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.

My First First Love
(첫사랑은 처음이라서 / Cheossarangeun Cheoeumiraseo / Because It’s My First Love)
MyDramaList rating: 7.0/10

It’s hasn’t been long since my last review because I finished this series within two days on Netflix! It was originally really far away on my list because it only recently came out but my friend hyping about it to me so much that I decided to also start watching it. It feels kind of weird to watch an Asian drama on Netflix, the feeling of watching a single episode is kind of blurred because the whole thing starts playing without interruption.

With this I will bring to you a fairly short summary of a very short drama 🙂
The English title is My First First Love, but the literally translated Korean title is Because It’s My First Love so I’m not sure which one to use.
Anyways, this 8-episode drama is about Yoon Tae Oh (played by Ji Soo), the oldest son from a very rich family, who gets his father’s permission to live on his own when he’s seventeen. He starts living in a very big house with a lot of rooms and although friends come over a lot, he doesn’t want the house to turn into a lodge or a place where people crash.
Tae Oh is a very energetic and positive person who doesn’t really worry about much, probably also because of his privileged life.
On the other hand, we have Tae Oh’s childhood friend Han Song Yi (played by Jung Chae Yeon), whose life takes a turn for the worse. After her father passed away and her mother abandoned her to work in the city, Song Yi has been living alone in the house her father built from scratch. Until one day, unannounced, she comes home and a moving company are taking all the furniture out. It turns out that her house had been on sale for a while and there was no response to the eviction notices, so basically a new family is moving in and Song Yi has to move out. She is literally put on the street with nowhere to go.
In another part of town, another of Tae Oh’s friends, Choi Hoon (played by Kang Tae Oh), also a rich family’s boy, is kicked out by his parents because he ‘shamed the family’ in his ambition to become a musical actor. He is literally left with nothing but his underwear – although he steals one of his mother’s dresses and a pair of heels.
Enter friend number 3, Oh Ga Rin (played by Choi Ri), a young lady from yet another rich family (blame Tae Oh’s dad for all the connections), escapes her security at the airport and disguises herself to run away from home.
All three of these people end up at Tae Oh’s house. They all have nowhere to go, and Tae Oh is the first person they think of.
The last friend, the only one who doesn’t end up living at Tae Oh’s house, is Seo Do Hyun (played by Jin Young). Do Hyun is not from a wealthy family (his father owns a dumpling shop) and he’s working several parttime jobs while studying for the civil servant exam. He always seems aloof and calm, unlike Tae Oh.
After some initial reluctance from Tae Oh, he can’t deny that he has way too many rooms for himself so the three friends move in with him.
Hoon promises he will stay until he passes an audition, but Song Yi really doesn’t have a choice and Ga Rin refuses to go back.

The rest of the story is mainly about the triangle relationship between Tae Oh, Song Yi and Do Hyun. Song Yi is Tae Oh’s first love. He wanted to confess to her in high school but then overheard her saying to some friends that she never had romantic feelings for him and gave up.
Song Yi’s feelings towards Tae Oh remain neutral – she does admit she felt attracted to him at times, but it never had a lasting impact. To her, he’s just a good friend who’s always there for her.
Do Hyun and Song Yi meet for the first time when Do Hyun is helping out with the moving company as a parttime job, so he is immediately aware of her situation. They meet several times after that and slowly get to know each other better. They eventually start liking each other and start dating without Tae Oh knowing they’re even close with one another.
In the meantime, Tae Oh also gets himself a girlfriend. He meets Ryu Se Hyeon (played by Hong Ji Yoon) when he mistakes her for his blind date and she plays along. He is blinded by how pretty she is and completely dives into getting to know her better.
In the meantime, Se Hyeon and Song Yi follow a class together and Song Yi doesn’t like her very much. Firstly, Se Hyeon is the one now living in Song Yi’s old house (coincidence? nah: K-Drama) and secondly, Song Yi hears rumors about her having several boyfriends because she’s too free-spirited to want a serious relationship.
Even so, both relationships progress, though both of them not fully accepted by the childhood friend.

First of all, we can probably all agree that the ending was way too open to be an actual ending. I can’t imagine that Netflix won’t renew it because this on its own just isn’t a complete series. I mean, the title of the last episode was literally ‘Turning Point’. That proves it’s more fit as a halfway-through episode than a finale.
I’m sure it will be continued and then I’ll be able to conclude this review for good. Everything was left wide open and unfinished, no wrap-ups whatsoever, no-one’s story was done. The season ends when they are in the middle of a trip and Tae Oh sees Song Yi and Do Hyun kiss and suddenly becomes aware of mixed feelings inside of him. The end. Hell no.

I pretty much already wrote the main things that happen in the drama (8 episodes are not much), so I just want to comment briefly on the cast and characters.
Foremost, this series was on my list because of Ji Soo. My friend who hyped me also is a big Ji Soo fan so we promised to watch it together and fangirl together. No but seriously, Ji Soo is the beanest bean of K-Dramaland. He is such a puppy. And he always gets the second male lead roles, so we were really excited for him to get his first main lead and finally get the girl!! And then he didn’t… again. Well he did get A girl, but of course everything is point at his true feelings for Song Yi, so… anyways, again, let’s wait for the second season.
It was really nice to see him in such a cheeky role, although he never loses his boyish charm. But Tae Oh is definitely one of the more confident characters he’s played, it reminded me a bit of his role in Page Turner.

I knew Chae Yeon from Produce 101 and know she’s an idol, but she’s been doing more acting recently. I think this is the third drama with her I’ve watched (after Drinking Solo and Reunited Worlds). I would really like to see more variety in her acting though, she needs to prove to me that she’s not just a pretty face and I’m not completely convinced yet.
When it comes to her private life, her growing relationship with Do Hyun, Song Yi suddenly becomes very independent, but there’s still moments where she keeps relying on Tae Oh. I did like the fact that her character opens up so much as she becomes closer to Do Hyun. When she’s with him, she suddenly talks about her feelings and thoughts and seems to be comfortable and confident, even deciding to just go see him herself without waiting for him. When he confesses to her with this whole story about not being able to give her special dates, she simply smiles and makes it clear that that’s not the words he should say, he came there to confess, so tell me straight out you like me and ask me out. She was waiting for him there, but it was really cute when she was dropping hints to him to encourage him to take the leap. Specifically in that scene where they’re walking side by side and she’s like ‘My mother told me that I should believe in my man’s future, not present’, and when Do Hyun jokingly asks ‘So do you believe in my future?’, she just flat out says ‘Yes’ and completely caught him off guard. On the other hand, when she’s with Tae Oh she often acts way more stubborn and although they’re supposed to be best friends, she keeps a lot from him.
I definitely like Song Yi as a character best when she’s with Do Hyun.
The only scene where I truly thought ‘…really, girl?’ was when after she had her first date with Do Hyun, she went walking home in the rain while she could’ve just took shelter in the convenience store where Do Hyun worked. That way she could’ve 1. waited for the rain to stop and 2. spent more time with Do Hyun even after their date ended. She literally put her hand up to the drizzling rain and went like ‘Hm, I can probably walk home’.
And then she started worrying about her new shoes getting wet. I mean, I get that they were a present and you don’t want to ruin them… but to take running home barefooted while scratching your feet open on the street cobbles as an alternative? That’s even worse than your shoes getting wet, girl! Think for a minute! Sorry, those were just some details I just found so easy to think of. And then in the end Tae Oh had to come to the rescue again with an umbrella and even lend her his sneakers. And she lied to Do Hyun about getting soaked in the rain shower just not to worry him.
I haven’t seen much of Jin Young except his second male lead role in Moonlight Drawn By Clouds. It seemed like he would be the second male lead here too, except he gets the girl and at this point it doesn’t seem like Song Yi has any doubts about her feelings for Do Hyun. They are a very adorable awkward couple. I feel like there is more to Jin Young’s acting than just the kind and calm gentleman role I’ve seen of him so far. But he is definitely a very sympathetic character and his confession scene was adorable.

Hoon and Ga Rin served mostly as the comic relief, but I liked how they showed some character development in Hoon’s case. We see a bit of him struggling with his auditions and even when he passes one, he is kicked out again after only a few rehearsals. There’s no guarantee an audition will give you your breakthrough right off the bat – a harsh but good lesson to be learnt and Hoon definitely matures.
I would like to see more depth in Ga Rin’s character as well. Now she’s just the stereotypical ‘rich lady who experiences life amongst the common people for the first time and is clumzy in everything she does but remains unbreakably positive’. And there’s definitely some potential for her and Hoon to end up together, because Hoon already mentioned that he thinks she’s pretty. And that’s how stuff goes down in K-Dramas.

