SPOILER WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU STILL PLAN ON WATCHING THIS SERIES OR HAVEN’T FINISHED IT YET!!

Twenty-Five Twenty-One
(스물다섯 스물하나 / Seumuldaseot Seumulhana)
MyDramaList rating: 7.5/10

Hi everyone! A happy month of May to everyone who’s following my reviews. The weather has been getting steadily better here, and I hope it’s the same wherever you are. While I’ve been a bit busy with my online classes and the fact I’m not receiving any more income, I still tried to sneak in a drama episode or two whenever I could and I was finally able to finish this series! It’s been on my list ever since it came out. Despite the many comments that passed on my feed, I managed to steer clear of spoilers. The only expectation I had was that it was going to be pretty emotional and potentially heartbreaking. In the end, I was positively surprised by how wholesome it made me feel. I definitely got teary several times, but I think it had a really hopeful tone until the end. I’m glad I got to watch it and enjoy it without any prior knowledge, because it allowed me to get immersed in it even more.

Twenty-Five Twenty-One is a 16-episode Netflix K-Drama with episodes lasting about 1 hour and 15 minutes. Although the episodes felt pretty lengthy to me, like watching 16 short movies, every single episode was undeniably worth the patience.
The main story spans over a period of five years, from 1998 to 2002, and in particular the growing friendship between two young people, Na Hee Do (played by Kim Tae Ri) and Baek Yi Jin (played by Nam Joo Hyuk). Their story starts when Hee Do is 18 and Yi Jin 21, and ends when Hee Do is 21 and Yi Jin 25, explaining the series’ title. In this period of five years, the main characters face hardships in love, friendship and family issues. Life throws them many curveballs, and as youngsters actively experiencing the changing of the times, they have to face reality and learn how to navigate through all sorts of situations, while simultaneously figuring out their own dreams and ambitions.
The story starts in 1998, when South Korea is just recovering from the IMF (International Monetary Fund) financial crisis that took place the year before. I did a little research on this, because even as a 90s baby myself I wasn’t aware of this event. Just to give some context to my peers who are also new to this, the IMF crisis basically entailed the consecutive bankruptcies of several large conglomerates in 1997, which, combined with financial crises and foreign exchange instabilities in other Asian countries, led to the withdrawal of funds, credit lines and investments from foreign banks to South Korea. (Source: https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/nft/seminar/2002/korean/)
This event is especially important in Yi Jin’s backstory, since his family is a direct victim of this crisis. At the start of the story, Yi Jin has only just moved into the same neighborhood as Hee Do, and they meet coincidentally when he’s delivering newspapers.
Hee Do is in high school at this point, and learns that her school’s fencing team will be disbanded due to lack of funding as a result of the IMF crisis. As fencing is the one thing she loves to do most, she goes through great lengths to get herself transferred to another school, Taeyang High, where the fencing team is allowed to continue because of one particular team member, and the person Hee Do looks up to the most: gold medalist Go Yoo Rim (played by Kim Ji Yeon/WJSN’s Bona).
After she finally gets accepted by Taeyang High’s fencing team coach Yang Chan Mi (played by Kim Hye Eun), Hee Do starts her new school life and befriends two childhood friends, Ji Seung Wan (Lee Joo Myung) and Moon Ji Woong (Choi Hyun Wook). With this, the band of friends is initiated. Because of their training, apart from taking exams Hee Do and Yoo Rim are exempted from attending class (this is a very foreign system to me, by the way), but they still get to hang out with Seung Wan and Ji Woong in the secret hideout they have created in the school.
One could say that the IMF crisis is the inciting incident of this show. Because of it, Yi Jin moves to Hee Do’s neighborhood. Because of it, Yoo Rim loses the support funds from Yi Jin’s family. Because of it, Hee Do transfers to Taeyang High. Directly or indirectly, every character’s life has been impacted by the IMF crisis in one way or another.

Like last time, I would like to go through my review based on character analysis. Every character has their own story and circumstances that lead them to the decisions they choose to make. One major thing I liked about this show is that I understood everyone’s perspective and mindset. Even when they weren’t acting nicely or doing the right thing, I could always understand where they were coming from, and that’s because this series creates a lot of sympathy for all its characters. We see what everyone is going through, and we see how that forms their opinions and behaviors. I thought this show had really nice character writing. It made me feel something for everyone.

Another interesting element of the show is that the majority of the story (the part about Hee Do and Yi Jin which takes place in the late 90s / early 00s) is basically one big flashback initiated in the ‘present’ time by Hee Do’s teenage daughter, Kim Min Chae, in 2020. While Min Chae (Choi Myung Bin) hides away at her grandmother’s house after fighting with her mom about wanting to quit ballet, she finds her mom’s old diaries. As she goes through them, she finds out about her mom’s life when she was in her late teens and becomes really invested in her story. I really liked that it kept going back to Min Chae coming to terms with her mom’s choices, and how reading her mom’s story also ultimately made her decide to give ballet another chance. It also made a strong parallel to Hee Do’s own relationship with her mom. Personally, I recently talked with my own mom about how I have no image of what she was like when she was my age, so this drama applied very well to the state of mind I was in. All in all, the mother-daughter theme is definitely strong in this one.

Na Hee Do grows up as an only child born from two loving parents. While her mother, Shin Jae Kyung (played by Seo Jae Hee) is building a career as a journalist, Hee Do spends a lot of quality time with her dad. Her dad is the one who introduces her to fencing at a young age, and it turns out she has great promise as an athlete. Unfortunately, her father falls ill and passes away before Hee Do can fulfill her promise of winning a gold medal for him.
What happens then is a very defining moment in the mother-daughter relationship between Hee Do and Jae Kyung. Jae Kyung decides to take on a news flash rather than attend her own husband’s funeral. From that moment on, mother and daughter have been drifting apart more and more. Jae Kyung never even speaks of her deceased husband anymore while she buries herself in work and keeps telling Hee Do to do the same: make sure to get into college and secure a successful career, and don’t get distracted by a mere hobby like fencing. On the other hand, she’s not blind to how much fencing means to her daughter, and actually even enables her to transfer to Taeyang High. We can see that she obviously cares about her daughter a lot, but she keeps choosing her work over being around for Hee Do. This includes keeping the fact that they are mother and daughter a secret from society as a whole. The news that famous news anchor Shin Jae Kyung and rising national athlete Na Hee Do are related would cause quite a stir, and they don’t want that to happen as it can cause Jae Kyung to get discredited whenever she has to report on something related to her daughter’s fencing achievements.
Hee Do often doesn’t feel comfortable going home because she doesn’t want to face her mom, and throws herself head-first into her fencing training at Taeyang High, beyond excited to be on the same team as Go Yoo Rim, whom she’s admired for so long. What awaits her at the new team, though, is another cold shower: Yoo Rim wants nothing to do with her and even says some pretty hurtful things, about how Hee Do is nothing and that she’s never going to make it as a national athlete.
Despite being disappointed by the unexpected behavior of her idol, Hee Do does everything she can to train as hard as possible so that they get to face off against each other in the finals of a national competition in 1999. She strives to become Yoo Rim’s rival.

