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.

Extraordinary You
(어쩌다 발견한 하루 / Eojjeoda Balgyeonhan Haru / A Day/Haru Found By Chance)
MyDramaList rating: 7.0/10

Hello hello! Thought I’d drop another review before the end of the month~ Summer’s nearing its end and we’re heading towards autumn, which means we’re nearing the end of this year already! It’s been a fast ride so far! Anyways, I’m glad that I finally got to watch this show, as it’s been on my list for a while together with my previous watch, and I intentionally took some more time to finish this as I’ve been finishing shows weekly for the past month and I wanted to cut myself some slack, lol. I have to say, I went into this without knowing anything, and I came out of it quite surprised and impressed because I think the story is very original and interesting. It did feel like it started to drag at some point, but it never stopped being interesting and I was really curious how it would end, so in that aspect I gave it a somewhat higher rating. I’m really excited to share my feelings on it!

Extraordinary You is a K-Drama that you can either watch as 32 back-to-back episodes of 30 minutes or as 16 episodes of about an hour – I watched it in the latter format. Our main character is Eun Dan Oh (played by Kim Hye Yoon), a high school student who goes to an elite private school called Seuli High, which only allows rich kids. From the start we get major Hana Yori Dango vibes, not just because of the school setting, but also because there’s a group of handsome rich guys who basically ‘rule the school’ called A3 (which is a clear reference to HYD’s F4, if you ask me). The A3 consists of the leader, Oh Nam Joo (Kim Young Dae), Lee Do Hwa (Jung Geon Joo) and Baek Kyung (Lee Jae Wook). Dan Oh is Baek Kyung’s fiancee, and she’s known the other A3 guys since childhood as well. Despite Dan Oh’s 10-year crush on her fiance Baek Kyung, he in turn has always treated her coldly and pushed her away. Their engagement has been decided by their respective families since they were little and Baek Kyung feels really pressured about marrying Dan Oh because he knows his father only cares about the business aspect of it. On the other hand, Dan Oh also has been diagnosed with a weak heart condition since childhood, and she’s been going in and out of hospitals for as long as she can remember. She always carries a watch which starts beeping as soon as her heartbeat rises, and when our story starts, she’s just had another major surgery. This has been Dan Oh’s life for as long as she’s known – being Baek Kyung’s fiancee, having had a 10-year unrequited crush on him and having a weak heart.
And then she suddenly starts hearing weird sounds, like pages being turned, and she finds herself being teleported to different locations and situations without any memories of how she got there. When she asks her classmates about it, no one seems to have noticed anything – in fact, they keep repeating the same dialogue over and over again.
Dan Oh eventually finds out through the charming school cafeteria guy nicknamed Dried Squid Fairy (played by Lee Tae Ri) that she is in fact a character in a comic book, and everything she’s ever known is just part of her set-up. Not only that, she’s not even the main character, but an extra. She merely just exists in the comic’s story as the main leads’ classmate and Baek Kyung’s fiancee who has a weak heart. Now, somehow, she’s become aware of herself in the ‘shadow’, aka the parts in-between the comic book scenes where she has to play her part. But whatever happens in the ‘shadow’, all the conversations and encounters she has in-between, all of that is erased from her classmates’ minds as soon as the ‘scene’ begins again. Besides Dried Squid Fairy, who clearly knows more than he’s willing to reveal, Dan Oh seems to be the only one to notice what’s going on. And then, she starts noticing someone who keeps helping her out, saving and protecting her whenever she gets hurt. It takes her a while to find the mystery guy, but then she realizes it’s Student Number #13 from her class. Student Number #13 (played by SF9’s Rowoon) is an extra who doesn’t even have a face or name in the comic book. As Dan Oh keeps seeking him out and tries to persuade him to help her in attempting to change her own fate in the story, Number #13 becomes more and more of an established character himself, and Dan Oh ultimately even gives him a name, Haru (which means ‘day’). Dan Oh becomes convinced that Haru can help her change her fate, as she’s been able to change his and make him an official character, at least to the extent of getting him a name and a face and recognition from their other classmates. However, Dried Squid Fairy keeps dissuading them to continue with this as it would harm the original story and might end up upsetting the writer – after all, the writer controls all the characters’ fates and stories and can just make a character disappear without a trace if they want. As more of the story’s characters start becoming aware of themselves and Dan Oh’s feelings for Haru grow stronger than her originally set-up feelings for Baek Kyung, questions of changing one’s fate start looming over everyone. Will it really make a difference what they do in the ‘shadow’? Once the writer makes up their mind about the ending of the story, do the characters really have a choice, as they’re still bound to the comic book’s scenes even when they’re aware that they’re only playing a role? Will Dan Oh and Haru be able to be together when the writer’s bend on pushing Dan Oh and Baek Kyung together?