In the beginning I was confused because -though this could be just me- Se Hyeon and Tae Oh’s stepmother just look so much alike. The first time Tae Oh sees Se Hyeon walking I literally thought that is was his stepmom who was suddenly in college for some reason? For a moment I thought he was staring at her because he was like, ‘what’s my stepmom doing here?!’, but then he was like ‘Dang, she’s gorgeous’ and I was like ‘mmmkay it must be someone else then’. But even in scenes after that, I still think they look alike.
Anyways, don’t mind me I guess.
What I wanted to say was that, even though we get the vibe that something is up with Se Hyeon, she did somehow make me empathize with her. She has this whole ‘I’ve been all over the world and studied in the USA so I’m not your traditional Korean prude girl and I ain’t afraid to play hard to get’ thing going on, she’s definitely different from Song Yi. She has a very subtle manipulative treat with which she makes other people do things for her, but when faced with her she doesn’t act like a full-on bitch. She just seems very chill about life and relationships and she does seem to think Tae Oh is cute, at least – even if maybe it turns out she is really using him.
When you look closely you can see that while acting smiley and cute it almost doesn’t occur to you that in the meantime she’s asking Tae Oh and other people to do all sorts of stuff for her (I realized this after watching one episode a second time with my friend). It’s hard to see past her smile and pretty face, but if you look purely at what she’s saying… I don’t know how this will turn out.
I just hope Tae Oh won’t be hurt too much.

I was talking about the couples in the series with my friend and she asked me who I shipped the most. But I couldn’t really give a clear answer and here’s why: K-Drama-wise, it would make sense if the ultimate goal is to push Tae Oh and Song Yi together. But in the situation from the last episode, Song Yi is clearly smitten with Do Hyun and doesn’t seem to have any romantic feelings for Tae Oh. However, Tae Oh is the one who is not certain. And he hasn’t been for a few episodes. I mean, when he takes Se Hyeon home and he finds out she now lives in what used to be Song Yi’s house, I get that he has to get used to the idea but it shouldn’t have to be a problem in his relationship with Se Hyeon. Still, he lingers on it and keeps repeating to himself that he has trouble accepting it without thinking (‘why does it have to be this house?’). It’s like he keeps worrying about things that remind him of Song Yi and he keeps creating these worries for himself.
If he was completely over Song Yi, he wouldn’t have had any trouble accepting this and the series could have ended with both couples happy together. But Tae Oh is the one who will probably start the conflict in the second season because he is at this moment the only one who feels he’s not completely at ease with the situation as it is.

One last thing, about basically all of the characters’ parents: I think Do Hyun’s dad is the only nice parent shown in the entire series. Song Yi’s mom literally abandons her all on her own on the streets without a place to go (she has the decency to call her to tell her that she’s not coming back to her and that she’s always felt like Song Yi was a burden she wanted to get rid of in order to live her life free of obligations = do you call yourself a mother?). Tae Oh’s father is a rich bastard with a preference for younger women, Tae Oh’s stepmother is such a younger woman who got knocked up by Mr. Yoon, Tae Oh’s mother passed away, Hoon was kicked out by his angry dad, Ga Rin’s mom was insanely overprotective of her… I mean, I think them living together in one house and experiencing life like this is actually better for them than going back home.

I would comment more on several masculinity versus femininity points that came along, but I probably shouldn’t get too critical. One thing that probably has to do with sponsoring: I couldn’t help but notice people wore clothes with the same brands on it a lot. I think I’ve seen Song Yi in three different outfits bearing the words ‘Think Less, More Party’, and at one point in one episode both Tae Oh and Do Hyun wore a shirt that said ‘Covernat’.

Overall, it was short and cute and I want to know how it ends (lol). In terms of acting it was all pretty much on the safe side, although everyone did act convincingly. I really want a second season because I’m not okay with this ending that doesn’t qualify as an ending; it felt more like a mid-season break.

It was interesting watching a K-Drama on Netflix, but I think I still prefer going on Asian drama sites and browsing through the episodes to find where I left off the old-fashioned way. (I will probably still watch Romance is a Bonus Book on Netflix though.)
This was it for now! I will edit this review when the second season comes out (hopefully). Stay tuned for the rest of my drama reviews!

Edit on 22/09/2019: I’ve written a separate review on season 2, you can read it here.

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.

With You
(最好的我们 / Zui Hao De Wo Men)
MyDramaList rating: 7.5/10

Hello hello! I’m back with a new review! I wanted to take my time writing this because the series was relatively long and a lot happens and I have multiple things to note.
I think I once saw a trailer or teaser of this drama when I was still following the facebook page of Dramafever (and they post a lot of clips from old and new dramas so I got a lot from there) and thought it looked really cute.
In the end, I think it really resembled A Love So Beautiful which I watched before, and it also reminded me of Rush to the Dead Summer. These are all stories depicting the lives from a group of friends that meets in high school and follows them through to graduation and after.
I think in my rankings With You lists second after Rush to the Dead Summer. I liked it better than A Love So Beautiful and I will certainly explain why.

But first of all, a summary. With You is a 24-episode Chinese drama about a girl called Geng Geng (played by Tan Song Yun). Geng Geng isn’t particularly bright, but gets into the prestigious school Zhen Hua by chance (because it was the year SARS broke out and the rules became lenient all of a sudden). On her first day on her way to school she has an embarrassing encounter with a fellow student, and this fellow student later turns out to be her future desk mate, Yu Huai (played by Liu Hao Ran).
Fun fact: ‘geng geng yu huai’ as a proverb means ‘to take troubles at heart’. It seems fate has been in their favor since the beginning. Despite some initial irritation, the two click like no other and become close friends. It doesn’t take long for it to look like more than friendship.
The story is basically about Geng Geng struggling in school to keep up with her competent classmates in a strict educational system while also getting used to her father remarrying. It’s about how she makes friends and how people help each other out. And of course her relationship with Yu Huai.
The drama starts around the year 2000 in Shanghai and makes time jumps to show the passing of time. Through this we can also see the evolution of technology (the use of mobile phones, like Rush to the Dead Summer) and ways of communicating with each other. The biggest time jump happens in the last two episodes where we suddenly jump from 2005 to 2015.

Let me introduce the group of friends surrounding Geng Geng and Yu Huai because these side characters were a big contributing factor in why I liked the series.
On Geng Geng’s side, there are Jiang Nian Nian and Jian Dan. Jiang Nian Nian, nicknamed Beta (played by Dong Qing), is a seemingly confident and mischievous girl. She’s the kind of girl who always stands up for her friends in a cool way and strives to empower the people she cares about.
However, the truth about her is that she feels very lonely inside. Her parents both work in Beijing and the lack of parental guidance sometimes does bother her. She eventually develops a crush on their homeroom teacher Zhang Ping (Fang Wen Qiang), and when the feeling isn’t mutual she starts showing her more vulnerable sides. Beta is one of my favorite characters from the series because of her layers. She doesn’t want her friends to see her weak, because she is always the shoulder to cry on, but in the end I’m glad she does show those feelings.
Jian Dan (played by Chen Meng Xi) is a simple-minded girl who followed her childhood crush Han Xu (Li Jia Cheng) to Zhen Hua. The two have been together since they were kids and Jian Dan has made it her mission in life to always take care of him.
Initially I liked the relationship of these two because I really thought it was going somewhere. It seemed to me like Han Xu was actually warming up to Jian Dan as well, but in the end I was confused when the whole thing happened where he couldn’t accept her feelings of love. Anyway, I thought they would be cute. Their relationship is different from a typical ItaKiss couple because he isn’t a jerk to her. He just gradually gets used to her next to him and he only finds out he took her affection for granted after he loses her. Overall, the relationships that were portrayed were very real to me. The main reason I love Geng Geng and Yu Huai’s relationship is because they are so real to each other, they are joking around, occasionally the flirt is ON (dang), and they are completely at ease with each other. No awkwardness in ‘omg he looked this way’ or in the mutual approach; we know from the first moment that these two are interested in each other, even if it’s just as friends at first.
Another classmate that has a slightly bigger role than the other classmates is class supervisor Xu Yan Liang (played by Liu Qi Heng). He has a secret crush on Beta, but is (kinda harshly) rejected by her when she leaves for Beijing in the end. He is a loyal friend nevertheless.
Zhou Mo (played by Liang Hao), is a friend of Yu Huai’s who is the only one from another class than the rest. He is smarter so he is in a higher class (yes, that’s how the school ranks its students). He is depicted as the typical guy who is constantly trying to impress girls but keeps failing until he gets a chance to play Jian Dan’s knight in shining armor in the situation with Han Xu. He suddenly shows a softer and more caring side there.
And lastly, the indispensable second male lead, Lu Xing He (played by Wang Li Xin), whose attempts to gain Geng Geng’s love last well into their future.