Honestly, the only part of the show I found hard to watch was the way Yoo Rim treated Hee Do in the beginning. Even after seeing Yoo Rim’s circumstances and the pressure she was under, I just couldn’t understand why she acted that way toward Hee Do. She’s shown to be such a nice person in the scenes with her parents, Yi Jin and Ji Woong, so why did she have to be so unnecessarily petty and mean to Hee Do? Especially when we find out that the two girls have actually been online friends for a long time, it made me kind of scared of how they would react when they found out, because it would definitely be pretty awkward.
A lot of things happen between them that cause tension and friction, with at its peak the controversy regarding that gold medal. By questioning the referee’s decision to announce Hee Do as the winner, Yoo Rim involuntarily unleashes a complete media circus onto Hee Do, who now can’t even be proud of her fairly earned medal anymore, the medal she wanted to obtain in her father’s memory. Even if Yoo Rim was surprised by the way the media started attacking Hee Do, even if she hadn’t wanted it to happen like that, she still didn’t stand up for Hee Do, she still kept quiet.
Of course, all was well when they finally came eye to eye about the fact that they were each other’s online friends and they made up and cried about how sorry they both were about everything that happened so far, I still found myself wondering why Yoo Rim chose to be that way in the first place. Even if she was intimidated by Hee Do because she’d been beaten by her before as kids (which Hee Do didn’t even remember) and because Hee Do showed such rapid progress in her training, she could’ve maintained a mature athlete’s mindset in acknowledging her as a worthy rival. I mean, even Hee Do was doing that, she beat her fair and square because she’d been studying Yoo Rim’s movements and techniques for years, out of pure admiration. Yoo Rim didn’t even bother to get to know Hee Do in order to figure out her movements, she didn’t even take an athlete’s approach to face her. It just seemed like she acted that way because she couldn’t stand the fact that Hee Do posed a threat to her reputation of being the unrivalled best for so long. I just didn’t like how Yoo Rim acted in spite of her personal circumstances.

After making up though, the two become the best of friends and from then on there’s nothing to break them apart anymore. While dealing with their individual stuff, Hee Do in her relationship with Yi Jin and Yoo Rim in her own love story with Ji Woong, they always find each other when things get tough and help each other out. The friendship between Hee Do and Yoo Rim ends up being one of the strongest ones until the very end, and that’s interesting considering how they start out.

All in all, I thought Hee Do was a very vibrant and powerful character. She really just threw herself into what she loved and knew how to do best, and despite some awkwardness in expressing her sentimental feelings, she was incredibly honest to herself and others. She stood up for what she believed to be right, even when others chose to grin and bear it. I loved how she just called out the situation of them not being allowed to train at night because it pissed off that senior for the BS that it was, like what the heck was that about? Did that senior really have the power or right to prohibit other members from practicing more? If she didn’t want junior members to train more than she did, she should’ve shown some more effort in training herself, rather than sitting in internet cafes after school every night. It didn’t make any sense, and Hee Do dealt with it. She was so sober in her way of seeing things, and even though she had some childish tendencies, especially when it came to her favorite comic book series Full House, she always stayed true to herself. I never once got annoyed or frustrated with her. Even in dealing with Yoo Rim in the beginning, she always remained the bigger person, she just dealt with the disappointment and let it fuel her to train even harder so she could face Yoo Rim fair and square. And it never became the objective to prove Yoo Rim wrong or anything like that, she was in it purely for her own training, because she wanted to continue fencing. I liked how consistent her maturity was, even in that scene where a bitter athlete comments on her and Hee Do is like, ‘you know what, you’re right’ and just deals with it so maturely, leaving that girl feeling all flustered about her own pettiness. That was a really admirable quality of Hee Do’s character, the fact that she never got petty with anyone in situations like that.
However, despite her determination and self-righteousness, she still had sore spots. Her tendency to hold back in her expectations of people became painfully clear in her relationship with Yi Jin. I remember how at some point, I was thinking that it became kind of a parallel of her relationship with her mom, whose life also got completely absorbed by journalism. Her mother failed to show up at moments that were important to Hee Do, and as soon as this started happening with Yi Jin, I just went ohgod-ohman-ohgod-ohman. All the while trying to remain patient and supportive, it was so strong of her to express that she was getting exhausted of only ever hearing his apologies, and that at some point, his apologies started sounding more convincing than his proclamations of love toward her. She saw what was happening and her feelings were very clear. She decided it would be the best thing to break it off, even if it were just to stop them both from being miserable in having to disappoint each other time and time again. I don’t believe she ever truly stopped loving him. The fact that she was able to mature so much through her friendships and romantic relationships made her a really strong character.

As I mentioned before, Yi Jin’s family is a direct victim of the IMF crisis. One moment they’re a wealthy family, the next they’re suddenly forced to live apart in anonymity. Yi Jin’s parents get divorced on paper and all four family members move somewhere else to live until the aftermath of the crisis dies down. Yi Jin doesn’t even know where his father is, and only occasionally gets to call his mother or contact his younger brother. He occasionally receives unpleasant visits from people effected by his family’s bankruptcy who blame everything on him, even though of course he isn’t personally responsible for what happened. People just always need someone to blame, and this has caused Yi Jin to resign himself to a life of unhappiness. He even vows to some guy that he won’t be happy, to atone for what his family has caused. Luckily the guy eventually comes back on his word to tell Yi Jin that he does have the right to be happy. Anyways, after what happens to his family, it seems like Yi Jin doesn’t grant himself anything. Even though he tries really hard to find a job, whenever he is rejected he resorts to booze and in general he just has this melancholic vibe around him. The only moments he seems to light up and rediscover his spark, are when he is with Hee Do. His fascination with her and her undying positive spirit inspire him to keep going, and I found it both heartwarming and heartbreaking to see how much strength he pulled from her presence.
At some point, he is able to secure a job as a reporter, helped by a consolation fund that’s also a result of the IMF crisis. I don’t know exactly what it entailed, but in any case it enabled him to take on this job at a much earlier age than most rookie reporters. Inspired also by his senior Jae Kyung, Yi Jin starts working his way up as a journalist, not without making significant mistakes, and eventually makes it from sports reporter to news anchor. His journey is spread out over the entire series in parallel to Hee Do’s advancements in her fencing career.
The two officially start dating in the year 2000, and Yi Jin transfers from the sports department to the local news department, to maintain objectivity in his reporting, especially after his colleagues find out he’s dating the athlete he used to cover. However, at the end of 2001, the tragic event of 9/11 envelops their relationship in a very dark cloud. Yi Jin is forced to go to New York to report directly from the scene, and the whole situation there takes a large toll on his mental health. He and Hee Do were already facing issues before he went, he made a habit of cancelling their plans last-minute because of work, he kept her waiting, he kept disappointing her expectations, etc., but New York definitely becomes the final drop for Hee Do, as she realizes that they’ll never go back to how they once were. If only he’d stayed at the sports news department…😔

