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.

Emperor or Boss
(陛下在左, 老板在右 / Bìxià Zài Zuǒ, Lǎobǎn Zài Yòu / His Majesty On the Left, My Boss On the Right)
MyDramaList rating: 6.0/10

Hi everyone! Maybe it’s a bit sooner than expected, but I’m sharing another review! I passed my final assignments, which means I basically passed my MA, so what better celebration is there to review another show! The ninth show my Spin-the-Wheel app picked out for me was another short one, so I was able to finish it quite quickly. I liked that it was another Chinese one – my app is really good at switching things up and I’m here for it. As with my previous watch, I didn’t exactly remember when I put this show on my list or why, but I’m always in for a cute romance story so I went in with an open mind. In hindsight I think it was quite silly and cute, even though it lacked depth and I couldn’t really wrap my head around some things. In any case, I’m excited to share my views on it, so let’s go!

Emperor or Boss is a Chinese Mango TV drama series, and there are three different ways to watch it: in 18 episodes of about 15 minutes, in 6 episodes of about 35 minutes, or in 3 episodes of about an hour. I watched it in the format of 6 episodes on BiliBili. The story is about a young woman named Fu Bao (played by Dawn Chen/Chen Fang Tong), who works at an acting agency. On the night of her 24th birthday, she is drinking alone in the storage room at work when she finds an authentic-looking notebook. On the cover it says “The Wishing Notebook”, and that whatever you write in it will come true. In a lonely and drunken daze, Fu Bao writes that she’d like to fall in love with someone as handsome as her boss Wei Lai (played by Ye Xiao Wei). The next morning, she wakes up in her own bed – next to her boss. Shook by the fact that the wish she wrote in the notebook came true – that is, if a suggested night together equals falling in love – she looks for it again, and that’s when suddenly a strange man in traditional attire confronts her. He claims to be Li Ming Shi (played by Yang Ze), the Emperor of the Li State, and his notebook somehow ended up in this world. The only way he can go back to his own world and time is if his name is written in the notebook by the last mentioned person, which, thanks to Fu Bao, is now her boss, Wei Lai. However, Fu Bao just happens to be needing an actor to step in at an audition and Li Ming Shi seems like the perfect candidate – it also happens to be a historical drama they’re casting for. She promises that as long as Ming Shi takes the audition, she’ll ask Wei Lai to write his name in the book so he can return to his own world. However, Ming Shi actually gets hired for the acting job and now has to finish the filming of the drama. Fu Bao, acting as his agent, allows him to stay at her apartment for the time being. The two get close and eventually fall in love. Meanwhile, as a result of waking up next to her that one time, her boss Wei Lai also develops feelings for Fu Bao. The three end up in a love triangle and the series’ title basically sums up the main question: will Fu Bao choose the Emperor or her boss?

To dive right in to my first impressions, I thought that the way it started was all over the place. It starts with Li Ming Shi being chased by his brother and some assassins in a forest, introducing their fight about the notebook before it disappears in a flash of light. Then suddenly the notebook is a prop in the storage where Fu Bao finds it. It also brushes over her waking up next to her boss as a kind of comical but meaningless event. Nothing is explained about how or why the book ended up years into the future, or how Li Ming Shi himself managed to travel there. It’s never even established which dynasty he’s from or whether he realizes he’s travelled through time. They both just seem to accept that they are apparently from “different worlds”.
Although the buildup in the relationship between Fu Bao and Li Ming Shi was quite cute, there was a lot that I would’ve liked to have established more clearly between the two of them. Fu Bao initially doesn’t really seem to take Li Ming Shi seriously when he explains that he’s from way back when. Even after she agrees to let him stay in her apartment, she keeps getting surprised by the fact that he doesn’t know how to use any modern-day utensils, or that flipping a switch to put on the light is like magic to him. She just treats him like any other person: she gets him hooked on bubble tea and instant noodles and just lets him wander around the drama set. It seemed to me as if she wasn’t even that interested in learning more about where he came from or what the whole deal was with the notebook. Her first intentions with him are quite selfish: she needs an actor to fill in for a role, and she holds the promise of asking Wei Lai to write his name over his head while accommodating him until the filming is done. In the meantime, Ming Shi gets more and more used to living in this new world and shows that he’s a quick learner when it comes to using a smartphone and playing video games.
While these two grow naturally closer as they spend so much time together at home and work, Wei Lai’s feelings for Fu Bao are growing as well. He’s not sure from when it started, but it does seem like mysteriously waking up next to her did the trick. From that point on, he’s constantly trying to get alone with Fu Bao. Fu Bao, however, interprets all his advances as ways to tease her or to take advantage of her as her boss.

