Somehow they managed to make this worse than the manga...

Why I say that? Because the source material is not great. It suffers from lack of direction, lack of character developement (too slow for the lenght of the manga) and plotholes. I never understood why it was popular at the time and it's one of the most boring and plain shoujo mangas I've ever read (and shoujo is pretty much what I've ever read).

One of the biggest problems with this show is that the source material is a romcom/slice of life manga, here though, they have decided to cross the line to drama and even some melodramatic moments becoming something of a terrible mix to me.
Why is this show called Good Morning Call is something I'm still asking myself after finishing it. They took the names and the very general idea but it doesn't follow the manga much and the characters are generally not like the manga either.
Both the protagonists are like the manga ones on steroids, especially Nao. In the manga she's your stereotypical teenager (also to point out they're younger in the manga when in starts than in this show), she likes shopping and looks... and something quite outdated it's precisely the whole girlie obsessions with the looks, weight and fashion. I'm sorry for Haruka Fukuhara, I don't know if she was forced to do it or it was all her, but she was way too over the top, exaggerated and very annoying most of the time. While Nao in the manga can be annoying at times as well, it's 100 times more in the show. Same happens with Uehara, sorry to the actor as well because I don't know if it's just his limitations in acting or the direction, but he had pretty much one single emotion the entire time. Manga Uehara can be cold, serious, sarcastic and rude sometimes but in most cases corrects himself later and he does show more emotions and he can laugh and be sassy. Show Uehara is just a rock, it was ok in the beginning but it got ridiculous pretty quickly.
There are many instances in the show where a situation happens that actually happened in the manga as well, but where in the manga was either slightly different or Uehara reacted in an ok way, in the show they cut before that or they changed the details what ended up making Uehara a lot worse of a person than he is in the manga. One example of this is that night when Nao goes to buy pudding and there was in the news something about some instances of attacks in the area. In the show she watches those news, has a fight with Uehara about the pudding, he shouts at her to buy replacement and later when she's scared he finds her in the bushes. You think, WOW Uehara is terrible! In the manga they fight for the pudding and Nao pissed saying he's like a child goes to buy a replacement pudding. Uehara sees on tv the news of the attacks and he runs down the stairs and catches here as she exits the elevator, uses the excuse of buying milk to accompany her all the way, and they banter and fight-play about who had to carry the bags back home. There are many times in the show that they made noticeable differences that make Uehara look so much worse than he's supposed to be.

I think had it followed the manga it would have been better, here they also decided that every single male had to fancy Nao and every single woman had to fancy Uehara, I would have preferred it to be less focused on the leads and they had explored the side characters more as well. Abe Jun is a very prominent character in the manga and they just put it in the background.
I also noticed there were contradictions in some of the things said in the show, for example, we see Kitaura mostly only talking and interacting with Uehara but at some point later she says to him she has to position herself (on some issue happening) with Nao because it's her friend....hmmmm excuse me? In the show you see them interacting like maybe once. It's not the only time this happens, and it felt like they wanted to link more to the manga but they couldn't remember what they had written before. In the manga Kitaura (and her cousin that doesn't appear here) were friends with Nao first and didn't have as much interaction with Uehara.

Daichi, who are you? Who knows, just created to be one of the interested parties and I learnt nothing about him other than he likes Nao, not even in the second season.
Itchan was cool in the manga, here it's just reduced once again to be another potential lover for Nao. Something that annoyed me the most about his character was that melodrama about wanting to quit the ramen shop, in the manga ramen is everything to him to the point he actually starts dating a girl he met in a queue to a famous ramen restaurant because she also loved ramen, what I thought it was funny. Also, his father is so much more stern here, in the source material he's kind and has health issues what it's also the reason his son works in the restaurant. Moreover, when the bowls were broken in the show the father is scolding Itchan, in the manga the father sends Itchan and Nao to apologise to the owner and the bowls turn out to be not that expensive per se but the old man says they were made by the woman he fancies so they're priceless to him. The woman he fancies turns out to be Nao and Uehara's landlady, and they start dating and even both accompany the young group on a trip, I thought it was hilarious, and had they sticked to a romcom with this show it could have been so much better. Also Uehara has such a cool relationship with the landlady, almost like a mother figure to him.

I could go on and on but it's no point. Generally the frustration is that if you're not going to follow the source material at least make it better, not worse... Here characters are bad and not explored, plot is thin, love triangles are boring and bring nothing to the plot, music is annoying and the over the top acting of the main character is the cherry on top to make this whole show difficult to watch an enjoy, so I can't recommend.

Leggi di Più

I liked it until it lost me

TRIGGER WARNINGS of this series: Infertility issues, illness, death.
Comedy is on the thinner side and there is also melodrama.

Looking at the ratings of this drama I feel like I watched a different one than everyone else.
I really wanted to like this series because the premise and the start had potential and there are things I liked in the portrayal of flawed characters that don't do the best of things, but sadly this just progressively lost me as episodes went on and things started to annoy me.

Overall my main two issues here are:
The execution of the plot is a mess at times, it wants to do too many things at the same time but none are necessarily solved or are just there for the pure chaos of it, it got kind of boring. I certainly didn't expect to find this show boring considering its length and how much I wanted to like it because the characters are not presented as perfect like in many other dramas. At points I felt kind of disappointed in myself for not finding it engaging enough but I literally fell asleep a few times, and I never fall asleep with series or movies. Funny enough is how I didn't even bother in going back and I don't feel I missed anything even though I missed in total probably about an hour and a half or a bit more of the total series.
Until the later episodes most of it it's just going and coming from places without enough of a substance to me, felt like a lot of padding. They're just looking for the potential father while he's dragging the girl around and the other two are following them, and the scenes with SML's mother and all that I still don't know what they added to the plot.

The second worst thing in this drama is once again the obsession with the bloodline. At points I thought it was presenting different ideas here because of the main characters and the plot in general, only to fall into the same silly ideas with the blood and how once you see your parents "you know" just because and unconditional love and blah blah blah. Equally silly was the expectation that some dude that might be his potential father would care about him just because he gave the sperm once, this is when they were theorising what that potential father might do or not for him as well as potential inheritance. And then only in the end to go back to a father that was a piece of s*** and abandoned him back in the time. "Oh, but he did go to the school though!!" someone might say, yeah, and after he was missing he didn't move a finger to find him, and apparently didn't care about her blood daughter either. I get ML needed the closure so to speak, but he said it more in the line of getting back some kind of relationship with him again, what falls again into this korean idea that parents don't do wrong and that at the end of the day everything needs to be forgiven because they're your parents, blood and "unconditional love" again.
The whole series revolves too much around "daddy issues" and I'm not a fan of this plot device.