I found Yi Jin to be a kind of tragic hero. He put all the burdens on himself and held back his personal feelings in order for the other person to heal. Despite his love for Hee Do, he was initially determined to just watch over her and protect her from any harm or injury as an athlete rather than committing to a romantic relationship with her. I have to admit I found him a bit confusing at times, because why was he holding back even after confessing his love to her? He kept pushing her away and then acted petty and jealous when he saw her hanging out with another guy. Like, bro, make up your mind already! If you’re gonna be like that, why push her away in the first place? It really felt like he was denying himself simple happiness. While trying to remain considerate of everyone around him, he ended up punishing himself the most. In contrast to Hee Do, who brazenly threw herself into her own dream, it seemed like Yi Jin always needed the support of others to continue what he wanted to do. He took strength from people around him, and I believe that’s because he wasn’t actually able to pick himself up without that kind of support. He took pride in his work and he definitely made a good path for himself, but there were also many moments where he failed to deliver. He wasn’t as straightforward as Hee Do, rather, he is the type to grin and bear it while knowing something is wrong. In that aspect, he and Hee Do were really different from each other. However, I think their connection was ignited by the fact that they were able to cheer each other up. Their first ‘arrangement’ of ‘being happy together’ was really sweet, but also temporary. As Hee Do later also mentioned in their break-up conversation, it was like they were only lovers during the good times. When they were together, they were the happiest, cutest couple, but as soon as they missed each other, they immediately started drifiting apart. I found the development of their relationship and the way it ended very painful, but also very realistic. I think it’s something that will often happen between people who try to make their own way in the world, while simultaneously trying to make a relationship work. Especially when it became long-distance, and even more so when Yi Jin decided to stay in New York as a correspondent there, because that’s when Hee Do felt like it was over and nothing was going to change.

To say a bit more about the relationship between Hee Do and Yi Jin, I just want to comment that I LIVED for their slowburn. It took a really long time for them to acknowledge their respective feelings for each other, and they only kiss for the first time in episode 12 or something, but their growing affection for each other already becomes apparent quite early on, and it’s the sweetest thing ever. The way they both just light up when they look at each other, the adoration on Yi Jin’s face whenever he sees Hee Do, the way Hee Do gradually comes to terms with her feelings… The writing and the acting of their build-up was amazing. When that scene came on where they were alone at Hee Do’s house, I was sitting on the edge of my chair, and I literally SCREAMED at the screen when her mom suddenly came in and broke the tension, because GOD. It felt like Yi Jin was going to tell her he loved her at any second, the tension between them was palpable and then they broke it off like that, haha. I literally had goosebumps during that scene, purely because of their chemistry, it was truly amazing. The tension was C U T T I N G and I lived for it.

While I completely get why people are disappointed about the ending and the breakup and the fact that the main leads don’t end up together, I actually don’t disagree with it. I found it kind of refreshing that they chose to go about it like this. All in all, the story is about a period of time in which their friendship and then relationship bloomed, a period of time where they were the happiest, and how they are both able to come to terms with their feelings about that time years after their relationship ends.
We never get to see adult Yi Jin, only Hee Do (played by Kim So Hyun), and while she doesn’t reveal much to her daughter about the matter – she even says she doesn’t remember the summer beach trip Yi Jin took them on that was so important to her at the time – it is established at the end of the show that she pushed the memory of Yi Jin away because she never got to tell him how she truly felt during their break-up. She ended up saying a bunch of hurtful things and regretted it afterwards, never knowing the same went for him. I think it was really nice how those final diary entries allowed Hee Do to return to that break-up scene and alter it to a conversation where both of them got to say what they actually wanted to, before bidding each other an official farewell. The fact that Hee Do getting her diary back allowed her to finally get closure on both her and Yi Jin’s true feelings about the break-up after all those years of silent regret, felt really wholesome to me.

I think that the theme of the changing times comes out in Hee Do and Yi Jin’s stories the most – it was through their experiences that the societal changes emerged the clearest. I always like it when they show the developments in fashion and technology to accompany the changes in society, it just gives this nostalgic feeling to the story and it’s like you’re really living through those times with the characters.
One example I want to give is the depiction of developments in journalism. While I barely know anything about the behind-the-scenes of news reporting, I found it so interesting to see that journalism in the late 90s relied on payphones so much. The fact that, as a reporter, you had to be near a landline to report news, and that you got scolded if you weren’t able to find one on time that wasn’t occupied, really showed how primitive it all used to be. I liked how they showed several different occasions of Yi Jin getting into situations where he faced difficulties securing a connection. That time when he had everything sorted out and was reading from his laptop and then his laptop failed 💀💀💀 My heart sank with him every single time something went wrong. Also, the part where Yi Jin was making that documentary about fencing and he had to work with that jerk senior of him who kept wanting to stir up some drama by making Hee Do and Yoo Rim reenact the move they made in their first controversial match. He literally made two athletes exhaust themselves and continuously hit each other for no reason even after Yi Jin had told him they weren’t going to do that. That jerk, just because he was a senior, thought he could pull anything, and even after Yi Jin was forced to apologize to him (not the other way around, of course🙄), he still acted like a prick. If it weren’t the circumstances making things harder for him, it was definitely people he worked with. I’m just glad that at least he had that one cool senior whom he was able to reunite with at the local news department.

