Good OTP romance, but everything else is trash.

Yes, the leads have great chemistry with each other and the build up to their romance and their actual relationship stuff were entertaining to watch. However no amount of hot kisses can make up for the terrible writing. (if there ever was a couple hooking up, while shooting a drama..) The writing seriously is more than just terrible. I have given 10/10 to bad writing before, but I think this is the worst written drama I've ever finished. From the get go the premise is pretty hard to get onboard with. (tear allergy..) Then we get a workaholic male lead that is good at everything including & not limited to racing(he is better at racing than professional racers), playing the piano, BOXING & maintaining a ripped body. Truthfully I could have forgiven all of the above, since those things are pretty normal in cheesy Chinese romcoms, but there is a LOT of focus on the corporate life at an investment banking firm and all the plots there and I mean ALL OF THEM are just bad, It's difficult to describe in words how bad. The second lead is just the icing on the poo, I mean come on now, really? A character that has a completely different personality in every single episode, what were the writers thinking? Were they thinking at all? There is also a lot of contradicting information & moments where I felt the writer is insulting my intelligence. For example it's a big plot point, how supposedly FL only called ML Brother Yuan once, wait a few episodes & he is brother yuan in like every single flashback.. I'm okay with cliches in cheesy romcoms really and I'm sure it doesn't come as a surprise that this drama is a cliche-fest, however I think it's worth pointing out that the "oh no I accidentally fell onto your lips" thing happens TWICE in this drama, yep you've heard that right!

I decided to give the drama a relatively high rewatch value, because despite all of the above, if you know the story in advance, it's super easy to skip all the scenes where the 2 leads are not on screen & that way it's almost prime entertainment..

edit: So a rewatch happened after all. Fastforward buttoning all the trashy office intrigue has led to a much more enjoyable experience as expected, but the whole breakup plot annoyed me much more than back then. Just why?

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It's fun, but it's not much better than the typical mediocre cdrama romcom.

The Good
⌲ The bickering in the early episodes
⌲ The fluff
⌲ The mom
⌲ Shen Yue's still awesome.
⌲ The basic fantasy story is just nice, especially before Mao Xiaojun's plot is explained in detail.
⌲ No lasting love triangles (second FL dates some rando for a couple of early episodes)
⌲ The "real" ending felt rather satisfying.
⌲ Dazzling smiles everywhere. (and of course, everyone is stunningly beautiful, more so than normal)

The Average
⌲ The comedy (there is very little of it in the last 8 episodes)
⌲ The main romance (questionable chemistry with a very shallow portrayal of romance)
⌲ The second lead couple (I liked their matching misfits vibe, but their plot could not have been any draggier)
⌲ The magic/daoist powers were somewhat underutilized. (Let's look at how nice the summoning thing was in Goblin)
⌲ The workplace felt a bit immersion breaking due to a multitude of reasons. (For example FL's immediate colleges were not really believable human beings, not even for a fantasy romcom and I'm not saying this lightly)

The Bad
⌲ The usual censored "it's just a novel" crap happening after the "real" ending. (it's the last 7 minutes)
⌲ Mao Xiaojun (I feel his story is just a needless complication that's been immersion breaking for me)
⌲ The last 7~ episodes are straight up boring. (I can totally appreciate endless fluff & sugar, but this was too lifeless for me)
⌲ Second ML's dad. (god, that conversation mini flashback during ep23 was just horrible)

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I don't regret watching this, but this is the kind of drama that I'll probably never think about again.

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Decent, but not a masterpiece or a "rare gem".

