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This show does some awesome things that no other BL drama has attempted. Shi is a single dad with a seven-year-old daughter (played by a child actress who has just the right mix of sweetness and sass). This is a drama about divorce, falling in love when you have a child, and finding the right person to make a new family. A drama about a big, rarely explored topic: gay fatherhood.
This drama doesn't let us forget that it was made a few months after Taiwan's highest court ruled to make gay marriage legal. So ultimately, this is way more ambitious than another boys' love story--this is a drama trying to figure out gay families. And the closing images are so sweet and optimistic you will want to see happy gay families everywhere.
Also very cool: the biggest conflict between these two characters feels really true-to-life. It's about Fei's insecurities because of the bullying he endured as a gay kid in high school. If Shi is sometimes too pushy, Fei is sometimes too ashamed of himself--and this makes them a great pair.
These two characters were complicated, and I didn't agree with all their decisions. And like so many dramas, the first episodes have some choppy editing that's a little confusing. But this story was so interesting I want everyone to watch it so we can discuss it together!
P.S. I saw another reviewer complain about the kissing, but I thought it was pretty good. I mean, no one will ever be as convincing as Max and Tul in Together with Me, but I didn't have any complaints.
P.P.S. I'm rewatching it a second time and I keep thinking of more things I want to add to this review. It's that kind of show. It's sweet and beautiful and inspiring and totally awesome. Really.
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My first impression was that this was just another confusing time-travel drama. I was right, even after watching the drama untill the very last second I still don't know how the whole time-travel thing works, this part of the plot was handled pretty messily. Maybe I shouldn't give it to much thought because the all story it's pretty paradoxal and could destroit the entire time and space. (I've watch a lot of Doctor Who lately.)
We follow Shi-Woo who have spent the last 10 years in love with his first love. (I never said this drama was realistic). The thing is that they don't see each other since high school, so when they met again it's a very awkward full of resentiment encounter.
But taking the whole time-travel thing off the picture, this drama mix in a bunch of romantic cliche stories in one, we have the first love one, the boy-meets-girl one, the teacher-student one, the noona one and the list goes on. It's not bad per say, but this drama is not for everybody. If you don't like cliche this is not for you.
This drama has also some nostagia value because it take us back to simpler times aka the "thousands" were smartphones weren't heard of and we didn't have wi-fi everywhere we went, and I really liked that about the drama.
Now let's focus a bit on the romance. For some weird reason, the student version of Ji-Soo had more chemistry with the Shin-Woo teacher version than with the student version, and the opposite happened with the doctor version of Ji-Soo who had more chemistry with the Shin-Woo student version than with the teacher version, and that got me really confuse, and I still confused 'till today. The side romances were also really cute and I like that the script gave them some space to develop, even though the focus was almost all the time on the main couple.
A strong point on this dramas was definitely the friendship, the group of friend had a really good dynamic through out the whole drama, and was my favourite part of the show. Even after ten years they still in touch with each other and that just happen if the bound connecting the people is strong enough. Also the "bromance" between the past and present Shin-Woo was great even though they look more like brothers than properly like the same person.
Acting / Cast: The actors did well, this isn't a acting masterpiece but it was good. Lee Jung-Shin was the person that stood out the most for me, I really liked his acting and how he portrayed adult Shin-Woo with is mix between a very adult person who still had something of a child inside. Seo Ji-Hoon also did a great job even though the writers sometimes made his character look like a little kid even though he was almost eighteen. Lee Yeol-Eum was also good, but I found her character a bit lame and annoying at times, but I think that was more about the writing than about the acting. The rest of the cast was also very good and did great supporting the main cast!
The OST of this dramas was good, it fit the mood, but was not memorable for me. The cinematography was also good with some pretty and cute pictures.
Overall I think this drama could have been an hour and a half long movie and the story would still be exactly the same but without the boring moments, I think some things got stretched out what made the drama a bit boring and even more confuse.
Will I watch this drama again? Probably not, for me this is a one-time-watch drama, principally because I'm not into clichê, and this drama has a lot. I recommend this drama for people who really really like cliche, because this will be perfect for you, it has almost every cliche I can think of in dramas, which is not bad, but it's to much for me personally. But if you are into cliche and have some free time you would like to fill with something this dramas is definitely for you.
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And, Jo In Sung needs to pick up new works quickly, i'm dying of waiting for him to be on drama screen again. Stop hiding your handsome face, it's not fair for us. Gong Hyo Jin already picked two dramas after It's Okay, That's Love.
