I have conflicted feelings about this movie. While I -a fan of the drama- have somewhat enjoyed watching it, it did feel redundant & a bit messy. In all honestly I have extreme doubts that someone who has not seen drama could even understand let alone enjoy this. The plot is about as complicated, if not a bit more so than the original drama's main plot (it's the same with complications basically), but all that is presented in 100 minutes, It's a bit like imagine Back to the Future 1-2-3 as one 100 minute long movie, would we even root for our heroes with that little buildup to the various time travel events that happen there.

Oh well, Wu Bai is still legend & Last Dance is still one of the best songs I have ever heard!

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It's entertaining garbage.

The Good:
⌲ The acting*
⌲ The chemistry
⌲ The comedy in the first 2/3rds of the show
⌲ The whole double Scooby-Doo crew thing
⌲ Ultimately I was entertained enough.
⌲ There were an endless number of cute/fluffy romantic scenes

The Average:
⌲ The romantic story itself could be better.
⌲ The second ML (It's a weak triangle, but still..)
⌲ The special ability (the drama does not follow its own established fantasy rules regarding how the eyes are supposed to work and it's just a really dumb concept.)
⌲ The corporate stuff is quite digestible until nearing the final episodes. (usually this is far far worse)

The Bad:
⌲ The plot goes from silly nonsense to complete -still very silly- chaos near the finale.
⌲ Typically Chinese fantasy shows get an "it's a novel" ending these days, here the plot is completely packaged in that, so it's the first 10 & last 10 minutes-ish.
⌲ The main villain (I mean what is the end goal here, really?)
⌲ The Police in the final episode (I guess the censors needed a little extra push?)
⌲ The mom wakes up after 15 years of coma & she is like your regular cdrama mom from 1 second onward. (my daughter aged 15 years, but everything is FIIINE)


* I've read many posts about people bashing Zhang Yu Xi for her bad acting. I think you all are just lacking context. Had you ever seen a Chinese romcom comic, you would probably immediately recognize all the "silly overacting" postures & various other things. The goal was clearly doing that on screen & the cast did it as well as I could possibly imagine anyone doing.

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It's a bit disappointing from kdrama writer giant Park Hye Ryun, still this is no Start-Up.

Screenwriter Park Hye Ryun is responsible for 3 dramas on my all time top 10 list. Because of that even though Start-Up was a huge disappointment I let the comment section's hype get to me.
What's good news I suppose that this is far far better than Start-Up. (Which I may have dropped half way or so in, I'm not even sure anymore)
Anyhow the plots and themes in Castaway Diva are very much Park Hye Ryun-like, despite the fact that she is not the only writer, probably the other writer Eun Yeol contributed more to dialog, I don't know. Anyway anyone who has watched the big three dramas I mentioned before (While You Were Sleeping, Pinocchio, I Hear Your Voice) will find many subplots & the general direction of the story in this drama oddly familiar. Near the finale there is a pretty iconic scene that is 1:1 While You Were Sleeping as well. Not that I mind this too much, Park Hye Ryun always heavily built and iterated from her previous works in all her dramas and I absolutely adored them..
So you might ask, why did I rate the writing at 5.5? Well, out of all the preproduced (non live filmed) dramas this was perhaps the most inconsistent (that I can recall anyway). To me it seems like the writers shaped the plot assuming that the general audience won't remember the minutiae of what they've seen 2-4-6 weeks ago. Unluckily for me I binge watched this over the course of 4 days during long daily workout sessions, as such in almost every episode I had several moments where I was rolling my eyes at all the gaslighting that has been presented to me. Also even if I ignore the plot itself and look at the various world building elements, the drama is -even by kdrama romcom standards- just incredibly poorly researched. Pretty much every little detail about the Island was wrong. I understand this is fiction, but it would not have been very hard to ask someone well versed in wilderness survival to give the writers some tips & to use common sense. (I could list countless things here, but just to say a few: potatoes, FL's well groomed-ness, swimming in baggy sweatpants/shirts, the shoes)
The biggest writing related pain point though is that this is like a romcom with most of the romance ripped out of it, but the rest of the things are left as they would be in a really silly drama about a cat shapeshifter or something else like that.
Anyway I did not really feel the leads bonding at any point in time, as opposed to the second lead doing some of that. Basically the love triangle here is very similar to what we've seen in While You Were Sleeping, but with the amazing main romance missing, if that even makes sense xD (meaning the second ML is not a nuisance, it's just this is so weird overall)
If you are curious what a good romance-less romance drama is like, take a look at the cdrama Reset.