I liked how the present time of 2020, the year of Covid, was depicted in such stark contrast to the 90s. The face masks, the hand sanitizers, the cleanliness of every building and the scarce number of people outside… Overall, whether it was the period from 1998~2002 or 2020, the series paints such a clear picture of the changing times, I really liked that.

I feel like I already wrote an entire review, but I still only covered the two main characters😅 Let’s quickly move on to the remaining characters, because I still have a lot left to write.
Let me talk in more detail about Yoo Rim. Like Hee Do, Yoo Rim is also an only child, but her relationship with her parents is very good. Her dad is a truck driver who’s away a lot for work, but whenever he comes home he’s always welcomed back happily and warmly by his wife and daughter. Yoo Rim’s mom runs a tteokbokki place. Despite her happy environment and unyielding support from her family, Yoo Rim is not blind to reality – her family has serious financial troubles. Especially after the financial support from Yi Jin’s family has fallen away, her parents have gotten themselves in a lot of debt. While her parents try to keep Yoo Rim away from all the worries, it doesn’t go unnoticed by her. One of the main reasons why Yoo Rim feels so much pressure to keep winning at fencing competitions is to ease her family’s worries as much as possible. Fencing is an expensive sport, and Yoo Rim can’t help but feel like she’s adding to her parents’ troubles. She even starts refusing gifts her parents buy for her because she doesn’t want them spending unnecessary money on her. They face an even bigger trial when a loan agency that a lot of people in the neighborhood stood surety for ends up disappearing overnight, scamming everyone out of their money. I wasn’t exactly sure what it meant to ‘stand surety for a loan’, but I guess it has to do with being legally responsible for another party’s debt? Please correct me if I’m wrong. Anyways, it means that a lot of money her parents had been saving up was stolen from them, along with many savings from people in the neighborhood. While they manage to barely get by after that, another incident happens that takes Yoo Rim’s family’s worries to an even higher level. Her father gets involved in a car accident that kills a young man and is pressured by his relatives to compensate in whatever way possible. The situation takes a huge toll on Yoo Rim’s already struggling family, and Yoo Rim decides to take matters into her own hands: she will move abroad, change her nationality and start fencing for a different team, just to stop adding to her parents’ worries. This decision turns Yoo Rim into a traitor of the nation, and she receives a lot of negative backlash for it. It’s incredible how quick some people are to judge while they don’t even know the true nature of a situation. In any case, even after moving to Russia (of all places), Yoo Rim never truly loses contact with her friends and she and Hee Do even get to face each other again at another championship.

As I mentioned earlier on, before Hee Do and Yoo Rim find out they’re each other’s online besties and become friends in real life, I didn’t understand why Yoo Rim acted the way she did. She seemed to be such a kind person, even in the way she accepted an umbrella from an invisible fan. But the way the relationship between the two girls developed, and how they both gradually gained more understanding and sympathy for each other before ultimately becoming besties, was really well laid-out. I had goosebumps at the pool scene where Yoo Rim jumped into the water from such a high distance and how that really shook Hee Do. Even behind the scenes we see how the national team coach pressures Yoo Rim, how double-sided their favoritism toward her really is.
In contrast to that, it is such a relief to see her in scenes with Ji Woong. I really loved their romance story. Ji Woong is the only person who’s ‘outside’ all of her stress, who always manages to cheer her up and make her feel light and loved. I also liked how easily Yoo Rim fell for him, like how from the first moment he came up to talk to her she was already giggling and enjoying the attention he gave her. Unlike Yi Jin, Yoo Rim never denies herself the happiness of dating despite her worries and financial troubles. The only moment she does is when she has decided to move to Russia, but then fortunately Ji Woong is the one who refuses to let her go and they make do with him occasionally visiting her, which is really sweet.
Despite her dire circumstances, I like how uncomplicated Yoo Rim’s character was. She was really kind and easygoing, she accepted kindness when it was given to her without questioning it, and she wasn’t afraid to show affection to the people she cared about either. After she let go of the petty behavior from the beginning, I started liking her character more and more. One of my favorite depictions of the strength of her and Hee Do’s friendship was when they faced off against each other in Madrid, after Yoo Rim had stopped replying to Hee Do’s emails for a while. It seemed like something had happened and they might drift off again, so I was anxious for them to meet. But there was nothing to worry about. It was so nice how the both of them just had this unyielding trust in each other, how Hee Do never doubted Yoo Rim for not responding anymore because she knew she must also be under a lot of stress for the upcoming championship. On the other hand, Yoo Rim also understood why Hee Do chose not to see her before the match. This was all confirmed the moment they fell into each other’s arms after the match, because in reality nothing had changed between them. They just knew, they understood each other’s situations and chose not to assume anything had changed between them, just because they both temporarily took a distance to focus on the match. I really loved the level of trust they had in each other and their friendship, it was really touching to see.

Seung Wan and Ji Woong have been friends since childhood, and Ji Woong often hangs out at Seung Wan’s place. Not a lot is revealed about Ji Woong’s family situation, except that he lives with his mother who is a night nurse. Seung Wan also lives alone with her mother (played by So Hee Jeong). Her father doesn’t appear in the show, but they hold his funeral in the final episode, when it’s revealed he was apparently in the hospital for a long time.
At school, Seung Wan is part of the broadcasting club, the same one Yi Jin used to belong to when he was studying there. Yi Jin also belonged to the school band, The Jungle Prince, to which Ji Woong now belongs. In other words, Yi Jin is a respected senior to the both of them. (By the way, I liked how the band was like this tradition that was just continued by new members under the same name every year.)
Seung Wan is very level-headed and also top of her class. She’s the class president and always gets the best grades. She is such a good student that many teachers don’t get why she’s friends with such a ‘troublemaker’ as Ji Woong. Seung Wan herself reveals at some point that she is generally bored with life, and hanging out with Ji Woong is the only thing that makes life exciting for her. When she’s with him, exciting things always happen and it allows her to escape the mundanity of her otherwise bleak life. She keeps trying to find exciting things to do, and this is probably also why she starts a pirate radio show which she broadcasts from her room. On it, she talks about everyday troubles as a teenager, and has a group of loyal listeners, amongst whom Yi Jin’s younger brother Baek Yi Hyun (Choi Min Young).
Seung Wan’s defining moment occurs when she decides to step up against the corporal punishments that are being executed at Taeyang High. Ji Woong is occasionally beaten by one of the teachers with a stick for the tiniest sign of rebellion, and Seung Wan can’t stand the fact that the teachers get away with this, especially since most schools by this time are no longer allowed to use corporal punishment on students. She is such a power boss for that, all the more when she decides to quit school when she realizes nothing is going to be done about it. This part in her story reminded me a bit of The Sound of Magic, in the way that she becomes aware of the power that adults hold, that even if she is brave enough to step up for justice, she won’t be taken seriously as a child/student. I loved it when she plain-out refused to apologize to the school, because it was the school that needed to apologize. She decides to throw away all the effort she put in her school work, simply because she doesn’t want to belong to a school that allows this kind of behavior. That is so badass.
I also loved how the scene that came next, the one where she told her mom what she’d decided to do. Her mother is amazing, she doesn’t scold her daughter, she doesn’t tell her off, she only asks to make sure if this is what she really wants, and then turns up like a sassy queen at Taeyang High the next day like, ‘So this is the school that allows such shitty behavior towards its students? Yeah, I don’t even want my daughter to stay here.’ I loved it.
In the final episode, Seung Wan is revealed to have started working at a variety show program, but even that seems to bore her. She still doesn’t find life exciting, so in that aspect she remains pretty consistent, lol.