I get it wanted to be comedy at some points but at times it was simply bad taste to me, like how FL wanted to take that baby in the beginning or when she takes ML from the hospital towards the end.
I also didn't appreciate much the duality of going from comedy to melodrama from one scene to another. I don't like melodrama in general either but I think that the comedy bits fell even more flat at times when straight before or after everyone was having a melodramatic moment. One second they're crying about something and the next it's like it never happened and everyone is happy to then remember and cry again.

There are quite a few side characters for such a short drama and I don't feel any of them was explored in depth what it would be fine if it wasn't because it feels they wanted me to care more about them than I did. SML is explored more but it could have been better in my opinion, his whole personality is more or less following the girl all around for most of the drama and it's progressed quickly to have his ending as it is.

I liked the ML for the mess he is, but I would have liked a tiny bit of growth, why is everyone still following him around when he's trying so hard to push everyone away? just leave him get lost then. It's funny that of all the things he did that was the worst for me, because as a viewer this dynamic got repetitive. He's a bad person but a good character, but I wish there had been some progression and that we didn't get the same dynamics of him rejecting people to then leave to then the others try and follow him, it got old quickly.
FL was ok for the most part until she started annoying me with her extremely childish tantrums, she spends half the show screaming. So she might be a good character again but in her case I didn't enjoy watching her.
Her side of the story is never explored enough anyway, we're given some pieces but there is never more exploration about it. She didn't even ask the bio mother anything either, she just spent the time screaming once again. We're also not given any other answer or even conclusion to her menopause thing, because it's not a black or white topic that it's how they presented it here, she's told, that's the end apparently. Her character in general revolves too much around ML and she's just a girl with two personality traits.

The ending was expected considering how the show starts and still was a bit anti-climactic in my opinion, even more that credits scene with the car driving, it's that FL with ML's body inside or what? It also felt a bit rushed since we got so many bits of their trip in a few scenes, I really wished this had been a good chunk of the drama instead of the thugs pursuing them in the first half for example.

Overall it's not an awful drama and it can be watched. I wouldn't rewatch it personally and I wouldn't recommend to people that wants happy endings, perfect characters nor to those that might be triggered by some of the topics.

Leggi di Più

Slow, childish, plotholes, poor execution of a story that could have been great.

I had seen so many people mentioning how good this drama was that I decided to give it a go having nothing else to watch. I was disappointed and I didn't even have high hopes as I find hyped shows are usually not my cup of tea.

The first third of this drama was hard to watch and I had to push myself to continue, mostly I found the portrayal of a 19 year old girl very unrealistic, she was very childish. Maybe it's just me, but I've never met (nor was I that way) anyone that age to act like that. Then I kind of got used to it by the middle, but also she seemed to slowly get out of it when she turned 20, what was also unrealistic. To top it over, Goblin was doing the opposite and as the drama goes he becomes more childish. Not going to lie it was funny at times, but overall it was mostly cringy.
The age gap of the characters was problematic (without taking into account the 900 years) and to me it made it worse the fact they blatantly tried to make this look better by making him more childish, also because it felt it tainted his character as this important and powerful Goryeo warrior. I feel there was a problem with trying to keep this balance of wanting to be serious and sad and tragic with the romcom aspect, I couldn't take things as seriously.
I think the story would have been a lot better had they started it when she was 29, it could have been way more mature. I did like the relationship of the 3 as housemates though and I found it the best part of the show.

There are too many plotholes and I could give it a pass if it wasn't because they had plenty of running time to address them. For example, the images of their Goryeo lives were repeated over and over way too much but in the end I didn't feel they fully showed well enough how things happened. Despite those images, I'm being told what happened more than shown, what is a shame. A lot of times the show seemed to go in circles not wanting to commit to a path for the story, at least not until the later episodes as usual (I seriously dislike this common thing of not doing anything until two episodes of the end, make a film instead!!), but by the end I was already kind of tired of the story to the point that I couldn't care enough for the consequences that were about to happen to the characters. Talking about characters, so many side characters with lost potential and so many plotholes in all characters.

The ending is... I don't want to say bad because it could have been worse, but... it's bad. Could have been poetic, could have been satisfactory but it's none and it's solved in the most weird, anticlimatic and pointless way in my opinion. So much potential for epic-ness wasted in there.

I have watched worse dramas than this one, but I still don't think I would be able to recommend this one if simply for the fact it's too long and not much happens to justify its run time. If it's because any or all of the actors, then go ahead, but if you don't care about the actors and are there for the story then I would say look somewhere else because this is not it.

Leggi di Più

Directionless plot, slow, use of tropes and the classic ignorance of how a teen behaves

Before starting this drama I was already skeptical about the deserted island setting. I feel it's something that can't really work much as a plot device if the story is set in modern times, and this show didn't prove me wrong.
Mostly we have to take this whole story as pure fantasy, but even in the constraints of plausibility in a fantastical world, here there are things that simply don't work and that are just left as plotholes and the rest is just a collection of unrealistic situations that will make you facepalm very hard or that you'll have to brush off to move on with the story.

I find with this series there is a lack of a focus in the plot. Sure, we have a FL and the plot seems to follow her from the start mostly, only that it gets sidetracked multiple times along the way and ultimately feels like her story line didn't progress much nor it made much the impact it could have. The abusive father of ML is the only constant linear plot line in this show, even though if still with a dose of unrealistic-ness and quite dragged.

The start was good and overall it was so much more interesting and I was more invested in the story line in the beginning. I think this is mostly as well because I thought the young actors did such a better job at the characters than the older ones. I don't understand why it's a constant issue that if someone older plays like they're stuck in their teen years mentally they have to do some weird overacting that it's just immensely cringe. Don't they remember their teen years? This is becoming a new trope I absolutely despise.
What was the point of her being stuck in that island anyway? This is only used as a plot device in a couple of occasions as flashbacks and any other setting could have been used anyway. It's a small part of the plot and I don't think adds anything. She should be so much more mature precisely because of her life experiences in that island but as it's mentioned in the show itself, she's childish like that because she didn't continue her education.... excuse me what?