One of the first points I want to make about this show is that, from the start, I really enjoyed the fact that the writers played around with perspectives on narrative. The parts where the characters became aware of themselves and started mocking their own personas really cracked me up. Honestly, it reminded me a lot of stage acting, also the way they referred to it as ‘scene’ versus ‘shadow’. It was basically the same as ‘on- and off-stage’. As soon as the ‘scene’ began, the light changed, and as soon the ‘scene’ was done, it was like the curtain dropped and the characters stepped out of their on-stage personas. For characters who aren’t aware of themselves, anything that happens in the ‘shadow’ is wiped from their memories as they only live in the ‘scenes’. For characters who are aware of themselves, they can go and do whatever they want as soon as they’re in the ‘shadow’, and they also remember everything that happens in-between ‘scenes’. In the extreme case of someone dying, there are different outcomes: when a character dies in the ‘scene’, they disappear for good, as they’ve officially passed away and are written out of the story. If a character should die in the ‘shadow’, they are put back in the story as a character who’s not aware of themselves again, without any memories of their ‘shadow’ time from before they ‘died’. The rules are quite well-established and thought through and they keep making sense throughout the story. All in all, I thought it was interesting to play with the idea of a character becoming aware of the fact that they are, indeed, a character in a story. Having the characters contemplate about their own personas when they’re not ‘on-stage’ was a really funny aspect of the show, as they all basically became aware of how cheesy their stories actually were. I also thought that making ‘our’ main character an extra in her own story was a very interesting starting point.

Let me go about my character analysis by establishing the comic book’s main cast and story. The current story, based on the comic book called ‘Secret’ by an anonymous writer which can be found in the school’s library (if you look very closely), focusses on the love story between A3 leader Oh Nam Joo and Dan Oh’s classmate/bullied transfer student Yeo Joo Da (played by Lee Na Eun). Joo Da is actually from a poor family and has to take care of her hospitalized grandmother so she works part-time even though that’s officially not allowed next to her studies. As the new transfer student and the sudden target of Nam Joo’s affection, she’s being relentlessly bullied by a couple of Nam Joo’s main fangirls, among who the story’s ‘villain character’, Dan Oh’s friend Shin Sae Mi (played by Kim Ji In). Dan Oh helps Joo Da out and stands up for her a couple of times, which makes them quite friendly with each other.
Then there’s Lee Do Hwa, the second male lead character who’s fated to be the ‘losing guy’ in the love triangle with Nam Joo and Joo Da. Do Hwa is the sweet, considerate and musically talented guy who always manages to cheer Joo Da up when she’s upset about something Nam Joo has done. Do Hwa is the first character after Dan Oh who becomes aware of himself, and when he comes to the conclusion that he cares for Joo Da both in the ‘scene’ and the ‘shadow’, he also attempts to change his story by confessing his feelings to Joo Da before Nam Joo claims her for himself. In the end, even when Joo Da becomes aware of herself too and it does seem like she’s leaning more toward Do Hwa at some point, she still consciously decides to love Nam Joo back, because he simply cannot exist without her. Joo Da and Do Hwa build and maintain a really precious friendship throughout the story, though, so it didn’t feel like a total failure on Do Hwa’s behalf and Joo Da really did think things through in the ‘shadow’.
Then there’s Baek Kyung and Dan Oh, the childhood friends and fiancees. Despite the fact that Baek Kyung has always treated Dan Oh coldly and pushed away her advances to act like a girlfriend to him and give him gifts and stuff, in hindsight I feel like he always loved her (we see that in their childhood flashbacks as well), but that he tried to push her away because he knew that this marriage, from his family’s side at least, only served as a financial tool. His father didn’t even care about whether Kyung actually had feelings for Dan Oh – heck, he didn’t even care if Dan Oh would die from her heart condition, as long as he had the connection to her family’s business. Also, Kyung was probably really scared of losing Dan Oh the same way he lost his mother, so I definitely think it was mostly him trying to push her away as well as his own true feelings for her, mostly to protect her from hurt and his family’s evil influence. In any case, it takes him a long time to figure out how he must’ve always felt about Dan Oh, and it only happens after he becomes aware of himself. You could say that he and Dan Oh end up going in opposite directions with their feelings; while his true feelings for her grow, hers fade.
Haru, who starts out as the faceless, nameless Student Number #13 in Dan Oh’s class, gradually comes into existence after Dan Oh starts noticing and acknowledging him, and the two fall in love in the ‘shadow’. At some point, because Haru has helped Dan Oh too many times in trying to change her fate, he is deleted from the story and comes back as a clean slate character without any of his memories from his time in the ‘shadow’ with Dan Oh – he is ‘recast’ as Baek Kyung’s loyal friend, which means he has to support Kyung and Dan Oh’s relationship even when he then ‘awakens’ again later.

Somewhere halfway through the story, we are introduced to a different story, a ‘prequel’ to ‘Secret’, if you will, in which Dan Oh, Baek Kyung and Haru are the main love triangle. This story was written before the high school love story they are currently in, and takes place in a fictional historical setting. Events and lines from that story start seeping through the three characters’ stories in ‘Secret’, and stuff becomes even more confusing to everyone. This other story, named ‘Trumpet Creeper’ after the red flower that’s a recurring symbol (it’s also the flower you see on the show’s poster above), ends in Kyung pressuring Haru to kill Dan Oh and even forcing his blade into her himself. The Haru from ‘Secret’ starts getting flashbacks of these times, and he even has a scar on his hand from this previous ‘life’, as if to remind him.
The only person who knows all there is to know about this other story is Dried Squid Fairy, as he was actually quite a major character in ‘Trumpet Creeper’, royalty even, who lost the love of his life because of Kyung’s character. Dried Squid Fairy seems to know the most but he does the least about it, thinking that getting involved or interfering with the intended story will only upset the writer – and that’s something we don’t want to happen. Dried Squid Fairy is usually the person who’s just watching everything unfold from the background without getting into action himself, silently cursing the writer for both punishing him like this and for not being original enough to at least change the characters in every story they write. At some point towards the end, the woman who was Dried Squid Fairy’s love in ‘Trumpet Creeper’ is introduced in ‘Secret’ as a transfer student and Dried Squid Fairy has to deal with her approaching him all over again while knowing how that ended the previous time.
In the final episode, after the story of ‘Secret’ is wrapped up and Haru has disappeared (because all extras slowly start getting taken out as the story’s conclusion approaches), we are taken into the writer’s next story, which again features all the same characters from ‘Secret’, but now as college students. Here, Dan Oh and Haru are reunited, somehow with their memories of the previous story intact.

