⌲ ML's jarringly forced character growth(s) in the later episodes!
⌲ All the horrible corporate and vengeance plots in the later episodes!
⌲ The lack of fluff in the later episodes
⌲ The ending feels super forced. (As much as I like a nicely wrapped happy ending, I would rather have loose ends, than everything resolved like this)

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Superficial acting, shallow OTP relationship

This is yet another fluffy romcom cdrama without many complications. The triangle is easily resolved, there are no annoying in laws, there are no breakups, other than the 2 one episode misunderstandings there was no drama in it. Okay sure the rival actress character tried to stir up some shit, but that did not amount to anything, nor did it bother me too much, beyond highlighting the FL's lack of intellectuality. It's somewhat annoying how these villainous bitchy characters always get forgiven, or get redemption arks.
I did not mind the sister character, she was too cute for me to take her antics seriously.

The leads may have had some chemistry, but the portrayed relationship was incredibly shallow. The drama is like 90% about the OTP's relationship and that is all about beauty and attraction. Basically there is no plot, I don't get the impression that two people are trying to get to know each other and grow together. It's not that I was bored due to the lack of makjang, triangles and whatnot, but this drama really is pure fluff and nothing else. You know how in Korean variety shows there are some games where first the girl does Aegyo for a while & then the guy reciprocates, well this entire drama is almost like that. I could have turned off the English subtitles and I wouldn't have lost very much.
The secondary couples have better stories, but they had too little screentime to really "save" the drama from mediocrity.
At least it's a normal length drama, it does not get too draggy.

I still enjoyed the drama a little, pretty people doing cute fluffy things can be entertaining enough without anything else, but there are much better fluffy dramas than this, 6.5/10. Intense Love is the opposite of memorable..

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This started out as a pretty decent drama, but I had a pretty hard time getting into it. More specifically I just couldn't easily ship the OTP in this show. I'm not adverse to age gaps at all, but the leads are just too far apart not in age, but in maturity and the production team made this even more extreme with making Moon Ga Young's character and visuals as juvenile as possible. It was kind of like watching a cartoon about the romance of a polar bear and an alien robot, I could only follow the story with detached amusement. (At least there was no love triangle)

With that said I have eventually gotten into it just fine and I felt pretty entertained, unfortunately the writer felt the need to ruin my fun almost right away. The three hours preceding the finale were pretty much garbage tier. First they broke up due to noble reasons, then they made up for like 5 minutes & finally the writer proceeded with the mandatory 2 year separation plot. I'm sick and tired of bullshit separation plots and the one in this drama felt especially bad. At least the final episode offered a pretty decent, but short happy ending.

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This show is fantastic! Out of all the kdramas I've seen this is the closest to the Reply series (especially 88) in presentation & characterization, but at the same time this show doesn't push the love triangle in a stupid over the top way, which is a huge plus. I mean sure this one is set in present day Korea and it's not a 1-2 women + many guys setup, but the vibe is very similar.
All the characters, including the minor ones are interesting. All the sub-stories are cool. It's great how the drama starts, it's great how it ended and the quality stays consistent throughout. Normally I prefer dramas like WWwSK, or Fight for My Way, but this was a nice relaxing experience without the epic/cathartic moments that those kinds of dramas are known for. It was very funny, but not embarrassingly funny, It was just unreal enough to be interesting.

The casting is basically perfect, even more so than in R88. I hope that I'll see more of these actors in the years to come. The OST was good, though it could have been a bit less repetitive. +

Just to say some negative things: They took the fart jokes way too far and there were some dramaception moments that felt a bit immersion breaking.

Overall it's an easy 10/10, I hope it becomes a cult classic outside of Korea. Looking at the ratings leaves a sour taste in my mouth, I hope it's not because of the gay character, but with Korean viewers you never know...

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There were a few things that I wasn't comfortable with, while watching this drama. I really did not like their portrayal of autism, Koreans seems to have a stereotypic (more often than not)misconception how a mentally ill person should talk, walk and hold their gait, however this was borderline offensive for me to watch. Most characters were treating Shion as a child the entire time just like in a children's show, many supporting characters had lines such as "he is really like a grownup now" "he progressed so much" and yet their behavior remained the same, as if Shion was a patient in this pediatric hospital.