Let me begin with saying that I enjoyed watching this show, but after having watched some pretty great and recent cdramas that also had no OTP related love triangles & decent communication between the leads, I just don't think this one stands out. Calling it a clichefest might even be correct depending on one's point of view. I have read many Chinese webnovels over the past 10 years and this one has adopted MANY of the cliche things from those works, especially about doctors & soldiers. Technically the ML is part of a SWAT police unit, he is not really a soldier, but the things they do to train & the moving targets etc etc are the same that every one of those soldier MC novels have. Mi Ka as a doctor is even more outlandish. She is supposed to be a surgeon, or aiming to be a neurosurgeon to be more specific. However not only is she a talented surgeon, but also a diagnostician on the level of Dr House MD. Her goals as a doctor are not exactly consistent all the way through the series and there are lots of crazy things she has done and is expected to do. Mr Miyagi sending her to the emergency surgery department (could be a mistranslation, because that's a strange, but not impossible department for a hospital to have) for her own good is just plain stupid.
If I were unfamiliar with Chinese pulp fiction, I would just assume that the medical things occurring in this drama were poorly researched.

All of the above doesn't bother me too much. The reason why I don't think this drama is so great is that that there were quite a few annoying things. The second couple's story makes no sense at all. Not only is their weirdly undefined relationship dragged on and on forever, there is even a pretty annoying love triangle..
The leads seem to have had a decent chemistry, however it took too long for them to get together and once they were together they kept being really awkward with each other for like 10+ episodes.
Naturally this drama too needed to have a 2 years long forced separation plot, because studying abroad as a relatively senior resident doctor is an absolute must.
Episode 6 was so bad that I almost dropped this drama out of anger there and then. (see the end of this review for more information)
3 episodes were wasted on the bitchy Shen sisters, that's 2 hours of my life I'm not getting back.

Calling the overall plot draggy would be unfair, but long action(medical action, or police raids) sequences were frequently used as fillers. These weren't boring too watch, in fact the early ones were quite great, but after waiting for some foreshadowed progress to finally happen sidetracking this way is not what I wanted to see.

The OST could have been more exciting, I would say it's below average compared to other cdramas that I've seen that have come out in the last 2 years.

The good things that everyone is saying about the drama are not all wrong. The leads and second leads were really great at their roles. The entire cast is great, pretty much all the supporting actors were more than on point. The visuals, the cinematography were just awesome. The typical flaws of Chinese cinematography were completely absent.
The OTP did indeed communicate rather well & they had quite a few borderline brilliant scenes. I really liked the FL's appearance. She looked like how a normal (admittedly pretty) doctor would look like, as opposed to the nation's little sister pretending to be a busy resident, while sporting a 2h hairdo.

DotS has its flaws, but I think that's a way more fun drama overall. (not like comparing these two dramas makes a whole lot of sense though)

I thought about giving the show a little higher rating, but decided it's too highly rated anyway and I will never rewatch this, nor do I feel the usual feels after having completed a truly great drama.



This is the comment I wrote while watching episode 6:
I just picked this up. I'm watching ep6 right now. I'm not saying that I don't like the show, but what kind of crap hospital is this. Queue at a lift, so they cannot take a patient recovering from brain surgery to the ICU? Netizens not understanding that brain damage takes priority over a broken arm? Let's not even talk about the transfer. It's just a plain stupid episode so far.
(in a real hospital there are enough lifts and if not people with minor issues can just walk up the stairs.)

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This drama is like 30% romcom, 20% melo & 50% outlandish school life plot. I liked the cheesy romcom, I accepted the melo, but I absolutely hated the school life part. I consider myself very tolerant, when it comes to kdrama logic, or fiction in general, but this was just really really bad. Starting with the 27 years old guy goes back to school to get revenge, then moving onto the "let's save the school" plot & all the other various events that happen at school, it's just a plain terrible script, or at least it is bad from an adult viewer's perspective. Maybe the target audience is 14-16 years old kids, for them this drama might have been a lot more fun, I don't know. I didn't buy Seho's character development either, it's not believable to me. Some positive points to note are like the chemistry between the main leads, or that the writers didn't make the triangle too annoying, the OST is quite okay, also Boa is like the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.

