scenophile
This review may contain spoilers
Messy, but addictive
The premise for this honestly caught my eye, and I've been super excited for it for ages. It turned out to be nothing like what I'd expected, and to be honest it was kind of a hot mess. AND YET, it was addictive and I felt anxious watching it.
It's messy because it basically threw all the cliches into a pot and used all of them—rich man/poor girl, best friend love triangle, characters screaming their emotions into the void, backstabbing best friend, Cinderella's step-family...but the way they did it was completely unexpected and not in the order you'd expect.
I was really annoyed with all the characters' actions right off the bat: Jo-Jo for being a cheater, Sun-Oh for stabbing his friend in the back, and Hye-Young for being a creepy stalker. I felt like people were only rooting for him because they saw his perspective, but from Jo-Jo's point of view, he barely even talked to her and just creepily followed her everywhere.
Because of all the characters' immature personalities, for once I felt like the time skip was in the right place. And as someone who usually DETESTS all time jumps, I really liked how it was inserted, and how the characters changed during that time. I do hate that noble idiocy is such a huge plot point, but the fact that it took place in the time skip made it a bit better, even though I still found myself frustrated with the flashback scenes.
The time skip was also helpful in getting me to not hate Hye-Young, because I liked his character development and how he finally took action, instead of always looking from afar. Even though his character is growing on me though, I still definitely have second lead syndrome and am rooting for Sun-Oh.
The cinematography and visual effects were the best part of this entire thing. I loved the sound effects. how the app looks, how everything was filmed, and how the 10m radius is edited. EVERYTHING.
I really wish there was more sismance and bromance. The bromance was nice, even though it crashed and burned near the end. On the other hand, there was ZERO sismance, and I hated how all the female characters (other than Kim Jo-Jo) were portrayed as boy-obsessed, shallow, gossipy, etc. Honestly, Jo-Jo's minor scenes with her wedding work friend were so refreshing—and more friendship is needed in this entire drama, which would work out to balance all the romance drama.
Because it was so romance heavy, I also found myself loving the scenes that delved into more Black Mirror territory and talked about heavier topics, like the protests, exploitation, suicides, etc. I really wished that that was a bigger part of the story, because there's a lot of potential for the characters to get involved in more than the melodrama cliches.
I also appreciate the lowkey LGBT mentions and how it's addressed with "It's not like you can control your feelings." MORE, please!
It's messy because it basically threw all the cliches into a pot and used all of them—rich man/poor girl, best friend love triangle, characters screaming their emotions into the void, backstabbing best friend, Cinderella's step-family...but the way they did it was completely unexpected and not in the order you'd expect.
I was really annoyed with all the characters' actions right off the bat: Jo-Jo for being a cheater, Sun-Oh for stabbing his friend in the back, and Hye-Young for being a creepy stalker. I felt like people were only rooting for him because they saw his perspective, but from Jo-Jo's point of view, he barely even talked to her and just creepily followed her everywhere.
Because of all the characters' immature personalities, for once I felt like the time skip was in the right place. And as someone who usually DETESTS all time jumps, I really liked how it was inserted, and how the characters changed during that time. I do hate that noble idiocy is such a huge plot point, but the fact that it took place in the time skip made it a bit better, even though I still found myself frustrated with the flashback scenes.
The time skip was also helpful in getting me to not hate Hye-Young, because I liked his character development and how he finally took action, instead of always looking from afar. Even though his character is growing on me though, I still definitely have second lead syndrome and am rooting for Sun-Oh.
The cinematography and visual effects were the best part of this entire thing. I loved the sound effects. how the app looks, how everything was filmed, and how the 10m radius is edited. EVERYTHING.
I really wish there was more sismance and bromance. The bromance was nice, even though it crashed and burned near the end. On the other hand, there was ZERO sismance, and I hated how all the female characters (other than Kim Jo-Jo) were portrayed as boy-obsessed, shallow, gossipy, etc. Honestly, Jo-Jo's minor scenes with her wedding work friend were so refreshing—and more friendship is needed in this entire drama, which would work out to balance all the romance drama.
Because it was so romance heavy, I also found myself loving the scenes that delved into more Black Mirror territory and talked about heavier topics, like the protests, exploitation, suicides, etc. I really wished that that was a bigger part of the story, because there's a lot of potential for the characters to get involved in more than the melodrama cliches.
I also appreciate the lowkey LGBT mentions and how it's addressed with "It's not like you can control your feelings." MORE, please!
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