Moving on to the drama as a whole, obviously it was not preproduced and that really shows. There are multiple odd shifts in the story, character personalities change out of nowhere, probably based on audience feedback. I feel that up until episode 17-18 not even the writers knew what they wanted to do with their main loveline, once they've decided on a path they went for in a rather abrupt manner. I think originally they wanted to go all in with their love triangle with Dohan, but then they've gotten cold feet & the second couple's relationship got mended in a flash.
Episodes 2 - 10 ~ are nowhere near as good as what follows afterwards, I considered dropping it very early on, because the medical cases were not that interesting, the story dragged a lot & even though the angst was expected with a story like this, I felt that it was without merit. Thanks to live filming they completely shifted the mood of the series around e10 & what followed was a lighthearted medical drama that for the most part oozed of hope. At times I have really loved it.
There is no romance in the first half at all and there is very little of it up until episode 17 or 18, I'm not sure if the romance tag is entirely warranted. The way how the main couple got together feels forced & their happy ending feels like a nonending. Yun Soo's parents weren't shown. The writer's idea of a solution for the parent issue was a 1 year timeskip, something along the lines of "They are still together after a year, so dear audience fret not the in laws were convinced somehow"
There was a lot of hospital politics & scheming in the show, however it was not fun, nor interesting, nor a crucial part of the story, so I recommend skipping all the scenes involving hospital politics.

The supporting characters were awesome and there were some awesome parts later on, for these reasons the 7/10 rating seems fair, despite all the negatives that I've listed above.

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This show has many of the worst kdrama plot devices. It starts out as a somewhat fun romcom, but already in the first few episodes it's not really above average in any way. Even the chemistry between the leads is not that great. The drama has one of the absolute worst love triangles that I've seen and that's not all, we even go into full on melodrama quite quickly, but not the good kind. (perhaps the tragedy tag shouldn't be missing)

To mention some positives too Nara did a great job portraying her character and at least we were given a long and a sufficiently satisfying happy ending.

Rewatching for me is absolutely out of the question. Seriously though how is this show rated at 8.3? It's one of the worst dramas that I have managed to struggle through and usually my opinion is not that far off from the average reviewer either..

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Increasingly awful nearing the final episode

The Good
⌲ The FL actress is incredible. (11/10 pretty, 11/10 chic, 11/10 acting ability)
⌲ The cast overall is quite good. (though the ML seems outclassed to me)
⌲ In the early episodes, despite the makjang premise It's been a pretty chill drama with a lot of fun bickering between the leads.
⌲ No -meaningful- love triangles

The Neutral
⌲ The chemistry between the leads is not bad, not amazing.
⌲ Lee Do Han (the actor did a good job, but it's a weird character & the whole premise of coming home from America makes no sense, if I were gay I would have never done that.)
⌲ The romantic progress between the leads is not very natural, it's like the writer decided to follow the episode 8 formula & then just kind of made it happen with a sledgehammer.
⌲ While the writer obviously did not do a good job, some of the dialog -especially early on- is quite amazing.

The Bad
⌲ The makjang-ish setting
⌲ E11 is one of the worst kdrama episodes I have ever watched.
⌲The finale is just a kindergarten tier fanfic fantasy. (normally I wouldn't mind so much, but following E11 it's straight up jarring)
⌲ The writing is really random in the second half, to the point that it's intelligence insulting.(I heard the comic is far better & more consistent)
⌲ The grandpa character (though I never really liked this senior actor in anything, but that could be on me)
⌲ The cartoon villain half siblings
⌲ The awful and I mean AWFUL seperation/breakup plots
⌲ The random time skip

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It's good, but overrated!

I started this show about a week ago, but long after the show has ended, so I have seen & read many glowing reviews & saw how folks proclaimed this drama being the best one they have ever seen.
I not for one moment have felt that way, but it took me quite a bit of introspection to -I think- figure out why.
I mean at the very least we’ve seen amazingly well acted emotional scenes, that are up there with the best of the best in Kdramaland. There is a lot of good music, romances & one amazing bromance thing, so at the very least I can understand why someone would rate this at 10/10 amazing..

Let me explain, why to me this is far worse than 10/10 & why I felt something is really wrong with this drama throughout most of the episodes. Disclaimer, I’m a rather nitpicky person. I can find logical flaws in almost anything, but that has not prevented me to give 10/10 ratings to flawed shows before.
Let’s start with a TLDR to not waste anyone’s time with my long rambling: Many and perhaps most of the minor details in this drama are either wrong or off. This pile of immersion breaking lack of attention to detail is just too tall for me.

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So here I go:

I could go on and on about -tiny or large- time travel related plotholes, but I have begrudgingly accepted them, because time travel shows always have a ton of these. (Though the level of disregard for consistency is on another level in this drama.)

Music is an important part of this drama, but the sound is completely unrealistic in most scenes. Not only does everything sound like an overly perfect studio recording, but also every guitar in the show sounds like $20000. These kids are not millionaires, yo! Sure the guitar point is very nitpicky, but I have never at any point felt like I’m listening to music made by a very talented up and coming band, or anything remotely live-like. (as in live music sounding like a live performance)

Sol Ina is just too old for this role. Yes, she acted amazingly well here & I’m happy for her success. I’m sure no one could’ve done better in her place, but I would love to see a big budget kdrama where the teens are played by at most 22 year olds. Just to reiterate again, yes she is stunningly beautiful and everything, but she's not a teen & can never pass as one. If this only happened in a couple of flashbacks it would’ve been fine, but she is a teen the entire time.
This point applies to Ryeoun as well. He is not a believable Korean teenager at any point in time. He is 25, what could he have possibly done, right?