Ji Woong is not just a troublemaker at Taeyang High, he’s also a trendsetter. He has a lot of confidence and doesn’t shy away from expressing himself, either through music genres or fashion style. He changes looks a couple of times throughout the show, discovering new trends and hopping on the bandwagon. At some point he switches his music style from rock to hiphop, changes his clothing style and brazenly wears hyped but problematic merchandise to school. While he has this air around him, he is all the more sincere when it comes to his feelings for Yoo Rim. He first tries to get Hee Do to introduce him to her, but as Hee Do doesn’t get along with Yoo Rim at the beginning, he goes for it himself and immediately lucks out. He and Yoo Rim start a special budding friendship, and Yoo Rim also starts calling on him more often when she needs some cheering up. Their feelings, while already quite obvious from the start, blossom into a really adorable romance.
I couldn’t help but love Ji Woong for his unmasked sincerity when it came to Yoo Rim. He may have had some hidden inner worries and insecurities underneath his image at school, but to Yoo Rim he spoke nothing but the truth. I loved how open he was about his feelings for her, like he literally voiced every single thing he felt, from feeling flustered to wanting to act vulnerable in front of her. I also liked that, although his character became most present in Yoo Rim’s storyline, there was a special bond between him and Seung Wan that was also presented really clearly. For example, when Seung Wan quit school, he couldn’t help but feel like it was because of him, and he even ended up crying. He was not afraid to show his emotional sides to Seung Wan, and I really loved the hug they shared in that moment.
All in all, Ji Woong is the kind of guy who will keep up a cool front rather than show his friends his scars, but on the other hand he is really transparent about his emotions and thoughts. I just loved how loyal he was, he was such a good friend and such a sweet boyfriend to Yoo Rim. Acting cool on top of showing time and time again what a good guy he was, only made him more likable. The way he proposed to Yoo Rim in the final episode was also very exemplary of how he liked to keep a cool image, but it was still very sweet.

Before I go on to the mothers and remaining family aspects of the show, I want to just mention that I am so glad they didn’t add any unnecessary love triangles. In the beginning it seemed like Yoo Rim used to have a crush on Yi Jin, and this would only create more tension between her and Hee Do. I lolled when Yi Jin told her she probably just liked his money and his sports car and Yoo Rim went, ‘Oh, was that what it was?🤔’, she was pretty real for that. I was also scared that Seung Wan would end up actually having a crush on Ji Woong or something, I don’t remember when but at some point I felt like she was resigning a bit when he got together with Yoo Rim, but luckily this was never officially confirmed. It was all the more relaxed because no one got involved in each other’s romances, and everyone was happy for one another. I appreciated that.

Let’s get a bit more into the important theme of family in this show.
Starting with Jae Kyung and Hee Do. We meet Jae Kyung as Min Chae’s grandmother before we meet her as Hee Do’s mother. Putting the two side by side, you would barely recognize her (they did an amazing job with the make-up, too😳) To say mother and daughter have grown estranged from another is an understatement. While Hee Do just thinks that her mother doesn’t care about her, Jae Kyung wishes her daughter would understand that she needs to maintain her professionality at work. Honestly, although I did get that Jae Kyung didn’t have the luxury in her job to report on things subjectively, I did feel like she could have been a bit more considerate towards her daughter. I couldn’t blame Hee Do for feeling distant from her, because it really felt like her mom cared more about her job than about her. Jae Kyung’s choice to appear in a news flash rather than going to her husband’s funeral definitely made the first real crack between them, and since then Hee Do has repeatedly been disappointed by her mother on occasions that meant a lot to her personally. She just stopped expecting things from her at some point, which must have made her feel very lonely at home, as she didn’t have any other family left.
The flashbacks of Hee Do’s father broke my heart, truly. The scene where she thought her dad didn’t get back on the train in time and started crying and then he came in and surprised her, I was basically sobbing with her. That man was a precious human being, and it wasn’t fair of Jae Kyung to just never talk about him again. Hee Do needed to be able to talk about him, remember him, and she was left alone in that, by her mother, of all people.
The main difference between Hee Do and Yoo Rim was that while Hee Do may not have had to worry about money issues, she didn’t have a support system at home. Her mother didn’t even congratulate her personally when she wins a match, she basically learns about what her daughter is up to through the news, rather than hearing it first-hand. When Jae Kyung went on air to report about how Hee Do ‘stole the gold medal away from Yoo Rim’, I totally stood by Hee Do. Of course it was her job, but I could understand how painful that must have been for Hee Do at that moment, because it felt like even her own mother wasn’t on her side. You could just see it from the way Hee Do reacted when any random person showed her kindness and told her she’d done well; she just teared up. That’s why the scene where Yoo Rim’s mother suddenly hugged her and congratulated her made such a big impact. If even the mother of her then-enemy could stroke her hair and tell her she was proud of her, what the heck was wrong with her own mother? That scene was really touching, and you could also see Yoo Rim soften at Hee Do’s response to that hug.
The same went for Seung Wan’s mom, who really gave a ‘mi casa es su casa’ vibe. Not only did she always allow the group of friends to gather at her house, she was also extremely hospitable toward Yi Jin and rooted for both Yoo Rim and Hee Do as if they were her own children. I loved when Hee Do won in that final match in Madrid and she went, ‘that’s my loach baby!!’😂And when Hee Do and Yoo Rim hugged each other after the match, she joined Seung Wan and Ji Woong in their emotional sobbing.
It was just so nice to see that, while Hee Do lacked this kind of warmth from her own mother, she was always given a warm welcome by her friends’ moms. It really felt like she was being accepted into her friends’ families and that must have meant a lot to her.

