Disclaimer: this is a review, and as such it contains spoilers of the whole series. Please proceed to read at your own risk if you still plan on watching this show or if you haven’t finished it yet. You have been warned.

Our Beloved Summer
(그 해 우리는 / Geu Hae Urineun)
MyDramaList rating: 7.0/10

Hi everyone! I hope everyone is enjoying the summer period wherever they are. It’s been a bit stressful for me the last few weeks because of work-related stuff, and I’ve really had to make compromises when it came to taking holidays, but I feel like I’m finally getting back on track. In the meantime, I’ve been watching a couple of other Netflix series alongside this one, so it took me some time to finish it. This summer drama from last year which was pushed up on my list because I simply couldn’t be patient anymore. I was already planning on watching it since I was just finishing the webtoon when it came out, but after people started recommending it I knew I couldn’t let it slide. And now that I’ve finished it, I see why! I’m glad I got to see it now because, like the previous one, it just fits into the current season so well and it really made me nostalgic of previous, more careless times. Even though there might not be a very eventful storyline, I think this drama is a very reflecting and healing drama. Let’s get to it, shall we?

Our Beloved Summer is a 16-episode Netflix K-Drama with episodes of about an hour long. It tells the story of Choi Woong (played by Choi Woo Shik) and Gook Yeon Soo (played by Kim Da Mi). When they were in high school, they were part of a documentary featuring them as the first (Yeon Soo) and last (Woong) ranking students. Ten years later, this documentary suddenly starts trending again. The lightness of the youths depicted in it is reminiscent of those nostalgic summer high school days and this attracts a lot of people to it. The producer of the documentary then comes up with the idea to make a sequel documentary, to show the viewers what has become of these two characters ten years later. Sounds like a fun idea, right? But what the viewers don’t know is that in the last ten years, a lot has changed between Woong and Yeon Soo. The two actually dated for 5 years and then broke up in quite a painful way, so they’re not exactly on speaking terms anymore.
Woong has always lived a carefree and unambitious life. He’s been incredibly spoiled by his parents and left to do whatever he wanted. His parents (played by the heartwarming combi Park Won Sang and Seo Jung Yeon) own a restaurant chain named after Woong and they’re doing very well in the neighborhood, so Woong has never had to worry about money. He’s always claimed that he wants to live a peaceful life in which he can fall asleep under the sun by day and under a lamp by night and that’s all he needs. He’s the kid who’s always sleeping in class even though he’d definitely rank higher if he just put a little effort in his studying. One talent that he does have, is drawing. It’s the only thing he can get himself to focus on completely. Ten years later, he has become a famous yet anonymous artist under the name Go Oh, praised for his great attention to detail in the buildings he features. He doesn’t draw people.
Yeon Soo is the complete opposite of Woong. She was the highest ranking student in school and has always seemed quite indifferent when it came to maintaining social contacts. She’s more focussed on her studies than on hanging out with friends in her free time. She lives with her grandmother and they are actually quite poor, so Yeon Soo feels like she’d better focus on taking care of her grandma than play around by herself. She is initially aggravated by Woong, as he seems so carefree and spoiled. She gradually opens up to him throughout the documentary, but in the beginning it seems like a miracle how they got these two polar opposites to work together. Ten years later, she is working at a small company called RUN that organizes events and collaborations between artists and foundations and such.
So yeah, the documentary they featured in as teens is a huge success and ten years later, the producer at the time, Park Dong Il (played by Jo Bok Rae), comes up with the idea to make a sequel. This time he won’t be producing it himself, though, he hands over the baton to Kim Ji Woong (played by Kim Sung Chul). Ji Woong has been Woong’s best friend since childhood, and he was a part of the original documentary as well since he was friends with the two protagonists. After the documentary ended, he expressed interest in working behind the camera and Park Dong Il took him on his team after he graduated. Now, Ji Woong is the one standing behind the camera filming his friends, knowing fully well that this is not going to be easy.
As far as main characters go, there’s also NJ (played by Noh Jung Eui), a celebrity who develops an interest in Go Oh’s drawings and ultimately develops feelings for Woong himself as well.
The two main supporting characters are Goo Eun Ho (played by Ahn Dong Goo), Woong’s manager, and Lee Sol Yi (played by Park Jin Joo), Yeon Soo’s best friend who just started her own bar.
So the story of this series starts with Woong and Yeon Soo coincidentally meeting again through work, before they’re purposely brought together again by Ji Woong’s initiative for a sequal documentary. Although they both end up accepting mostly to spite each other, during the recordings they are inevitably drawn back to one another until they officially can no longer deny that there’s still something there. In the meantime, Ji Woong and NJ’s storylines are explored further and all in all we learn that there’s a lot more to all the characters than meets the eye.