As I mentioned before, I really liked how this show played with different perspectives on narrative and storytelling, and also on how the characters become aware of the fact that they are set-up as a specific personas. I thought it was super funny, comic book characters looking back on their own scenes while thinking, ‘geez, why are my lines always so cheesy’. Regarding stereotypes, especially when it came to Joo Da, I found it really refreshing how she became her own person when she became aware of herself. We always complain about female lead characters being too apathetic and existing purely as the male lead’s love interest. I just couldn’t help thinking throughout that Joo Da was Barbie and Nam Joo was Ken, lol. It was even more interesting that Nam Joo actually never became aware of himself as such, although he did become aware of the fact that he existed purely for Joo Da, and that’s why Joo Da chose to stay with him. She knew that she would be able to live her own life without him, but this wasn’t the case vice versa. At some point I kind of expected her to choose Do Hwa in the ‘shadow’, but I also liked that she was able to make up her mind and decided to care for Nam Joo even outside the ‘scene’, for her own reasons. It was really nice to see Joo Da start standing up against her bullies by herself and calling out Nam Joo’s mom for being such a hag, lol. It’s basically how you wish characters would respond to being treated unfairly but they never do because of their set-up. Well, in that aspect this show definitely made up for some frustrations in other shows.
I was also able to deal with the cheesiness of everything better because the characters themselves were also aware of it. It didn’t bother me that it was all sweet and sugary because it was a love story in a comic book and that’s just how it was written. I actually cracked up at the animated spotlights that kept shining on the two main leads, and how Do Hwa kept seeing a wreath of roses behind Joo Da’s head when she smiled at him. What made it better for me was the realistic feedback that the characters gave on the story once they became aware of their own positions in it.

One of my absolute favorite aspects of the story was Lee Do Hwa’s love-hate relationship with his violin. As the second male lead (and basically the Hanazawa Rui) of the story, Do Hwa would often be depicted sentimentally playing the violin somewhere and Joo Da would often bump into him while he was doing that. I believe that around the first time that Do Hwa becomes aware of himself, he finds himself in a situation where he’s playing the violin on the rooftop while crying, and from that point on he starts mocking his character for being like that and it took me out every single time. He really went ‘wtf I just found myself crying while playing the violin on the roof, why am I such a loser’,😂. Even when he tried to get rid of the violin, it just kept popping up and he was always like, ‘why am I playing this thing again??😭’. I thought it was hilarious. He would find himself sitting in the music room with Joo Da being like, ‘why is this thing in my hand again😩’. It was just a really funny running gag throughout the story.

I want to dive a little deeper into a couple of the main characters – mostly the ones that became aware of themselves but also some noteworthy others before mentioning some of my more critical points about the show.