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Instead the drama took a detour to crazy town and for far too long. Second female lead was ridiculous and annoying and almost ruined this drama for me. Add to that female lead's insane Noble Idiocy and a good chunk of this was strictly for fast forwarding.
I’ve only watched a few Taiwanese dramas but I’ve found almost all of them have some light, fun, very shallow rom com premise and then a bazillion episodes to fill. They nearly always end up in Makjang territory to try to stretch the story long after the premise has run its course. This wasn’t as bad as Fall in Love with Me, which completely forgot what it was supposed to be about in the first place. But it got pretty bad. Jia-yu should have just gotten the psychiatric help she needed early on and we could have gotten back to the fun.
If you fast-forward most of the back half, there's a delightful little rom-com in here trying to get out. Aaron Yan is always an enjoyable and Puff Kuo stops yelling her lines after a few episodes and becomes very enjoyable to watch. Edit out the makjang and it's a fun little show, second female lead notwithstanding.
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The plot runs in a perpetual circle and gets more and more ridiculous as you go along. Memory loss, chaebols, controlling mothers, kidnappings, makeovers and second lead syndrome - this is like the mother of all kdramas. It gave birth to the rest.
I can't say that I liked it and I certainly wouldn't want to watch it again. But for some reason I don't dislike it and even want to recommend it. I have no idea why.
At 25 episodes it's a bit of a marathon so pace yourself.
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I thought it would be a light romcom but it turned out to be such a weird amalgamation of thriller-romance-comedy-mystery-supernatural that it was gruesome to watch. First of all, there is no plot in this drama and its all fluff. There is no build up to any climax and it falls very flat after first few episodes. All the episodes are the same and have the same format that there was no compelling reason for me to stay even though I ended up pulling through to finish it. They go on dates, look for the culprit, and show some slapstick humor with guys in suits (and that wasn't even funny). Was the mystery aspect worth staying for? Not at all. It was so poorly written, predictable and weird. The suspect is a psychopath who targets skinny women -- this was discomforting and out of place in a drama that is supposed to be a romcom. Because it tries to be so many things, all of its "subplots" it attempts to execute is poorly done and awkwardly paced. It goes from cute and fun to outright disturbing and ridiculous farce. I ended up skipping over parts of the drama during the parts where there were just a bunch of random men trying too hard to be funny with their buffoonery and horseplay. It was just so immature and hard to watch and was completely irrelevant to the plot and characterization. Many of the "plots" are so insignificant, such a letdown and not worth staying for at all either. For example, when the person who was making threats to Min Hyuk was finally revealed, it is then forgotten about for the rest of the drama. It was pointless and anti-climatic. A lot of things happen in the drama without meaning. The drama was not mentally stimulating even though it was mentally exhausting.
Don't get me wrong, I do like romcoms but this was just too messy and predictable that I couldn't enjoy it. There are some cute moments with Bong Soon and Min Hyuk and they do a lot of aegyo if you're into that. It tries to appeal to the audience by being intentionally cheesy but I found it cringey and cliché. In addition, I was initially looking forward to seeing two of the male actors I love in one drama but even their presence there wasn't enough to make me enjoy it in the slightest. It was just so boring to watch them in that stupidly predictable love triangle. It would have made so much more sense to have Bong Soon and Gok Doo end up together, especially after they had been crushing on each other since high school. But somehow they just keep missing each other by the second. It was frustrating to watch even though we all knew the outcome of the triangle. Gok Doo, one of the main characters, felt like a side character and he literally has one emotion throughout the entire drama. Everyone in the drama just felt so insignificant and static. I know having the gay man in the drama was supposed to be funny but it would have been offensive since he was portrayed in the most typical way ever and I swear he screams everytime he's on screen. It felt like I was in some sort of replay loop whenever interactions with the side characters came into play. Bong Soon's mom was the most useless mom I have ever seen and I hated how dense and simple minded she was portrayed as even though an attempt was made to justify her actions towards the end. I also found Bong Soon so annoyingly reckless and discreetly pretentious everytime she whined about having her power yet flaunting it to other people and even abusing it while being unnecessarily disrespectful to the employees of the company. She was so childish, naive, and high maintenance and I just don't get that it's the reason why the two boys are heads over heels for her. The way she and whines cries reminds me of a child that you want to slap but you just can't because they're a child. I didn't have much patience for her even though everyone found her cute. The cuteness and fluff was just way over the top that it left a bitter aftertaste in my mouth.
Unless a drama has particularly beautiful OSTs, I usually don't pay too much attention or notice it. But I absolutely hated the music here, and maybe it's because its associated with my dislike towards the drama itself. It was so annoying to listen to that I'm so glad its over now.