I don’t think this will be a very long review since there’s not a lot happening in terms of action or plot, it’s really just a story depicting the relationships between a group of people, with focus on Woong and Yeon Soo as they find their way back to each other. I think I’ve already established the setting of the story and its main characters well enough in the above paragraph, so let’s get straight on to analyzing.

So first of all, as I mentioned, I’d been reading the webtoon of the same name and I wanted to finish that first before starting on the drama series. At first
I just assumed that this would be an adaptation of the webtoon, but actually
it’s more like a sequel – exactly like how in the series they are making a
sequel to the original documentary. The drama series starts where the webtoon
ends. The webtoon only depicts the period during high school in which they film the OG documentary, and it ends when the filming ends, when Woong and Yeon Soo first develop feelings for each other and decide to date, and when Ji Woong tells Park Dong Il that he might be interested in the work he’s doing. So that in itself was pretty refreshing. The fact that it wasn’t a literal adaptation but the series took the creative liberty to continue the story like that, I think that’s a pretty original way of adapting and of course it also created new expectations. If it had been just a literal adaptation, it would have taken some of the thrill away for me because I’d already know what was going to happen since I read the webtoon. But creating that twist from the start, the fastforward to ten years later, immediately made me go 👁👄👁. And they did so much more than just create a continuation of the original webtoon. They created an opportunity to dive even deeper into the characters’ backgrounds and storylines than the webtoon did. We find out so much more about the characters,
where they come from, what struggles they’re dealing with.
We find out that Woong is adopted, that he was abandoned by his father when he was really young and that Mr. and Mrs. Choi took him in as their own son after losing their own child.
We find out that Yeon Soo has a crippling inferiority complex that caused her to break up with Woong in the peak of their relationship because she felt like she didn’t deserve to be happy and carefree by herself as she was struggling with financial problems plus the care for her grandmother.
We find out that Ji Woong was (emotionally) neglected by his mother as a child and that’s caused him to emotionally distance himself from other people, even his closest friends. We also find out he’s been in love with Yeon Soo since the first time he saw her.
We find out that NJ is really lonely and doesn’t have any friends. She tries to keep up her reputation as well as possible but keeps slipping up and causing her management team problems when her true feelings keep coming out.
I guess you could say that the four main characters are all struggling with a certain type of loneliness/sadness. On a positive note, at the end of the series, they all learn to overcome it.