The mother-child bond was definitely a recurring theme. Except from Yoo Rim and Yi Jin, the other characters all only had their mother as their parent, I don’t know where all the fathers went, but it was a very mother-dominated show, lol. And what also made it interesting was that every single mother-child bond was different. I just wanted to mention that because apart from the general family theme, it really relied on mothers and daughters a lot. I liked how it drew upon both the relationship between Hee Do and Jae Kyung and that of Hee Do and Min Chae. I hadn’t expected that the story would be initiated from a daughter’s wish to get to know her mother better in order to come to terms with their differences. It made for a strong foundation, in my opinion.

If the flashbacks of Hee Do’s dad were emotional, the scene at the graveyard broke me completely. When Jae Kyung suddenly takes Hee Do to visit her father’s grave and she breaks down admitting how much she misses her husband, finally allowing Hee Do to see that side of her mother that was hidden behind the anchor mask for so long, that was heart-wrenching. I actually cried during that scene, man, that was something. At least after that, they were able to get along better again. I guess it really was up to Jae Kyung to clear the air, because Hee Do wasn’t going to get it out of her. I liked Jae Kyung much better after that, also when she got more involved in Hee Do and Yi Jin’s relationship and started treating Yi Jin better as well. When Yi Jin finally becomes a news anchor in the final episode, Jae Kyung personally congratulates him, no hard feelings whatsoever about his former relationship with her daughter. Jae Kyung was a role model to Yi Jin, and he strived to be as professional as her, although he still struggled a lot to keep his personal feelings under control. His perspective on Jae Kyung differed so much from Hee Do, but I loved Hee Do’s maturity and optimism when she acknowledged that while her mother appearing on the news may have a sad effect on her, it has a stimulating effect on Yi Jin’s ambitions.

Finally I want to talk a bit about the relationship between Jae Kyung and Coach Yang Chan Mi. I realize I haven’t talked about Coach Yang at all yet, but she was a very important character when it came to Hee Do and Yoo Rim’s fencing achievements. While she is the team coach at Taeyang High at the start of the show, she used to be a national fencer herself. That is, until Jae Kyung, her friend, covered a news story about Chan Mi accepting bribes from fans. We later learn that at the time, Chan Mi wasn’t even aware that it was a bribe, she found out through the news along with everybody else. This definitely put a big strain on her friendship with Jae Kyung as Chan Mi had to start all over again. Despite her carefree and casual attitude, Chan Mi cares a lot about her trainees and doesn’t accept people who won’t go all the way in fencing. Even though she acts like she’s reluctant to accept Hee Do into her team in the beginning (we find out later that her transfer was already confirmed and Chan Mi was just testing Hee Do’s waters), she ends up rooting for Hee Do the most. Without ever favoring one over the other, even after Yoo Rim changes teams and nationality, Chan Mi always welcomes her back with open arms. It’s clear that a part of her has also forgiven Jae Kyung for what she’s done, even though she still holds it against her. I thought that, while they clearly drifted apart, there was still a solid ground between the two ladies, and they still managed to maintain a professional relationship as a reporter and a former athlete.

I just remembered an arc that I wanted to discuss, which also brings me to another example of great episode writing. There is this one girl on the Taeyang High fencing team, Lee Ye Ji (Joo Bo Young) who eventually decides she wants to quit fencing. Unlike Hee Do and Yoo Rim, she just doesn’t feel joy when she’s fencing anymore. However, Coach Yang doesn’t let her quit so easily. At first I was like, why? It’s clear Ye Ji made up her mind about quitting, so why force her and tell her that it’s just a slump she needs to get over? I thought that was a bit harsh, to be honest. Anyways, Coach Yang ultimately agrees to let her quit, but only after she places in the quarter finals of an upcoming match. Hee Do and Yoo Rim help Ye Ji with her training as much as they can and Ye Ji ends up winning. Even though this is a great achievement, she still tells them she wants to quit and is let go. This happens in the same episode that Seung Wan quits school. I really loved how, even though the two stories happened separately from each other, the episode ended with both Seung Wan and Ye Ji standing in front of the school gate as they made for the exit. Seung Wan just quit school, Ye Ji just quit fencing. It was such a simple occurrance, but the fact that these two stories suddenly came together at the end of the episode felt so nice. It was like everything was connected. I’ll say a bit more about this in my concluding remarks, but even when several dramatic of sad things happened in an episode, it always ended in a hopeful, wholesome way that just made sense and always made me smile. I really loved the writing of this show.

Before I go on to my cast comments, I want to make a final note about something I mention more than often in my reviews: the fact that I always like it when a specific field of interest is covered that I don’t have any prior knowledge about. In this case, it went for both fencing and journalism. Honestly, fencing never interested me much, but boy were those matches exciting! They were so thrilling and the energy of the athletes was so palpable, the way Hee Do screamed each time she made a point, the training, the sweating, the focus… It all made it very compelling to watch. I’ve never watched any fencing matches on TV as engagingly as I watched the matches in this show. It was really interesting getting a glimpse into the world of fencing. I didn’t even know they used those machines and little cables they clipped onto their helmets. (On an unrelated note: the beep of the fencing machine they used in matches sounded exactly like my laundry machine and dryer, so on many occasions I was looking over my shoulder to see whether the sound was really just coming from my screen, lol.)
I have watched more shows that included journalism, or the dark side of news reporting, but it was interesting to get some insight into journalism in the late 90s. Discovering all the developmental aspects of the job through Yi Jin, it became even more clear how all industries have faced so many changes throughout the years. I also thought it was powerful to show how reporters also suffer mentally because their work can have such a negative influence on people. Dramas typically depict reporters as vultures, they don’t show any empathy, they just flock around someone, pushing mics in their faces, trying to get a statement out of them. But shown through Yi Jin’s experiences like this, it really puts things in perspective. Reporters are also people, and they have to abide by the rule to not show any emotions while they report. I did find it surprising that Yi Jin became so determined about becoming a reporter of all things, after what happened to his own family and how he himself had gotten ostracized and criticized by society. Still, kudos to him for continuing throughout all the hardships. I mean, he even ended up losing the love of his life because of this dream, he really wanted to go all the way. It was pretty heavy at times, but I did like to see those different sides of the occupation and how Yi Jin struggled with them. It made the job very realistic, and Yi Jin all the more human.