The love story in this show is quite anticlimactic and the "love triangle" if it can even be called that, it's unnecessary as always.
A lot of the plot points are just like that because the script said so, otherwise they make no sense, like Ki-ho hiding his identity to her knowing she's looking for him, like so much could have been avoided if he had told her straight away and told her the situation and to keep it secret. It's just so silly. Also he goes from that to then wanting her to be famous like all of a sudden he doesn't care anymore.

The biggest middle chunk of the show the attention is mostly on Ran Joo's character more than the FL, to the point the whole premise of her career as a singer is put to the side. At this point I lost most of the interest I still had for the story. Ran Joo's character is not bad but it's not great either and if I was supposed to feel sorry for her I didn't because her situation could be so much worse, especially when compared with the Kang family whose dynamics, by the way, were of the best of the show.

I think overall for a short drama it didn't have a clear idea of what it wanted to focus on, there were multiple subplots and the execution of them was not done in the best way, the story progressed in chunks of focusing on one thing or another what I get why they did it that way but it just added more to the unrealistc-ness of it all. Moreover, some of the characters would also keep changing from one side to the other what would do or undo the plot as it goes. The worst of all of this is that it makes you lose interest as it changes because most plot lines become very dragged as a result. Points for having so many story lines and characters at the same time and somehow still manage to make it boring.
There were a few conversations between characters that were engaging and I shared their sentiments but most of the others were very uninteresting and added nothing to the story or character development.
FL is cringe, ML is background character, couldn't care for Ran Joo, second ML (Woo Hak) has more screen time than the first and yet his personal story goes really nowhere (and he had more chemistry with FL too), and I have no idea why Lee Seo Joon is considered main character, he spent the series going in circles. Kang parents were great and I wish we got more of Mo Rae since she seemed somewhat interesting.

No more amnesia trope PLEASE. I'm so done with it, let's just leave it back in the past where it should remain. It was annoying at the time and it's even more annoying now.
This is also labelled as "comedy" here but I really don't know why, there are zero comedy moments unless people laughs at FL accent and "teen" attitude what it's actually insulting because it perpetuates this idea that certain accents/dialects mean the person is ignorant and dumb, she even somewhat drops it in the last episode, because now she's a *proper singer*... meh.

I debated giving this a 5 because I've seen worse and it had some nice moments, but writing this review and thinking about the series really stopped me. It is watchable if there is nothing else to watch and some of the songs were nice but I generally can't recommend. It doesn't know what it wants to be and manages to do everything half way in a dragged and boring way.

Leggi di Più

Good visuals and nostalgia trip but cliché till the end

I actually rewatched this because I had zero recollection of the plot or anything else and I didn't have it on my watchlist here to remember. One quarter into the film it came to me why I didn't remember anything of it and the whole plot came to my head.
Cliché can be entertaining and enjoyable, I've watched cliché series and films in the past I enjoyed, even cheesy ones for the guilty pleasure, but this film falls in the frustrating cliché category.

This is one is of mixed feelings for me and clearly quite forgettable. I like the visuals and the nostalgia trip, although I would say it doesn't dwell as much on the nostalgia as other titles (like 25/21 does) and some times I felt the filter or post editing they did was a bit on the heavy side. For me this movie would get a higher score if they hadn't gone that route with the ending but I do understand why they thought it was a good idea to put it there to tie it all up into the theme.
This whole film is a big nostalgia trip of overused plot devices in romantic dramas of the period in any media, the plot device of friend asking MF to get closer to her love interest to learn about him... or the plot device of romantic male interest leaving the country or dying is a classic, but it was equally frustrating and bad at the time than it's now (I'm still salty about how many shoujo mangas and animes used this, seriously). It's one of those things that simply shouldn't come back because mostly it's just sad for sadness sake and lazy at this point (like the amnesia trope). This is not the only title in recent years to follow the nostalgia trip by reusing bad plot devices that were not liked even at the time.
The classic of miscommunication among characters is also something that makes this quite frustrating to watch at times (MF with the best friend). And equally tiring is the girl that is thin, eats a ton and it's also socially clumsy and cute without knowing it... but I can forget this last one this time simply for being the classic in a "nostalgia remake".

Here it does have the tag of melodrama, I'm not sure I would classify this as such since only the ending is. It's nostalgic, dramatic and romantic with a frustrating cliché ending.

Would I recommend? Not sure, I liked the acting, the aesthetics, the cute moments, the colours and the story is generally watchable most of the film even with the clichés, but the ending is very frustrating and annoying so if you decide to watch it take that into consideration and watch it for the trip.

Leggi di Più

Good adaptation from the manga but acting and execution are a bit off at times.

I generally recommend this drama, especially to those that have read the manga or watched the anime. If you haven't, I would say it can feel there are some plotholes or rushed parts here and there but it's a good adaptation. If you have read the manga or watched the anime it's a lot easier to fill in the bits missing but also as it tends to happen, this isn't better than the manga because of that same reason.

I came to this drama with low expectations because adaptations tend to be not that good and very rushed, something that clearly happened with the movie version of this same title (because obviously it was impossible to fill the plot of 30 volumes of manga in a 2h film). It was difficult to not make comparisons because despite overall thinking this series is so much better than the movie simply for having most of the plot points of the original work, I also thought that some of the characters were better portrayed in the movie, namely the protagonist. As another review has pointed out, the main character here lacks the uniqueness and creepiness that the manga character is supposed to have. I feel the movie did a better job at this. Sara Minami is pretty by society standards and they didn't try much with the hair or her behaviour and demeanour to look closer to how she's supposed to be, she just comes across as a bit shy.
Also, while I think Rinka Kumada did generally a good job as Yano, I felt she was missing the subtext, in the manga and anime there were always instances where you could tell she knew what was going on, and would work things out before anyone else and she was mature for her age, I don't think this was portrayed very well in this series and I missed those nuances of her character. I also think physically I expected her to look more like a gyaru, more similar to how they did in the movie, that it's how I imagined her in the manga. Also one of the things I precisely liked of the portrayal of Yano was the fact she's fashionable and more adult like but she also has good grades and cares about her studies, what I think it's not a very common portrayal in mangas for someone looking like a gyaru (and smoking!). In this series to me if I wasn't told through the part of the rumours I would think she's just an average high schooler. Maybe they didn't want to portray her as a gyaru to keep up with the times, but they could have done something else to show the contrasts of her character since there is nothing in the way she acts or speaks here that tells me how she is either.
On the other hand, I was happy with the rest of portrayals, and in fact I was very pleasantly surprised by Riho Nakamura as Chizuru, I think they nailed it with her.
(If I'm being picky though I have mixed opinions about the portrayal of Kazehaya's father, it's a difficult one, but I don't think he looks serious and stern, just kind of awkward and forced? I don't know how to feel about him).