Let me dive a little deeper into the characters for starters.
Choi Woong. Where to begin with him. I find him a pretty complex character, actually, because he has way more layers than you’d expect. At first glance, he seems to live a life of leisure, he’s always been coddled by his parents as a kid, he’s been allowed to do whatever he wants and doesn’t have to worry about anything. He grew up being quite privileged, and all because the right couple found him. If he’d ended up somewhere else, his background might not have given him so much favoritism. I kept wondering how Woong truly felt about his upbringing, especially since he was aware of the fact that he was adopted. He never really talked about his feelings, not as a kid or as an adult, but it must have definitely left its invisible marks on him. From the outside, he seems so carefree and light (maybe a little socially awkward), but you wouldn’t guess that he would be carrying that kind of sadness with him. On the other hand, I find him quite mature as well. He’s very observant and you have to give him credit for being aware of so much more than he shows. Of course he also has a clumsy side, especially when it comes to romance and relationships, which makes him very relatable and likeable. But I just got the feeling that, even though he may have appeared indifferent, he knew exactly what was going on with everyone.
One problematic characteristic I found with Woong was that he put other people’s feelings before his own too often. For example, in the second to last episode, he got a harsh review on his exhibition, and Yeon Soo didn’t show up either so he felt really down about that. But then Ji Woong suddenly told him that he’d found out his mother was dying, and he found Yeon Soo crying on his doorstep asking him to comfort her because she was upset about her grandmother who had to be hospitalized. You could just see on his face that he wanted to tell her that he was also having a hard time, but he ended up just hugging and comforting her, putting her first. He never put his own feelings on top of everyone else’s if he deemed the others’ feelings heavier than his own.
I also feel like his lack of ambition, even as an artist, is an important part of his character development. He’s always just lived doing what he likes and drawing what he wants, but it still seems like he lacks a certain confidence in his work. He definitely enjoys making art and also puts in effort to organize exhibitions on occasion, but he still doesn’t truly see himself as all that. When he receives that review and also when his former art classmate now turned rival artist Nua (nice cameo by Kwak Dong Yeon) openly criticizes him for not actively going after him when he stole his work and accused him of plagiarism, Woong realizes they are right about him. He doesn’t even get angry, he doesn’t even stand up for himself, but you can just see the shocked realization on his face. It’s a really painful moment since you can just see his whole being crumble in uncertainty. Honestly, I found it a bit complicated to pinpoint what exactly his feelings towards drawing were, or if he even really wanted to be an artist. He seems to be struggling with this during the entirety of the series, even though he tries not to make a big deal out of it. He ultimately comes to the conclusion that he wants to attend a university in Paris where his favorite architect teaches, so I guess he does have a certain urge to learn more about architectural design and wants to get better at drawing and designing buildings. He may have felt himself being pushed into becoming an artist as it was the one thing he excelled at, even though during their dating period in high school he told Yeon Soo that he was planning on keeping his art as a hobby.

As for Yeon Soo, it seems like she struggled a bit with Woong’s lack of ambition as well when they first started dating. He didn’t have the plan to go to college or really start a career, while the main thing she was worried about was how to thrive economically. I guess the fact that they were polar opposites didn’t only pose a challenge for them to open up to each another when they first met, but it also kept creating wedges between them and Yeon Soo was definitely more conscious of this than Woong. In hindsight, I feel like she just really wanted him to find something that he genuinely wanted to do, because that’s also why she supports his decision to go to Paris. 
The reason she broke up with him after 5 years of dating had more to do with her own situation than with him. She was financially struggling and going through a rough patch and instead of including Woong in her worries so that he may have helped her, she decided to just let him go. I still don’t think it was fair of her to do it like that, not giving him any reason and just leaving him hanging. Of course she did tell him the real reason, but it was over the phone and Woong was drunk, plus he missed the important part, so it wasn’t a very successful make-up conversation. Anyways, so while I don’t agree with how she did it, I can imagine where she was coming from. She reflected on herself and acknowledged that it was because of her own lack of confidence and she didn’t want Woong to suffer along with her. This is also very typical of Yeon Soo, of what she’s always been like. Independent, not wanting to rely on others too much. The care for her grandmother had always been her number one priority, and she didn’t care if she had to give up her social life for that. With Woong things got more serious of course, but she still made her choice.  
She first meets Woong again after 5 years when her job requires her to get artist Go Oh on board with a collaboration and she visits his house. For the first period of time after they’re involuntarily reunited, the two treat each other with disdain, but it’s clear as day that both of them have lingering attachments. 
It was really touching to see how much Yeon Soo actually allowed herself to smile when she got back together with Woong, all those feelings that she’d been suppressing just came bursting back out and she finally allowed herself to accept all the love she was receiving. 
I think the most groundbreaking moment for Yeon Soo was when she had to decide whether or not to go to Paris, either with Woong or for her own work. Everyone kept telling her to just follow her heart and go live the life she wanted, but she realized there and then that that’s exactly what she’d been doing all along. While her mind had tricked her into thinking that she’d always been alone, she was actually never alone at all, she’d always been surrounded by supportive people. By reflecting on that, she was able to break out of her own (imagined?) loneliness and that’s also how she finally realized what she wanted to do. 
When Woong and Yeon Soo both break out of their cycles, it’s like they’re finally free from invisible chains. Everything suddenly seems possible again and they even make their long distance relationship work. 