Before I go on to my positive and critical criticisms on the story and characters, I wish to share my opinions on the cast and elaborate a bit more on what I mentioned above.
I think the acting in this drama was very good and realistic. The actors very nicely portray the fickle high school student characters, both in happy and in struggling moments. The characters all have different sides to them, no one is one-dimensional and that is great.
My first compliment goes out to Liu Hao Ran who plays Yu Huai. He was really nice to look at, I don’t mean just looks but he just has this really kind face with a lot of expression. Everytime he looked at Geng Geng this little smile would start spreading on his face (or even just in his eyes) it made me really happy. He and Tan Song Yun portrayed their mutual feelings really well. If there’s one thing I love it’s a build-up in a relationship where it takes the couple a long time before they reach the touchy kissy part, but it’s so obvious even without skinship how much they like each other. With Yu Huai and Geng Geng it was mostly just teasing touches, pats on the head and stuff but the chemistry spat off the screen with just that.
When eventually they had a kiss in the future when they hadn’t seen each other in a long time, it was explosive (and initiated by Geng Geng which I thought was very good). So props to the two main actors! I enjoyed watching them together, they were adorable and I shipped it. I was looking forward to whenever they would have scenes together and that’s a good sign.
Furthermore, I liked how we get more insight into their friends’ lives as well. I loved Beta because, as I said, she has so many layers. She hides her loneliness in being the protective tough friend but she actually needs someone to cry on in return. I think in the future she does end up with Xu Yan Liang and that’s good because he’s always been the only one who looked out for her and cared about her for who she was inside.
I also iked that it wasn’t about ‘pretty people’. I mean, both Xu Yan Liang and Zhou Mo weren’t exactly ikemen or flower boys. But they still put their feelings out there and both got the girl in the end. There were all sorts of kids in school and that was a well-made representation. Sometimes the focus in Asian dramas only seems to be about how pretty or handsome people are and I personally find that very shallow. So this was also a good thing in my opinion.
I liked that Jian Dan eventually realizes that it’s no use to keep pursuing Han Xu while getting nothing in return. It shows that she isn’t just a mindless naive girl – she comes to a realization and is strong enough to let a guy go that she’s loved for at least 10 years. That shows a lot of courage. She stands up for herself by letting him know that she won’t walk behind him anymore and focusses on her own path in life, even if that means literally separating classes from him in school. She changes back to liberal arts to do so and leaves him crying with regret. And rightly so. He shouldn’t have taken her for granted.
Overall, I think every character has something to contribute to the story, even if it’s the senior in school Geng Geng would get advice from or the snobby girl in class. Everyone eventually shows different sides to their personality and that made it really realistic and enjoyable to watch.

Most of the actors were new to me. I only knew Zhou Mo’s actor from My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend where he played the main lead’s best friend. I don’t usually see actors I know in Chinese dramas so this was nice. I also feel like I knew Lu Xing He’s actors from something (dramawiki says he was in Meteor Garden but I don’t remember who he played there lol).

In terms of satisfying elements: I really liked the opening sequences. By this I mean the sequence that shows the title of the series: a bird’s eye view shot of the six friends (Geng Geng, Yu Huai, Beta, Jian Dan, Zhou Mo and Xu Yan Liang) running away after being caught sneaking into school at night to watch a famous Chinese athletes’ running on a school television. This is the opening scene of the series before we flashback and officially meet all the characters. This approach is similar to Rush to the Dead Summer, because that one also starts with the graduation scene before rewinding all the way back to the beginning.
The first scene already shows Geng Geng and Yu Huai’s closeness and promise to always be desk buddies. I loved seeing the sequence where they one by one snuck out of the classroom after guards came to chase them away and I liked that they made that the title sequence, because it’s a scene that is a constant reminder of their youthful school days.
I also really liked each episode title sequence. Every episode is introduced by a short sequence that would later in some way or another appear in that particular episode. I just loved how these short clips are all very simple but beautifully illustrated.
While writing this review I found out the literal translation of the series’ Chinese title is ‘The Best of Us’. I think this would’ve been a great English title for the series as well. It seems to include multiple meanings, it could stand for the period when the main characters were at their best, their youth. It could also refer to the social hierarchy at school and achievement pressure which the characters are exposed to (being the best in school and life). Anyways, now I kind of wished it was the official title, it would make much more sense. I think ‘With You’ is a bit vague because it’s about so much more than just Geng Geng and Yu Huai being together (at least that’s what I assume this title indicates).

I will now jot down my thoughts on some important themese that pass by in this series. First of all: family.
The first thing we learn about Geng Geng is that her parents are divorced and her father is starting his remarried life. Geng Geng gets a stepmother and a little stepbrother and getting used to this new life influences her a lot. Geng Geng keeps in touch with her mother, who is busy working and a lot stricter about her education than her father, but she’s still always there for Geng Geng when she needs counsel or comfort. Geng Geng misses her mother a lot and it takes her a while to warm up to her new step-family.
It may not seem like a big plot in the story, but I think it actually is. Having divorced parents contributes to Geng Geng’s reputation of ‘being a minority’ as is mentioned a couple of times later on in the series. Some guy she goes on a blind date with even calls her parents ‘dishonorable’ for getting divorced. Geng Geng is always the underdog who’s not smart enough and family situations in these matters always come up in discussion.
The theme of family is important for more characters than just Geng Geng. For Beta, it’s a sensitive subject because her parents are both away in a faraway place she can only reach by plane. For parent night at school she actually pays a butcher in the market to pose as her fake dad. She never admits how lonely she feels except during her one-on-one talks with the homeroom teacher who sees completely through her and forgives her because he sees what a good kid she is (which causes her crush on him).
But it almost seems as if Beta feels like she needs to be a parental protective figure to her friends because she lacks parental guidance herself and doesn’t want anyone else to miss that. Even in the arc when a new student joins their class and befriends Jian Dan while also getting closer to Han Xu, Beta feels like she needs to protect Jian Dan from getting hurt even though that’s what turns her into the nosy friend from Jian Dan’s perspective.
I think this is a very important point in the seemingly unbreakable friendship between the inseparable Beta and Jian Dan (they’ve been friends since middle school). Jian Dan feels like Beta is obstructing her from forming new friendships. But I can imagine that Beta is just scared of change and doesn’t want anyone else she cares about to leave her behind.

Another heavy theme that appears later on is social pressure.
While the series starts out very cheerful and optimistic and the focus of the characters is merely to enjoy their time at school, when senior year approaches something else comes with it: ambitions. And in many cases this is the parents’ ambitions for their children.
I was a bit shocked when this part came along.
The snobby girl in class, Zhu Yao (Liu Wen Qu) attempts suicide while crumbling under the pressure. Yu Huai also starts falling apart. He starts out as one of the best students in class, but when both his mother and his teachers start pushing him to go study physics at a good university, he suddenly loses his focus and starts failing. And slowly but surely we see him lose it. Still emotionally bound to his promise with Geng Geng and the desire to also show her that he won’t fail her, he starts slipping up and in the end he doesn’t even have the courage to face her anymore so he disappears.
Showing this part of Chinese society in this way in something that seemed to be a simple story about friendship made it even more realistic to me. I knew there was high achievement pressure in Asia, but to see it depicted like this got me really uncomfortable.
In Korea, there’s a whole series devoted to showing school life and related pressure issues, also including the influence of parents on the school board (The School Series [1-4] and [2013/15/17]).
Yu Huai’s mother is like that too, and while her love for her son is undebatable, she takes it too far. She starts coming to Yu Huai’s school uninvited and spies on him to see if he’s doing his best in class (and I’m talking actually peeking through his classroom window). It’s crazy! And then when it looks as if he’s too busy playing around with Geng Geng, she calls Geng Geng out for distracting him even though she’s only been busy helping him study.
It always breaks me to see this theme in dramas because I truly think from my heart that people should choose their own futures and follow their own dreams. Especially when they’re young, people can literally waste away when forced to pursue a study or career they don’t find personal joy in.
Isn’t being young all about finding your own way in life? Why should that be forced upon you? It’s about finding your own strengths.
This makes me quite angry sometimes, although I know it’s just because I’m personally not used to such strictness.
I found it heartbreaking to see that when Geng Geng and Yu Huai both couldn’t fulfill their prospects of being accepted into a university in Beijing, while Geng Geng’s first instinct was to reach out to Yu Huai, it was Yu Huai’s instinct to run away because he couldn’t face the consequences of his failure while he really needed Geng Geng at that moment.
I watched a documentary once about ‘losing face’ in China and how humiliating things like this can be for them so I’m taking this very seriously.) When they meet again after 10 years or so and Geng Geng is a professional photographer, Yu Huai still thinks he doesn’t deserve her and then it’s Geng Geng’s turn to step up and show him that she won’t leave him alone. In the end, the two truly are meant to ‘take troubles at heart’ and face them together.