First of all, Eun Dan Oh, our heroine who’s just an extra in ‘Secret’. By the way, I don’t know what the Korean association with the term ‘extra’ is but I actually wouldn’t have called Dan Oh an extra. To my knowledge, extras aren’t frequently recurring characters or even characters who get introduced by name and face. Student Number #13 (aka Haru before he was recast as Kyung’s friend) was my definition of an extra, but Dan Oh had a proper role, she had a backstory and a romantic storyline of her own. I would’ve found it more appropriate to refer to her as a side or supporting character, as she and Haru were definitely not the same kind of extra. Haru may have been able to do whatever he wanted in the ‘shadow’ as it wouldn’t have affected the main storyline, but Dan Oh did have an established role to play, so her attempts to change her own storyline would definitely influence the main storyline as well. Maybe it’s normal to refer to all side characters as ‘extras’ in Korean, but I found it a bit strange. Also, they kept referring to Do Hwa as a mere ‘supporting character’ while he was the second male lead, so that also felt a bit off. Maybe these character titles are a bit different in other cultures? Anyways, let’s just keep referring to Dan Oh as an ‘extra’ nonetheless, because it’s essential to the story.
As far as Dan Oh has always known, she’s had a crush on Baek Kyung for 10+ years and she’s always been pleased about her engagement to him, even though he’s been treating her really badly. She was written to only ever consider Kyung as her romantic interest, but then when she becomes aware of herself she suddenly realizes that her feelings for him are like a default setting – in the ‘shadow’ she’s more than aware of how badly he’s treating her and she wonders how her character can possibly have feelings for him when he’s treating her that way. She starts to care less and less about how Kyung treats her in the ‘scenes’ as she sets out to find the mystery guy who’s been helping her out, and when she finally finds him, she is surprised at how a handsome guy like him could be a mere extra.
Student Number #13 doesn’t even speak at first, and it’s not clear if he even understands the instructions she’s trying to give him to help her out. However, we do see that she’s the one who gives him a purpose and an identity by acknowledging him as an individual character who’s more than just background fill-up. In hindsight, it probably also had to do with their former connection through ‘Trumpet Creeper’, but Dan Oh is able to bring Haru back all by herself without ever even remembering her storyline from ‘Trumpet Creeper’ – only Haru and Kyung get flashbacks about the previous story.
In terms of family situation, Dan Oh lives alone with her dad (Uhm Hyo Seop), and it’s revealed that her mother passed away from an illness (maybe also a weak heart condition? I don’t remember) when she was young. Her father treasures her a lot and strives to get her the best medical care there is. Her doctor, Lee Joo Hwa (Yoon Jong Hoon), who happens to be Do Hwa’s older brother because of course everyone is connected, clearly also cares about her wellbeing, and he’s always really conflicted when he has to bring her bad news about her worsening condition. Dan Oh’s relationships with the people directly around her are all very good, she has a really good relationship with her dad and she’s got little to worry about besides her own heart condition.
All in all, I found Dan Oh to be a very original female lead character, because for one she doesn’t seem to have any personal insecurities. I personally found it very refreshing to have a female lead character who just had this natural confidence in herself and who worried about things as they happened in the moment. She’s very bubbly and talkative, and not what you’d typically expect of a character with a weak heart condition. She isn’t allowed to participate in events that will make her heart race too much, but other than that the way she presents herself definitely doesn’t scream ‘terminal heart patient’. She never doubts the relationship between her and Haru, she just lets it happen and doesn’t even care what other people think of it (although that’s also because she knows no one will remember them walking around holding hands once the next ‘scene’ starts anyway). In any case, I really enjoyed the part of the show where she started falling for Haru and the relationship between the two deepened. It definitely gave me the dokidokis😌. It was also cute how they kept finding their way back to each other, even when the writer very strongly kept them apart – for example when they’d agreed to meet under that 300-year old tree on a specific day but Dan Oh was suddenly hospitalized and Haru kept being flicked back to different places so he wouldn’t be able to reach the hospital, that was just mean😞. All in all, they were a very cute couple and I enjoyed watching their romance unfold very much.
One of my favorite scenes between them was when they literally talked about the word ‘extra-ordinary’ and Haru even calls Dan Oh ‘extra-ordinary you’. It just made everything come together so nicely, not just the show’s English title but also that they came to terms with the fact that they were going through a change from an ‘ordinary extra’ to an ‘extra-ordinary extra’. The wordplay in itself was cute, but I also just loved how they kept coming up with ways to make each other have faith and keep going with their relationship in the ‘shadow’, even though there was a chance the writer might ruin things for them.
I honestly felt like Haru wasn’t even supposed to be in ‘Secret’, just like Dried Squid Fairy’s lover from ‘Trumpet Creeper’. Even in the comic book, he was drawn as a faceless extra, there wasn’t even a likeness to the lead character from the previous comic. He just suddenly started coming into existence in situations where Dan Oh would get hurt, and then he would suddenly jump in from nowhere to break her fall. It was interesting to see how his character gradually became bigger and bigger. It must’ve been Dan Oh’s subconscious attraction to his character that literally pulled him back into existence despite not even remembering their previous connection, which is kind of impressive in itself. Both Haru and Dan Oh end up getting ‘reset’ in the story one time, but they always manage to get the other to remember everything in the end and reunite.

Moving on, let’s talk about Baek Kyung a bit more. Kyung’s family situation is a lot more dire than Dan Oh’s. His mother died in the hospital when he was very young (same as Dan Oh), and that’s why he has a deep dislike for hospitals, which also connects to his initial disdain everytime Dan Oh has to get admitted; it forces him to have to visit her in the hospital. His dad (Choi Jin Ho), a royal ass, has remarried and he has another son from that second marriage, Baek Joon Hyun (Bae Hyun Sung). Kyung’s father often criticizes and even hits Kyung for disappointing him, because he wants Kyung to make Dan Oh’s fall for him, he can’t push her away. His interest in Kyung and Dan Oh’s marriage lies purely in the fact that his business needs the financial support from Dan Oh’s family business. Kyung has a strong dislike for his (step-)family as a whole, but his younger step-brother Joon Hyun seems to be quite taken with him. In fact, we find out that Joon Hyun is also aware of himself, and even remembers ‘Trumpet Creeper’ as well. Once Kyung becomes aware of himself, there’s actually not much that changes for him, because his feelings for Dan Oh are the same both in ‘scene’ and ‘shadow, and his personality also doesn’t really change. At some point I started feeling a bit bad for him whenever he and Dan Oh had a romantic scene together and when the scene ended Dan Oh would immediately run away to look for Haru, and Kyung would be left behind being all, ‘I actually wouldn’t have minded holding your hand a bit longer but sure, leave me here by myself😒’. Although I was definitely team Dan Oh/Haru, I couldn’t help but feel for Kyung a bit, and I still feel like if they’d just played out the story as it was originally written without ever adding in Haru, Kyung and Dan Oh would’ve still made a cute couple in their own way, especially after Kyung admitted to his true feelings for her and became a more amiable person altogether. I personally have a bit of a soft spot for guys who act all cold but secretly care a lot, so I couldn’t really hate his character, although I did find him kind of harsh toward Dan Oh in the beginning – but then again, that’s how he was written. I think he managed to come into his own in the end, and he became more likable throughout the story.