Overall, this drama was a letdown and caused me a lot of grief, I don't even know how I didn't end up dropping it after episode 6.
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In many ways, this is basically three shows - a weird choice when there's only 12 episodes - and since one of them is a Sageuk with little relation to the rest of the show, it's impossible to know what on Earth the writers were thinking. If you watched the first three episodes and then the final one it would make just as much sense. You don't need to watch the rest as they contribute nothing to the plotline.
It is very disappointing to watch the final episode and realise what this drama could have been if they'd concentrated on the six pupils coming together to form Orange Marmalade. We could have seen them become friends and allies over 12 episodes, learning to understand each other despite their differences and defending each other because of their shared experiences. Instead they decided to skip all that for a boring historical diversion - even though we were told at the end that Orange Marmalade was the *main point of the drama*.
There's a charming - if unoriginal - storyline in here about some high school students who overcome bigotry with the power of music and I'm just going to pretend that's the one I watched.
I'll watch Yeo Jin Goo in anything because he's a great young actor. But I was let down by the writing of this drama.
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I must say that japanese fictions have my respect, because for a movie produced in the 70s, it show a certain amount of equality, with women training with men first. And second, we don't only see 1 woman but 3 women fighting, even if the others two were supporting roles. And last, but certainly not least, you also see other women battlers in some scenes. This movie almost made my day!! In other martial art fictions of that decade, you'll rarely see more that one woman fighting and be glad that there's even one. Writing like that, I sound like a real feminist, that's funny...
I also loved how rough she become when kicking butts, while looking so harmless and charming the rest of the time, that was a nice contrast. What I also like is that you see her sweating during the movie, which made the battles even more believable, whereas in other fictions even when the woman fight, her make-up and hairstyle remain almost flawless, that it's just ridiculous...
Now for Shiba Shin'ichi, it was my first time seeing him and I was thinking that he and our héroïne were forming a dynamic duo!! The man was truly amazing, he only has a minor role but his fights were spectacular. It's like the woman protagonist was the woman version of him in fighting skills.
Now the bad parts were some two scenes where you see women showing their breasts. Scantily dressed dolls are already bad enough for me, they don't need to push it further... Another scene where a girl is raped in front of... I won't spoiled who and of course they had to rip her shirt. Like it was the trend back in the day, to viciously tear the clothes and have the girl be raped by a group of wild beasts. I obviously fast forward that useless part, we all know how shameless and awful a rape is, no need to show us such nastiness.
And lastly, I didn't like how the fights tear the end became more and more like butchery killing, with blood spilling eveywhere like a mad leaky faucet and organs showing, it escalated to the bad side of gore for the faint-hearted me...
So as much as I enjoyed the fights, I wouldn't want to watch it again because of the bad parts.
To finish, I wonder what the heck they did choose such a wallpaper to advertise the movie!? Our protagonist wear trousers all through the movie, so she never shows her legs. But I notice that no matter the era, a woman who fights has to be represented sensual or sexy to balance, it is!? That's why I applaud chinese or HK actions movies starring women, because they tend to do it very little.
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Pros:
-Yoo Ah In as King Sook Jong
-THAT OTP CHEMISTRY YO
-Jang ok jungs character---for like 65% of the show ????
Cons:
-didn't care that much for the political stuff except for when it directly affected the fate of our couple
-the shift in the characterization Jang Ok Jung in the last leg of the drama
I've never seen Yoo Ah In act before and you know, I probably would have loved him in any role I see him because he seems to be one of those special few actors that can embody their characters. He made me FEEL. And it should be said that I did not know him from a hole in the wall prior to this drama. As a matter of fact, I had started watching it and didn't even bother finishing the first episode cuz when he came on the scene I was just like "ugh, who is this random guy I don't know? he aint even that cute. bye" Ha. Little did I know he'd have me totally and completely smitten before long. I give him a straight up 10 in this drama. Kim Tae Hee was good. Not the emotional feels level of Yoo Ah In, but she was good enough that I cared about her character and loved that she was a woman with dreams and ambitions that had nothing to do with a man. And HERE IN LIES THE CRUX OF MY PROBLEM WITH THE DRAMA. The characterization of Jang Ok Jung shifted (and I do know that historically the later half was probably more accurate--my problem is just in the sudden shift that was supposed to have made sense after a certain incident and totally didn't to me. If I had seen her slowly building this desire for revenge then I'd understand, but she had pretty much been getting the same messaging from people her whole life and then for some reason randomly we're supposed to understand that she just couldn't take it anymore when she was actually handling it with dignity and grace before? ????).