I mentioned before that every character in this series had a contribution to make to the story. One of these cases is the story of Geng Geng’s senior.
During the main story, Geng Geng has occasional encounters with a girl who is some years above her in school. This girl is Luo Zhi (Chao Ran). She seems to be the typical beautiful popular girl, but she’s actually struggling with unrequited feelings herself. She’s in love with the school’s golden boy Sheng Huai Nan (Nie Zi Hao), but she can’t express her feelings for him. Geng Geng one time discovers a secret message from her written on the school’s rooftop saying ‘Luo Zhi likes Sheng Huai Nan but nobody knows it’.
In the future, Geng Geng meets Luo Zhi again, now about to get married with (three guesses) Sheng Huai Nan. Luo Zhi specifically asked for Geng Geng to take their wedding pictures at their old school. Luo Zhi tells her that they started dating after both starting their studies in Beijing and now they couldn’t be happier.
The greatest moment was when Sheng Huai Nan revealed that he’d written on a wall somewhere ‘Sheng Huai Nan loves Luo Zhi and now everybody knows it’ (or something along those lines), as a parody on Luo Zhi’s old message. As it turns out, Geng Geng told him about the message in secret. Seeing this love that had seemed impossible still coming to bloom, it inspires Geng Geng to admit to her remaining feelings for Yu Huai after all and reject Lu Xing He for good.

I haven’t talked about Lu Xing He much yet. Geng Geng and Lu Xing He meet when Geng Geng is sneaking through the storage room at school to find her camera that was confiscated and Lu Xing He is taking a nap there. Lu Xing He is immediately interested in Geng Geng and starts pursuing her and from the first moment this creates a rivalry between him and Yu Huai.
Although it was very cute how he was so obviously in love with Geng Geng, one problem I had with him was that he didn’t know when to stop.
I’m sure he was well aware that Geng Geng didn’t like him back like that and only had eyes for Yu Huai, but he kept trying. Now there’s nothing wrong with trying but at a certain point he should’ve accepted that it was no use.
I was confused because at least two times it seemed like he got closure to accept Geng Geng and Yu Huai’s relationship and back off. The first time was when he decided to quit Zhen Hua and move to Beijing to follow his dream of entering art school. The second time was the scene with the train barriers where he stayed back and yelled that he liked her while the train came rushing by. In those two moments, I thought ‘okay, he got it.’
But then he returned anyway and still continued his attempts. In the end it just became a bit annoying to me.
On the other hand, Geng Geng also annoyed me a bit in terms of never giving him a clear answer. She knew how he felt about her -he said it at least 10 times- and she still wouldn’t clearly state ‘sorry, I don’t like you back like that’. There was never a clear stop sign from her, she would just continue going with him whenever he dragged her away (a trope I hate in Asian dramas) or when he would invite her places. She should’ve been aware that going with him meant giving him hope. And it did, because that’s why Lu Xing He kept trying.
Even in the end, after the encounter with Luo Zhi and Sheng Huai Nan, she sends him a rejection THROUGH TEXT. And not even a rejection of his feelings, but a rejection of his PROPOSAL. THROUGH TEXT. “Sorry I can’t accept your ring.” Like, seriously, how cowardly is that?!
They were good friends and he deserved a sincere face-to-face explanation.
But this only resulted in him coming at her the next time kind of aggressively with ‘what did you mean by that text?!’, which was kind of scary. And this puts her on the spot, but even then the only thing she says is ‘I’m sorry’ without any further explanation. I mean, a single ‘Sorry but I like Yu Huai’ would’ve done the job. At least he would’ve gotten closure. But it dragged on too long between them until it just became awkward and annoying when he made advances and Geng Geng was just standing there like… haha what are you doing, while both of them knew their hearts weren’t in the same place.

Despite the great story developments in the main part of the series, I felt a bit disappointed with the last two episodes. This was mainly because it felt too much like the other similar series I’ve mentioned before. They always tend to end the same way and I’d hoped for this one to be different.
The construction of all the stories remain practically the same: the bonding during youth which builds up to an actual relationship, their plans to stay together in the future, then something goes wrong, someone disappears, and then they meet again years later and find that they still love each other. Also, in the period of separation the second male lead has started taking his woo-ing to the next level and the female lead is almost admitting to move on with him, even if that means actually lying to her own heart. I just felt like the ending didn’t give much new insight or possibilities. I had hoped for something different because Geng Geng and Yu Huai’s relationship distinguishes itself from other typical dramas. In the end they still end up together of course, but there is no real talk about their feelings or a mutual apology. Somewhere I just wished they would’ve honestly talked the whole thing through.

Another example where I wished they would’ve communicated better is the part during their senior year when both Geng Geng and Yu Huai are determined to study in Beijing together. Geng Geng goes to Beijing to audition for a film school there and Yu Huai goes to a training camp where he needs to take a test in order to nominate for early admission at this prestiguous university he’s striving for (or that his mom is striving for, at least). They are apart for about 10 days which is already hard for them, but they promise to call every day. However, Yu Huai finds out that cellphones are prohibited and need to be handed in because it’s a distraction according to the insanely strict teacher there. He is there with Zhou Mo, and Zhou Mo literally calls Jian Dan to tell her that his phone will be confiscated and that he won’t be able to call her so she at least knows what’s going on.
But for some reason Yu Huai doesn’t do this. He keeps calling Geng Geng in secret until a teacher catches him and he’s forced to hand in his phone while still in mid-conversation with Geng Geng on the other line. And even in that moment when Geng Geng is literally on the line asking ‘what’s going on?’ he doesn’t tell her. He just hands the phone over to the teacher without even finishing his conversation, without even saying, ‘sorry I have to hand in my phone so I won’t be able to call you’. I just couldn’t understand why.
If he’d just done that Geng Geng would’ve known and not worried. Instead he left her hanging, wondering and worrying why she suddenly couldn’t reach him anymore. In that scene I was so confused and frustrated why he couldn’t just tell her that simple thing just like Zhou Mo did. What was so difficult about that? It’s not like Geng Geng would’ve been angry at him if she’d known he wasn’t allowed a cell phone.
I can’t stand it when people don’t communicate in dramas, but this was such a trivial thing – I couldn’t imagine he felt like he couldn’t tell her something as simple like that. Luckily, he eventually finds an old public phone and manages to reach Geng Geng to explain the situation and tell her that he misses her. But it all goes downhill from there, because that training camp is the start of Yu Huai’s deterioriation.

I mentioned before there was one kiss, and this is in the 2015 time period where Geng Geng decides to fully pursue her feelings for Yu Huai after all. There’s a moment where they play video games and for a second it’s old times and she just grabs him and there is a passionate kiss. However, since Yu Huai is still in denial here he pushes her away (for some reason I still don’t understand) and doesn’t even dare admitting he’s been in love with her since forever. So it didn’t really feel satisfying as a kiss where they both finally admitted their eternal love for one another.
The series ends with Yu Huai walking in on Geng Geng while she visits his mother in the hospital and (I think) overhears his mother talk to Geng Geng about her regrets in being so strict to both her son and being harsh to Geng Geng. After being pushed away by him Geng Geng starts texting him all sorts of quotes and sentences that Yu Huai said to her and vice versa that were important to their relationship. In response to that, Yu Huai comes to her in their special place where there’s a piece of wood Geng Geng carved their names in and that’s the end of it.
Though ending up together was the least they could do, I kind of wished there was a final hug or kiss to seal their feelings for good.