Honestly, this was another weird thing, because the three are so clearly set up as a love triangle, but I don’t think Wei Lai ever really stood a chance. I don’t think Fu Bao had feelings for him, even when she wrote in that notebook. The summaries I’ve found on different drama source websites are quite misleading too, to be honest. I read somewhere that she wrote that she wanted to sleep with her boss, but the subtitles that I watched clearly stated that she wanted to fall in love with someone “as handsome as him”. How this manifested itself in the two of them waking up next to each other in Fu Bao’s bed – I don’t know, but it definitely instigated Wei Lai’s feelings for her. Still, I’d only call something a love triangle when there is at least a chance for both parties, and in this case Fu Bao’s feelings for Ming Shi developed so naturally that Wei Lai was pretty much just making a fool of himself with his numerous attempts. It actually became a bit awkward to watch at some point, like he just didn’t want to see what was right in front of him, and he kept convincing himself that Fu Bao was into him. I really didn’t like that he became so desperate, even when Fu Bao and Ming Shi had literally conveyed their eternal love for each other right in front of him (which did make me feel for Wei Lai a little, to be honest). You know a love is not sincere when a guy comes to you pleading that he’ll give you more of this and that than the guy you’re dating, as if that’s what it’s about and not your own feelings. So yeah, I don’t think Wei Lai went about it the right way. It would’ve probably been different if he’d been more considerate of Fu Bao’s feelings and not just his own.

Admittedly, despite the many sappy lovey-dovey parts, I really liked it when Fu Bao and Ming Shi finally officially got together, because then suddenly it took a turn I did not expect in this show. The unicorns and rainbows suddenly turned into some serious passion and fire! It actually made it more exciting for me to see how the two immediately became so physically intimate after they professed their mutual love. They literally couldn’t keep their hands or lips off each other! I saw a funny comment on MDL that said, “Those Sailor Moon sheets saw some thangs!” 😂 If that ain’t that the truth! I honestly didn’t expect this level of intimacy in a show that started out as such an innocent romantic comedy. There have been series in which the mutual love confession led to a sappiness that became too much even for me (looking at you, Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha 👀), but I actually thought it was very cute how affectionate Ming Shi became. Like, he went through a really natural development from dignified and stoic to such a smooth-talker! The way he just slipped in flirty lines, like “You are my whole world” and “Because I met you”?? Honestly, the scene where he blow-dried her hair and lifted her onto the basin got me like 😳😳 because it was so smooth?? I actually thought the fact they became super lovey-dovey really fitted the vibe of their relationship so far, they went from friends to lovers without any prior expectations and then just let it happen. I liked that.

Of course the show isn’t complete without some stupid person trying to ruin everyone’s day. One of the other actors from the drama that Ming Shi is doing, a guy named Robert (for some reason), just can’t deal with the fact that Ming Shi is a better actor than him. He goes to despicable lengths to try and “disqualify” Ming Shi, in which he actually endangers his life: he literally loosens the rope holding Ming Shi as he’s hanging midair for an action scene, risking a very high and dangerous fall. Luckily he gets fired for it (I’d say attempted murder but okay), but he comes back in the end because of his eternal grudge against Ming Shi (a sore loser is what he is). When Ming Shi’s older brother Li Ming Qian (played by Wang Zi Ting) – the one who was chasing him in the forest for the notebook in the first episode – also suddenly finds his way to the future, Robert makes a deal with him. He can get Ming Qian to where his little brother is so he can kill him (?!) and then he strives to keep the notebook for himself.
Robert is the kind of person who can’t stand being confronted with the fact that other people are better than him. Don’t be like Robert.

This leads me to another point I would’ve liked to get more clarity on: what was the deal about the two brothers and the notebook? It was established that Ming Qian had super vengeful feelings towards his younger brother for some reason, probably because he got to be the Emperor, but then I’m like, isn’t the older sibling usually next in line? Did the older brother do something that cost him his chance at succession? I didn’t really get why he constantly fought Ming Shi and even wanted to kill him for real. Some brotherly feelings! I get that the notebook had the power of making wishes come true, but was that the main reason or was it just a plot tool? I really would’ve liked some more backstory about how the relationship between the two brothers soured, because now I just had to assume it was what it was without any context to judge the situation for myself. In terms of narrative, the fact that there was no substantial context regarding their upbringing or relationship only made it more extreme that Ming Qian actually wanted to kill his younger brother. No redemption arc for him, no insight into what he’d been through, nope, he was just depicted as a merciless villain and I found that a pity.

