This started out super promising, and the promise of an actual strong, independent female lead was something so refreshing. But somewhere along the way, the drama turned into The Heirs-lite and I didn't know what to think anymore.

The plot of the "missions" to bring the cousins closer together completely disappeared, and we were hit with a bunch of old k-drama tropes: disapproving guardian, secret relationship, hospital and health issues, fighting over a corporation...etc. etc. etc.

A lot of the characters lost their personalities. Even the female lead, who was my only reason for watching, started descending into a stupid girl who cried A LOT and refused to communicate about anything. Truth be told, I was rooting for Hyun-Min because he was such a fun character(and I'm tired to death of the cold/rude male trope), but he definitely lost his charm somewhere, and at the same time, Ji-Woon's cold personality did a 180, as if the writers were actively trying to get the viewers to like him. For me, it was too little, too late. Overall, some of the things the characters did just lacked common sense, as if it was to move the story along. Hye-Ji was also honestly such a problematic character who had no personality (other than being obsessed with Hyun-Min), and the fact that she was such a huge part of the plot development annoyed me, though I liked that she wasn't as conniving as other k-drama second female leads.

I will say, though, that the OST was good.

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This is definitely going to go down as one of my favorites. There's something really wholesome and heart-warming about the entire plot, and even though the problems that the characters face are sometimes really intense, I don't think the vibe of the overall drama ever wavered.

Shut Up Flower Boy Band is surprisingly realistic, and one thing i really liked was that there wasn't one evil antagonist they were all going up against—most of the conflicts were internal struggles or tensions with friendship, and the show handled it all really well. Even the characters who didn't really get along with the main characters were very three-dimensional.

Even though there were some noble idiocy plot points, which I usually hate, I liked them in this show and I understood, mainly because even though the characters were fighting, it never felt like they were no longer friends. The bromance was one of the strongest parts of the entire show and I loved the way they handled conflicts with one another.

Su-Ah and Ji-Hyuk were super cute together as well—after I finished watching the drama, I went back and rewatched all their scenes together. I also liked how there weren't a lot of needless misunderstandings between them; even though they found it hard to talk about their feelings sometimes, when it came to it, they really understood each other's choices. Ji-Hyuk was kind of a bad boy but also lowkey always soft for Su-Ah, which was adorable. Su-Ah was a surprisingly strong female character who spoke her mind a lot and stood up to others, even though she is quiet—but I do wish they had given her even more regarding her art. While the guys had their music thing going on, it felt like her artistic talent was hinted at but it never moved forwards. I wish we saw more of Ji Hyuk's family background too, as it was pretty much only hinted at throughout the drama and I think could've played a bigger part.

Hyun-Soo (L from Infinite) was also one of my favorite characters, who was given a deeper personality than the others. I wish we got to see more of his interactions with his sister. His romantic plotline, though, was something I had mixed feelings about—and I'm not sure I'm fully on board with the ship.

Overall, though, I don't think I was ever really annoyed with ANY of the characters, which is a rare occurrence for me.

I did get spoiled for The Catalyst Event at the end of episode 2, so honestly I didn't find that as heart-wrenching as all the struggles that the characters had to go through afterwards.

I love the OST too—especially Jaywalking and Wake Up, of course—but I'm not sure I love the soundtrack as much as I loved Heartstrings'.

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This drama hit us with all the cliches, but it made it work, and the "Wednesday 3:30pm" idea was an adorable addition. As someone with a soft spot for best friend to lover stories, I knew I was going to love this right off the bat—and I did, for the most part. I loved the dynamic of the main leads, and I really liked how their feelings were gradual as we got to see how comfortable they were with each other.

The only reason this doesn't have a higher rating is because of the DREADED prolonged lack-of-communication plot device that makes me want to rip my hair out every time it appears in dramas...

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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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The premise certainly sounds a lot like Love O2O, and a lot of parts were similar (friendships, gaming), but the dynamic of the relationship and the plot was VERY different. Love O2O was a lot better for multiple reasons.

Firstly, I cannot get past the acting of the main female lead. It always felt like she didn't know what to do with her hands, and whether she was pointing, shrugging, or crossing her arms, it always looked SO unnatural. The same could be said for her "shocked" and "sad" facial expressions. Honestly, the personality of the main female lead was really boring as well. This drama did what fanfiction often does, which is make the main lead chosen for all the important roles and win the competitions when realistically that would never happen. The FL had no good comebacks to being teased or insulted, ever—her response is always to huff and pout. After the college years, I hated the main lead even more than I did already because she became the most annoying and moody person ever, for no good reason.

I loved her friend, Zheng Lei's personality ten times better, and I wish she was the main lead instead. Mo Xiao Lin was a pretty good character as well. I couldn't stand Pan Qi either, and I know that in real life I'd also be annoyed to death by someone who was as boy-crazy as her that every other sentence out of her mouth was about dating. Every time she did something wrong, she never apologized either, just threw a tantrum until everyone else came to her instead.

The visual cinematography in this was kind of bad. The gaming graphics were worse than Love O2O, and at the start it just looked like the actors were running around in front of a green screen. During actual scenes, the camera would move around and tremble, making me feel like I was getting motion sickness. During the last few episodes, what we got was basically 80% flashbacks, 15% characters talking to one another about the flashbacks, and 5% actual things happening; I honestly just skimmed through it because I had watched it all before. Speaking of that, there were SO many voiceover narrations, and they happened at the weirdest parts that needed the most detail, basically cutting the most important plot points down to a few minutes of brief explanation.

The plot was okay, but there was never really an overarching plot or direction. The drama felt like sub-plot after sub-plot, and it was painfully obvious when another sub-plot was being introduced because the main character would be like "Oh! I spy an issue! Let me think of a solution!" Having one plot after another meant that characters would come in and out of the story randomly. There finally seemed to be a more comprehensive plot at the end, but it was all stuffed into two episodes and by that point it seemed rushed, messy, and out of the blue.

