I have yet to watch this and the first japanese version but I've seen the anime! I don't know what EXACTLY happened…
That’s too bad. I’ll still watch the anime just to complete the whole set, but I highly recommend the live action Japanese version, which I consider one of the greatest movies I’ve ever seen, probably top 50 for me.
Everybody, please do me a favor and watch the Japanese live action version from 2003 (Josee to Tora to Sakana Tachi). That movie not only felt fresher, quirkier, funnier, and more engaging, but it was also way more emotionally devastating. This Korean version was definitely competently made, with sound and photography on a higher level than the norm, but the development of the characters and relationships was skimpy, and the overall feel I think was misguided. The wall-to-wall slow, sentimental music was a particularly bad misstep. It made everything too ponderous and pretentious. Next, I'm going to watch the anime version, but I doubt it'll be able to compete with the original live action Japanese version.
Yoo Rin just drove me nuts in the last couple of episodes! She was so stupidly masochistic and self-destructive, I was seriously rooting for a sad ending where she loses Gong Chan forever. Gong Chan should have just told her, alright, if that's the way you want it, then goodbye forever, I'll just marry the person I should have picked from the beginning, my faithful secretary. The resolution was so sudden and made no sense, so the happy ending was totally unsatisfying because it wasn't earned. And don't get me started on the old fool of a grandfather, the shady grifter dad, or the boring older couple, whose only purpose was to save you time by providing lots of scenes you can just fast-forward through. My favorite thing about the whole drama was Yoo Rin's 2 friends and their cute sibling relationship.
Make sure you watch all the way through the end of the credits. The post-credits scene was very moving and made me dewy-eyed. If you enjoyed this, definitely watch Josee, the Tiger and the Fish (the original Japanese live action film).
I just finished episode 3, and I'm really enjoying this, but did I miss something here? Episode 2 ends in the middle of the match, and episode 3 begins after the match is over and somehow some enemies have made up. I feel like I skipped some scenes between episode 2 and 3.
After enduring 7 agonizing episodes, I have to drop this. I hate watching dramas in which almost every single character acts like a total idiot. If Jung Ho had gone to my high school, the entire class would have waited for him in a dark alley and beaten him into the dead, bloody pulp that he deserved to be. And that naive pushover In Jae isn't doing her students any favors with her ridiculously out-of-touch teaching style. And just what does a student have to do to get kicked out of this school? With such unrealistically lenient standards, even the Columbine kids would've been given a warning and a second chance at this joke of school.
I had to stop watching it, because when she invited this homeless guy into her house, I had a bad feeling that it was going to turn into a psycho killer rapist type movie.