Apart from Dan Oh and Kyung, the only other characters that are provided with a recurring family member (and not just a mention) are Do Hwa, Nam Joo and Joo Da. As I mentioned before, Do Hwa’s older brother Joo Hwa is Dan Oh’s doctor, although now that I think about it the two brothers don’t actually have any interaction with each other in the story whatsoever. We meet Nam Joo’s parents and older brother, and mostly his mother keeps popping up to make several attempts to persuade Joo Da to get away from her son (again, HYD flashbacks). We see Joo Da’s hospitalized grandmother one time as well. Other than that, there are no additionally added family members in the cast, which I appreciate because sometimes stories tend to linger on less important storylines. I definitely want to thank the writers for creating this story the way they did because it automatically forced them to stick to this one storyline and not get distracted by too much side noise.

Let me talk a bit about some of Dan Oh’s classmates who never become aware of themselves until the end and who just peacefully exist within the love story of Nam Joo and Joo Da. First of all, and I’ve already mentioned her briefly before, Shin Sae Mi. I have something to say for her character because I think she was anything but one-dimensional, and there was something peculiar about her that I believe made her much less typical than she was probably supposed to be. We are introduced to Sae Mi as Dan Oh’s closest friend in class, together with Ahn Soo Chul (played by Kim Hyun Mok). Sae Mi is basically Nam Joo’s biggest fangirl and as she’s also secured a favorable position in his mom’s esteem (as we see later), status-wise she’d probably even have a chance of getting matched with him or something. Together with three other girls (ironically called Il Jin, Yi Jin and Sam Jin), her role in the ‘scenes’ is to bully Joo Da because she’s jealous of how much attention she gets from Nam Joo.
Honestly, when the character chart of the comic book was revealed and Sae Mi was featured right behind the main love triangle as the main ‘villain’ character, I was kind of surprised because I never actually saw her as a character whose role was bigger than Dan Oh’s. In Dan Oh’s story she’s the friend, and she’s not even that mean. On the contrary, she and Soo Chul are responsible for a lot of comic relief in Dan Oh’s scenes, and when all’s well and done Sae Mi even finds herself developing feelings for Soo Chul in the ‘shadow’, even though she’s not aware of herself there. In the college story in the final episode, Soo Chul even becomes her main love interest as a cool and handsome sunbae, while Nam Joo becomes the weirdo in the strawberry sweater who drink strawberry milk all the time. In any case, I just want to say that I had a hard time acknowledging Sae Mi as the ‘bitch’ in ‘Secret’ because she’s more often shown as Dan Oh’s loyal friend than she’s shown to be a mean girl. I found it interesting how Sae Mi, despite being written as the ‘bully’ of the female lead, was put into such a different perspective. I honestly believe that if Sae Mi would’ve become aware of herself, she would’ve second-guessed her own character as well for being so harsh on Joo Da. I wouldn’t even have been surprised if Sae Mi and Joo Da ended up becoming friends in the ‘shadow’, lol. It just didn’t make sense for her to be written as the bitch character but simultaneously be such a good and loyal friend to Dan Oh, who was regularly standing up for Joo Da. I don’t know how to explain it exactly, but I just thought Sae Mi wasn’t as bad of a character as the writer made her out to be.
Besides Sae Mi’s friends, there’s also a couple of other classmates who were basically named to be Classmates #1, #2 and #3. Somehow there were always three of them, lol. Baek Kyung’s fangirls were called also Ae Il, Ae Ri and Ae Sam, and opposite Il Jin, Yi Jin and Sam Jin you had Yang Il, Yang Yi and Yang Sam, who even went as far as to refer to themselves as ‘Y3’ and had a wish to take over as the new A3, lol. The class president was named Ban Jang, which literally means ‘class monitor’. Even the main leads’ names, Oh Nam Joo and Yeo Joo Da were direct references to the terms ‘male and female lead characters’. It all just added to the argument of how lazy the writer was and I thought it was funny how they thought of details like this. Speaking of which, I don’t know if this was just me but wasn’t there just a running gag with the word ‘seuri’/three’ altogether? Seuri High, A3, Y3, friends #1, #2, #3… maybe it was all part of the writer’s unoriginality from the start, lol.

By the way, I revisited the Extraordinary You cameo that took place in True Beauty. I only just found out that the director for both shows is the same, so that explains a lot, haha. I mentioned the cameo in my review of TB at the time, but as I hadn’t watched EOY yet I wasn’t able to grasp the reference. As soon as I finished EOY I went back to check out the TB cameo again (it’s in episode 4, if you’re interested) and now I am glad to say I finally understand the joke, haha. It’s a scene set in a cinema where the ML interrupts Dan Oh and Kyung while they’re on a date together before the ‘scene’ ends -you even hear the page flip and a part of the OST play in the background- and Dan Oh runs out calling for Haru while Kyung is left behind yelling for her to come back. That was the only cameo I was aware of at the time because of the comments, but I discovered there’s actually one more in episode 15 with Nam Joo. It’s the scene on Namsan Tower where the FL mistakes him for the ML, causing him to drop his strawberry juice. As he picks it up, Nam Joo tells the FL that his girlfriend loves strawberries – which is of course a direct reference to the fact that Nam Joo consistently keeps giving Joo Da strawberry milk because he believes she likes it, even though she just mentioned liking it once. It was funny seeing and understanding these cameos now after finishing the whole show. I also thought it was clever because both shows are based on webtoons – it wouldn’t even be that weird to have them happen in the same universe. I also noticed that in the cameo, Dan Oh has the same longer hairstyle as she does in the college story featured at the end of EOY, so maybe the new story is set in the same world as True Beauty? I thought that was a pretty funny detail. I noticed later that there were a couple more actors from EOY who made a guest appearance in TB, though not necessarily as their EOY characters. I’ll mention those in my cast comments.

