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Fun & heart-fluttering
This show seriously shot its way up my list of favorite web dramas so fast. It's a travesty this couldn't go on for longer because I'm such a huge fan of this enemies-to-lovers (or more specifically annoyer & annoyee relationship) trope and I feel like this drama did it absolutely flawlessly.The plot was straightforward and it had its cliches, but the drama didn't feel recycled at all — it was so refreshing, the leads absolutely killed their roles, and I just really loved how the story and relationship developed between the characters, who were simultaneously polar opposites and like two puzzle pieces that fit perfectly together.
The cinematography was also really good; it's not high production by any means but I really loved the symbolism of different colors as well as how the show edited SW and JY's scenes to parallel or contrast them.
It's also rare we get to see side characters get their due in these short shows, but Semantic Error really did an amazing job on the minor characters revolving around the leads; they not only had their own personalities and lives either, but I also just felt like their scenes were just as interesting and fun.
Overall, such a good drama with the perfect balance of fluff and tension. Definitely one I would return to watch.
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Heartwrenching at certain points
I honestly have to say that Jang Ki Yong totally stole the show for me. From his first scene, I knew that he and Ji-an would have some sort of history, and indeed he turned out to be the most layered and gray character. He had one of the best development arcs I'd ever seen, and the acting was top-notch.Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the development between the leads as well, but it just didn't captivate me the same way, save for a few scenes that were actually really touching.
I wish I could rate this higher but it actually took me so long to get through this drama, and even mid-way it was hard to find the motivation to keep going. I think part of this was the amount of time dedicated to the side characters — while some did grow on me, especially when they interacted with Ji-an in later episodes, for most of it I didn't care much for many of their scenes and it just very disjointed from the main storyline.
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Potential
My 5.5 is not to say that I didn't enjoy this — it was a light-hearted watch and the aesthetics of it are so beautiful. I was even okay with the weird documentary format that worked in some places but didn't work in others because somehow they got "footage" from before and in weird, personal places, and somehow they were indirectly talking to each other as interviews bounced back and forth.The part that turned me off the most was the plot and character development, which needs a lot of work. It was like they had 4 pairs of characters but only thought about 1 of them, and even the story for that main pairing was dragged out and very thin. I was more invested in all of the other ships and they either didn't get a storyline across multiple episodes or just didn't play a role in the story at all.
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It's not that I hated this but
I just really didn't feel ANY emotions — and for a movie with such a heavy topic I probably should have.I think part of it has to do with the ensemble cast as well; I've never been a huge fan of ensemble movies except for Train to Busan (ensemble dramas are fine, because you have more time to learn to love all the characters) and this one was no different. I cared about a few of the characters but had trouble differentiating between everyone else, and so the entire movie just felt so much like action with no substance.
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This review may contain spoilers
Messy ending, but characters are intriguing
So yep, I really don't think this drama should be thought of a romance. But if we do see it that way, then yep — SECOND LEAD SYNDROME IS REAL. I've always been a bigger fan of the playful, comfortable, easy-to-talk relationship and how comfortable Baek Inho and Seol were with each other and how she made her laugh and how he actually had such good advice about how to live life...I LOVE him to death.Everyone who says that the ending of this drama is a mess...they're pretty much right, but if we DON'T think of the drama as a romance, I actually loved all the characters on their own:
Yoo Jung: I've always wanted to see a main lead like Yoo Jung — cunning, resourceful, with a thirst for justice and yet he goes about it in the coldest, cruelest way. Slytherin to the core. Loved it, and honestly the end of the drama felt more about his way of thinking than anything else.
Seol: So relatable in how endlessly hardworking she was and I loved how chill she could be with her friends. It was frustrating to see who she had to deal with, but I felt like the ending scene with her in the office and seeing colleagues who mirrored her college classmates...it tied everything up nicely.
Baek Inho: I've already said I loved him and he's one of my fave character archetypes — the estranged bad boy with a temper who goes WAY soft for the girl. His character was way complex and the backstory was heartbreaking, and there was so much tension between all his emotional turmoil vs. the emotions he wore on his sleeve.
Baek Inha: If I knew someone like this in real life, I'd be endlessly frustrated with them and hate them, but in this drama she was both annoying and hilarious. I can't help but feel like her character development was way out-of-the-blue and she got the short end of the stick with how crazy the drama's plot went, but ultimately she was still interesting.
Bora + Euntaek: Loved them. I wish they got a little more screentime but they gave me the friends-to-lovers that I always crave.
With that being said, the plot definitely went crazy, but since I watched this years after it aired, I was mentally prepared for it and it turned out to not be as bad as I expected. As a romance, it was problematic because I don't think the leads were good for one another, even from the very start, but if we're looking at the characters individually, I felt like this drama had a lot there.
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As expected for a short web drama though, it didn't get to explore these things in depth as much as I wished it did, and the ending felt very bubblegum as everything just suddenly started going right.
The more action-packed plotline was also a nice surprise — it's rare that web dramas try to explore a story that needs so much backstory. Sadly though I felt like the resolution was very deus ex machina, and it had no lead-in or sufficient explanation.
I also really didn't like the side characters, and maybe part of it is just that there were way too many, and they all seemed to be dealing with the same issue of not knowing what you want to do in life. And the robot would solve it for them — it all got a bit repetitive.
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This review may contain spoilers
I'm a sucker for high school / college dramas, but not ones that span a long time. So obviously I had mixed feelings about this before I even started. To be honest, I had gotten it all spoiled for me, and knowing that the ending was unsatisfying, I ended up skimming the entire drama.If you asked me to describe this drama in one phrase, I'd scream "SECOND LEAD SYNDROME." Lu Zhi Ang was undoubtedly my favorite character, and it hurt knowing that he wouldn't get the main girl, when he was SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE MALE LEAD. And as much as I liked Yan Mo, I usually never quite like the second love interest as much, especially for a character I was so invested in. I never really cared about the main ship either—in fact, I've gotten a little tired of the "strong and silent" type of boy being the love interest, and I felt like Zhi Ang was just so much more lovable.