While I'm generally pleased with how much they fit in this show of the source material it could have been even better. Some bits felt a bit rushed, while some others, like some of the dialogues seemed a bit too slow. I enjoy slow and I enjoyed the slow pace of this drama in those dialogues, what I'm not so pleased with is this coming as a detriment of other plots or scenes being rushed. I generally would have preferred this drama had been between 15 and 20 episodes long, it would have given the time for everything. Another thing that also was a bit annoying for me it's how they cut out almost every single kiss or show of a more mature relationship that appeared in the manga/anime. I can imagine why, but many people watching this has read the manga or watched the anime, and many others that haven't and liked this will potentially check both or one of them, so why? I could tell even in scenes when that was being cut, and any show of affection between any of the characters was quite awkward in my opinion. The girls dynamics were on point though.
Acting was generally ok, but at times for me it was a bit off, sometimes it felt like they were reading the lines without emotion or like they were doing a theatre play instead of a recorded show. Maybe also like they were trying hard to use the same exaggerated expressions or body movements than in the anime? what could feel forced and cringey sometimes. I think this happens more in the first half of the show than in the second. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either.

Music was ok, some songs were cute, some gave me the vibes of the main theme of American Beauty? Overall it was ok, but I did notice a couple of times in the first few episodes a song would play in the background that didn't necessarily match too well with the vibe of the scene (for example, a scene with serious dialogue and a bit too happy song in the background).

I can't see myself rewatching this, it was entertaining, watchable, cute at moments, loved the scenery and atmosphere but I prefer the intensity and the emotional portrayal of the manga/anime so I'll gravitate towards those before this one. But as I mentioned before, as an adaptation I'm pleased and it's probably one of the best manga adaptations of this genre I've seen despite its few flaws.

Leggi di Più

Ideas are there but underused and execution is very amiss

I wanted to give this series at least a 5, there are some concepts and ideas there that are interesting but they're so massively underused or the direction they took was so amiss that writing this review I just couldn't bring myself to. Also taking into consideration I found myself fast-forwarding moments and at some points even nearly falling asleep.

In things I liked there was the fantasy element between younger and older FL as well as the bits of social commentary relating to age discrimination in both groups. The struggle of the FL in the beginning was relatable at times and I was interested in seeing how the story would unfold. The disappearances of the people in the past were also an interesting plot and although the murder mystery was kind of cliché in many aspects from the very beginning it could have made for an interesting plot anyway if they had bothered to properly work on it. Lee Jung Eun's character as Im Sun/older Mi Jin was also the best of the show.

The main issue with this series is the fact that it feels they didn't bother with anything enough to make it stand out in any way, in fact it felt they wanted to make it so plain and average that they ended up not having enough plot to cover the whole of the episodes and as a result it's very dragged and many episodes are very uninteresting, I found myself fast-forwarding bits here and there, especially as the episodes got towards the end of the series. At times it felt like I was just watching FL going to and back from work with the little bells in-between for the change and not much else. And talking about the bells, what were the point of it? You can clearly visually see the change so I just simply don't understand it, and I know it's a very small detail but they started annoying me a bit as episodes passed. I think this series would have worked much better as 12 episodes, even more considering their lack of regard towards developing the story in an interesting or meaningful way.

Starting with the plot, the murder mystery is anticlimactic and pretty obvious from early on. Sadly they didn't bother in making multiple characters suspicious enough and with a possibility of two and knowing that the first one going by the clichés won't be the culprit you know it will be the second. It doesn't feel like they tried or wanted to even try to make that part of the story interesting enough, the small flashbacks of ML's past are repeated multiple times, as are the images of the aunt and so on, but they add nothing to the story, the research is not engaging nor they bring you along for it and the reveal and subsequent developments are very lackluster, with a killer that is because yes, as usual. I'm very tired of watching thrillers were the bad guys are just simply mentally unstable psychos that kill because yes and at random. It's getting old.

On the other hand the "fantasy" element is pretty pointless. It's somehow the backbone of the series but it's massively underutilised and reduced to simply FL is that way during the day and during the night, there isn't even a real exploration of why and the ending of it it's a big disappointing mess. I can't either even start to understand why she would see her older self and talk to her as if it was a separate entity in the last dream. Sure, we could argue she was talking to her subconscious or inside her mind but it's treated too much like a different person, also at the end when ML sees her under the blossoming trees would also suggest this considering FL cannot see her at that moment either. It makes you wonder then if in a way FL was possessed by her aunt more than she becoming old, but clearly that was not the case as she couldn't hear her aunt inside nor we see her aunt in her older self to start with. This actually brings me to another problem I had with all this, and it's the fact that the FL's parents don't recognise her as the aunt physically when she's older but there are other people that think she is her, it was confusing and honestly quite sloppy, as it was the fact that the issue of the parents not believing it was her could have been solved from the start by talking to them when she was Mi Jin instead of Im Sun, or strategically showing them. This could also have been applied to pretty much everyone, including the ML, what makes this hide and seek get old very quickly and makes the FL look quite dumb.
Another thing that annoyed me a lot when it comes to the fantastical element is that when she's changing the time is shown as going very fast, what was that about? They would always fast forward the sunset and the sunrise like if they don't exist. It's almost like they couldn't decide when she actually transforms nor they could bother in animating a slow transformation. The line was more clear with sunrise but with sunset is like they didn't know what to do, so they would fast-forward like an hour of time in one second and we would go from the sun starting to set to completely night sky. It had my eyes rolling.
But anyway....how is the cat even related to the transformation? Who is the cat? Was it all indeed because of the aunt? why the aunt doesn't appear at any point in voice, spirit or in some sort of clue to know? Was she actually an old Mi Jin or was she looking like how they want us to believe the aunt would have looked as old? if the aunt was behind this, why not making it more obvious and make Mi Jin transform as her, why an older her that we haven't ever even seen?
To be honest this is just one more drama in a series of others I've seen in more recent times that use some fantastical element and it's either very underused or completely a background feature. Let's stop please, it only becomes frustrating more than anything and usually they never have a conclusion for that part of the story, it just is.