The portrayal of disabilities in Korean media always have been very annoying to me. Here it’s probably the best I’ve seen so far from them, but there were still quite a few weird moments. Being deaf is very difficult to portray well to begin with, I don’t know. Largely because you want to keep the audience entertained, but if you as an actor do over the top emotional faces in every single scene, then the end result cannot possibly be something believable. Though of course the actors followed well what was asked of them. I can somewhat understand why they choose to do it like this. Imagine if the story was almost the same in every way, but Cheong Ah had not been deaf just an introvert, if Eun Gyeol's parents were able to hear, but lived a very hard, tumultuous life. To me it seems like most of the plot would have worked just the same. I strongly suspect that the writer added decided to go with the CODA thing, because there were a couple really big hit shows that featured disabilities. Deafness is not completely an important, integral part of the show.

Romance is only so so, I did not really feel the chemistry, nor are the romantic plots very engaging. Then again this is probably the most realistic part of the drama, because teenagers falling in love is the easiest thing in the world, no elaborate plots are needed.

The main villain is very sterotypical and boring, her actions were very silly & her end is anticlimactic. The family situation at that house makes no sense. They could have made Cheong Ah's backstroy much more interesting without opting for this whole "her father ignores her suffering" plot.

The late nineties Korea in the show is -you guessed it- highly unrealistic.

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My fellow MDL user, I’m sure you’ve noticed by now how most of my criticisms are about realism. It would be a logical conclusion that this is a me problem, since kdrama as a genre tends to be very lacking in realism & anyone who wants realism should not watch kdramas.
I agree with this of course, but if a show’s end goal is not just to entertain with comedy & sugar, but maybe to educate about disabilities, to present gut wrenching moments and to make the audience empathize with the characters, then realism becomes rather important, or at the very least a fantasy setting should respect its own established rules & just in general the writer should not insult our intelligence.
Just look at the various Reply dramas, every single one of them has a similar blend of teen romance, bromance and to a lesser extent family tragedies to Twinkling Watermelon, but they are far more reasonable in every way, the emotional scenes in those are really really great, while the comedy and romance still get to shine.

The overall presentation is a bit childish. So perhaps we should just judge this as a teen programme. That’s fair, I’ve given it some thought & perhaps watching this at the age of 14 my mind could have been completely blown, I don’t know. Most of us on MDL are adults though & with that in mind I decided to settle for a rating of 7.5, because despite everything I've said, here and there there were moments of real brilliance in the show.

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This felt like watching a shortened family drama. Most of the side couple content has been removed & they focused on the family conflict and the main couple, but it still had that family drama presentation. I think this could have worked better in the 50 episode format as well. Not because I would have wanted more of the same, but rather had the side couples each gotten a couple episode's worth of screen time I think the annoying things could have been far less pronounced and we had so many sidelined characters with immense rom-comedy potential, or I don't know we could have watched the younger sister training as a haenyo..

The biggest problems I've had with this drama are the absurdity of the old breakup & the absurdity of the decade long unrequited loves. Of course I found the toxic dad extremely annoying & his sudden change of heart ridiculous as well, but that is ultimately just one bad episode of 16, so that would not have been a deal breaker.

Overall I would say that this drama has been a bit sloppily executed. The cast is absolutely amazing, but many of the actors did not take this very seriously & immersion breaking performances were not corrected. In case there is a problem, it's the director's job to call out the ng, in this drama they settled for "barely acceptable" way too many times. This is very common with family dramas, but those are typically far lower budget, so the lower production values are to be expected.

The writing is all over the place & there are countless problems with character motivations, personality adjustments and just nonsensical stuff, even for this genre.

Can Triangle haters watch this drama? Well, I'm not sure. The second ML does not really do anything, there are no three way handgrabs and whatnot, but I found his character to be extremely annoying. (It's a poorly written character, doubt any of the triangle lovers would be able to feel SLS for him)

To say something good as well, I found the non-gloomy parts of the drama quite funny & it's nice how it's relatively low on product placements. Jeju Island is the product placement, but this is the best kind there can be :-)

Ah, I almost forgot. While this drama is not very tropy, it's really annoying how 30 somethings who have dated in the past for many years acted like preteens in love & we have even gotten two typical sleep together, but do nothing scenes.

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Based on this review it may not seem like it, but there really was a lot of wasted potential here. They had most of the ingredients to cook a great meal, but unfortunately the cooks were drunk.