Kim Ji Woong made a 180 degree turn from what he seemed like to me in the webtoon. While I did suspect there was something about the way he eyed Woong and Yeon Soo, especially after they started dating, but he never caused a scene and never said anything about it so I wasn’t sure what it was about. I do feel like the writers chose the more predictable option of making him in love with Yeon Soo.
Ji Woong is one of the most interesting characters to me since, even as the male lead’s best friend, he doesn’t always appear to be very sympathetic, per se. He seems very emotionally closed off from other people, even his closest friends and colleagues, and he also shows a sharp, sarcastic side at times.
He bottles up his feelings the most out of everyone, and at one point it became a bit frustrating to me. So many people reached out to him, but he never accepted any help. I’m glad he was able to resolve his whole situation in the end, even with his mother, but it certainly took him a lot of internalizing and shutting himself off from everyone else to get there. I kept wondering why he would do this to himself, filming Woong and Yeon Soo, even though part of him must’ve subconsciously wanted to keep them away from each other. He knew there was tension between them, but he also knew there was a chance they might make up again. I’m not entirely sure what his intentions were, if he was planning on shooting his shot with Yeon Soo himself or not. I did feel very sorry for him when he found out that they were dating again because it CRUSHED him. It was so painful to see Yeon Soo trying to cheer him up and not being aware of anything, while you could see it was killing him inside because he really needed some time to get over her and he couldn’t even tell her what was going on. That was really rough. 
In general, I think Ji Woong’s personality is justifiable when you take a look at his upbringing. His adapted habit to emotionally distance himself from people was undoubtedly caused by his mother. She basically ignored him throughout his childhood, she always came home late and would then scold him for staying up to wait for her. When he wanted to talk about his day, she’d just shut him up by saying she was tired and eventually she even told him that if it weren’t for him, she wouldn’t be living ‘such a pathetic life’. She blamed her own misfortune on her child. Now we don’t get the whole picture, we don’t know what happened to her, what kind of life she was living or how Ji Woong lost his father, for example. Maybe being a single mom took its toll on her? Anyways, the way she treated him, especially as a young child, was not okay. And then, not only does she suddenly come back to reconnect with him, she out of the blue tells him she’s dying. Not only that, she wants him to film her because she doesn’t want to die without leaving a mark. I mean… I get that that really messed with Ji Woong’s head. She hadn’t been there his entire life. Because of her absence, he’d felt like he was different. He didn’t have something that all the other kids had, and even other classmates with only one parent seemed to still be really close with that parent. He just couldn’t understand why it was different in his case, all the more when he saw how Woong’s mom treated him. He became more like a son to Woong’s family than to his own mother. Although I understand his resentment towards her and how his upbringing has made him so reluctant to express his affection to others, I was glad that he eventually talked with his mom and decided to feature in her documentary, as his mentor Park Dong Il took over the production.
In Ji Woong’s production team there’s also Jung Chae Ran (played by Jeon Hye Won), who also works on the documentary with him. She’s quite straightforward in her communication and the running joke is that she’s becoming a lot like Ji Woong in personality. Chae Ran has a crush on Ji Woong and is very hurt by seeing how he gets in his unrequited feelings for Yeon Soo. She’s the main person that keeps worrying about him, keeps reminding him to eat and sleep well, even though he usually just waves her good intentions away. However, after Ji Woong finally resolves all his stuff with his mother and gets over Yeon Soo for good, Chae Ran confesses to him quite casually and even though he doesn’t give her an immediate answer, it does seem like he appreciates it. 