Before I go on to my cast comments and conclusion, I just want to give my singular point of criticism on this show. As I briefly mentioned in my introduction, although I really appreciated the original twist of fictional characters becoming aware of themselves and trying to figure out a life in-between the storyline that’s been set up for them, there was a point where the story started to drag on a bit too much for me. At some point, there was a lot of repetition in the dialogue and the only thing anyone ever talked about was ‘can we or can we not change our fate?’, ‘can we change the ‘scene’?’, ‘how did you manage to change the ‘scene’?’, etc. It felt like I was watching the same scene over and over again. Even after Dan Oh and Haru decided that they would just try to enjoy the time they had together in-between the ‘scenes’, they still ended up talking about changing their fates every single time they were together. I don’t know, there just came this point where the story wasn’t going anywhere and Dan Oh was only worrying about her worsening heart condition and whether the writer would let her die or not and there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it. At first Dan Oh was really adamant on changing her fate, then Haru disappeared once and she swore never to try changing her fate again, but then she still kept talking about it non-stop and I was like, ‘make up your mind already!’ It wasn’t dragging to the extent that it became frustrating per se, but it did cause my attention to slip a little bit and that’s also the reason why the final few episodes took me longer to finish. I guess there was just some time to kill before the final conclusion in which Dan Oh would either have a final major surgery or be cured, and they decided to fill it up with endless back-and-forth discussions about nothing. I could’ve done with a little less of that.

Also, I would’ve liked a bit more explanation about those vortex black hole things that suddenly started appearing, because even though several people could see them it was never actually explained what those were supposed to be. The conclusion I came to was that they were some sort of mirrors to the parallel universe of ‘Trumpet Creeper’ that started to seep through once Dan Oh and Haru started interacting in ‘Secret’ (although I’m not sure if that’s the exact point from which they started appearing). They did seem to have a link to the previous story because at some point Haru looked into one and saw a scene from ‘Trumpet Creeper’ unfold, and when he stuck his hand into it he also regained his scar. However, even Dried Squid Fairy was just looking at them like🤔🤔, and I kind of expected him to at least know what they meant, but I guess not. I’ll just stick to my own theory for now, haha.

Before my cast comments I just want to make one final comment on the show’s Korean titles, because I found it interesting that it was so different from the English one again. The English title makes perfect sense, it’s even literally explained in the show, but the Korean title is directly derived from the webtoon it’s based on, and it roughly translates to ‘A Day (or Haru) Found By Chance’, which clearly refers to the name ‘Haru’, which Dan Oh gives him with the embedded hope that he might ‘change her everyday life’. I think it’s kind of a cute and accurate title since Dan Oh does find Haru by chance in ‘Secret’, she manages to find him and pick him out of the crowd by herself while no one else ever even noticed him. I personally do feel like the English title has a more specific reference to the story though, also with the wordplay on them being ‘extras’ and all. I just thought it was interesting to compare the two titles, as I do sometimes.

On to the cast comments! I was glad to see a lot of actors that I hadn’t seen in anything before, and some who I only knew from name or face but now finally have a better picture of!

To start with our heroine, Kim Hye Yoon, when I checked her drama performance list I saw a lot of stuff that I’ve seen but where she only had like a guest role or a 1-episode-only role. I guess I may have seen her face but I’ve never seen her in a main lead role before so I’ll just give a comment on her performance without referring to anything else. As I mentioned earlier, I thought Dan Oh was a really original female lead character, even just by the fact that she wasn’t the heroine in her own story. I thought that was a really clever twist to give, to create a main character who didn’t have to be ‘on-stage’ the entire time but who was able to become her own person in the blank spaces of the main storyline. I think her performance of Dan Oh was very animated, very bubbly, and I liked how she just exuded confidence. I think it might’ve been trickier than it seemed to act out a story within a story, all the more because there are so many sudden scene switches that were most likely recorded separately but still had to look like they happened in an immediate sequence. I thought she consistently kept up the same high energy very well and I’m curious to see her in different kinds of roles!

Even though I know Rowoon, I don’t think I’ve actually seen any dramas with him yet! We’re definitely going to change that – as a matter of fact I know there are a couple of his dramas on my watchlist. I know he’s an idol and that he’s been doing a lot of acting and I was prepared for the fact that he was handsome but I still couldn’t deny that he was ⭐VERY⭐ dreamy. Once this initially mysterious, non-speaking role warmed up to Dan Oh and started getting playful with her… well, let’s just say I couldn’t blame Dan Oh’s beeper to go off at certain points. There was this scene when Dan Oh arrived at school and he pulled her towards him by her backpack straps just to say ‘annyeong’ and I was like 😳😳. He really was the cutest, and Dan Oh and Haru made a very adorable pair. I also loved the recurring scenes of them bumping backs together. I am very curious to see him in the dramas that are still on my list, so hopefully I’ll get to watch those soon!