(I have no problem with the slice of life in a school setting genre in general, this drama specifically is just below average)

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Reading the other reviews I was really looking forward to this one, but it does not seem to live up to the hype. Someone said that it's as good of a sitcom as Friends, but this is definitively not the case. The show is certainly funny & cute, albeit it has a lot of boring moments, especially in the early episodes. There were a few baby gags, but having seen the american Tv show "Raising Hope" I was not overly impressed. There was a lot of for the lack of a better word "anime" humor, you know the kind of humor where some event repeats 3-5 times during an episode with minor changes, when repetition is used as a tool for extra comedic effect, I'm on the fence whether it was good or not. I liked all the characters, the furry girl was especially awesome. There were some unnecessary kdrama cliches that shouldn't have been required in this genre, such as Sol's father appearing in the last episode, or Yuna having a second love interest for that "sweet" triangle......
Despite all this I had a pleasant time, but I will probably not watch it again, nor am I interested in season 2, because as usual over half of the cast is changed ..

People learning Korean should watch this show, because the pronunciation of this group of actors seems to be unusually easy to understand.

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90% of this drama is pretty much the perfect romcom. Despite it being an office romance, the day to day operations at the workplace don't suck too much, which is extremely RARE in this genre. The main romance is beautiful and a bit novel too within the contract marriage category. (well it's not really a contract marriage, but the drama is structured like that) There are two side couples, one of them is amazingly funny with endless bickering shenanigans, while the other is really really boring, but the boring couple had very little screen time, so it's not a huge deal. Triangle haters can watch this too, since the secondary love interests don't amount to anything in this drama. Also the couples I cared about did not have any arbitrary -or justified- breakups, just how I like it.

So why is it not a 10? Well, boring couple aside, we still go through many of the cdrama greatest hit cliches & some of them are really creepy too I suppose. I really hated the scene with the teddy bear for some reason, the art of cinematography died there a little bit. Also the final episodes have some weird content that is kind of propaganda-like about harmony between banks/clients and whatever else.

When I just started watching this I asked the comment section that since this drama kind of features an early marriage with cohabitation does it have any bed scenes? I think I've gotten a negative answer. Now that I'm done watching I can confidently say that at the very least sex is low key implied long before the final episodes. This is well done I think, I don't need sex scenes, or even the camera zooming in on a thrown away bra, but it still feels somewhat plausible & mature.

The plot is not amazing or anything, but most of it is rather well thought out for a romcom.

Obviously the rewatch value is high, I'll be back!

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I have watched this, because I can be considered a fan of EunJi and this looked like it would offer light hearted comedic relief. I guess the show did not disappoint too much in that regard. The acting ensemble was truly outstanding, some of Korea's best actors appear in this drama & their performances were up to standard. EunJi plays the exact same character as in R97, I don't mind typecasting in this case, since the show was built around this specific persona. The OST is okay, although it's not memorable at all.
I liked the main couple, their slow, but steady development in this genre is perfectly fine. I wouldn't say that they've had off the charts chemistry though. I hate triangles in general, but here it was bad in the sense that it served no purpose, generated no meaningful tension, felt like a writing quota type thing, you know how there is always a gay guy in american sitcoms as of late.
There are some obvious problems with how the characters & how character development are portrayed in this drama. It's always annoying, when a show isn't preproduced & the writers make major changes midway, because of feedback, or because there is outside pressure from sponsors. The way how they changed SooAh's character, or almost everyone's character in the White Tigers group mid way makes no sense whatsoever. I was applauding SooBin's performance in this "villainous bitch" role, but unfortunately she went from a villain to a troubled girl with a sad background & from that to a kind angel in the finale, this made very little sense to me, It could not have been any more unrealistic.
South Korean society has some rules & behaviors that are really backward and I dislike it, when these things surface in dramas. In SassyGG the primary obstacle for the main couple comes from the impending marriage of their parents. "Oh no, what will I do, if you become my dongsaeng" Other dramas have exhausted this trope to death too.. Not cool!