NJ is to this point still a bit of an enigma to me. She wasn’t in the webtoon, so her character was created specifically for the drama series and I keep thinking about her character’s true purpose. She’s a celebrity, although now that I think about it, it’s never actually specified what kind of celebrity she is (an idol, an actress, etc.). We just see her in backstage situations where she’s allowed to take a break and have her own thoughts. However, she has no one else to share these thoughts with. She becomes fascinated by Go Oh’s drawings and as she’s just bought a building (or more?) herself, she wants him to draw her building. As she keeps approaching him, she falls for him, but when it turns out not to be mutual, she doesn’t become petty. On the contrary, she really tries to reel herself in and when she does slip up and makes a petty remark, she immediately reflects on it humorously. In her solo scenes where she’s alone at home thinking about Woong and why he’s not calling her back, she acts like a normal K-Drama girl in love. It’s quite endearing to see that ‘normal’ side of her. Other than that, we don’t really get to know much about NJ in terms of how she became a celebrity or how she grew up or anything like that. She’s just a celebrity, and a slightly problematic one, from what I gather. She is dealing with a lot of rumors and scandals and her agency team keeps getting thrown around for things she does and says, but I think it’s a good thing that she speaks up about these things. For example, that part where she organized a volunteer trash-picking event for people that posted nasty stuff about her on the Internet and she overhears them talking about her behind her back even though they’d all been sucking up to her to drop the charges – these people were shameful and when she confronted them they kept turning it all back onto her. It’s crazy that people can act like that and say harmful things to a celebrity, but as a celebrity you just need to suck it up. You can never act the same way and you’re not even allowed to confront disrespectful people that spread nasty rumors about you. NJ has completely accepted that this is her life, that she is not able to have any friends because of her line of work and that she’ll never have a ‘normal’ life in which she can do or say what she wants. But she does go out of her way, heck she even skips schedules, to go see Woong and when an article is published claiming that the two of them are dating, even though she critiques her agency for not putting an immediate end to the rumors (they think it’s good publicity), she doesn’t go out of her way to help the rumor out of the world either. 
All in all, just like with Ji Woong, even though NJ was definitely not a bad person, I still had some trouble finding her 100% sympathetic at times. I think it just has to do with the fact that I couldn’t pinpoint what exactly her intentions were, either. On the one hand she seemed to be friendly enough, but there was something about her, something she was not saying, something that went deeper than the surface that we didn’t get to fully explore. So that’s why I’m still calling her an enigma, she’s still a bit of a mystery to me. 

The point I want to make about the above four main characters is that they all had similar issues. They all had double layers, double intentions and they all had a habit of hiding how they truly felt and keeping quiet about what they really wanted to do. Which makes for an interesting, but also complex group dynamic.
Looking at it like that, I’d say Eun Ho and Sol Yi were definitely the most uncomplicated characters of the series and they succeeded in lightening the mood for the others as well.
Goo Eun Ho was Woong’s junior in art school (if I remember correctly) and he also regularly helped out in Woong’s parents’ restaurants. He’s kind of a comic relief character in the show, he’s very open with his emotions and in that way he stands in very stark contrast to Woong and also to Ji Woong. When the series starts ten years later after the OG documentary, Eun Ho is probably the person closest to Woong as he is in his house a lot of the time. Eun Ho is a big fan of NJ, so he keeps fanboying over her and begs Woong to do more collabs with her too. He’s also the one person worrying about Woong after the review comes out, the one person expressing that Woong is the one that needs to be comforted the most. 
Lee Sol Yi went to college together with Yeon Soo and they’ve been close friends since. I loved that, when Yeon Soo realized that she’d never truly been alone, in all of the flashbacks she had, Sol Yi was there. She’s kind of a tough love ‘eonni’ to Yeon Soo and even to Eun Ho, as she’s older than them both. Through their contribution to the new documentary, Eun Ho and Sol Yi get more involved with the protagonists, there are more meetings at Sol Yi’s bar and Eun Ho even starts helping her out with her business. In the end, the two of them start dating each other as well.