Overall, I enjoyed watching this series. I liked it better than A Love So Beautiful because the characters were less stereotypical and the bonds portrayed were realistic and sincere. The bond between Geng Geng and Yu Huai was beautiful and pure and still there was this passionate affection. The simple but strong love between two kids who knew nothing of love created a very innocent but strong chemistry. The friendships depicted were very real and every character contributed something to the story. There were no characters that served just as comic relief or anything like that. It showed a lot of different lives and relationships, not just between friends but also between families. It’s about embracing youth and dreams but also experiencing heartbreaks and changes in life. Because that’s what life is about: a constantly changing thing. Even if you’d like time to stand still and be in a certain moment forever, you’ll find that that’s not how it works.
The writing was good, the characters were well constructed, the cinematography was beautifully illustrating. Apart from some tiny details, it was a very fun but still realistic series to watch.

I will now go back to some Korean dramas, but I still have some Chinese dramas left to watch. Even though Chinese dramas are kind of the underdog in what I usually watch, hidden gems like With You are what keeps me interested in keeping them in the running.

Until next time!

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.

Switched
(宇宙（そら）を駆けるよだか / Sora wo Kakeru Yodaka)
MyDramaList rating: 2.0/10

I found this series on Netflix and I decided to watch this while I’m also still watching With You (next on my list). Plus it’s been a while since I watched a Japanese drama and I believe this was on my list for later anyway (edit: fake news, I mistook it for a Chinese drama named Flipped). After watching this series, at first I didn’t intend on writing a review because I felt too much frustration about it. I didn’t feel like there was anything nice I could say. However, after reading some other more positive comments and reviews, I felt like this was the whole purpose of me starting to write reviews and express my thoughts and there are still some general positive comments I can make. I will try to remain nice, but there are definitely some frustrating aspects that I can’t express in any other way.

Anyways, let me summarize the plot of this only 6 episode-long series.
First of all, in the story of this drama there’s a fantastical phenomenon called the ‘Akatsuki’ (Red Moon), and it’s a regular occasion when the moon turns red for some reason.
Ayumi Kohinata (played by Kaya Kiyohara) is a sweet high school student who seems to have a really nice life. She has two great guy friends, she has a nice family, fun friends, school is going well… and then her childhood friend Koshiro Mizumoto (played by Tomohiro Kamiyama) even confesses his love for her! Can it get any better?
Nope. It can get worse, though. On the day of her first date with Koshiro, she suddenly gets a call from an anonymous caller. When she picks up, a girl from her class, Zenko Umine (played by Miu Tomita), declares to her that she’s going to commit suicide. As a matter of fact she’s on top of a building right behind Ayumi and she asks Ayumi to keep watching her as she jumps.
In complete shock, Ayumi watches her classmate jump and faints afterwards. When she wakes up, she is in the hospital and when she asks the nurse how Zenko is doing, the nurse looks at her weirdly and says ‘What are you talking about? You are Zenko.’
As it turns out, Ayumi and Zenko have switched bodies. In her desperate attempts to get her life back together after this bizarre event, Ayumi finds out that Zenko has always been jealous of her and actually planned to switch bodies with her, especially now that Ayumi got together with Koshiro who Zenko also has a major crush on – which is only possible when you commit suicide during a Red Moon and the other person watches the whole thing.
So Zenko now seemingly has what she wants – but Ayumi, though shook to the bone, is determined to get her life and body back. The only person who sees right through her is her good friend Shunpei Kaga (played by Daiki Shigeoka), who also has feelings for her. Together they try to find a way to reverse the switch, because Koshiro somehow reveals a dark side to him as well by staying with Zenko even though he knows she’s not really Ayumi.
Ayumi and Kaga encounter a woman named Ukon who provides more information on the body swapping – being a victim of it as well – but tells them there’s no way to reverse it without one of the two persons actually dying.
In the meantime, whilst trapped in Zenko’s body, Ayumi experiences the bullying that Zenko has had to endure and her bad relationship with her mother and starts empathizing with her as she never realized her classmate’s life was so hard. But, with forced determination, she starts opening up more in school and gains the sympathy of her former friends and in that way shows that even though she might look differently, Ayumi still has the power to make people like her. Zenko, on the other hand, is not amused by Ayumi’s progress and shifts back into her own psychotic dark behavior.
Eventually, Koshiro reconnects with Ayumi and Kaga by revealing that he only stayed with Zenko because he wanted to find out a way to bring Ayumi back. Before conjuring up a plan to do so, Koshiro and Kaga also accidentally get swapped and make the situation even more complicated.
In the end, the three friends manage to persuade Zenko to attempt a ‘shuffle’ plan in which they take turns swapping bodies until they’re back in their own and it ends with them succeeding and becoming friends and happily ever after.

First of all, let me write a little about the characters.
Ayumi is the typical lovely, sweet, popular high school girl. Normally the popular girls in Japanese dramas would be characterized as actual mean girls, but Ayumi is the epitome of sweet. Even after everything Zenko does to her, she still wants to help her and emphatizes with her. She gets stuck in a situation where she literally sees someone else live her life (I’m suddenly somehow reminded of the song ‘Crystal Ball’ by Keane and its music video) and she still manages to not give up even though she might have to spend the rest of her life as Zenko. Although at some points she is so naive I felt that they were still trying to stereotype her as the too sweet and naive girl. She was also crying a lot, although I would understand the initial shock, she kept being shook by all the things that happened even when at a certain point she kind of should’ve gotten used to things. Just my opinion.
Zenko shows her true colors until the end. Even when she thinks she’s finally got it all, she learns that physically becoming Ayumi also entails that she’ll always be reminded of the real Ayumi that she hated so much. She has decided to switch bodies with Ayumi based on a completely selfish thought to be popular and have her ideal boyfriend. It’s all based on exterior factors and in the end it doesn’t matter – Ayumi still comes through and she only becomes more miserable than she was before.
Koshiro is one of the most ambiguous characters in this drama because as a viewer I kept swaying between HE’S EVIL and OH NO HE’S GOOD AFTER ALL and OKAY NOPE HE’S DEFINITELY EVIL and OH NOT EVIL AFTER ALL. It started to get really confusing, and only in the last (or second to last) episode we see his point of view. It wouldn’t have made any sense if he was evil, because he’s been childhood friends with Ayumi and they were so close for so long so it would’ve really been weird if everything had been a lie and he ‘only wanted to be with Ayumi because of her pretty face’ as he once proclaims.
I can only say one thing about Kaga, really. KAGA IS BAE. He’s the typical second male lead, the friend who is friendzoned even after being the only person to see Ayumi for who she really is and standing by her the entire time. We don’t get to see a truly sympathetic side of Koshiro, so if it were me I would go all the way for Kaga. But hey, that’s not how dramas work unfortunately. Anyways, Kaga was the hero for me in this series, and I think for most people.

I want to critically look at the motives in the series, mostly Zenko’s. Because in situations where people act rashly because they’re being bullied and feel ousted from society, there usually is a reason to find somewhere that may rationalize their behavior. And sometimes there’s people who just can’t be helped. I’ve been in a situation myself where I only tried to help someone and they just wouldn’t listen or accept any help and just continue living in the dark.
Zenko’s character is described as someone who has always lived in the dark. Ever since her father abandoned her, her relationship with her mother worsened and the bullying at school worsened. When they showed scenes of her being bullied, I certainly thought ‘this is harsh’. But then again, I think it’s most important how you move on from those experiences. On one hand I feel like learning and growing and getting stronger from there is the most important and staying stuck in that victim role and letting that define you is the worst that can happen. But that’s my one-sided opinion after being one of the first case scenarios. It’s definitely not easy and I can imagine people being effected by bullying for life, I just find it a pity. Because no one deserves to be bullied and to be effected by such nonsensical childish treatment is such a waste. I believe everyone can make something of their life, as long as they find the strength within them, regardless of what other people have said to them in the past. It’s not about them, it’s about you. You shouldn’t let yourself be effected by what some kid said to you in high school. That kid probably didn’t even realize fully what effect his/her words had at the time and would probably now even apologize for it if he/she could. Everyone does stupid things as kids with no full awareness of what this could do to another person. But the most important thing is to get stronger. Let those people behind in the past. They don’t define you. You define you.
Sorry, whole positivity rant, but that’s what I would want to say to Zenko. She is the number one example of someone who lets the bullying get to her, falls into the victim role and doesn’t know how to get out of it. Doesn’t even want to get out of it, in a way. She thinks becoming someone else will solve all her problems. Well, guess what: you are the only one who can save your own damn problems. Changing your face doesn’t change who you are. In the end your true colors will shine through. In the end she started yelling at people about how they were still talking about the real Ayumi and I was like …girl you should’ve taken so much things into consideration before you decided to switch bodies; OF COURSE they’re going to talk about Ayumi. You’re not her, you don’t have any of her memories or personal traits. If you’re going to be bitter about continually being reminded of her you shouldn’t have become her, lol.
In the end confrontation, Koshiro says to Zenko that both he and Ayumi offered their help to her before and she didn’t take it. He points out that she’s someone who won’t even accept help from others but simply wants happiness to come her way. Life doesn’t work that way. Accepting help also is a way to open up to people, but Zenko is so distrustful of people that she won’t even allow herself to see the good in some people and starts to become hateful towards them too.