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meh

The first 5-6 episodes were overwhelmingly strong, sure there was not much innovation there, or things I have not seen before, but the mostly excellent casting & the fantasy elements offered solid entertainment. However the second half of the drama just fell flat. The focus shifted from the fantasy romance to other far less pleasant things and some of those make very little sense too. Also why would there be a need to give the father personality adjustments in a pre-produced drama. To me it seems like the screenwriter was really not prepared for this, but even if this were live filming, the pacing would still feel far below average. I have read the webcomic after finishing the drama & in my opinion that one is far better. Yes the ending is still very bad, because I always hate it when "superhero" characters get a normie ending , but at least throughout the comic the author focused on the right things and there were some nice epic moments after all the buildup, which cannot be said about the drama.

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Fantastic, no scifi fan should miss this!

I have read the book & partly because of that I found the early episodes very repetitive and slow, I'm convinced that the book delivered those concepts far more smoothly! This is pretty much the only big negative of the entire show. I mean sure I could nitpick a lot if I wanted to about some silly TV innovations near the final episodes, but I enjoyed those too I suppose. If memory serves the fake science in the book was far more digestible, they have made some things a WEE BIT crazy in the show, but even those were quite fun, adding some action scenes to liven up the experience a little is acceptable to me. ("After a long time, life and civilization will begin again" Right!)

Everything else is pretty great. This is the best scifi show I have watched in a very long time. I have kind of given up on Scifi television, because Hollywood stopped making quality content & no one else had the budget to even try, but somehow China did it & it even passed censorship, which is a miracle in itself. Honestly though, the production values are VERY GOOD. The fact that most CG happens in the game world helps a lot with the magic. The OST is fantastic & so are the non CGI visuals. The main actors also did a more than commendable job.

So while this is obviously not even close to a perfect adaptation, I think it's more faithful to the original than the Lord of the Rings films, just to put things in perspective..

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If I really wanted to attack it from a political perspective, there are some very legitimate points others have brought up, but if you care too much about those things, would it be even possible to peacefully watch ANY scifi show?

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¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This is probably the most mediocre kdrama romcom you'll ever see, except three things.
1) There is no love Triangle
2) It has come out in 2022.
3) It's trying to educate the audience a lot.
The first one is rather obvious, the lack of love triangles is always a huge plus for me. This drama is many things, but boring it is not, so I can only applaud the writers for this choice.
The second one needs more explanation. In my opinion 2022 had been a really bad year for kdrama romcoms, there were only like 3 really good ones and quite a few rather bad attempts. At the very least Law Cafe is an enjoyable easy watch, once.
As for the third one, I sense a lot of blatant -progressive- educational intent & this largely reminds me of TVING dramas. Progress is of course good and Korea could for sure use some, but social engineering works better, if it's not so much in your face..

To elaborate more on mediocrity, the romance is average, the comedy is average & we have a crazy cartoon villain alongside an incredible amount of silliness.

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It's not great.

I love noona romance cdramas, but this sure does not feel like one. FL is in her late twenties, has a child & is divorced, but acts like a shy 18 year old college student most of the time and her kid has largely no plot relevance. ML is the usual 24 year old domineering CEO, however he devolved into an insolent teen as the story progressed. His character is not very well acted either, the actor did FAR better in Sweet Teeth. I don't see much chemistry between the mains either. Yes, there is a lot of fluff, but it just feels too fake. Like seriously this drama has some of most forced (forced in the sense that it feels weird & fake) hugs and kisses I have ever seen in a romance drama. The reason why it's a 5 and not 3 is, because it's rather low on angst, there are no love triangles worth mentioning & there are just no villainous characters overall. Even the mom is unusually well behaved.
Also like half of the show takes place in a corporate setting, but the writers have forgone the usual crap that goes down in workplace cdramas.

-I must mention that the final reveal about the forgotten ehm incident was the most underwhelming thing ever & the rushed ending left a sour taste in my mouth.

-Also the second lead couple's story was just stupid, I'm sorry.

-As for the third couple, their story is basically educational content to teach us how much better it is to NOT be a sissy. The censors must have loved this.

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It's a noona romance masterpiece!

The Good:
- The noona dynamics
- It has a truly beautiful romantic story.
- It has an outstanding cast.
- It has a bucketload of wholesomeness.
- It has great boss characters.
- The great sismances
- It has short, but impactful flashbacks.
- I did not feel the 29 episodes being too stretched out.
- Best parents!
- The love triangles are relatively weak.

The Neutral:
-The show is a bit silly, no one will mistake this for reality :-)
-The 7 year age gap is over-dramatized.

The Bad:
-The forced semi breakup after a kiss that lasted for 3 episodes(those episodes were pretty bad 11-12-13)
-The plot involving the evil sponsor woman made very little sense.

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