I would like to give another special mention to Woong’s parents, Choi Ho and Choi Yeon Ok. Because seriously, this drama just set the standard for the perfect parents HIGH. They were SO incredibly warm and loving, and I loved their silliness together as a married couple. Even when it turns out that his mother knew all along that Woong knew that he was adopted, she never treated him any differently because to her, he was her real son. This again forms a paradox with the parent-son relationship that Ji Woong and his mother (Park Mi Hyun) have as he wasn’t even treated like her real son even though he was. But yeah, Woong was definitely very lucky to end up in such a good household. 

Yeon Soo’s grandmother (Cha Mi Kyung) was also a nice supporting character in the show, and I’m glad nothing too bad happened to her before the end. I found her interesting because she also wasn’t a one-dimensional character. She had a lot of worries about Yeon Soo and she wanted her granddaughter to not only live for or like her. I liked that she’d just immediately taken Yeon Soo’s side in the breakup, and then after Yeon Soo told her she was the one who broke up with Woong, that she’d been the one to hurt him, she was still kind of tsundere about it, haha. I loved the scenes where she and Woong were alone and Woong was just a puppy on edge to every single movement she made. Of course she would always stand by Yeon Soo, but I’m glad she didn’t let it cloud her judgment too much, you could tell she secretly liked Woong and she was rooting for them. 

Lastly, I wanted to mention some final minor characters that I liked, namely Yeon Soo’s colleagues at work (Heo Joon Seok, Park Yeon Woo, Yoon Sang Jung and Cha Seung Yeop) and Im Tae Hoon (nicknamed ‘IMtern’ by Ji Woong), the intern at the documentary team. Imtern (Lee Seung Woo) really stole my heart, haha, I felt so bad for him that he got on Ji Woong’s team as he was having NONE of it. 

Before I go on to my cast comments, I want to briefly say something about the relationship dynamic between Woong and Yeon Soo. I wanted to make a special mention of it since in my last review of Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha, I was thrown off by how much the characters’ personalities seemed to change as soon as they confirmed their feelings for each other and started dating. After that I guess I just started paying more attention to it, lol. In this drama, even though the two main characters definitely became brighter when they got back together, I never once felt like they were acting out of character. They were honestly so adorable together. The way they reconnected was just really natural and cutely awkward, especially considering they’d been a couple before. I think it poses quite the challenge to act like you’re getting back into old feelings for someone that you used to have a 5-year long relationship with, but when it happened there was no doubt in the world that they’d never truly given up on what they felt for each other. So in this case I would say, mission accomplished, relationship dynamic approved! 

I believe I have mentioned most of what I wanted to discuss regarding the main characters and the story, I’m not sure if it was too short but if I remember more I’ll add it later. Now on to the cast comments before I conclude with some final remarks.

Honestly, Choi Woo Shik outdid himself in this role. Apart from Parasite I don’t think I’ve seen him in a main lead role before, but this role was MADE for him. It made me see him in a completely different light. He balanced the different sides of Woong so well, and I was really impressed with his unexpected ability to change his expressions so subtly yet so significantly. During the scene where Nua told him that he pitied him, at some point there was this sudden change in his gaze and it gave me goosebumps. At first I thought he was getting angry, but it turns out that that was a look of unmistaken but still shocking realization that he experienced. Anyways, I really loved him in this series, he was amazing and so was his chemistry with Yeon Soo’s actress. Other things I’ve seen him in include Rooftop Prince, Fated to Love You, Fight For My Way and The Package and yeah, Parasite. To think it’s been 4 years since his last drama, though! He’s been doing more movies lately, apparently.

I’ve only seen Kim Da Mi before in Itaewon Class, and these are the only two drama series she’s done so far. I was wondering how she would be since her iconic performance in Itaewon Class, and I have to say that it was very nice to see a brighter side to her, but also to see her portray multiple layers. I remember not really finding her character in Itaewon Class very sympathetic, to the point where I wasn’t even feeling the ship of her with the male lead, but in this drama she occasionally melted my heart. She’s so cute and her face is so tiny!! I liked how she managed to balance those different sides, and with that her character’s development from stern and serious high school student to a more mature adult who was able to reflect on her own behavior from the past. I really liked her performance here.