Overall, I still liked some parts—mainly near the start, during college, and when the game actually played a big role. The last ten-ish episodes were definitely messy and not worth watching.

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So I love the "fake dating" cliche, and I was really excited for this one. But so many of the characters were annoying and downright toxic. First of all, the female lead starts off as one of the worst leads I've ever seen—unbelievably naive, nosy, and always drunk. Even though it was kind of explained by the backstory, she was still unbearable. It took me a REALLY long time to become okay with her because even when her character grew a little, I hated the way she handled situations—silent during misunderstandings that could have otherwise been avoided with one line, and loud/obnoxious during the worst times. The other characters were not the best either; many of them were manipulative and toxic, but seemed to be intended as a "positive" character, which was just confusing. There wasn't one character I purely liked, and even Jang Mi's mother I couldn't stand.

The plot I really liked, though. It was a different take on the "rich evil mother" cliche and Gi Tae's mother actually had dimension to her (though she still irritated me). I felt like some of the plot near the end, especially with that breast cancer plot twist was kind of just out of the blue and random.

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The only thing that truly gets a 10/10 for this is the OST, which was just so calming and emotional for me. It really added to the "fairy tale" feeling of the drama, and with the cinematography, it just made the aesthetic of the drama that much more immersive.

I definitely didn't really treat this as a contemporary romance while I was watching it, because of how unrealistic it really is—I thought of it more as a fairy tale retelling, and suspending your disbelief is a skill that will definitely come in useful when watching this. As a retelling, though, I really liked seeing how the historical scenes translated into the modern ones. I was definitely not as interested in the historical plot as I was in the modern one, so it helped that there were less historical scenes as the drama went on.

I was honestly disappointed with the last episode. It felt like it was a little unnecessary to add another bout of amnesia and memory erasure so late in the drama, and I didn't like how it meant that the only person who remembered Sim Cheong was Heo Joon Jae. Once again—that goes along with the unrealistic parts of this story.

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Surprisingly, I found myself more emotionally invested in the murder plot than the ship. I'm not saying the ship wasn't cute, which it was—but it was also some back and forth wishy-washiness that kind of annoying after a while. I didn't really like how they kept keeping secrets from each other—this is always the most frustrating thing in dramas because you just know that realistically being honest would have made everything so much easier.

The actor for the murderer is honestly SO GOOD. That courthouse scene is one scene that I will definitely keep rewatching because of the small gestures and facial expressions, and just the raw emotion that comes across in that scene. Amazing. That guy deserves to be a main lead. Though I don't think I could ever see him as anything other than a murderer now because of this drama, haha.

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To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of Seven Tan as an actress, and I wasn't a huge fan of Yun Duo as the female lead. While I liked her compassion and kindness, there were also some parts that just felt cheesy.

The main ship was quite cute at certain points, but they never really went through any actual adversity. I didn't ship them as much as I shipped the second pairing, and that second pairing was the main thing keeping me watching.

The so-called "second male lead" for the love triangle was honestly just downright annoying, and there were a lot of sub-plots that I felt were interconnected but in a very messy way.

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1. I love the main theme and the end theme so much.
2. I love the fact that there are no DUMB misunderstandings, and that the leads trust each other in their relationship. There are some moments where I felt like the leads were both a little TOO perfect, but ultimately it was refreshing.
3. I don't believe in love at first sight which this is based on, but everything is so cute that I'll honestly let it slide JUST THIS ONCE.
4. I am not on the ship for that second pairing. ER XI DESERVES BETTER.
5. I've honestly never been any sort of a gamer, and I also am not too interested in any historical aspects, but I surprisingly enjoyed the video game parts.

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To be honest, I went into this thinking I was going to hate it. The fact that the FL already had a huge crush on the ML and was super obvious and desperate about it was something I just knew I was going to cringe at—and that's the only reason why I couldn't give this one a higher rating. The main female lead was so annoying.

Obviously, I ended up enjoying this a lot more than I expected. It was super cute and I loved all the little things that the ML did for the FL without her knowing — but there was still a lot of lack of communication that bothered me. I know the second lead did a lot of stuff too—and that a lot of people had second lead syndrome but I actually did not, whew!

I was also hesitant about this drama because of the time jumps that I knew happened throughout the later episodes. These are so easily ruined, but the drama actually did a good job of dealing with the relationship growths during the time we didn't see. Still though, I'm not a fan of time jumps and I felt like their reasoning was very weak.

Overall, this was a really great story about romance and friendship, and I am so happy both the ships in this sailed :')

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This was honestly so much more heart-wrenching than I expected, especially since the problems faced by the character were so relatable and harsh, and I felt frustrated seeing the antagonists win again and again—but that just made it more realistic. I honestly really appreciated the way this drama handled mental illness and family issues. Even so, I felt like the antagonist had gone so far it was hard for me to empathize with her, and how the classmates acted at the end (as if they just accepted all of her and never asked her to take responsibility for anything ) was kind of unbelievable.

From the very first episode, I knew I'd love it. I loved the FL so much and it was so refreshing to see a female lead that was loud, badass, but vulnerable at the same time. I loved it up until around the 11th episode, when the characters started to do some really stupid things. Going off of that, I don't see the purpose of having Kim Yeol's dad and Yeon Doo's mom dating as a plot point at all. It was just unnecessary drama and wasn't really resolved in the end anyways.

Although I wouldn't go as far to say that I had second lead syndrome because I shipped the FL and ML, my heart still BROKE for the second lead and to be honest if he had ended up with the FL, I wouldn't have complained.

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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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