I do think the directors showed that side of her character at the beginning to enamor the viewers to her and it worked---but when you take away the things we like about our heroine (how focused and driven she was about being a fashion designer, how independent minded and entrepreneurial minded she was, her ability to stay grounded in her belief in herself when people tried to stomp down on her) and replace her with a woman focused solely on Her Man, seeking revenge, and someone that's just a little bit vindictive and manipulative---welllllll. You kind of leave the viewers thinking WTF. And look, I GET IT. Again we're dealing with a character that in real life was all of those things, but by the end of the show i didn't know what I was watching. The premise of the show was to show a different perspective. I felt like there was a lack of continuity in regards to her character development (or devolvement tbh) and that really killed what would have been on of the most epic OTPs for me.
BUT. like. I still want people to see this OTP in action cuz GAHHHH. So give it a try. I rated it 7 which might seem bad but by my standards it's not. And I'd probably go and rewatch a few episodes.
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Park Hae Jin in workplace thriller romance, Ji Chang Wook in an action spy film and Taecyeon in a truly-hilarious Makjang were just three of the seven. And while the latter may not be able to act, he's certainly not afraid to poke fun at himself and the genre.
If you don't expect much, you may not be disappointed by the ending but I personally was. As I said, you shouldn't expect much from an advertisement but this really does go nowhere and leaves you wondering what happened in the end. But if you go in with low expectations and don't expect any actual kisses and you'll be fine.
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When I first started this drama I was very torn whether to continue or drop this drama. Yes I'm speaking the truth even though my rating might make me look like a liar. Halfway through the first episode I asked myself if I shouldn't watch a drama of which I am sure that I will like it. In the end I watched two episodes of this drama and I don't regret it. In my opinion, that's when the drama started to climb the hill, slowly but surely. (I started to like it after 3rd/4th episode)
First of all, the story: Since you should've read the plot summary already I won't talk as much around the bush as I just did. It's a fantasy story which can be liked even if fantasy usually isn't your type. Because I speak from experience, I just can't stand fantasy because it makes a story so hard to feel realistic, but this oh this drama felt so real. The plot twists were what I liked the most. When you think the situation finally calmed down another event takes place and it's just entertaining to watch this story. Many people said something about fillers and I do agree, but to be honest those fillers were what made the story even better. Otherwise it would've been a short dramatic ride.
The cast did one amazing job! Because this is a fantasy show I had a hard time to get used to the characters but the cast's acting made it really easy! They acted so natural, as if it's the most normal thing to happen that you talk to a god and the next second to a demon or whatever. All, and when I am saying all I mean all roles were played well. Even the most unnecessary ones. And the characters lived through a development that every drama wishes to have. The people from the first/second episode had nothing in common with the ones in the last. I mean, they were both perfect but it was just fascinating how good and realistic the character development was made. And not to mention the chemistry between the main leads. I loved every relationship there was. But Son Oh Gong and Jin Seon Mi aka Sam Jang were really really well played. Both were extremely hard roles but pulled off by pros!
Next is the music. The OSTs are reason enough to watch this drama, I'm not kidding. Every single OST made my heart melt like I don't even know what. I can't find a better word as perfection to describe them. And they also fitted every situation very well. Not only OSTs but also random background melodies were so well produced and fitted perfectly.
All in all this drama was a ride of emotions, it could break your heart in one second but the very next you had to pause the episode because you can't stop laughing.
Maybe this review is so much better than others because I expected nothing from this drama. But maybe you just look into it and find out for yourself if it is wort it. But however you decision might look like, in my opinion it is a must-watch drama. Even though some people didn't like it I'm sure they still were glad that they watched it. But please don't judge the drama by not having seen everything! I was about to drop this drama after about 40 minutes and now look at my ratings.
I hope you will watch this and most important enjoy it at least as much as I did!
Whatever your choice is, have fun!
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This review may contain spoilers
This is one of these dramas you spend so much time watching - week by week - waiting for the next episode because it seems to be following a logical and intriguing storyline that was building on a theme that made sense. Then for some reason, this drama took a u-turn. Reality takes a dive and the viewer must suffer through 2 episodes of dry storytelling and unrealistic scenes accompanied by dumb piano playing and pitiful music in the background. This was not a realistic or credible story ending. I am not going to write a spoiler but I advise any new viewer to heed a warning -- don't spend 52 hours of your life on this scrambled egg. The rest of us have been wounded deeply and feel the burn of frustration. Was this review helpful to you?
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