I found FL's parents pretty annoying towards the beginning, very nosy, big meddlers in her life while also saying some pretty rude things to her. They got better when they became more background characters (I say "they" but here the problem is mostly the mother). When it comes to the FL, I preferred her Im Sun persona than Mi Jin and so many times I just wished they had skipped the whole "fantasy" thing and just made Lee Jung Eun the main character of the story. Mi Jin in her younger self was annoying at times and the writers couldn't decide if she was independent and strong or damsel in distress so they changed as the plot needed, at some points she would be screaming so ML could save her, at some points mostly when alone she would deal with it herself. It's quite expected also that there will be differences between the two actresses portrays of the same character but sadly at times they did indeed feel too much like different people.

ML is a character that almost feels like they wanted to make nuanced but at the same time present as the smart prince in the shinning armor. I was not a fan of him, most of all because he was very rude and abusive in the beginning of employees, very ageist as well and him looking at FL in the kitchen and thinking of his mother was kind of the cherry on top. But overall the worst for me in terms of the character is that duality between presenting a nuanced character but also giving him to me in a platter of gold like he's supposed to be a role model or a romantic interest for the viewer as well as the fact that in the end she was the reason he changed after-all what it's just not real and sends the wrong message . Sure, I'm going into details when in fact his character is not very explored but I feel it still applies. We got more insight of FL's psyche than him. I get his past is haunting him but that can't be his whole personality and even in that sense we don't get a lot of depth into his past, only the same 4 scenes recycled. His mother was clearly not great either but there is no thought, conversation or even mention on his thoughts about his mother at any point. Because of the superficiality of it all, when the remains of the mother are found in the end the scene of him crumbling doesn't have the emotional depth it should for me. People around him keep repeating how much time he has spent on the case trying to find the people but we're always told and not shown the depth of it in a meaningful way so it was difficult for me to relate. I think Choi Jin Hyuk did his best with what he had but that scene of him crumbling has more depth than the entirety of what we have been shown of him, it's very disjointed because the plot didn't care enough up to that point.
In fact, we could argue that until around episode 15 the plot didn't care much about anything and then the whole plot and reveal is dropped in a few scenes because "we got to get on with it". It's just such a sloppy execution.

When it comes to the romantic development of the main leads the plot is disappointing. It's very plain and I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out why they even liked each other since except for a few moments of revelations they didn't seem to share much. I could understand her crush on him based purely on the fact she would see him as this cool and composed prosecutor with a great job, but the other way around? We're introduced to his crush to her in a slow yet weird manner and in general it feels like their relationship is quite detached at the same time. Either way, the worst of it all is the cliché of "ending it" an episode to the end what adds absolutely nothing as always and it was awkward and very pointless. Now, if for example they had decided to go another way with solving the fantasy element of the show then it would have been more interesting he would have helped solve the mystery of it maybe.
The dynamics between them could have been hilarious had they stuck to more comedy throughout the whole series (and if he had found out earlier about her changing even) but the comedy aspect is dropped early on and then the few moments that try to be more comedic just end up being embarrassing more than anything.

When it comes to side characters Ko Won is extremely pointless and the attempt to make him second romantic interest was laughable. They actually had great chemistry as sidekicks but they obviously HAD to try and cross the line, it was very awkward, especially considering Ko Won had most of his interactions with Im Sun and not Mi Jin. Yet at the end they try to refer to it in flashback as friendship and camaraderie like if he confessing his feeling hadn't happened. Weird.
Why didn't they pair Ko Won with Do Ga Yeong? I get the not wanting to cross the line of fan to lover or something but it would have made for a cuter story in my opinion. The love story between her and Ju Byeong Deok tries so hard to be comedic relief but it was quite embarrassing and unappealing and not going to lie a lot of it has to do with both the age gap and also that Ju Byeong Deok as a character came across a bit as a perv at times in his buffoonery ways.

I'm not sure I can recommend this drama even to pass time if you have nothing to do because of how draggy and slow it is, I generally found it boring. It's watchable yes, Lee Jung Eun is great in her role, has some endearing moments of camaraderie and the murder mystery although very cliché and predictable is not exactly unwatchable, but 16 episodes it's just too much in my opinion and there are better dramas out there to pass the time.

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Very unpopular opinion

Looking at the ratings of this drama mine is going to be an extremely unpopular opinion, sorry.

This drama felt like a big advertisement for teenagers on how their lives need to play out.
If you're a teen in high school you can have a crush, but don't go further!! focus on your studies and wait. Oh, you're 18 now? it's ok then, you can have a relationship. You finished your degree? you need to get the best job ever immediately and be super successful very young, be able to afford a house and not long after marry and start a family. It's almost fuel for depression.
The timings on when the characters were allowed or not to do something were super on the face, and they tried very hard to make the main two characters flawless in their upbringing, studies and manners.
In fact only Guan Fang has a more nunanced life, but it's put there as an example of what someone that gets into trouble needs to do, but they don't even dwell on how he did it, he just did because he looked at his grandma one day. It's very superficial.

I found the main female character quite annoying at times (some others I enjoyed her sassyness) and overall there is really no character progression for any of them, so as a result even when in the end they're in the wedding they look like 16 year olds getting married, I found it super weird. You also don't get to know them individually, not even the main characters (only Su Zai Zai and Guan Fang a bit more maybe), so you don't really know anything about them, only that they're friends and they're all ok successful people. Their specific traits are quite superficial so they're not that distinguishable ones of the others really, they work mostly as quirks since they don't impact much on how they act or what they do. Even when Jiang Jia didn't know what she wanted to study is solved quickly with very little hesitation. Zhang Lurang tells me in the end he has changed so much, but other than the fact they told the actor he could now smile more, I don't see any other change. He says he had low self-esteem, and while it's shown him not being treated very well as a teen by his mother I didn't see at any point him seeming to have low self esteem, I only saw him being serious and quiet and it's not the same.