Onto the second big problem I had with the drama, which is Park Eun Bin, or more specifically her portrayal of castaway Seo Mok Ha. I have seen this actress before shine in Age of Youth. (I don't think she is lacking in skill, in fact she is probably awesome.) Also while in Attorney Woo I very strongly disliked how she acted as an autistic lawyer. There she did the usual Hallyu version of "person struggling with disability" act and probably did it as well as it is possible, but I always found that incredibly offensive in any drama, but I digress. The point I'm trying to make is that someone had the genius idea to not only cast her for this role, but also make this castaway character's portrayal essentially the same, or maybe because this was her next drama after Woo she did not completely recover from that role which she has taken way more seriously as an actor. I suppose instead of all this ranting I could have just said that she is overacting in this one, but it just feels wrong & weird.

The casting in general is not all that great. I love watching good sismances in dramas, but I did not feel that sister chemistry all that much, though all the back and forth in the plot did not help. Nor did FL have good chemistry with ML, but there was barely any time to build on that, so I could be wrong. Though I must admit the evil dads were quite fit for their roles, despite not having seen these supporting actors in evil roles thus far.

Remember how the final 3-4 episodes of Pinocchio were after due to it being a huge success they extended the run from 16 to 20 episodes? Walkaway Diva has ~8 episodes like that, out of 12 which is obviously not great. Earlier I ranted about the writers expecting the audience to forget stuff, now that I think about it, perhaps that could have totally worked on me too, because I don't think I'll remember much of anything of what happened between ep2 and 10 in a couple of weeks.

I apologize for all the rantish walls of text so far, I too am getting tired of writing this review, so I'll quickly list -in no particular order- what I actually liked about the drama:

⌲ Episode 1 is a great short film, with very talented child actors [10/10]
⌲ Everyone is really attractive, with very pleasant, almost hypnotic voices.
⌲ The entertainment industry related procedural parts are usually far far worse. (they avoided many common themes that tend to ruin things in other dramas about idols)
⌲ The parents -adoptive dad+mom- were adorable.
⌲ The OST and all the singing is really really and I mean REALLY good. (though it's annoying that everything is basically lip syncing, because all songs are perfect studio recordings, where there was no effort made to make them live-ish during editing)
⌲ There are no significant misunderstandings.
⌲ It's a high quality production with great photography & across the board great audiovisuals.
⌲ Evil Dad #2 was a relatively high class kdrama villain & did not overstay his welcome. (similar to other Park Hye Ryun villains)
⌲ There were some very satisfying -power-fantasy like- scenes.
⌲ The dialog has some rather great moments, here and there.

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Top tier tomance, but the rest is increasingly not great nearing the finale.

The romance in this one is about as good as it can get within the constraints of Chinese TV. The leads not only have great chemistry with each other, but the romantic plot flows very nicely and realistically throughout the entire show. There are no love triangles or needless complications either & yet they have so many touching and emotional scenes, it's just insane!