It’s cast comment time!😃

This is the first ever drama I’ve seen of Kim Tae Ri. I only know her from the movie Space Sweepers, and honestly I didn’t even recognize her from there, even though she was one of the main characters (that’s how bad my memory is, guys). Anyways, it seems like she really hasn’t done that many projects, she’s appeared in 6 movies and 3 dramas so far, and has 2 upcoming dramas according to MDL. I see now that she herself graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Broadcasting! She must have understood a great deal about that aspect of the show, even though her own character wasn’t involved in it as much. I saw that she received both the Best Actress and Most Popular Actress awards for her portrayal of Hee Do in this show. As this is my first review of her, I’ll just say that I really liked her performance. She made such an endearing character of Hee Do, balancing the tough exterior with the vulnerable interior without every losing her strength. Her chemistry with Nam Joo Hyuk was really good, they made an incredibly endearing couple. I was really impressed by her performance, and I hope to see more of her from the future!

My boy Nam Joo Hyuk! Honestly, every time I think I’ve seen all this guy can do, he always manages to get me back in a chokehold. There’s just something about the look in his eyes when he silently expresses his love to his co-star that just makes me go🥹 The puppy eyes, the melancholic smile, honestly, he needs to give us a break sometimes. I’ve seen him in almost everything he’s done so far, Surplus Princess, Who Are You – School 2015, Cheese in the Trap, Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo, Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo, Bride of the Water God, The Light in Your Eyes and Start-Up. Also, The School Nurse Files is coming up on my list soon, so I’m excited for that! Although I keep wanting to see more happy roles from him like in Weightlifting Fairy, it’s undeniable that he pulls off the melancholic anti-hero very well too. It reminded me of his role in The Light in Your Eyes a bit. He keeps proving that he has these different sides to him, and I love it. I think he made Yi Jin, despite his undeniable shortcomings, into a very human and multi-layered character that kept trying to do the right thing in spite of his own feelings. He did very well, I can’t wait what kind of project he’ll take on next!

I hadn’t seen anything with Kim Ji Yeon/Bona before this, I didn’t even know she was in Cosmic Girls (which, for the record, says absolutely nothing because I don’t know every single member from every single K-Pop group). Anyways, she’s been in 6 released dramas so far, the latest one just came out. Again, as it is my first review of her as an actress in a drama, I can only say that I liked her performance. As soon as she came out of the initial pettiness, she made Yoo Rim into an incredibly likable character and a true friend. I think her acting was really good and she definitely got a lot of opportunity to show her range in emotional acting. I imagine she and Kim Tae Ri had to learn some fencing, too, I’m not even sure anything was done by alternates. Despite their initial rivalry, Hee Do and Yoo Rim really set some high friendship standards, haha. I liked their chemistry together a lot, it seemed like they all got along so well!

I kept thinking I recognized Choi Hyun Wook from something, but I haven’t seen anything with him in it, either! He’s been in some hyped shows like Taxi Driver, Racket Boys and Jirisan, which I haven’t seen yet. Anyways, I really liked Ji Woong’s character. I loved how they didn’t make a stereotype of him, how despite his tendency to ‘keep it cool’ he still showed a lot of emotion and vulnerability. He wasn’t afraid to express himself, be it through music or fashion, and it was nice that he ended up running a street fashion-inspired business, it suited him very well, he was a born trendsetter. I also really liked his chemistry with Bona, they made a really cute couple and he just couldn’t keep himself from smiling at her. I think the only ‘vulnerable’ sides to his characters were revealed through his mother yelling at him through the phone about his low grades, getting beaten by that jerk teacher and his reaction when Seung Wan quit school. Usually he would just faintly smile and shrug it off, but I don’t think it was always that easy for him to act as carefree as he wanted. He portrayed the layers of the character really well.

I also didn’t know Lee Joo Myung, so kudos for this show to introduce me to so many new actors! She has about as much drama projects to her name as Bona, and I haven’t seen any of them. But yeah, I really liked Seung Wan. She may actually be one of my favorite characters in the show. I liked how, despite the fact that she was the only single person among two couples in her friend group (which I related to by the way because I’ve been there☠️) she was never left out, she was an indispensable part of the group. I liked how she got that edge to her with the whole ‘I don’t find life interesting’ attitude, I wouldn’t have expected that to come out of her mouth initially, seeing as she was doing so well in school and seemed really ambitious. I wonder how exactly she came to see the world that way, and how she got attached to Ji Woong’s ways to excite her life more. I also really liked her relationship with her mom, the scene where she supported her when she quit school was really touching. Also, I liked how the show ended with Yi Jin’s younger brother reappearing in front of her, now an adult (played by Kang Hoon) and she was like, ‘Maybe life will prove itself to be exciting, after all😏’, lol. Her character was just really refreshing and original, and I liked her a lot.

Apparently, Kim So Hyun, who plays adult Hee Do, is a musical actress and she’s only done 4 dramas so far! 😮 Again I was so sure I knew her from somewhere, but I guess not. Her face looks so familiar, though. I thought it was interesting to initially introduce Hee Do as an adult and then go about retracing her life as a teen. In the end, I couldn’t help feel more connected to teen Hee Do than to adult Hee Do, it somehow felt like they weren’t the same person. While she only appeared in a couple of scenes as Min Chae’s mother, she didn’t reveal much about her memories or the way she now looked back on things. Honestly, I was kind of shook when we had that wholesome summer beach trip episode and then when Min Chae asked her about it she was like, ‘I went on a summer beach trip? When?’ The way I tensed up! I was already expecting the amnesia trope to peek its head around the corner or something! Luckily it turned out not to be anything as dramatic as that, it just proved how she’d learned to dissociate from her precious memories with Yi Jin until she got her diary back. Still, that gave me a proper scare!

I’ve seen Seo Jae Hee before in Run On, and she’s also in some upcoming watchlist dramas, so I’m excited to see more of her. As I already mentioned in my review, I was so impressed by how well they managed to make her skin look older and younger! I think she was a really good casting choice for Shin Jae Kyung, even if it was just for her poker face. She definitely pulled off the detached mom very well, although she seemed much warmer as a grandmother. It was nice to see her acting chemistry with both teenage Hee Do and adult Hee Do, they really came a very long way but at least they were finally on good terms with each other again. Being kind of biased by Hee Do’s perspective in the beginning, I also had mixed feelings about her. She would do these sweet things for Hee Do behind her back but it seemed like she was determined not to let Hee Do find out about it, as if she didn’t want to reveal how much she actually cared for her daughter. I don’t know if it was purely her professionalism at work, but if she had been able to distinguish work from her private life, she could’ve at least treated her daughter a bit more warmly at home. For example the way she retrieved Hee Do’s gold medal, that was a really sweet gesture. There’s always some characters in the bunch that behave a bit ambiguously, and I guess that went for her as well. All in all, I liked her performance.