As it happens many times I found the friends romantic relationship more interesting, that is until they decided to completely push it to the side and only resolve it quickly after the time jump. Time jumps also mean nothing here anyway, none of them change at all and whoever else they meet they only stay in their lives for like 5 seconds anyway. Very choppy.
Plot was boring at times (and I like slice of life) and most of the dialogue was very superficial, what is not necessarily terrible but then you had more poetic lines in specific crafted moments that were taking me again to the feeling of massive advert.
Many side characters appear only at weird moments and then in others when you would expect them to appear they don't.

Points go for the cute moments here and there, but overall this was a big miss for me.
I've watched chinese movies before but this was my first chinese series, and considering the high rating of this compared with my opinion of it I'm not sure I should try any other series maybe :/

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Messy writing, started good and gets worse the more you watch

What happened here????? I'm so baffled by this drama, how it managed to destroy or not develop properly anything that it started, everything is introduced and dropped. This drama was either a writing exercise using a dart board with random words and they hit some random ones and had to connect them in the story somehow or a "pass the story" game the writer had with their family one Saturday evening after a couple of drinks where each person was trying to add any absurdity to the plot they could.
If you read the premise of this show above please just completely ignore it because that's just about the beginning of it and it's dropped very quickly.

At the start I thought it was interesting as a concept, not necessarily new but I welcomed to see what they would do with it. Clearly they didn't know what to do with it. After a couple of episodes with more comedy (although some quite juvenile for my liking), they completely dropped it and moved to the couple dating show. At this point I already started wondering what was the point of it. ML's issue is put to the background so quickly and at times even forgotten. At points there were some better moments but many others I started feeling I was watching paint dry.
What was the point of the time jump after the dating show? I really don't know. I don't like when I'm invested in a story, or trying to be like in this case, and there is an unjustifiable time jump, doesn't matter how small. It felt very "ok that's done now, let's do something else". But the "something else" they do it's just going in circles achieving nothing. The romance falls short, the friendship between ML and SML falls short and it's never explored in depth other than showing some past disagreement. Everything is pretty much left half baked and you keep watching hoping something comes that makes you change your mind, but then it slowly creeps into melodrama territory with the adopted trope and the bio mother appearing (what was the point again? it doesn't add anything to the story or personality of FL) and then proceeds to do what happens at the end of episode 9, what was the cherry on top and by that point I was simply done with it. Then somehow not only they managed to introduce even more melodrama with the father getting scammed and then having an out of the blue action bit at the end with him and the three sons but also somehow they tried to evolve a bit the story of FL's mother last minute mentioning the engagement but actually nothing happens? And then to top it all off we have 15 minutes at the end with a children's play with a similar plot to the original premise of this show with flashbacks I don't need to see because I've already seen them.

Why are there so many characters? Somehow there are so many but they make me care about none. FL at times felt like background character because she was so plain I just didn't see the point. Her whole personality was just trying to write the next show and not much else. As I already said introducing the bio mother was cliché and boring, but also very annoying that once again they're trying to excuse or forgive abandonment. I have seen only a few dramas where this is tackled in a more realistic and correct way. Most times it's just forgiven because "blood" and it's a trope I highly despise. In this case while there wasn't complete forgiveness it wasn't really tackled in any engaging way, it's not even discussed why. It was very pointless.
ML had personality and there is more in-depth to his character but his issue as mentioned previously was massively underutilized and we're only told about his thought process as an afterthought, like for example when at the end he decides he doesn't want to do news anymore. We were not taken for the ride of his development, we're just told later. At this point I do have to mention Go Kyung Pyo's acting because I've seen him in other stuff and I liked him but here I just don't know what they were going for. I say "they" because I can imagine that's what the director wanted but the moments when he couldn't lie were bad, and he would just become an expressionless statue. Only when he would have an outburst he would be more human. So he spent most of the drama being a robot and it wasn't engaging, nor funny or entertaining, it was just awkward. The "issue" shouldn't even have been there anyway as mentioned previously because it was only used in the beginning.
About the SML, who cares? I just couldn't care about his character. He was introduced as the second love interest to make the cliché love triangle but after, why follow his story further? Sure, they do tackle some issues with his character but it all felt very superficial and the outcome is not fireworks worthy to spend that much screen time on him.
Secondary characters on the FL side are a big what's the point? and on ML side are plain annoying. FL's friend with the kid only there in the beginning to make you think the kid is FL's and then after she's just there so she can be the love interest of ML's brother. The kid is only there for the same reason, and I still don't understand the point of his "power", not explored, you don't even know if real and overall added nothing to the mess.
ML's parents had an interesting background and story with their struggles but even at the end I didn't feel like there was much consideration to the fact ML had been used for a long time and their parents took it for granted and they spoiled the two younger ones big time. They're trying to sell me at the end because of the pity party that was the accident that they're great parents but they're not? And it has everything to do with their attitude and nothing else.
ML's brothers were pretty awful spoiled people and again, they try make them better by the end but I felt nothing, nor did the "romance" of the middle one with FL's friend. No chemistry and I feel bad for her since he gives the vibes of man-baby.
Talking about chemistry, the one of the main leads is not quite there either. At some points I thought they were cute together but most of the time I felt nothing. I did like at points their romance was a bit more mature and straightforward but overall even though it's one of the supposed main plot points of the show it felt background many times.

Personally I can't recommend. I know already when I start skipping scenes that this is not going to be a pass for me and in this case I used it so much especially in the last two episodes. It's a complete mess writing wise and I can't think of any element that would justify wasting the time since everything else like music, characters... are either just passable or mediocre.

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Pointless

It was such an achievement to somehow make this even worse than the first season, mainly because it's completely pointless. Characters have zero developement personally, you don't learn anything new about them, side characters of the 1st season are not as much in the picture and the only plot device used in the whole series consists on chucking some new characters to the main couple to create drama.
I'm not sure if they actually used anything from the Good Morning Kiss manga (the sequel to Good Morning Call) to make the 2nd season but generally it's just nothing like the manga, at least not the first 4 volumes (the only ones in English), where they are mostly planning to get married and they have already been together for about 5 years.