The drama is not just romance though, there is plenty of billiards related content. In the early episodes I was amazed by the camerawork & by all the effort taking & recording these shots must've taken. Though the games themselves were really really strange to my non-expert eyes. (but I have seen snooker played at the highest level & Ronnie O'Sullivan would be jealous of what's happening on screen in this show)

The first thing I disliked in this drama is fake Finland. Even if we ignore the strategically inserted homeless guys the whole environment is incredibly weird. To me it feels like the the studio shipped all the blonde white actors -based in China- to Finland (assuming they filmed there, I think so~) to act in this show. To add insult to injury the dubbed English is weird too, not because it's bad like in Kdramas, but rather educated Chinese dubbing actors just cannot sell this, every time a white guy opens their mouth on this show it sounds incredibly fake. (Though maybe I'm overreacting. It's just a Finland like imaginary country, not Finland after all.)

The bigger problem I had with this is that the final 7 or so episodes are incredibly boring. The romance in them is still fun, but the focus shifts to various educational topics involving sports, patriotism & self improvement. The sports drama parts, games played were all extremely skippable in this period as well. Having only this much in a 30 episode cdrama would be quite normal in the current era, but pushing most of it into the final episodes made it very difficult for me to finish the drama.
Despite how much I enjoyed at least 2/3rds of this, it's difficult for me to rate this very highly, since it was really and I mean REALLY difficult to reach the finale.

If you are reading this review before watching the show, my suggestion for you would be that after ep20 as soon as you start feeling bored, just straight up jump to the final episode.



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Now that I think about it, I also find it odd that the Cousin had a distinct second couple plot, but the creators forgot to wrap that up.

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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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Somewhere between decent and lukewarm

The Good:
⌲ Park Shin Hye's smiles (especially compared to her younger self)
⌲ There is some decent comedy here and there.
⌲ There are no triangles.
⌲ The drama mostly delivers in the complication-free fluff genre. (and I'm all for these)
⌲ Yoon Park in a kind role (I've only seen him in really annoying villainous, or grey roles before)

The Average:
⌲ The breakup (As far as noble reason breakups go this one is not bad. )
⌲ The chemistry between the leads was whelming.
⌲ The villain (messy pointless plots, but at least a relatively tame villain character)
⌲ The medical stuff is very poorly researched. (luckily there is not that much focus on this)
⌲ Hong Ran

The Bad:
⌲ Park Hyung Sik has matured too much to pull off the aegyo and a childish adult character in general. (not that we need aegyo in our lives lol)
⌲ The team should have used child actors in the high school flashbacks, every scene looked jarring like this..
⌲ The final episode was very boring, filled with some ridiculous product placements & very few swoony scenes (car, hug the couch, buy the bag)
⌲ What was the point of ML's parents being in the drama???
⌲ The drama is somewhat poorly written without much planning involved.
⌲ Adding to the previous point Nam Ha Neul is basically a completely different person later on, where did her spunk go?

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The drama's okay, but it's not some hidden gem downrated by China haters.

The Good:
⌲ The OTP romance is relatively strong. (but this is only about 30% of the drama)
⌲ There is no triangle worth mentioning.
⌲ The format of getting into various psychological cases is nice. (almost case of the week-like)
⌲ Standing up to a toxic parent is always great to see in a cdrama(, but typically doesn't pass censorship.)
⌲ Overall the drama is a quite well made quality production.
⌲ The interesting symbolism (here and there)

The Average:
⌲ There are a lot of abrupt kisses that felt really strange & awkward.
⌲ The secondary couples are fun, but they barely had any screen time.
⌲ The individual cases are a hit or miss, there is a lot of procedural mediocrity everywhere.
⌲ The varying usage of hypnosis
⌲ Many things are over-explained, though this is the norm in this genre.
⌲ The 10 minute long breakup due to noble reasons
⌲ While the OTP romance is generally good, the writers have pulled the brakes in a very unnatural way to stall the couple's natural progress.

The Bad:
⌲ Second ML's plot is horrible + his cartoon villain persona could not be any more stereotypical.
⌲ The final episode is really underwhelming, in fact this is one of the most boring final episodes I have ever seen.
⌲ Going abroad to study is naturally a must..
⌲ Shao Ning's involvement in his love interest's treatment is a wee bit creepy.

