Tomorrow (2022)

Even so, you should live!

Trust me it is such a beautiful drama. The bad thing is, it is way too heavy to watch. It straight up pull strings of your heart with all the harsh realities of the world.

It will make you realise that the world is not bad beacuse of "today". It does also makes us realise that "those who commit suicide are the ones who wanted to live so badly".

The fact that this drama doesn't have any actual villains but it was just the society and the trails we have to go through just to live. It was also very true that the "pain is the essence of life" we should live beacuse the weather is nice today.

It leaves a deep scar into us during each episode but will also give us hope that those who done wrong are the ones that will for sure suffer in one way or the other. I also trust this reality. South Korea and anyone who wants to give up on his life should have a strong belief in destiny and karma. Trust the universe and it will answer your prayers.

Suicide is never the option its just a escape from today but not forever. So please don't give up on your loved one's. Dont leave them just beacuse you have it hard.

It also highlights the fact that it is so difficult to control your own emotions sometimes. It highlights the hypocrisy of a human rage, resentment and anger that he is willing to kill, sacrifice or die just for his pride and ego.

All the grim reapers in the drama was in punishment because they let their rage consume them and regretted it for an eternity.

Best drama

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Refreshing and fun concept with a very good cast

The first two episodes definitely set this drama to a good start. We've seen many types of Grim Reaper-themed and similar kdramas but I personally hadn't seen any focusing on Grim Reapers that actually protect people from death before. It's a very unique concept and has a lot to explore.

We have many things to look forward to with this drama, starting from the backstory of Koo Ryeong - where she came from, what she did to end up there, what her purpose is - to Choi Junwoong's adventure as a "half-half" Grim Reaper, as well as who Ryunggoo is searching for, the story between Koo Ryeong and Joonggil, and of course the side stories that we'll be getting with every new case.

I personally enjoyed the first two eps a lot, but also think that this could be a bit hard to watch for someone who is struggling with suicide, or has suicidal thoughts, like the content warning at the beginning of ep 1 stated. The bullying scenes in the first eps were a bit too much, even for me who has seen many high school-themed kdramas where everything is about bullying. So I'd recommend you to be careful with this drama if these topics trigger you.

About the bullying scenes - it bothers me that nowadays it's very hard to avoid bullying scenes when watching a kdrama. Even something unrelated to high school or bullying (like a Grim Reapers kdrama) will have at least one scene or mention of high school bullying. Of course it's not present in every kdrama, but it is in a considerable amount. I know bullying is a serious problem in Korea and that's exactly why they show it, but I wonder if they really do anything positive by doing it. They're just showing how much the victims suffer, but in reality it doesn't really contribute much in preventing any more bullying.

Anyway, that was just a random thought. 'Tomorrow' is definitely raising my expectations as there are many things to look forward to in the plot, and that's what I will be doing for sure!

PS. All the main characters' names are very similar to each other and it looks funny in Korean (구련, 준웅 중길 령구).

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Poor Plot Flow

While this series isn't one of the worst as there are flickering moments of relatively good scenes, it's pieced together pretty poorly. The introduction in itself wasn't done well with a slapping together of the main leads who continued to not have much chemistry with one another. But when the supporting actors do a much better job in acting than the leads, it's difficult to stay interested. The lore of the reapers world was not believable even for a fantasy/supernatural genre. As a minor examples (among many), the comatose state of the "new guy" was at the fault of the reapers, and yet the choice they gave him was three years of coma which could be reduced to six months of coma if he joins the team. There's no explanation of why they can't just reduce the come to a month or to just release him from it, if they are capable of providing different time ranges. Another example is when they are apparently forbidden to change history when going back into the past, but the "new guy" is pretty much allowed to make drastic changes to the past like preventing a death from occurring and yet, there's barely any repercussion before the plot just moves on.

Because I can probably continue watching this on a very casual mode mostly due to the supporting actors and their stories (hence the slightly higher score), but as none of the mains are likeable, prefer to drop it instead.

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Great Idea, Disappointing Acting and Execution

While the concept of the series is intriguing, the execution fell short of expectations. The idea of grim reapers interacting with suicidal individuals is interesting, but the implementation lacks finesse, especially in the aspect of erasing memories. Unfortunately, the main lead, Choi Joon Woong, delivered a performance that didn't align with my preferences. The acting felt overly cringe, making it challenging for me to continue watching. Despite my initial interest and managing to endure two episodes, I've decided to drop the series due to the mismatch between the acting style and the tone of the show.I'm not criticizing the actor's talent but it's just my personal view on whether the performance suits the series.

No offense to fans and I prefer not to rate, but since it's required for the review, I gave it a 5.

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One of the most toxic "fixes" to mental illness I've ever seen.

SUMMARY
This drama glosses over the severity of mental illness by presenting it as something momentary that you can get over in a minute. It overestimates a mentally ill persons abilities to recover from it and it never encourages medical or professional help as it never recognizes suicidal tendencies as part of a severe illness in the first place.

It's unaware of the different diagnosis it's presenting symptoms of which becomes a problem as it treats every case similarly. Insult the person and tell them to become stronger, give them a near death experience, encourage them with words and then the person is cured and will never try to commit suicide again. An extremely damaging and unrealistic approach to encourage people to use on suicidal or suffering individuals. Even if the approach would consist of only positive encouragement, the writers are still not recognizing that this needs medical attention once the person has survived their first suicide attempt.

This drama was created to spread awareness and lower the stigma around mental health issues but instead, what this drama is basically doing is encouraging and validating the toxic out look Korean people have on mental illness and invalidating the suffering and trauma, individuals had to go through to become suicidal.