Stepping back for a second from the lessons to be learned, I would like to comment on the acting style. Japanese dramas always have a certain format of acting, the style of humor and the never-ending ‘eh?’ whenever something’s asked. Another thing that is almost always depicted the same way: crazy people.
I mean, come on. Not every crazy person walks like a goblin while psychotically (and very loudly!) biting his/her nails. It was perfectly clear that Zenko bore grudges and that she was a dark person, but this was just exaggerating. They made her look like someone from The Grudge or The Ring or something, with the crazy eyes and all. Serioulsy, the nail-biting in particular was really obnoxious and nasty. At a certain point I started throwing my pencil at my screen whenever fake Ayumi started her crazy eyes nail-biting sequences. I believe it’s not even possible to bite your nails like that, are we sure her fingers are still attached to her hands? Sorry, but really, this was really annoying for me.
More typical Japanese drama tropes include dramatically running away after seeing or hearing something shocking (or I suppose in Ayumi’s case, whatever reason – she broke out in a dash a lot of times).
One scene in particular was really frustrating because I kind of hoped that she would make the right decision but at the same time knew she wasn’t because it was a Japanese drama. It was really predictable but not in a good way. It’s the scene where Kaga asks Ayumi to stay in the classroom and at the same time Koshiro asks her to come to the arts room (while every single person in the drama knew that Koshiro was up to something with Zenko and Kaga was the only person ever alive in that world that could be trusted). It was so obvious that she had to stay in the classroom for Kaga, but she STILL went for Koshiro. It was an illogical and profoundly DUMB choice. I mean, it was scripted, but I kind of hoped Ayumi wouldn’t be that stupid. In that way they made her into the typical naive sweet girl who wouldn’t see the bad in her childhood friend even though at that point he was acting really suspicious. It was just that at that very moment, she stood closer to Kaga than to Koshiro so it also just seemed really weird for her to still choose Koshiro in that particular moment in the story.

Lastly (I’m not going to make this too long), I would like to comment on the frequent and most of all casual talk about suicide. I mean, when they decided to go along with the ‘shuffle’ plan they were basically talking about themselves committing suicide multiple times. And they didn’t even blink at the prospect. ‘Okay, so first us two will jump off a building and then you two, and then afterwards it’ll be you two and us two. Let’s go jump off a building and get our bodies back!’. They made it sound almost comical, and it was really weird for me. The whole series contains so much darkness, heck, people jumping off buildings and even this video of a lady where she crashed into the building as she fell and literally splat on the ground (with very nasty splat sound effects, also not very nice)?
To talk about such things so casually gave me real mixed vibes about it. Especially when it’s all happily ever after in the ending and everyone is happy and everything is forgiven and forgotten and I was just like… No? All this stuff that happened and you’re just going to act like nothing happened? This girl tried to basically kill y’all and you’re just going to be her friend?
I didn’t even understand how they managed to persuade her in the end, let alone how she suddenly still became ‘nice’.
In one way I would’ve liked it if it turned out that all she needed in the end was just a hug and an apology from her mother. Her mother came around and admitted on how she’d treated her. Heck, I had more sympathy for the mother than for Zenko in the end.

I would’ve liked a bit more story for Ukon and the talking bird. Now they only had an informing role and we don’t really know anything about them apart from a short flashback of how they changed bodies themselves. At first I thought the bird and Ukon had changed bodies, that would’ve been fun.

Overall, I think the most important lesson to be learned from this drama is that nothing will change who you are. Even when you try to look different and change your life, even taking over someone else’s life, you can never become anyone else than who you are. Your true personality will shine through no matter what you look like.
And I’m seriously done with fat-shaming. I don’t know what it is with Asian dramas, but characters that are described as ‘ugly’ somehow always are casted as chubby/fat people. Ugly isn’t measured by someone’s body weight, it’s measured by someone’s behavior and personality. And this drama proved that, even when looking cute from the outside, the ugliness of Zenko’s personality still came through. I actually think Miu Tomita is really cute, especially when she smiled. When she had to play Ayumi in Zenko’s body, I just wanted to hug her and pinch her cheeks. Being fat/chubby doesn’t equal being ugly. Take a note, Asian dramas.
There were a lot of unrealistic factors in the series, apart from the Red Moon and the swapping bodies. You’d think that people like your parents and your closest friends who really know you would immediately know that there was something different about you. Everyone just behaved really unnatural and unrealistically in the given situation. If you were so desperate to keep up the act of becoming someone else, would you openly express crazy behavior and act very much UNLIKE that person?

In the end, Kaga is what saved this drama for me. When he was trying to laugh through his tears at the end when he still brought Ayumi and Koshiro together despite his own feelings and everything he’d done, that was the one moment I had feels. Somebody give this guy a medal and a a really big hug for me. Oh, and I don’t know if I’m the only one, but doesn’t Daiki Shigeoka look like Yamapi? Like, A LOT?

When checking the info on the AsianWiki site, I found nothing but positive comments on this drama. I’m a bit confused because I was mostly frustrated and cringed a lot while watching. But maybe other people saw through the bizarre-ness of the story and focussed on the feelings that were portrayed. And I have to admit, the actors did act convincingly despite the strange and occasionally disturbing script.
This drama was a bit too weird for me. I mostly kind of scoffed or laughed through the bizarreness of the story. It definitely wasn’t one of the better shows I’ve seen and I don’t think I will recommend it to anyone.

I’m going to watch some cheerful shows now!

Stay tuned!

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.

Radio Romance
(라디오 로맨스 / Radio Romaenseu)
MyDramaList rating: 6.5/10

Hello again! Time for another review. I just finished watching Radio Romance, but I took my time watching it. I didn’t go through it as fast as with the last drama I watched, and I will explain why.
First of all, this drama was on my list because of the two main actors. I’m a fan of Kim So Hyun, and I liked Yoon Doo Joon in Splash Splash Love, so that immediately sparked my interest.
I will start with a summary of the series, then I will elaborate on the characters and cast and then point out my criticisms on the series.

The story of Radio Romance is about a young radio script writer assistant named Song Geu Rim (played by Kim So Hyun). Her dream is to be a real script writer for the radio, but there’s a problem: she’s not a very good writer. Her scripts never make it to the broadcast and that’s why she’s been stuck as an assistant. She has it all when it comes to motivation and drive, and she has a real passion and love for the radio.
This passion started when her mother became blind after getting eye surgery and she had to describe everything she saw to her mother in great detail. The two of them would listen to the radio and her mother loved it so much because it made her able to see all these stories and sceneries that were described. It became Geu Rim’s dream to be able to get her own written script spoken on the radio, especially one sentence that her mother really loves: ‘It’s time for the sky to turn from blue to red’ (or something along those lines, to indicate the setting sun).
However, when the DJ for the radio show Geu Rim is a part of decides to quit all of a sudden and they can’t find anyone new, their show is about to get cancelled. At that moment, the eccentric radio producer Lee Gang (played by Yoon Park) returns from his trip to India and recruits Geu Rim for his new team. He says he will make her his main writer, on the condition that she gets top star Ji Soo Ho (played by Yoon Doo Joon) as their guest. Geu Rim is hesitant at first because she doesn’t really like Soo Ho – she’s not impressed by the whole top star image and just finds him a bit fake. However, the urgency is real and she doesn’t have another choice so she persistently starts persuading Soo Ho in order to get him on their show.
Soo Ho, who grew up in a seemingly perfect family (his parents both celebrities as well, the ultimate fabulous family and all that), is actually not happy at all. Everything in his life is decided by his mother (who isn’t even his real mother), who is also the CEO of his agency, and his father is away all the time having secret affairs with young actresses. His whole life he has lived from a script, he has never done anything for himself – he isn’t allowed to. When he gets offered the radio show, he initially has no interest at all. It doesn’t pay much, his mother is against it, it won’t have any real value to his career, so why would he? However, after seeing how far Geu Rim is willing to go to persuade him, he finally agrees to do it.
Geu Rim is determined to show him the beauty and importance of radio, and eventually of course he starts genuinely liking it too – and her, as well.