I still really liked the first half of this drama. If I wasn't someone who just HAS to finish everything till the end, I'd have stopped at the episode when they graduated college. Honestly, that's what I'd recommend too. Although the high school parts had some cliche plotlines (ex: cheating on a test), I still liked how pure it was.
The last 6 episodes were the worst. Everything was really random and extreme, and the sort of mellow and slice-of-life drama I'd been watching suddenly became a soap opera where everything went wrong without any good reason other than to make things tragic. I also HATED Qi Qi's character arc—she was another one of my favorite characters and she was completely ruined.
Also, I felt like there were so many unnecessary flashbacks. I swear I watched Yu Jian with Qing Tian's interactions a million times, and it was always the same scenes over and over again. There were also so many flashback montages for the main leads and for Zhi Ang and his mom, and they were always the same scenes. I also was lowkey weirded out by the flashbacks of how Xiao Si's parents fell in love: I wish they had gotten actual young actors instead of just doing things like putting the mom actor in a pink doll dress and giving her pigtails.
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Boring and uninspired
I know this movie received critical acclaim and a lot of people loved the plot twists but wow, it did not click with me at all. I liked how the plot was set up at the start but as the movie went on, it just felt like it was dragging a lot. There were a lot of scenes I didn't care much for, and all of the characters (especially the main guy) just felt very bland and uninteresting to me.Part of my apathy, though, I know is just a lack of interest in this genre as a whole — I found it really difficult to suspend disbelief when the explanations were reliant on religious mythology, exorcism, and themes like that. If you are a fan of those kinds of movies, you might enjoy this more than I did.
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Fluffy but mediocre plot
I really liked the vibe of this drama and the fluffiness of scenes — the relationship between the leads and the second leads are adorable, and the bromance and sismance were also really nice.Though I like individual scenes though, some things just feel really cliche and hard to believe when it came to plot, and development of the story was sometimes lacking cohesion — some things that happen are unclear and led to cliches that I didn’t need. I have to admit that the premise of the drama requires some suspension of disbelief which I had trouble with, but over time I got used to it.
Other than that, most of the obstacles were handled well, but I felt like the last few eps of this drama fall into a melodramatic progression (to be honest a lot of Chinese dramas fall victim to it) but there were the very dramatic tropes of kidnapping, noble idiocy, corporate corruption, etc. All of these are just really annoying and unnecessary to me.
Lastly — I have to say that the OST for this drama is really good, but sometimes doesn't match the scene well.
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Another thing — they used a time turner as the prop?!!? As a huge Harry Potter fan, that lowkey destroyed some of the immersion for me because I kept thinking: that is NOT how the time turner works, you can only change the past if you've already changed it ?
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This review may contain spoilers
Peak bromance
This was a great action drama that manages to hit just the right spot between heart-warming, funny, and dark.I absolutely adore the ML and his kind-heartedness and care for his mother; the friendship between the two leads really is the heart of the show and it was such a great display of healthy masculinity.
On the thriller side, I'm also really impressed with the show's willingness to kill people off and just be utterly brutal. It makes the stakes feel much higher. On thing that does hamper the plot a bit is the disappearance of Hyun-ju's character, who was such a vital part of the first half it felt weird to not have her in the second half at all. I understand that this was a side effect of the situation in real life though, but it feels — especially in hindsight — such a shame to not have that throughline in the plot.
Other than that, a great drama with great action seasons. Looking forward to season 2 later this year.
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Good in my brain but average in my heart
It was great seeing these characters again, and in general, I do feel like S3 stayed true to the characters and to the heart of what the Borderlands have meant up till now, but ultimately this season was sort of missing that spark that S1 had in particular, and while I did hope for a S3 because I am an amnesia trope hater, this one ultimately still feels a bit tacked on.One part of that is the side characters. We always have a little cast of B characters, and while S3's weren't annoying of out-of-place necessarily, I definitely found them the least memorable, aside from the professor/doctor. It doesn't help that Arisu and Usagi spend 95% of the season apart, so we really have no pre-established relationships to rely on for those deep, yet comfortable scenes that gave the show a lot of heart. Arisu/Usagi scenes were probably the strongest in the entire season.
The games ARE fun though, and as usual I enjoyed the stunts a lot. The climax delivers in terms of cinematography and stakes, and the cameos we get at the end are fun and really do provide closure. I'm glad we got this season, but I do think I never quite felt the gut punch I wanted.
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Should've been in the original
Almost didn't know about this since it wasn't on Netflix!Look, the original show didn't really click with me, but I definitely feel like this epilogue made the show better and it should've been part of the original cut. This is only 10 minutes and a lot of it is flashbacks, but it provides a little more closure.
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Decent entertainment
This is a pretty good watch but something just didn't really click for me; the way the plot is exaggerated is certainly fun, but I think it's lacking the more emotional aspect, and the lessons are just pretty simple, and just as a matter of personal taste this definitely isn't the tone of the dramas I usually watch.I think the characters are fun, but they do fall a little short of feeling like actual people, seeming more like exaggerated archetypes. It's ultimately an entertaining and light-hearted watch.
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How to Make Millions before Grandma Dies
1 people found this review helpful
Warm and healing
A beautiful story. It's definitely been done before — particularly in Asian media, but that didn't really affect my enjoyment overall and I really appreciate the slow but steady pacing. It feels very down-to-earth, in a way. It did, however take a while for me to get into this but I think it grew on me and will keep growing, slowly.Was this review helpful to you?