I found most of the characters introduced very annoying, especially Saeko and especially when she was having a tantrum. Generally they all acted very childish for being university students, and in fact in the manga there is progression in terms of maturity with the characters at that point, they could have explored that in this series but they just decided to keep it as superficial as the first season, or even worse. I don't get the point of Nanase, totally plot filler. Thing is though, they had the chance of exploring the crush Ota had in Abe in the manga, but instead they just did whatever that was between Nanase and Daichi.
When Natsume started having the feelings for Nao I rooted for him really, he was so much nicer than Uehara with his single emotion face and paired better with Nao. I knew it was not going to happen at all, but I almost wished. Sadly though, they couldn't even do that well and made Natsume super pushy later on. How is it that basically Natsume and Saeko push the main leads to break up and suffer absolutely no consequences for their actions, they're all super dupey friends in the end like nothing happened. It was so weird to watch the whole thing.
This whole second season was a plotless filler of bad writing and main leads are exactly the same than when it started, Nao has evolved zero and Uehara only managed one smile.

I can't recommend, even worse than the first season.

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Repetitive, dragged and not funny

I feel the need to write this review to offer a bit of an alternative opinion to what seems to be the general consensus that this is a great drama.

I'm not sure what this was trying to be or what message is trying to convey. I didn't find it very entertaining either.
It started with an interesting premise but it went downhill very quickly.

One of my main problems with this drama are the plotholes. There is really no explanation on how things work, the main character is the one deciding what things are to be left or changed and we have to take it at face value. Who knows, maybe her friend Fuku-chan was actually not supposed to have a child, we'll never know. But that's the main problem, who decides what has to happen and what not, who decides what is good and what is bad. Maybe she saved her annoying teacher from being wrongly accused in the train situation but maybe later he killed his wife. We don't know, we just have to accept FL is somehow omnipotent and her choices are the best course of action. Somehow she also knows what to do or not to get shiny points for her next life.

It was generally passable until the friend Mari is also introduced as being in a repetition of her life, at that point I started to question if most people going by that logic are repeating lives or what are the rules on who is allowed and who isn't. Everything was already hold by a very fine thread but when the story line with the plane is introduced it was made so much worse. For starters why did they have to save all that people? They just decided so. Again, there is never an explanation on fate, morality or anything. One could argue that by them focusing all their energy and time to be pilots they missed making so many memories with the friends and enjoying life to the fullest, or that that plane crashing was meant to happen, or, and here it comes the biggest of them all, if the friends died in the plane, shouldn't they also be in their lives repetition or maybe they would have crossed the other door and reincarnated into something else in which case their deaths in the "repetition" timeline of the FL and Mari would be set to die no matter what since they wouldn't exist as humans or as themselves anymore. It's just never explained and it makes no sense.
The writers basically decided some people where allowed to be main characters, meaning people that could repeat their lives and the rest are just the puppets that follow a specific pattern.

If you have watched Groundhog Day (1993) and you enjoyed it you might like this, if you don't like a plot that pretty much repeats over and over I would say avoid this, it gets annoying, especially since the only repeated events in the life of the FL are the same ones EVERY single life with minor differences in general and a different career. It's a chore and the story is not so worth it. There are so many details in her career progression in each of her lives and what is the point? Especially the one where she's a producer.

I found it kind of stupid to go for the capitalistic stereotype of what is considered success when the FL only changes her career in each repetition and that somehow gives her different outcomes of what animal the guy in the desk tells her she's going to be in the next life. I guess we all should be doctors apparently. Equally stupid that something as silly as that guy disrupting the coming of age ceremony was full of comments about how he was going to be a microorganism in his next life. And it's not even the disrupting, is the fact of his aesthetics as well, it was very on the face of "if you don't dress society approved and behave how japanese society dictates you'll loose points at reincarnation", same kind of sentiment was shown when Mari says in her first life she was a gyaru for a while. Excuse me? If it had been done in a very funny way I could have taken this afterlife based on capitalistic success and japanese morals entertaining enough, but it falls way short of that.

It was also convenient that the four of them lived single their whole lives, I guess because the writers knew they wouldn't be able to handle the story if there were partners and children involved, so only the background characters were allowed that kind of progression.

I'm assuming part of the comedy in this show is supposed to be the way they accentuate the roundabouts of Japanese communication, I get it really, but I just simply didn't find it funny, I found it as frustrating as it is in real life.
This also brings me to the fact the FL was not really a very likeable person and there is not much of a change in her all throughout. Sure, she says at one point she started doing the things to be nice not for the points but it doesn't change the fact she's doing exactly the same things and we're not really being shown anything new.

Overall I can't recommend this drama, watching too much repetition already felt such a waste of time, it's only a comedy in the sense it's not a melodrama and the story isn't that engaging. Some might say it's ultimately a story of friendship and while yes partially it is, it's questionable when in most of the FL's repeated lives she didn't spent that much time with the friends (she even complains to them in one of them because they visit her too much) and it's not shown like she misses them that much in the timelines she chose to not have a relationship with them. For this reason as well, I really didn't care much for that ending and it didn't make sense either how they managed all to be reincarnated into the same thing considering they were only given one option every time? Works for cute effect I guess.

Music is fine, they clearly played with the nostalgia trip in that aspect a lot. But it felt like they wanted to precisely get some easy points for doing that. I recognised many of the songs and brought me back in time, but sorry, it's not enough to make this show good, I'll rather just go and listen to the music without watching this.

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Started out ok-ish and gets worse the more you watch

It started out ok although from the beginning there are a couple of clichés that already made me cringe.
Main Guy character is a classic "nice guy" with stalker behaviour, very frustrating and if pushed can be quite evil even.
Girl has self-esteem issues.
Side characters are side characters, we learnt almost nothing from anyone, it's kept very superficial. I could even say the same for the main characters, the reasons for him to like her are hold by a fine thread until they have more relationship and we're still told absolutely nothing about her, I don't know anything of what she likes or doesn't, what she wants to do or doesn't, she's just pretty.
Writing is mediocre and I feel at points the movie doesn't know what it wants to be or what direction it wants to go, at points it feels like it wants to be a different version of 500 days of Summer, but then it tries to tell me the main characters are meant for each other and there is romance there, even suggested with that ending. Talking about the ending, it's unsatisfactory to the point it leaves me a very bad aftertaste as if everything Guy did was justified and June grew nothing and thought about things 0.01 seconds. There was no growth and no change.

I found some parts a bit funny, but overall not sure I could classify this as romantic comedy, Guy makes this movie go south very early on and I just felt uncomfortable he was so pushy and inactive at the same time.

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Trigger Warning!!!!