As it turns out, Soo Ho knows Geu Rim from when he was younger. There was a time when they were both in the hospital – Soo Ho for his depression and Geu Rim to support her mother. They met there. and Soo Ho fell in love with her. So actually he’s been in love with her all this time. The first time they meet as adults, he recognizes her immediately but acts like a jerk because that’s who he has become. However, when they start working together, he quickly accepts that he can’t deny his feelings and also confronts her with those feelings.
Geu Rim slowly but surely learns more about Soo Ho’s truth; his fake perfect life, the sadness and loneliness he’s been carrying with him for so long, and she starts sympathizing with him – and this sympathy turns into love as well.

I will start by stating what I liked about the series before elaborating on my critical points.
Recently I really enjoy watching dramas that put a spotlight on a business or society matter that otherwise doesn’t get much attention. Unpopular opinions or underdogs in certain industries suddenly get represented more and more and I really like seeing that. That’s why I really liked how this drama depicted the radio industry. Radio is considered to be kind of an underdog in contemporary media forms, with all the new social media platforms and apps and everything. I’ve never actually thought about what goes on behind radio shows, that those are scripted too and include a lot of technical expertise.
Although I have to say the radio show depicted in this drama – I don’t know if all Korean radio shows are like this – but they are really different from radio shows in my country. Most of the radio where I’m from is just the same music over and over and some hip radio DJ’s blabbing and making stupid jokes. They only call people when they’ve won something (like tickets for a concert they’re giving away or something). I haven’t heard a radio show where there’s an actual sincerely scripted monologue followed by a fitting song. Maybe once or twice, but those are not the mainstream popular radio channels. So it was definitely interesting for me to see this image of how radio was supposed to reach people.
Song Geu Rim has a really idealistic image of radio, something with the radio channels being stars in the sky and the importance of showing the listeners those stars (?). I’ve never thought of radio like that, but I suppose it’s a bit underrated. It’s also mentioned in the series when Soo Ho initially refuses to go on the show; ‘I’m already doing all these movies and dramas, I’m famous from TV, why should I bother with radio’. Ironically, in the end this very medium is what brings the two main characters together for good.
In any case, thank you writers for giving this insight into the world of radio.

I have to admit one thing very honestly: the story and the situations depicted in this drama were very old-school to me. I feel like these days K-Dramas manage to really step up their game and not dwell on the hopelessly romantic tropes. They’ve really come a long way – this is why when I watch an older drama I can see the difference so clearly. The tropes with making a big deal of holding someone’s hand or pulling someone aside because a motorcycle rushes by at high speed – they’re nice gestures, but they don’t need to be dramatized in my opinion. In this drama this was exactly what was being done and I realized I found it kind of tiring. I honestly thought ‘come on guys, I thought we were past this’ at several times. Each kiss, each hand being held, each pull closer was in slow motion (+ repeated 4 times from different angles) and guided by cheesy romantic BGM. I had hoped for a little more maturity in the relationship. The chemistry wasn’t the best either in my opinion. They were cute together, but their romance lacked passion.
Of course, Soo Ho’s awkwardness justifies it from his side because it’s scary as hell for him to open himself up like that for the first time ever.
But for Geu Rim… honestly it seemed to me as if Kim So Hyun wasn’t used to having her own kissing scenes yet because her kisses were more like pecks and when a REAL kiss occurred it was initiated by Soo Ho/ Yoon Doo Joon and you could see her just kind of going along with it, making it a bit awkward while it should have been a genuine ‘I love you so much’ kiss.

I do have to give it to Yoon Doo Joon though, because while I thought Soo Ho’s eyes looked dead most of the time, his face would completely light up when he’d look at Geu Rim (especially when she made him smile). I think it’s great when actors can act with their face like that.
Soo Ho’s character is complicated. He has closed off his real feelings for so long that he’s become this other person who doesn’t have the freedom to live his own desired life anymore. Because of a traumatic happening in his past he can’t sleep well at night anymore, and he just follows the schedule that people make for him.
When he meets Geu Rim after so long, he finally starts seeing the light at the end of the tunnel again and slowly but surely (and very awkwardly) tries to open up more, even though he finds it hard to sometimes contain his greediness in the process. At some points he became a bit too Kim Tan (*the guy from The Heirs, I will use his name to indicate a certain kind of toxic masculine behavior from male characters in K-Dramas from now on) for me, but there were also moments where his loneliness and inner sadness got the better of him and these moments justified his actions because you could see that he did it purely because he didn’t know any other way to convey his feelings to Geu Rim. So I won’t be too hard on him.

As I mentioned before, I really like Kim So Hyun. I’ve seen so many dramas of her it feels like I grew up with her and I saw her turn from a child actress into the young woman she is now. It’s really nice to see someone evolve like that and to see her acting progress as well. As a child actress she got a lot of dark and gloomy roles – she started out as the young version of either the first or second female lead – and the first happy role I saw of her was in Let’s Fight Ghost. I felt like that was the first time I saw her as a genuinely cheerful character. That was her transition from child role to high school student role. I remember seeing her in I Hear Your Voice, which is a phenomenal series in my opinion. She was really good there as the female lead’s young version. And then there was Who Are You 2015 where she played the double role of twins – again a display of her versatile acting.
Overall, I think I have to say that her roles in Ruler: Master of the Mask and Radio Romance are my least favorite ones. I’m not saying I hated it; it’s just that I know how well she can act and her character just fell flat to me, even though she started out really cool. I felt like she could have shown more spunk and independent behavior as Geu Rim. On the other hand, I did like the moments where she resisted Soo Ho’s demands. When he would keep calling her and she’d think ‘damn, why does he keep calling’ and she would just not pick up her phone. Also, when they were together but she needed to focus on script writing and she would just tell him she needed some space. Soo Ho is a real attention seeker, so I get that from her character’s perspective it might not be easy to push him away for even a moment. But still, she could’ve been a little more empowering as a female character.

I have to elaborate that I really liked Geu Rim’s character in the beginning of the show. I liked how she dressed, the frizzy hair, she was this hip young cheeky kid with a passion that she couldn’t realize. When given the chance to be an actual writer, she could cry with joy. That’s all she cared about at that point. Throughout the development of the series, when her relationship with Soo Ho progresses, for some reason her look became more plain and she lost a bit of the spunk she had in the beginning. She suddenly became really mellow in my opinion, her energy level went down.
This was also kind of caused by the increase in dominance in Soo Ho’s behavior. He starts acting like the jealous boyfriend even when they’re not officially together yet. Everything had to go according to how he wanted it, he would just barge in and grab Geu Rim by the hand and take her with him as if she was a will-less damsel. He would forbid her to see other men, even hang out with Lee Gang even though they had a real close friendship. Of course as it turns out that Lee Gang is also interested in Geu Rim he was right to be aware for rivalry there, but it was obvious Geu Rim wasn’t romantically interested in Lee Gang.
As soon as Geu Rim started acting mellow and just started following Soo Ho, I couldn’t help but remember Kim So Hyun’s character in Ruler: Master of the Mask where she literally had no own will at all. I found it a pity that her character became so soft, because I really liked her spunk and I know she can act so much better than that.

I have seen Yoon Park in several other dramas but this was the first time I’ve seen him in such an eccentric role, so I really liked that. Although he didn’t even come close to being a love rival, he was the mature guy who accepted his defeat with a smile and backed off to let the two be happy. But I really liked his trolling nature. Although I liked his eccentricity, they could’ve made him a little less stereotypical. The constant ‘Namaste, Namaste’ was enough after a while.
I feel like Lee Gang and Jin Tae Ri were cast purely to create a second male and female lead, but their characters didn’t feel like second lead characters to me, more like slightly important side characters. Lee Gang, in any case.