Now the main reason why this drama is bad is because the story is just terrible. It's normal for romcoms to have meaningless underlying storylines, or that the story is not in focus, but there is gotta be a limit right? I'm perfectly fine with the school slice of life genre, but the things that happen at this school are just plain bad writing, perhaps it's not as bad as in the recently aired drama "My Strange Hero", but it suffers from many similar problems, namely outlandish teachers, kids breaking under the pressure doing outlandish things, ajumma armies demanding justice and my favourite: kids fighting the school's corrupt leadership/principal. Abusive parents doing abusive things cannot even count as abnormal in this drama...

I do not regret watching this, EunJi kept me entertained all the way to the end, but I will not watch this again for certain.

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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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This show was awesome. There were a few missed opportunities, like I was anticipating Ryan to greet Dokmi with "Shian-haseyo" and I also wanted for ShiAn to learn of her being ShianIsMyLife, but that never really happened. I could nitpick about how little sense the childhood backstory made (or the bubble series paintings forming a .....), but honestly it doesn't bother me too much, in this genre if the story is not terrible it's already a huge win & good news it's not terrible at all!
Except the issues mentioned above it's the perfect romcom show. It checks all the boxes that I want in a kdrama romance. Park Minyong was much better in this drama than in What's Wrong With Secretary Kim, like there is no contest. In WWWSK I felt that the chemistry just wasn't that good & she had some scenes where she looked almost like a wooden woman, I even doubted her acting ability for a while (until watching Healer a few months later that is), but in HPL the chemistry was off the charts & her acting was excellent too. I especially wish to applaud the writer (the manwha artist) for not forcing the love triangle too much..
The OST is a bit average, but it's a good fit for this cheesy romance. The cinematography was outstanding, but lately this is true for almost all new kdramas I watch. Knowing myself I will almost certainly binge watch this again in a month or so.

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Horrible.

Well what can I say, the drama started out fun, but it was obvious to me that things will go downhill for our characters and fast. That would not necessarily be a problem, however this was not really enjoyable after the early episodes at all. The plot is not only bad, but also it just often does not make any sense, it's like the author used various kdrama character & story templates to piece the plot together, hoping that the research she has done into weather forecasting would be enough the carry the show, that is however not the case. People in the comment section called this "noir", I don't think that is accurate, it's just a badly written light melodrama, where the melodramatic events are lacking in impact & it's just difficult to empathize with any of the four main characters. The only thing I liked about the plot is FL's sister's loveline, that's pretty much it.

I fully expected the bad writing going in, this author has written Dr Romantic, Dr Romantic 2, Gu Family Book and Where Stars Land. Out of these only Where Stars Land is actually a good drama & the good writing is not the reason why.. Forecasting though is far worse than those listed above. It's like the cheaters are the main characters in the drama and that's not really the problem by itself, but good god Yoon Park's character is just the worst and he has more romance and implied character growth than anyone else.

As for the OTP romance, it's just bad across the board. For starters neither of the two are likeable, why should we care about their horribly written romance? Also as much as I love Park MinYoung, she had no chemistry with Song Kang whatsoever. (I've seen her have great chemistry with at least 3 different actors before) So yes, the casting has been botched from the get go.

ML's father is a character that should never appear in a kdrama. Due to the limitations of what can & cannot be shown on Korean TV, characters like his can never be showcased realistically, all this is only good to annoy the viewers.

I must congratulate Forecasting Love and Weather for one thing though, as of today this is the worst kdrama that I have ever finished. The drama has gotten my attention in the first 2-4 episodes & later on I kept hoping every week that the current episodes will be better, which has never happened. The production team has successfully made me watch a large array of product placements & I'm sure the same applies to a large chunk of the Korean viewers as well. I have a difficulty believing that the good ratings are due to everyone enjoying this so much, but it's ultimately a commercial success. The big problem with commercial successes is that they are going to get copied and ..