This was actually my first time seeing Lee Jae Wook in action, as well. I knew of him because of the recent Alchemy of Souls hype, and there are a couple more series with him on my watchlist, so I’m excited to see more of him. Baek Kyung was the kind of character that gradually grew on me even though I wasn’t particularly rooting for him. I just thought that, should things have gone wrong and the writer decided to break Dan Oh and Haru apart for good, he’d at least have been a decent back-up since he genuinely cared for her. He was simply too little too late with realizing his true feelings for her. I ended up feeling a bit sad for him because just when he was starting to realize how much he loved Dan Oh, Dan Oh was already convinced that his feelings for her were also because of his set-up. She didn’t even consider the fact that he might’ve started developing real feelings for her the way she did with Haru, and to see him get left behind in the dust after their scenes together did make me feel a bit bad for him. I liked Lee Jae Wook’s performance though, I think he was one of the characters that maintained his character without getting sappy, and I liked the way he’d just walk into a room with Haru or Dried Squid Fairy, scoff, and immediately turn around again, lol. I am curious to see him in different kinds of roles!

Apparently, Lee Na Eun is a former member of K-Pop girl group APRIL (who sadly disbanded last year), which at least explains why there was an APRIL song in the OST, lol. As I mentioned, I liked how they made Joo Da into a multi-dimensional character despite her set-up, and I also liked how Lee Na Eun pulled off the role. The way her face changed when she realized how unfairly she was being treated but never immediately went to the typical bitchy face, and also the way she confronted her bullies and Nam Joo’s mother without actually lowering herself to their level was really satisfying. As I said, Joo Da was Barbie, she was Barbie and she was able to break free from her pattern. She got the chance to make her own decisions despite being fundamentally tied to a man by the writer. I also really liked her friendship with Do Hwa, and part of me even wanted them to end up together, even if it was just to mess with the storyboard a bit more. I just really liked it when Joo Da, of all people, started becoming aware of herself, because as the female lead she just came into so much power she didn’t even realize she had while she was her fragile persona ‘on-stage’. I really liked her character development.

I still find it such an interesting choice to never let Nam Joo become aware of himself. It would’ve been such an obvious thing to do, but they didn’t, and that’s why he was Ken all the more. It was funny to see how the almighty Oh Nam Joo, the Domyouji of the story, was made into such a softie because he just couldn’t escape his set-up of being devoted to Joo Da. In the end it actually made him a little miserable as well and I even felt a bit sorry for him. That ‘scene’ where he bought Joo Da that fancy hairclip and the curtain dropped and Joo Da went, ‘do you even remember when or where you bought this?’ and he was just like, ‘I don’t know, I just think about you all the time’🥲I was like ‘daww, this poor guy’, lol. I still found it sweet of Joo Da to stay with him despite her will to live her own life, seeing how his character just couldn’t exist in the storyline without her. I liked Kim Young Dae’s performance, all the more because he had to portray such a stereotypical character. I liked how his character was also put into perspective and even though he never became aware of himself as the male lead character of the story, I did feel like he voiced some really meaningful stuff at the end. To see his development from the proud and tough school leader to basically a bit of a wimp was really funny and also a bit touching. I’m just going to say it: no matter his set-up, Oh Nam Joo is and was Kenough.

I could’ve sworn I’d seen Jung Geon Joo in something else before, he looks so familiar! Apparently he had a role in The Third Charm, but I don’t remember him from there and I don’t even think I mentioned him in my review (yes, I actually checked). He also had a guest appearance (not a cameo as Do Hwa though) in True Beauty. I guess they just put people from EOY in there as regular easter eggs, lol. In any case, Lee Do Hwa was one of my favorite characters, and not just because of the thing with the violin, although that contributed greatly, lol. I just really liked that at least one of the main characters of the story ‘woke up’ so fast, especially in contrast to Nam Joo, who remained oblivious forever, and it was funny that it was Do Hwa because he was supposed to be the sweet and sentimental one. I remember this one scene where he was stopped in his tracks at a street corner just so he could witness Nam Joo meeting up with Joo Da at her part-time job. Again, I love how they dealt with tropes like this, because we all know those scenes where the second male lead just ‘happens’ to come across the main pairing and has to watch from a distance as they get closer. Here, it was literally like that. Do Hwa was basically teleported from day-time school campus to night-time city street and put in freeze just so he could witness that encounter between them. I remember him being like, ‘why do I have to be transported to a random street corner just to see this and feel miserable?’ It put such a different twist on classical storytelling and tropes in K-Dramas (and comic books, for that matter). Because of his set-up as the second male lead Do Hwa had to endure a lot of this and that made me really empathize with him. He did everything he could in his limited ‘shadow’ time to form a personal connection with Joo Da that wasn’t part of the original story, and he never got in her way as she was figuring stuff out, even after realizing that she’d become aware of herself. I really loved their friendship and I really loved Do Hwa. He was such a sweetheart and he also became such a loyal friend to Dan Oh and Haru, to the extent where he even got heartbroken when one of them suddenly didn’t remember the other anymore because of a reset, haha. He was their number #1 shipper. I loved the final A3 scene where he was hugging Nam Joo and Baek Kyung, crying about how mature they’d all gotten, lol. Bless Lee Do Hwa.