I’ve seen Kim Hye Eun in several shows before, like Romantic Doctor, Teacher Kim (S1 only), Radio Romance, Are You Human Too?, Itaewon Class and most recently in The Sound of Magic. It was funny seeing her as Coach Yang, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her portray such a down-to-earth, casual character before. It was a nice change from her typical castings and I liked her character a lot. There were a couple of times when I wondered what she was thinking, such as with the Ye Ji situation and how she wouldn’t let her quit, but it seemed like she knew what she was doing and she just didn’t want her trainees to give up easily. I guess she just wanted Ye Ji to experience the thrill of fencing one last time before she let her go. If that’s what it was about, I can get behind it, but I still thought it was quite harsh to tell her it was just a slump while the girl was clearly miserable during training. I liked how, despite her prior experience with Hee Do’s mother, that didn’t specifically add any ‘destiny element’ to the story. In typical K-Dramas, characters are always somehow connected to each other for a reason, but here, even if that was the case, they didn’t make an additional deal out of it. Even if Hee Do hadn’t been the daughter of her old friend, she would’ve still ended up accepting her after seeing her raw talent, she saw Hee Do for the diamond in the rough that she was, and that’s all that mattered. I liked how she became such a big supporting figure in both Hee Do and Yoo Rim’s lives. It was nice seeing her in this kind of role for a change.

I want to give a shoutout to So Hee Jung, who played Seung Wan’s mother. I really enjoyed her performance, she was such a lovely addition to the cast. Also, I thought they cast her very well as I could even see some similarity between her and Lee Joo Myung. Maybe it was just me, but I just thought they were very well cast as mother and daughter. I loved how she kept in the loach joke – originated from when she met Hee Do and Yoo Rim for the first time as they all helped her picking up a bunch of loaches she’d dropped. After that, Seung Wan’s friends all became her ‘loach babies’, lol. I really liked how kind and welcoming she was to Ji Woong, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if she took care of Ji Woong when his own mom was out on shifts. I will never forget the scene where she came to defend Seung Wan at her school, criticizing those teachers, she was amazing, I really liked her.

Yoo Rim’s parents were played by Kim Dong Gyoon and Heo Ji Na. I’ve seen Kim Dong Gyoon before in Secret Garden, The Girl Who Sees Smells and Fantastic, and also in some cameo roles I believe. I think this is the first time I’ve seen him as a kind father figure. I was so scared when he got into that car accident that he himself wouldn’t make it, but it was also really nasty how he was treated by the victim’s relatives. Of course, you would blame the person responsible for the crash, but it’s not like he meant to do it. It was an accident, and sometimes blaming it on other people really doesn’t solve anything. I don’t know, maybe I was a bit biased because of their already dire financial situation. You just didn’t want this to happen to Yoo Rim’s family while they were already struggling so much.
Heo Ji Na made me tear up with her incredibly warm facial expressions. Honestly, the way she hugged Hee Do and stroked her hair as if she were her own daughter, even though she had ‘robbed’ Yoo Rim of that gold medal that would bring in some money for her family… she was selfless and genuinely kind. It really warmed and pinched my heart at the same time. I haven’t seen this actress in anything else before, but she was cast really well as Yoo Rim’s mom. The scene where Yoo Rim saw her crying as soundlessly as possible while fixing her fencing gloves was so sad. Yoo Rim’s parents really sacrificed a lot to maintain their daughter’s dream, and they would never ask her to stop fencing just so they could save money. They were really nice characters.

By the way, I lolled so hard about that random Cutie Pie cameo appearance of Choi Tae Joon. How was he able to keep a straight face through that?? I liked seeing him pop up in this unexpectedly, but it was still a bit weird, haha.

Okay, so now we’ve finally reached the end of this review. I really wanted to finish earlier, but I kept thinking of new things to add in. I think I covered everything I wanted to say now, so let’s move on to my concluding remarks.
As I think I’ve made clear already, I really liked this drama. It was nostalgic, it was well-paced and I really liked the writing of both the characters and the episodes. The story was spread out really nicely and wrapped up neatly at the end. I can understand why people wouldn’t like the ending, but I also don’t think it’s fair to just dislike something purely because the main couple doesn’t end up together. The reason for their break-up was crystal-clear, and I believe the most important thing was that they didn’t hold each other accountable for anything. They broke up to liberate each other, to not stand in the way of each other’s ambitions and dreams. I actually quite like the ending, it felt really wholesome. Every single episode, for that matter, was wrapped up in a very hopeful, positive and wholesome way. I remember smiling at almost every single episode’s end, because they always found a way to add in a hopeful element. I don’t think it’s about happy endings or reaching a final destination in life. I think it’s about navigating through life through challenges that naturally occur because of the changing times, be it in the 90s or right now. These challenges are even more challenging because they are out of anyone’s control. It’s like trying to keep a raft floating on turbulent and unexplored waters. Even if you have a dream or a certain profession or sports you want to keep doing, there will always be changes because the times always keep changing and nothing remains the same. Even now, we are in the middle of new changes, it never stops.
In the succession of having watched the movie 20th Century Girl and some other old school stuff, it was nice to be immersed in the 90s once again, because what a throwback it was. I liked how they painted such a clear and relatable picture of the times. Apart from that, I also really enjoyed the dialogues, the characters that were anything but one-dimensional. Everyone was so mature and several characters also seemed quite ahead of their time in the way they felt compelled to stand up against things that were still deemed to be normal procedures at the time. Everyone is just trying to figure out where they’re going, and trying to enjoy the time they have to spend with their friends, families and loved ones. Life will always throw us curveballs when we least expect it, and it’s about how we deal with those without losing our footing.

Thanks you for reading all the way to the end! Taking an entire day to write a review always feels worth it when I think of people who will actually take the time to read it. On the other hand, I’m just glad I was able to finish this review in one day, lol. I will now continue on to something entirely different, another recent Netflix release, and it’s from Taiwan this time. It’s been a really long time since I watched a Taiwanese drama, so I’m really curious as the trailer looks intense but thrilling. I’ll be back soon with a new review.

Until then, bye-bee! xx