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The Good:
⌲ Yoona is very pretty
⌲ There are no love triangles.
⌲ There is a certain amount of enjoyable fluff.
⌲ The secondary fls and sismance (though it’s not exactly amazing)
⌲ The arab prince thing was amusing enough (I cannot imagine getting butthurt over something like this)
⌲ It’s at least a better drama than ‘Forecasting Love and Weather’.

The Neutral:
⌲ Jun Ho’s acting (I understand why he did not take this very seriously though, I do know he is a talented actor)
⌲ The romance in general (not bad, not great)
⌲ The father (He is bad, but in similar dramas I’ve seen far worse)
⌲ The chemistry between the leads
⌲ Of course it's a clichefest. (though It's not too bad in this regard)

The Bad:
⌲ The plot is just horrible (yes in romcoms it shouldn’t matter, but there are way too many offensive and intelligence insulting things, it’s like a Lakorn)
⌲ The dialog is pretty bad too at times. (and this is a big problem)
⌲ There is a lot of backward crap that is kind of like airing the nation’s dirty laundry, at least in Hollywood as bad as their shows are they are trying to move forward.
⌲ Outside of the leads & their friends almost everyone is a mean bully. (the corporate chain of abuse, see the prev. point)
⌲ The romantic plot itself flows rather strangely & completely falls apart in the final episodes.
⌲ The mother & her reason for leaving her son
⌲ The drama has an incredible amount of bad energy!
⌲ The ML sometimes appears to be mentally challenged, like Dali and the Cocky Prince's ML.
⌲ The fakest smiles you have ever seen
⌲ The older sister (her acts are too juvenile and dumb even for kdrama cheabol-land-u)
⌲ “Double the profits, hit the targets!”
⌲ One long helicopter ride should be something like sub-$10000 in Korea, it’s obviously far cheaper than dealing with the bad press, optics and liability over what happened and they talked about this so forking much.
⌲ .. there are many more things, but I tire of writing this review ..

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Enjoyable, but perhaps a wee bit overrated. (and the Love Triangle is fairly strong)

I've been had. I've read in the comment section that the love triangle is not an issue & so I started watching this with no reservations, unfortunately that is definitely not he case. The triangle is - at least from my perspective - pretty bad, not only is it present throughout most of the drama, but also the plot devices used to keep it going were not great. Okay, it's objectively not horrible compared to some of the worst offenders, like it's nowhere near Jealousy Incarnate bad. Yes, the FL never hesitates about whom she wants, but her rejections were most of the time half-hearted & she got teary eyed due to the second ML way too many times. I couldn't even FF button his scenes, because the second ML is just too integral to the plot.
I'm guessing that people that like this trope would love this though..

Okay with that out of the way, I think the second biggest problem with the drama is that it's quite draggy at times, the same misunderstanding is recycled over and over to make it far longer than it should've been. Also the plot is not very polished or coherent, there are some really weird shifts in the story. For example how we transition from e27's cliffhanger to e28 makes less than zero sense to me. The corporate embezzlement/laundering case in the final episodes was quite bad as customary, but I've seen worse.

So why is it still 7.5? Well, the things that everyone else is saying are true. Both couples had great chemistry, the acting is great, the comedy is on point as well. Also the macro plot is pretty amazing. Annoyances aside it's fantastic how they handled the dream situation. Before watching this I was totally prepared to talk about how cdrama time travel shows always have to be dreams, novels, or just imaginations due to recent changes in Chinese censorship guidelines, but they've really killed it here. The way how the dream ended is just about perfect. The way we transitioned back to real life & how they kept the fantasy going was also pretty great. (I mean While You Were Sleeping is a hundred times better, but for a contemporary Chinese drama this is really pushing the limits of what's possible to be shown on TV) I've recently complained about how in Business Proposal they've cut out my favorite part of the webtoon and the Asian drama gods have heard my plea, because that exact plot is here in this drama. (It's about the FL wanting to turn fake into real & pursuing the ML real hard) The second couple was pretty fun, though their story is 1:1 Toradora.