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This is mostly a very satisfying watch.

Generally I don't like revenge-makjang dramas, but I like Park Min Young. I thought, let's just give this a go, worst case scenario I'll just drop it after a while. Overall this is a very pleasant surprise. The whole plot works a lot better than anything else I've seen in this genre before, mostly because villainous transgressions get quick -and smart- paybacks almost every single time and these are very satisfying & overall well written. Outside of Boa's questionable acting the cast did a phenomenal job as well and the whole thing is just very decently done, the production values are really up there with the best. So why is it not a 10 you might ask? In the second half there were 2-3 weak, messy episodes where the plot fell apart a little bit, though the drama managed to recover from these & wrapped up nicely too.

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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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It's on the cusp of greatness, but the writing has ruined it.

To me it feels like this drama had most of the ingredients to become something really special. Namely, we've had amazing actors and an absolutely amazing production team. With a better writer this could have almost been a Goblin. To me everything outside of the plot is working really really well. The lead couple I think had great chemistry & the actors did a phenomenal job creating some really touching scenes, to some extent letting the audience feel that emotional roller coaster in a good way.

But of course the plot has almost ruined everything. In the comment section I remember reading someone criticizing that most romantic progress in the drama is conveyed by side characters trying to convince the leads that they have something going on. I can kind of agree with that take, the romantic plot just meanders aimlessly, even in the final episode. I cannot believe that anyone would think this show has wrapped up nicely! Is this even a happy ending, is it even an ending, what the heck has happened?
The biggest problem of course is that this is a time travel show and the plot is completely random. Deus ex machina is considered by most people a writing tool that should be used very sparingly if at all, in this drama though it is everywhere. In general it's quite difficult to write a time travel plot that makes sense, oftentimes the audience is expected to turn off their brains, but this is perhaps the least consistent time travel story I have ever witnessed.
Of course the pacing is totally off as well. So much time is wasted on meaningless stuff like that delivery guy's story, but when it comes to important stuff everything is so condensed. For example the title has saved 10000 times in it, then why is that important plot point so rushed , why are the events that led to this standing on such a shallow footing?

The show has a love triangle, it's not a very offensive one, but at the same time the second ML keeps popping up, he confessed in the final episode as well.. I very strongly dislike love triangles, this is close to the limit of what I can still endure.

(This is supposedly an adaptation, but it barely resembles the kdrama & only does so very early on..)

The OST is quite good, the song "慢慢走吧 Man Man Zou Ba - 王梓赫 Ray " is really really great. (you can easily copy paste the Chinese name and find it on Youtube)

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This show is of course quite good, there are literally no love triangles, misunderstandings or angst, but there is still fun content that's enough to fill up about 25 episodes, unfortunately we had 33. Still the filler is not so bad either, overall it's full of chill swoony stuff. The couples were all great pairings with excellent chemistry. I just feel a bit annoyed how little -meaningful- screentime the side couples had. (especially considering how much filler their scenes could've replaced) One thing this drama did exceptionally well is portraying new couple awkwardness & progress into becoming comfortable with each other. (but then they just had to make several "sleep together in our day clothes prim and proper" scenes to annoy us with)

I've said this before in other cdrama reviews, but saying it again, it felt like I watched an amazing show twice in a row, that's why the rewatch value is low, because I feel I already did it..

Also there were quite a few epic moment opportunities that were intentionally missed. I was really looking forward to some of them too, so that stings a bit. (for example ML meeting FL's cousins, I mean could they have made that any tamer?) Censorship makes dramas like this possible so here it could be considered a net positive, but the blunting effect on the excitement is a bit too much for my taste.