Not me realizing that Kim Sung Chul is Ipsaeng from Arthdal Chronicles! I love seeing actors I know from Arthdal as modern-time people in other series, haha, it creates such a weird paradox. Other than that I haven’t seen him in any other drama series yet, but who knows when I’ll get to see more of him! Compared to Ipsaeng, Ji Woong was like the total opposite kind of character. He was serious and detached and as I said, at times I wasn’t really sure if I 100% liked him or not. But I think most of it really had to do with his neglectful upbringing and he turned out well enough in the end. It was interesting to see him act so differently from what I’d seen of him before! 

I haven’t seen anything of Noh Jung Eui before, I just see she was Park Shin Hye’s younger version in Pinocchio, but that’s too long ago for me to remember. She seemed so familiar to me, though, I really thought I knew her from something else. Anyways, as I’ve mentioned, I still have some question marks around NJ’s character. She was definitely just as multi-layered as the other characters, but in her case I never really became certain of her intentions. On the one hand it seemed like she was struggling with her life as a celebrity, but on the other hand it also partially felt like she was imposing on herself the ideas that she couldn’t have any friends, because even if you’re a celebrity, you can still have friends as far as I know, it’s not against the rules or anything, right? Anyways, she hid her loneliness mostly with humor, especially towards Woong, so it wasn’t always clear how serious she was being. In the end, I believe she also made up her mind to start following her own heart, but I’m not sure what exactly that meant to her in terms of actual plans. I’ll keep saying it, she’s a bit of an enigma!

I hadn’t seen anything with Ahn Dong Goo yet either, but some of his dramas are still on my to watch list. I guess he’s only been starring in drama series starting from 2019, so he’s quite the new face! I liked Eun Ho a lot, he really brought in a fresh breeze and always made the people around him feel comfortable. His dynamic with Woong was also very funny, as they had such a stark contrast. I liked that, even when he seemed like a fool to Sol Yi in the beginning, he did eventually prove himself to be really reliable and cool, without even changing anything about himself. It just takes getting to know someone, I guess! 

At this point, Park Jin Joo is just a classic addition to any drama. She seems to be in almost every Netflix K-Drama I watch these days! I know her from The Girl Who Sees Smells, Jealousy Incarnate, Reunited Worlds, While You Were Sleeping, Encounter, It’s Okay to Not Be Okay, Lovestruck in the City and she’s also done a lot of cameos. She still hasn’t gotten rid of the ‘best friend’ role curse, though, I believe it should be time for her to become her own female lead – she’s such an icon. And even though I’ve already seen her in so many different series, she still surprised me here. Like, I still feel like she showed something new and that’s pretty impressive.

Park Won Sang always gets the friendly father role as far as I know, I know him from Dream High, Healer, W – Two Worlds, Fantastic, Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo, Wife I Know and The King: Eternal Monarch (honestly, who WASN’T in The King). But he was a really funny and loveable dad in Our Beloved Summer as well, I loved how he and his wife never even blinked or shared a look as they thought back on adopting Woong, it was just meant to be for them. 

As I’ve mentioned in many a review before, Seo Jung Yeon has become one of my favorite middle-aged lady actresses. She just ALWAYS delivers, from minor to main role. I keep repeating the list, but she appeared in Valid Love, She Was Pretty, Descendants of the Sun, Moonlight Drawn by Clouds, Bride of the Water God, Come and Hug Me, Melting Me Softly, The King: Eternal Monarch, Run On, and a whole bunch of stuff I still want to watch. I couldn’t help but love the heck out of her as Woong’s mom in this drama. That scene at the end when Woong realized she knew that he knew about the adoption and there was nothing but pure love in her eyes as she looked at him and they ended up just bawling it out together T^T I just love her.