Please forgive me as I will now elaborate on my most critical point of this entire series: Jin Tae Ri.
Jin Tae Ri (played by Yoo Ra) is an unpopular actress who used to star in a drama with Soo Ho when they were young and she’s desperate to make a comeback. That is literally her story. The only thing she does in the entire drama in butt into people’s business to focus the attention on herself, bitch at people to make herself feel better, and repeat the same record over and over again: ‘I was in a drama with Soo Ho as a child. I was in a drama with Soo Ho as a child.’ She would barge into places, make desperate accusations and irrelevantly blackmail people. When she wasn’t bitching at people, she was crying because ‘deep down she’s actually really vulnerable and she just wants people to notice her’. Well, that’s exactly how she was portrayed – as someone who just wanted to be noticed but in trying to achieve that only created pointless air with her words.
I don’t like to be this critical, but Jin Tae Ri is possibly one of the most pointless characters in a drama series I’ve seen so far. I honestly didn’t understand the point or purpose of her character.
She didn’t contribute anything to the story, not even as a rival or anything. If she was supposed to be in love with Soo Ho, that didn’t come through. She only threatened him with the fact that she would reveal information about his family in order to get on a show with him to better her reputation.
It really felt like she was just there in order to have a bitchy second female lead character. In the end she gets together with Soo Ho’s manager because he’s the only one who can stand her. No one in the drama cares about what she has to say, everyone just lets her rant and when she leaves the room everyone just goes on with their lives. Even when her background story was explained it didn’t do anything for me.
This was one of the main things in this series that really bothered me, I hope people can respect my opinion. I don’t want to blame anything on the actress because she still performed everything devotedly, but this was just a very badly written character. She could’ve not been there and it wouldn’t have made any difference. In the end she literally didn’t achieve anything except a boyfriend, good for her.
I had this hope that when she first started her ‘I’ve known Soo Ho from when we were kids’ story, she would turn out to be an actual childhood friend who knew what happened and who’d maybe been there in the period where Soo Ho’s friend Woo Ji Woo died and the impact it’d had on Soo Ho. If that was the case, it may have given her some purpose as a character; as someone who knew a side of Soo Ho that no one knew and who’d help him open up or something. But nope, none of that.

About this friend Woo Ji Woo, he was the stepping stone to link Soo Ho and Geu Rim to each other. When Soo Ho was in the hospital, he became friends with Woo Ji Woo (played by Choi Min Young). Ji Woo is an energetic boy who loves music but who is terminally ill and knows he won’t live longer than age 20. He has a crush on Geu Rim, who frequents the hospital because of her mother, and he strives to win a singing contest and confess his feelings to her while he still can. Soo Ho is inspired by his will to live the last of his years freely and without regrets, but he ends up falling for Geu Rim as well.
In the end Soo Ho feels so bad about betraying Ji Woo that he distances himself from him. When Ji Woo runs after him one time he is hit by a truck and dies. The guilt of his death has followed Soo Ho to this day, it’s why he still can’t sleep and open up fully to Geu Rim. Whenever he’s with Geu Rim, a part of him always remembers Ji Woo.
In the end it turns out that Ji Woo was fully aware that Soo Ho liked Geu Rim as well and he even gave them his blessing disguised in letters addressed to Geu Rim but actually written for Soo Ho.

Why the two main characters in K-Dramas always have to be somehow linked to each other in their respective pasts is another trope that I’m getting a bit fed up with. It’s not a regular thing in real life where all ideal couples actually already knew each other as children and just magically happen to meet again under really complicated circumstances, I think the stories where two people just meet without having any connection to each other are the most realistic nowadays.
I liked the Ji Woo story, but there were things that felt weird to me. It kind of seemed to me like the two boys were following Geu Rim as kids, they were always watching her from a distance, even riding the same bus, always just watching her and smiling at her (which I sometimes thought was a bit creepy in a way). Also, Geu Rim’s lack of emotional reaction when Soo Ho told her the whole Ji Woo story was really weird. You’d have to feel something if your boyfriend tells you he had a friend who liked you and he pretended to be him because he liked her too and how they watched her so many times together? Geu Rim was just like ‘daww you must have felt so sad seeing me because I reminded you of your friend *hug*’ That’s certainly not how I would’ve reacted.

There was one character that I did like, although he didn’t get any credit for his actions in the end: Jason (played by Kwak Dong Yeon). He is introduced as a friend of Soo Ho and also as a psychologist who is instructed by Soo Ho’s mother to keep an eye on him. In the meantime, he likes to assess Soo Ho’s emotional transgression and when Geu Rim enters his life, he is fascinated to see how Soo Ho changes. In the beginning it was just funny to see how cheerful he’d get when Soo Ho would show an emotion. At a certain point I started doubting if he was to be trusted, because he has this poker face expression sometimes that had a glint of darkness in his eye – but in the end it turns out that he didn’t have any hard feelings against Soo Ho. Yes, he might have gotten a little too ambitious in his curiosity as to how Soo Ho would respond to certain situations, but all he tried to do was help him open up and face his fears in his own way. And as a result he just gets a ‘no you researched me for fun, you made me a case study and reported to my mom, get out of my house’ from Soo Ho. Anyways, I liked his character.
I like characters that aren’t one-dimensional and that keep you guessing as to what they’re really up to and what their motives are.

I liked the character of Soo Ho’s manager as well, although he didn’t get a lot of back story. He was a nice supporting character. I do feel like they made him like Tae Ri just so she had someone to turn to in the end that could love her, but otherwise I didn’t feel them as a couple.
However, their kissing scene was better than all of Soo Ho and Geu Rim’s kissing scenes combined. Honestly when that happened I couldn’t help but think, ‘now THIS is what I call a kiss’. On the other hand, the proposal felt kind of out of the blue. Mostly because I just missed the whole build-up in their relationship. But anyway, I already ranted enough about Jin Tae Ri, so I’ll just say I liked the manager guy.

There were these two radio producers who became ‘rivals’ to Lee Gang’s team, one of them being Geu Rim’s former boss. This woman, Ra Ra Hee (played by Kim Hye Eun) is the one who kept Geu Rim as an assistant for so long, and when Geu Rim gets the chance to be the main writer for Lee Gang, she becomes salty and tries to convince Geu Rim that she’s not good enough. However, even though she teams up with Soo Ho’s mother and tries to thwart Lee Gang’s team, in the end she does seem to care for Geu Rim as her junior. Apart from that her role wasn’t really deepened any further, except for her relationship with her partner producer.

I realize I haven’t said anything about Soo Ho’s mother in detail yet. Nam Joo Ha (played by Oh Hyun Kyung), is this sophisticated career woman who has spend her whole married life pushing her son in the right direction (her right direction). Almost the entire series she seems to be the cold-hearted stepmother who doesn’t care about her son’s free will and emotions and can’t care less that he has feelings for some girl; keeping up appearances is the most important thing.
But when their family’s facade is exposed by one of her husband’s ex-affair actresses, she is on the brink of falling apart. She is secretly suffering from her husband’s behavior and covers this by drinking wine and being extra strict for Soo Ho. I liked that in the end Soo Ho and his mother managed to come to terms when he covered for her in a press conference and she also opened her mind more.

As a last comment before my conclusion, this drama showed me again how insane the fan culture in Korea can be. Top stars and idols are treated as gods by their fans, but as soon as they fall in love in real life, the fans can immediately turn against them. I just don’t understand how some people can have so little respect for other people’s privacy. It’s none of your business! I think one of the most terrible things about being an idol is that you don’t get to live a normal life. You are limited in so many things, things that seem so mundane to normal people: seeing the people you like, going places you want to go, even falling in love and dating. It’s crazy and I will never get used to it.

I’m sorry if this review became a little more critical than uplifting. But I find it important to write down my thoughts on the series, whether they are good or less good. I find it important to be critical and I’m trying to be more critical in life as a whole because I usually don’t have a strong opinion about a lot of things. This is one of the things where I feel free to share my thoughts and I hope this can be respected.
In any case, I’m glad I saw this drama but it wasn’t one of the best I’ve seen. There were a lot of tropes I’d like to see less of in the modern (post-2017) K-Drama. The balance between the important and less important characters was a bit shaky, with some characters we got a lot of information while I could’ve done with less, and with some characters I would’ve liked some more depth in order to sympathize with them more.
I am still going to watch new dramas with Kim So Hyun because she can do so much better than this and I still admire her as the young and talented actress that she is.
It’s definitely a cute love story, but I would’ve liked it to be a little more than that. Using the radio medium as a way to connect people was really nice, but with the development of the romance this too seemed to fade into the background a bit.

Anyways, I will keep writing my reviews and I will keep you posted! Thanks for reading! ^^