(Also we could talk about how incredibly offensive to women some of these acts of "classic" chivalry are, but hey what else is new? This is still a Chinese drama)

I really liked the proposal scene in this one. I usually cringe whenever I have to suffer through proposal scenes, not here...
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Overall this is one of the better Asian dramas I've seen this year, but it's very far off from the best ones in the chill-conflictless genre. (in fact 'Meet Yourself' is a 2023 cdrama as well that I think is much better)

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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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Twins separated under oddly mysterious circumstances is a very popular trope in Chinese pulp novels, as such I was kind of looking forward to watching this, despite knowing full well in advance how bad some of the plot is going to be. As far as this genre goes the setting could have been far worse, it's pretty bad of course, but due to a lack of explanations the parts that are told the audience are honestly not nearly as outlandish that I've seen, or rather I've read before. With that said most of the drama is very enjoyable, the fluffy romance is quite up there, the leads look great together and have good chemistry. While the children are not very skilled child actors compared to what's normal in a cdrama of this budget, they are of course very cute & adorable making the drama even better.

So why is this only a 7?
The big one is that the ML has made some questionable choices that made me dislike the character a little. Also the episodes (4-5) preceding the finale are quite bad, but stuff like this ALWAYS happens in this genre, so I suppose I should've known what's coming.

Can triangle haters watch this?
I think yes, because the ex is only present for a couple of episodes and she is rebuffed with resolve, for me at least this much is bearable.

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Typically I don't like watching high school cdramas, because censorship makes it near impossible to portray a reasonable romantic story in them and also they often have content involving parents & teachers that I abhor.
This drama is a standout in in this genre in the sense, that they've shown innocent but very sweet high school dating. At times I was wondering how this passed censorship. Then later on ML's momster came and forced a 1 year separation, so everyone could focus on their studies & then I thought "okay, so that's how". There were also various moments in the drama, when the leads were vehemently denying their romantic involvement with each other, but it was never in doubt. It was very strongly implied that they knew each other's feelings and they did everything dating teens would do, other than skinship that is.
(This is the second crama I've seen that is like this, the other one was 'Meeting You')

Basically the show can be split into three parts.
1) The kids getting to know each other. (first 5-9 ep)
2) The friend group of 5 enjoying their best life. (this is very close to 10/10 amazing)
3) College, young adult life (last 6-7 ep)

I would say 1) is not great, initially I found the show to be the most typical Chinese high school drama I have ever seen. I was fully prepared to drop it, but I did not really have anything else better lined up & I needed something to watch during my late night workout sessions.. Upon reaching 2) I was very surprised, suddenly everything started working for me and it felt like I'm watching a different show, where EVERYTHING is better, including the acting, the editing and even the background music inserts. In fact episode 10 is one of the best cdrama episodes I have ever seen, it was absolutely magical.
After the forced separation we quickly transitioned to college life & adult dating. While I tend to enjoy a simple, fluffy and complication-free happy ending, I felt 3) to be lackluster in many ways. I really liked the second couple & they barely had scenes there. Much of the non romantic plot earlier was involving ML's brother & momster. FL did not meet ML's mom during the adult part of the show, at least other than us seeing the mom sitting there at their wedding there has not been anything else. The brother also only had like one line during the wedding, would have been nice to see what happened to the genius. Also there were at least two occasions when I felt the writer set up some big cathartic faceslap moments and the then things just fizzled out, not cool! Give me my loud slap! To sum it up, in 3) we just went through the motions without enough emotional impact. (well there was a little of that in the finale, maybe)

Anyway despite the negative points this one is absolutely worth watching, perhaps even just for the bromances, but to me 'A Love So Beautiful' -despite that annoying Wu Busong and the breakup- is a much better cdrama that is largely similar to this one, but feels far better overall. It's better acted, has several really epic moments, the final episodes are very satisfying and it's amazing from episode 1 onward etc etc.
Of course if I started to compare it to the best university/young adult cdramas then it would just fall short.

TLDR: It's the second best high school cdrama I've seen, but usually high school cdramas suck, so 8/10.

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