The OST is not bad, at least as a completely separate entity from the drama. However I think the tracks often did not fit the drama's mood & the mixing is just strange.

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The first 7 or so episodes were really special, out of this world good romance, beautiful cinematography,excellent acting performances by the main pair and annoying, but tolerable side characters. Unfortunately by the time we reached the last episode the writers ruined almost everything & also some really tedious & annoying sub-plots were used.
So in my opinion the best way to watch this is to watch the first 9 episodes & then jump straight to 16. ~~ That way you all will see something truly remarkable.

My disappointment in episodes 11 > 15 is comparable to what I felt watching Jealousy Incarnate, when they all lived in the same apartment...

Still I will remember this show for a long time to come, rewatching the first 9 episodes is something I will probably do, when the pain of what followed has become a faint memory. Objectively I should probably give this something like 4-5 stars, but the first half of the show is good to the point that it's insane, hence the 8 stars rating..


edit: It's been three years and finally I have decided to give this one another go. I followed my own advice, watched the first 9 episodes followed by the finale. My attempt to relive the magic has mostly failed. Probably it does not help that I've seen One Spring Night 3 times.. In my review I said "tolerable side characters", but I had an extremely hard time to tolerate them the second time around, especially the horrible horrible mom and the ex. I have some qualms about ML's sister as well, but I'm sure most of it is bias having seen the actress in EVERYTHING.

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Just watch the original, if you have the opportunity!

This is a hard one to explain. Obviously 'A Time Called You' is the adaptation of something amazing, that much is probably clear to most MDL users by now and what makes hard writing this review is that it really is in many ways a fantastic adaptation. They have changed the ending, but that was literally the weakest point of the original, most other things are incredibly faithful to the source material. Most of the time when a kdrama is not an original work, the writers try to add their "personal touch", which more often than not leads to the ruination of the script. Recent examples that come to mind are 'See You in My 19th Life' and 'Kiss Sixth Sense'. Both of these are webcomic adaptations & all changes the writer has made from the source material made the scripts worse, pretty much every single one of them. However as I said this drama is different, the plot most of the time is identical to the original, with the dialog being identical as well, the changes are extremely minimal up until the later episodes. One could even say that this is a far more authentic adaptation than the Harry Potter, or Lord of the Rings movies.
As for the casting, most actors fit the original Taiwanese casting down to a T, the similarities are quite eerie actually, I have never seen something like this before. I may not be a big believer in Ahn Hyo Seop's acting ability, but he tried more than hard enough & he is visually a very good fit as well..

So then it begs the question, why is this not amazing?
I think this is the first kdrama I have ever seen where the script was -in a practical sense- perfect, yet I did not really like it. I'm just going to list the big issues one by one:

⌲ The cinematography is too pretty and vibrant, it does not fit.
⌲ The 'song' is a terrible pick and yes this is VERY detrimental in this drama. (if you have to listen to the same song 20 times in a drama, they gotta do better than this, is there even a melody?)
⌲ The OST outside of the cassette song is completely lifeless & could be described as 'nothing'.
⌲ The FL may have had the same lines, but the production team has somewhat ruined her characterization, there's not enough contrast between her two roles, the "switch" is not impactful enough! (YeoBeen acted amazingly well, this is not on her)
⌲ The chemistry could've been better.
⌲ Some of the most impactful scenes of the original are very inferior and some of them are missing, which is weird, because of how closely the adaptation follows the plot. (I think it's not a FF button malfunction, the Piano scene & the bullying of the bullies scene are missing from this? Please do tell me in the review comments, if this is a problem with me falling asleep at those critical moments and I'll just adjust my review & apologize for being stupid)

Ultimately it comes down to this adaptation being redundant, it's just unnecessary! There is no Korean touch here worth mentioning, It's a pointless adaptation. (perhaps it's all about the new product placements within a show that should be a guaranteed success, since it's a copy of something very few ppl know in Korea, but is already proven to be amazing?)