TRIGGER WARNING FOR RAPE AND CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE.
NO COMEDY.

I need to remember to check the tags on here before watching anything on Netflix. Still, here it's also tagged as comedy and simply no. While there are comedic moments towards the beginning and a couple towards the end (and they were actually funny), the main tone of the film is NOT comedy. The comedy was very good and I wished they kept it for all the film, I guess also because that's the main reason I decided to watch it in the first place. ML's snarky remarks and comments were of the best in the film.

Please BE AWARE this gets quite dark in terms of themes and I was really not feeling like watching something like this right now and it did make me feel uncomfortable at times.
While most of the scenes are not explicitly shown they're very heavily implied or they're partly shown, so please be aware of this!!!

Leaving that to the side, acting is very good, Kim Woo Bin did a great job. Plot is generally ok and follows a good pace although I wished in a way it had been longer and we had more bonding between characters or in-depth into the main one since at points it felt like we were jumping from one thing to another without much introspection or personal development, but as a plain action film it works. It has its flaws plot wise and characterization wise with some stereotypes in the mix, so it's not outstanding but it's not bad either.


But seriously, no comedy and it's quite anxiety inducing.

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It was very nice and then it gets spoiled by meh

This movie is very beautiful.
The scenery and cinematography are great and the type of filter or film they used gives nostalgic vibes.
I think acting is very good, especially by the ML, he was great and I really liked the dynamics between the characters and the banter.
The introspective journey paired with the scenes, the train rides and the beautiful landscapes give you all the feels and I found myself grinning for a big part of the movie because of the little endearing moments here and there like the one with that young traveler in the snow.

Everything was great for me until towards the end when they dropped the EXTREMELY over used troupe that it's also actually very predictable from the start.
That was such a shame and it really spoiled it for me.
There are just so many things that could have been done with the plot, the most plain one being just simply that time passed, that there was a long distance between them. I really wanted a trip for the sake of introspection, self-discovery and peace but we sadly got this once again, and at least I guess he knew and it was not a bomb like they do in other movies/series. I really wish this plot device was left in the 00s where it belongs. I'm so over it at this point.

The plot in general is not new even leaving out that cliché at the end and the execution is not exactly great either. While the flashbacks are carried out in an ok manner the last part showing her side in that way for cliché/shock value was both confusing at times, repetitive and just wallowing in the drama for the sake of it.
Moreover, they knew each other for like a month I think it was, so it's too extreme that he's still hang up on that 18 years later to the level of affecting his career in that way. Also equally unrealistic in my opinion that he only had one 3 months relationship in all that time, what level of workaholic are we talking about?

It's really as described by the tag, bittersweet, although for me because of the lost potential and not what happens in the plot.

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I haven't watched the original...

...and this was ok, not great but also not terrible.
I think the premise is interesting at the beginning and the story of her going back to 98 becomes more of a classic romcom what was ok for me.
I think it was around episode 8 when it started to go a bit downhill for me, it started to drag and felt slower at the pacing. Still, the thing I found the most annoying at that point was the overall introduction of him also as a time traveler, and mostly the fact that the story at that point is shown in a very scene by scene way and becomes confusing. Until that point you're wired to think all the time in her going back to the past, but then he's doing the opposite and instead of showing the story in a linear manner like it happened with her, and what would have made this a lot easier to follow, they keep showing things simultaneously and I got a bit confused a couple of times. Later this seems to improve again, but once they show who is the real culprit....well, I started yawning, it became so melodramatic and so cliché. Motive? who needs one when you can just introduce a psycho that just does things because yes.
It definitely got less interesting for me from that point onwards and I found episode 11 the most dragging of all, especially also with Kwon Min Ju. Sure, I felt bad for her and I could understand where she was coming from, but she was using victimism and suicide to hurt others at the end of the day. She "doesn't hate" Han Jun Hee but tries to basically hurt her and everyone else. The reason for her to get better later is weak as well. Overall I was not very satisfied on how that was portrayed and tackled.

Jung In Kyu was very melodramatic at the end of the original timeline, it was just bad in my opinion in taking the blame for something he didn't do. He certainly didn't think enough there and felt like an impulsive regreatable teen reaction and all I could think was "this is lame".
The ending is ok but also leaves many questions about all the other characters since it only shows the main two. Funny enough the main question I had is what happened to Oh Chan Hee, did he go on a killing spree and was never caught in the new timeline? As a child he already was showing an interest in Min Ju because of his brother's photos, did he try to kill her later on? Or maybe no because she was not depressed and so not an "easy" prey anymore? did he kill someone else instead? (obviously I assume even if he tried he didn't kill Min Ju because Nam Si Heon mentions her in the bus like she's still alive). Did his brother become a stalker of Kwon Min Ju? I mean, he kind of already was with the photos and all.

The moments of resolution in this drama generally felt a bit anticlimatic for me, when FL manages to get control of Min Ju's body again before the jump I was not impressed, the way they meet back again in the end didn't impress me either. Maybe they didn't have that much chemistry so it left me a bit flat? Maybe because other than the story we don't get to know much about each of the main characters nor they do share that many bonding moments? not sure if that's the reason, I can't fully pin point why.
Something that also bugs me is the fact that only towards the end we learnt that Jun Hee and Min Ju can communicate with each other, like what? shouldn't this have been a thing during all the drama then? it would have changed the whole thing in my opinion, so to be honest I do count this as a plothole, and if there was a reason only then it was possible they didn't explain it at all. Is it just to be more melodramatic? Otherwise they could have met, communicate, raise concerns and helped each other along the way, what would have made the whole story a complete different thing.

Overall I think this would have been interesting and a bit different if the series had been longer and they had also focused on the characters relationships in the new timeline, or had even introduced the idea of paralel timelines because of the change. I find it a bit unsatisfactory when shows end with a reset.

The reason why they could time travel is not really even suggested either so the whole idea of the time travel is kept superficial, I'm ok with it in general but if someone is expecting more in-depth in that respect this is not it.
The song chosen to be the one for the cassette very annoying after a while.

Generally it's an ok watch but forgettable.
I know people will tell me the original is so much better, it might be but I've also read here in the comments this one generally follows the plot of the original very close, meaning, I'm going to find the melodrama and the culprit as annoying as in this one so I'm probably going to give it a miss for now, I might watch it at some point when I don't remember this one at all.

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