I haven’t seen anything with Jo Bok Rae before, but he also seems very familiar to me. Maybe I will see him in another drama in the future. Anyways, I liked how they kept his character on the side in this series, because of course he had a much more apparent role in the webtoon. I like how he became more goofy, as I remember his character from the webtoon being a bit more worrying about everything mapping out the way it was planned. But I liked that he became a real mentor to Ji Woong, even though he acted a bit silly sometimes. He was initially the person that kept him on the team no matter how many complaints they got about Ji Woong in the beginning when he was still inexperienced, and he was also one of the people reaching out to him when it became clear he was struggling with something. I think it was a nice gesture that he ended up shooting the documentary about Ji Woong’s mom so that Ji Woong himself could also be in it. 

I really liked Jeon Hye Won in this drama, Chae Ran was like the voice of reason that Ji Woong tried to block out for a long time but then couldn’t ignore in the end. It was really refreshing to have such a straightforward female character in the background who didn’t get too emotional but just remained practical until the end. Apparently she was in Because This Is My First Life, too! I’m also going to see her again in some other shows in the future, so I’m excited for that! 

I haven’t seen a lot of things with Cha Mi Kyung either, but I do see a couple of drama titles that are on my list. She also does a lot of movies, apparently. Anyways, I liked her as Yeon Soo’s grandmother. She wasn’t a typical grandmother who just approved of everything or who was just always nice to everyone. She had multiple layers as well and I really liked the dynamic between grandmother and granddaughter as well. They loved each other deeply, but Yeon Soo was definitely more affectionate towards her. Grandmother would frown and scoff but you could tell how much she loved her as well. She was a good judge of character, too. 

And of course I want to mention Kwak Dong Yeon AND Kang Ki Doong for their continuous iconic guest appearances. Kang Ki Doong’s appearance as Sol Yi’s ex-boyfriend was extra funny because we know that they are really close friends in real life. It just made for a very enjoyable moment. For Kwak Dong Yeon, I’m actually used to more eccentric roles from him, so it was interesting to see him as a very serious guest actor for once. These guys will just never disappoint.

Oh, before I forget! There was this guy that Yeon Soo was working with in the beginning, the person who urged her to get artist Go Oh on board. I actually initially thought he would get a much bigger role. I even thought that he would become like a love rival or something, but he just disappeared after two or three episodes. I was just reminded of him when I saw the cast list and I was like OH RIGHT THAT GUY. He was played by Lee Joon Hyuk and he also looked really familiar to me. And then I found out he was in Are You Human, Too? and I remember that I indeed wrote about him in my review that I hadn’t seen anything with him before. Well, now I remember him from something! 

Closing remarks! So yeah, I’m glad I finished this drama. It wasn’t a very spectacular series in terms of events and action, as I mentioned before, but that just gave more space to explore the main characters more deeply. I can personally place this drama in the same kind of category as Run On, mainly because of its healing message. All the characters were very humane and had good and bad personality traits. The typical thing was that they all took on their issues all by themselves without asking for (or even accepting) help and that they had to learn that it was okay to share and reach out. I thought it was nice how all of them managed to break free from their own invisible chains at the end, because it made such a big difference. I also liked the main couple, their chemistry together was really cute. It’s the kind of drama that not everyone will like, probably, but I did enjoy it. It may not have been the most thrilling thing I’ve seen, but I can still appreciate it for its simple and strong message. I would say it’s about letting go, as well as about letting people in at the right time. About dealing with loneliness/sadness and about not ignoring what the heart wants. 

This was for now the last drama that I pushed up on my list because I couldn’t wait to watch it. From now on I’m going back to my original watch list, which also includes some more Japanese and Chinese series, so I’m excited to mix it up again! Gotta love K-Drama, but sometimes it’s also nice to have a ‘change of scenery’, so to say. In the meantime I’ve also been watching multiple other non-Asian stuff on Netflix, so my watch schedule is tight!
Can’t wait to start on the next drama on my list. 

I’ll be back~