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Not trying to bash the songwriter here at all, songs that are basically just poems sang with a soulful voice can be amazing, having an impactful melody is not a requirement, it's merely a bad fit for this drama, that's all.
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edit 1: It kept bothering me, so I rewatched the last 15-20 minutes of the drama in a less medicated state than before. My conclusion is that while I'm not very happy with how the original drama ended, this just feels low effort, I don't know. Considering how one of the few changes they made is related to young Han Jun Hee's story, I sense this might be because they wanted to avoid something that can be considered risque. This I can understand, it's just that the result is much more lifeless & lacking in impact, than the original.

edit 2: There are a large number of positive reviews on MDL that criticize people like myself for not evaluating this drama correctly & that we have too much bias since we watched the Tdrama first. This criticism has merit, however I think even if we ignore the redundancy thing there is just such a huge difference in emotional impact between these two dramas. I have rewatched some select scenes from the original this afternoon & It's fascinating to see how much better those are. (The Birthday Cake scene, This is our First day scene.. generic banter & liveliness etc etc) I think someone has to dislike Mandarin or Taiwan a lot to not see this.

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The Mainland reimagination of Someday Or One Day

This drama is obviously very strongly inspired by Someday Or One Day, but in my opinion it cannot really hold a candle to it. One of the bigger problems is that the foundation of the plot is extremely unsteady. Specifically the time travel phenomenon has major problems. It doesn't really matter whether it's really time travel, or the implied alternate universe thing, things just don't add up, the FL is not making reasonable decisions based on either of those things. (Logically it's gotta be the second one, but if you think about that in detail, it becomes unreasonably dark and cruel real fast)
The first half of the drama is basically an extremely average high school cdrama, with all the problems those typically have and more. As per usual in good old cdrama fashion the "children" can only be "very good" friends and that's almost always tedious, at least when we don't transition to college life in a timely fashion. To add insult to injury beyond that we have ridiculous gangsters, even more ridiculous childhood connection flashbacks and finally an absolutely horrible second ML. Basically it's the same second ML character I've seen in Extraordinary You, but without the plot justifying his bullshit.
As for the OTP romance before the angsty parts started, I did just not feel it. Even if I completely ignore ML's stalker-y tendencies, I just could not get immersed in their romance. Based on the MDL comment section, the problem is probably with me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. On the plus side, had I been more immersed, the events following the 13-14 episode long high school part would have eviscerated me, bullet's dodged there.
The ending is one of the worst endings I have ever experienced and I'm not talking about the largely irrelevant final episode, but rather FL's depressing final attempt to save ML in the episodes preceding that. Just to reiterate again, if it's not time travel, but the multiverse thing, then it's just the absolute worst.

I enjoyed some of the second couple's moments, but they had no plot relevance whatsoever.

The minor sloppy, or silly things in the plot are quite numerous, but ultimately those are quite easy to ignore, except in the last episode. That episode felt like fan fiction. The final scene is once again not great and thinking about that in depth - beyond it being just FL's fantasy - leads to quite silly conclusions.

The production values are through the roof, this is a very pretty show and the OST is up there with the very best cdramas, though they sure neutered Eddy Kim's song quite a bit..

Someday Or One Day has one of the most beautiful romances I have ever seen, it's written much more cleverly, the plot is sequenced much better and that show has much more charm across the board, it feels like a work of art as opposed to the TV equivalent of pulp fiction.
This month has been dominated by time travel dramas for me, but this is the worst one of the 4 that I've seen(Shining, Someday, Rainless Love, Reset), still I don't regret watching Shining for One Thing.

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