I also don't understand the writers choice to encourage traumatizing or destroying the "bullies" lives as a punishment for their actions. A study shows that the most likely reason a person becomes a bully is because they have been deprived of a safe space and are suffering from severe trauma or stress. This is a very important detail the show could have brought up. No matter what choices you made in life, if you're suffering from mental illness you should be offered help. Considering that the bully went on to become a public figure, someone who has constant pressure, stress and hate directed at them daily, they're probably in a really bad mental state already and has now, for sure, become more likely to develop suicidal thoughts because of the RM team. Very counter productive for a team that is supposed to lower Koreas suicide rate. This also means that they're spreading a message that you deserve to suffer if I believe you're a bad person even if you too, are a victim of mental illness.


LONG REVIEW
Korea carries one of the worlds highest suicide rates in the world.

Why?

To name only a few reasons; The Korean society was built to perfectly mimic survival of the fittest. Escaping the bottom of the pyramid is nearly impossible and accidentally sliding off the top is a daily risk. People are expected from an early age to become number one at everything but in a country of roughly 52 million people, only one can become number one and everyone else has to fight for the left over money the top 1% hasn't pocketed yet. Being valued at such a surfaced level, the fear, the stress and the pressure is a sure way to cause mental deterioration, so how do people deal with it?

Frankly speaking, they don't.

In Korea, mental illness is not being taken as seriously as it should and a lot of people don't understand what it entails. It's misrepresented in the media too often and constantly associated with insanity, weakness or danger. It's highly stigmatized, looked down upon and going to therapy to get help is still a taboo.

And this drama embodied that toxic mentality perfectly.

The job of the Risk management team is to find suicidal individuals, figure out why they are suicidal and then convince them not to end themselves. And although this drama does a great job with presenting traumatic events, trauma, PTSD and depression it doesn't know that it's doing it and that's a problem. It's a problem because the solution presented to solve the issue at hand minimizes the severity of the situation and enforces the toxic mentality that so many Koreans have when it comes to mental illness. "Just change your attitude and you'll be fine".

Sadly, that's not how it works.

If a person is considering suicide, it's not an impulse thought. In most cases, people have to go through an immense amount of pain and suffering before the thought of not existing enters their mind. And then the thought of not existing becomes comforting. Once it's comforting it usually stays just a thought for most people. "I don't want to exist. I want to die. But I wont." For a person to be pushed beyond this, it takes a lot of additional torment. The comfort of not existing encourages a curiosity in how one could leave this world and then these option make a plan. Lastly, the plan is executed and that's it.

So why does suicide become an option?
It's not because of self pity and it's not because life after death is expectedly better. If a person chooses suicide it's most likely because this person has suffered enough depression that their mental state has been completely reprogrammed into feeling only self loath, misery and loss of importance. Any positive emotion has been unlearned by the brain and any attempted at relearning them will feel fruitless. You're not feeling sorry for yourself but you're feeling sorry for everyone around you that has to put up with your shit. You feel bad because you don't deserve to be here since you're not doing any good for the world anyway and because of your current situation, you're becoming a burden to the ones who once loved you, but don't love you anymore. Of course they don't love you anymore. You don't love you anymore.

Now, with all of this in mind, how good of an idea do you think it is to tell a person standing on the edge of a roof top to "do better", "get over it", "get stronger", "don't be so weak", "You put yourself here"? And how possible would it be that the suicidal person is already thinking it?

How probable do you think it is that putting this person in a near death situation will suddenly change their mind and make them want to live?

How much of an impact do you think making them laugh once (if even possible at all) and then telling them to "smile more" will have on their life?

It would have the same impact as telling a person in a wheel chair to get up and walk it off.

Just like any physical illness, healing takes time. And in severe cases it can take a life time. It takes doctor visits, check ups, diagnosis, medicine, rehabilitation, work, love, support, motivation and all of this might still not be a permanent prevention of having suicidal tendencies. It's a never ending battle between life and death and you need a strong motivator to be willing to put up with such a long lasting fight under such unfavorable circumstances and not be tempted to just give up.

If you've made it this far into my review I want to know if any of these things that I have written about mental illness was communicated to you in any way through this drama.
- Did you realize the severity of the characters mental health issues and what they might be suffering from?
- Where you in anyway informed of how much treatment and work these characters are going to have to go through now that they survived their first suicide attempt?
- Were you presented with what that hard work and struggle might look like?
- Did they ever mention that having a diagnosis is okay?
- Did they ever encourage getting help from professionals?
- Did they ever validate that the people they saved were sick?
- Did you realize that the "bullies" were suffering from mental illness as well?

Personally, nothing I have listed here were things I felt like the drama communicated well.

And the reason I'm asking this is because this drama wasn't made for people suffering from sever mental illness. Those who are still trying to get treated don't want to relive their nightmares through other characters and then be invalidated because they still don't know how to handle things. The people who have gotten treatment don't need to be educated on what to do cause they're already aware of what they need. So the only audience left to influence are the people who either don't suffer from mental illness, or the ones who have untreated mental illness and aren't seeking help for it.

And for those people, I would never recommend watching this drama.

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BE CAREFUL VERY TRIGGERING

I dropped it after only 2 episodes because it's veryyyy triggering! Even if you think it is not a big deal like me at first, if you have had any experiences with suicide, you will definitely get triggered! Please be careful since they go very in depth and you will see everything in full detail.
I think that if this is not something you have experience with, you might still be okay watching it, so don't take this review as a bad one. I only wanted to help some people who might be sensitive to these issues like me. ;)
PS: I will give it a 5 since I can't submit the rating empty but I will not give this a rating since I didn't watch enough to be able to rate it but I felt like I needed to write this in case someone was in the same situation as me.

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