Now I can finally drop some reference dramas here, because if there’s one actor I’ve seen in a bunch of stuff before, it’s Lee Tae Ri. He was in Sungkyunkwan Scandal, The Moon That Embraces the Sun, Rooftop Prince, The Beauty Inside, and he also did a bunch of cameos and guest appareances as far as I can tell. He also had a guest appearance in True Beauty where he worked at the FL’s school cafeteria 👀, so that may have also been a reference to his character in EOY. Dried Squid Fairy (I see he’s credited under the character name Jin Mi Chae on MDL, but I have no recollection of him ever being referred to by that name in the show so I’m just gonna keep calling him DSF) is probably the most mysterious character out of everyone. He seems to be the only one aware of the comic books before Dan Oh finds out about it and he keeps a lot of the truth to himself, but there’s also a lot he apparently doesn’t know. The only concrete piece of information that’s revealed about him is that he was one of the main characters from ‘Trumpet Creeper’, and that he was harshly punished and downgraded by the writer to end up as his current minor character in ‘Secret’. As someone who’s seen the power (or should I say the wrath) of the writer first-hand, he’s the most wary of him and that’s why he keeps dissuading everyone else to interfere with the main story. I think he would’ve probably made a better case for himself if he’d played open card with everyone from the start. He could’ve told them exactly why they had to watch out for what the writer could do. It was because he decided to stay so secretive about it that no one thought to heed his advice. I honestly wish there could’ve been a bit more depth to Dried Squid Fairy’s character, because he was literally just standing there with his arms crossed, brooding but never acting. I wish he could’ve had a more active role in either helping the main characters out, or at least trying to stop what they were trying to do more actively. Now he was basically just the, ‘No… stop… don’t…’ guy who didn’t actually step in to stop anyone from doing anything risky. I do like that Lee Tae Ri is a regular casting choice for historical dramas, it suits him very well. Whenever I see him I always go ‘Heyyy, this guy again!’, haha. It was fun seeing him in this.

I really thought I knew Kim Ji In from something, but looking at her drama list I guess I don’t! I see she had a guest appearance in two episodes of Start-Up, but I don’t remember her from there. Maybe she looks like someone else that I’m confusing her with? I don’t know. Anyways, as I already said about Sae Mi, I was really grateful for how not one-dimensional they made her character, or any of the characters for that matter. Everyone tends to hate the designated ‘villain/bully/bitch’ character, but Sae Mi didn’t seem like a villain/bully/bitch to me at all outside of her ‘scenes’ with Joo Da. I just couldn’t help wondering how she would’ve reacted to becoming aware of her role in the story, but unfortunately, we’ll never find out. I liked Sae Mi’s character (apart from when she bullied Joo Da, of course), she was kind of a mess but she was consistently funny without trying to overdo it and I had to appreciate her friendship towards Dan Oh as well. I liked that she even opened herself up to the possibility of being attracted to Soo Chul at some point and I have to admit they looked pretty good together in the college story, haha. I couldn’t help think that Sae Mi must’ve been a pretty fun role to play, with different sides and challenges to it. I liked her performance.

I haven’t mentioned Soo Hyang, Dried Squid Fairy’s former lover who was suddenly introduced in ‘Secret’ as a transfer student, in my review that much because there wasn’t that much to her that was really important to the main storyline, but I did find it cute when she revealed that she did remember Dried Squid Fairy and they were able to reunite with a hug at the end, that was really sweet. Also, I’ve seen Lee Ye Hyun before in Andante, on which I wrote my very first drama review, so I just wanted to make a mention of that, lol.

Lastly, I want to make a final mention of Bae Hyun Sung, who played Baek Kyung’s younger stepbrother, because I yelped when I recognized him from Our Blues. I have to say I had a feeling about him from the start, I just felt like there was more to him from the way he looked at his brother, so I wasn’t actually that surprised when he revealed that he was also aware of himself, but I did find it interesting that he remembered all the way back to ‘Trumpet Creeper’. Also, since it was allegedly rare for a character to become aware of themselves it did seem a bit random that a minor character like him could be onto everything. I was also confused when he suddenly started appearing at Seuli High with everyone, I hadn’t noticed he was a student there before. Anyways, it was nice to see a familiar face and he’s just such a puppy. I liked how his character stayed true to Baek Kyung rather than follow in the footsteps of his nasty parents.

Well then, I think I’ve reached the conclusion of my review on EOY. I found the story very original and interesting, I loved how they played with classical tropes and flipped perspectives so that the characters themselves got to comment on their own roles and the story they were a part of. I guess it just started getting a little messy for me as soon as ‘Trumpet Creeper’ was dragged into ‘Secret’, and I got a bit impatient when there just didn’t seem to be anything else to talk about besides ‘to change fate or not to change fate’. There were a few things left open that I would’ve liked to get an explanation for, like for example how those vortex holes worked. I also found myself wondering if we’d find out who the writer was in the end. Like, I almost expected the final scene to reveal the real world in which the comic book was being sold, or a revelation in which the writer expressed their disdain on how their characters kept trying to mess around with the story, something like that. Everyone kept making such a big fuss about this powerful and merciless writer and the fact that everyone’s fate was so uncertain because everything was in the hands of this invisible god-like being, and then in the end we don’t even get to find out how exactly the whole thing works. Not that I minded the ending, or the fact that we as viewers remain within the story’s universe until the end, but I can’t deny it left me hanging just a little bit.
Other than that, I really enjoyed watching this, it wasn’t too heavy or too dramatic (even though it was a comic book story), it was entertaining and sweet and I liked the majority of the characters and their multi-dimensionality. I think that, while it had the typical vibes of a romantic love story, it also did a good job of commenting on that typicality, on those stereotypes and tropes. I always love it when dramas express skepticism towards stereotypes. The way the characters became aware of their personas and reflected on them was one of my favorite things about this show. It really put classical drama stories in a new light, and it just made me feel hopeful for new and original ways to explore storytelling in K-Drama.

Next up on my list are a couple of shorter Japanese dramas, so I’m definitely going to be back in a week or so with my next review. Stay tuned!

Bye-bee! x