All in all, I guess my major criticism would be the lack of character context or backstories. We don’t learn anything about who Fu Bao is, how she came to be an agent at that agency or what kind of environment she grew up in. There is no indication of any family members or friends outside of her workplace. I personally like to have a bit more substantial evidence of how the FL has lived her life leading up to the fateful day she meets her soulmate.
The only character that we get a little bit of context from is Ming Shi, and that revelation brought so much to his character for me. At some point in the last part of the show he tells Fu Bao about how he was brought up, how he always had to live by the rules and wasn’t allowed to even put a single toe out of line. Heck, he wasn’t allowed to eat more than three bites of any kind of food. This little bit of backstory added so much to how his character transformed and how thankful he must have been for Fu Bao to take him into her world and show him what it was like to eat and do whatever he wanted. I couldn’t blame him for not wanting to go back – screw being the Emperor if you can’t even binge-eat your favorite food! It wasn’t much, and I still would’ve liked to know more about his family history, but it was something.
I also really would’ve liked more context on the work relationship between Fu Bao and Wei Lai in advance of the events of the show. How long had they known each other and worked together? Were there any feelings between them before or did that really just fall out of the sky because of the notebook? There are so many things that I wanted to know. Without any context of what their dynamic was originally like, I guess it was just extra awkward to see Wei Lai suddenly coming onto Fu Bao like that. Also, I honestly couldn’t even tell what he was like as a boss because there wasn’t a single scene of him doing his regular job in-between all the advances and interrupting sweet moments between Fu Bao and Ming Shi. Like, if you write a character as the boss of a company, at least support that with some visual evidence rather than just letting him throw around some phrases like, “I have the power to fire you! I’m your boss”. That didn’t really help in building his character, either.
Apart from that, I just wanted to know how the whole timeslip/world-skipping thing worked. Like, which one was it? How and why did the notebook end up in Fu Bao’s time/world? How did Ming Shi and Ming Qian both manage to follow it to Fu Bao’s time/world? Why was it necessary to write their names in the book to bring them back when it wasn’t necessary to enable them to travel through time/worlds? Like, ANY kind of explanation on the different times/worlds would’ve been welcome. It was the last aspect of the story to leave ambiguous, in my opinion, but they still ended up doing just that.
Generally speaking, some more explanation, backstory and context would’ve really helped to put things into perspective more, because the lack of it made a lot of things quite random and awkward.

The final criticism I have is related to the ending. It’s not the first time I’ve a Chinese drama end this way. The main couple is somehow separated and then in the end someone who looks exactly like the ML suddenly pops back up in the FL’s life. I can’t describe it very well, but I remember a similar ending in Flipped, where the ML’s actor suddenly appeared as a “new employee” who just happened to look exactly like the ML. I never know what to think of it. After creating such a dramatic separation scene and showing how Fu Bao and Ming Shi were both crying their eyes out dealing with the loneliness they each had to face when they went back to their own worlds, what was up with the ending of Ming Shi suddenly returning as a “new employee” at the company? Like, if you were just going to reunite them that easily, why make their separation so dramatic? Also, was he really Ming Shi or someone who was the spitting image of him? From the way he was smiling at Fu Bao, you’d think it was him and that he remembered her as she did him, but did no one else recognize him then? Was everyone else’s memory wiped or something? I was so confused when Fu Bao suddenly woke up at that storage room and time seemed to have reverted to her 24th birthday, with the notebook still there, but with the introduction of this “new employee”. Like, what the hell happened? I really didn’t follow the ending. It was a pity because I was sincerely touched by the scene before that, when Fu Bao saw Ming Shi everywhere in her house and she started singing that love song of hers, imagining him to sing along with her while tears were welling up in her eyes. That scene was so touching! 🥺 And then she suddenly woke up back at the start of the show and I was like, wait what?! Don’t tell me everything was a dream?! Did none of it actually happen and did the “new employee” just appear as the person Fu Bao wished for in the notebook? If anyone has a clue of what I’m not getting, please enlighten me, cause I really don’t know what to make of it.

Since it’s such a short show and I’ve already covered all the main events, I just want to give two final shoutouts to supporting characters that I liked.
First of all, Wei Lai’s assistant Du Zi Teng (played by An Qin Fu). I really liked this guy, he was so funny. I loved how he immediately knew Wei Lai was into Fu Bao, and he was just a very friendly figure to everyone. His character brought a really nice energy to the show.
I also really liked Ming Shi’s co-star from the historical drama, He Tao (played by Meng Jia Xin). I loved her friendship with Fu Bao, it was so nice that Fu Bao had a sincere ally on set who would stand up for her. I would’ve liked to see even more of their friendship, though.

You know you’ve written a very short review when you reach the cast comments and think, wow, I’m here already? 😂 That’s the thing with short dramas, they make for very short reviews that are easy and fast to write! I didn’t actually know any of the actors from this show, but I still want to give some comments because I do like getting to know new faces.

Dawn Chen/Chen Fang Tong reminded me SO much of Jang Na Ra. Her little face with the round eyes – she could’ve been her double in Baby-faced Beauty and no-one would’ve known the difference. In the beginning I was a bit confused by the way she portrayed Fu Bao, as in that it was unclear to me what her intentions were with Wei Lai and Ming Shi. But this got better throughout the series and in the end there were some moments where I was genuinely touched by her performance. She seemed so casual and worryfree from the start that I wasn’t sure if she’d get to show us any emotional depth, but they kept that as a surprise for the end, I suppose. I believe there’s at least one other show with her on my watchlist so I’ll be glad to see her in some other series as well. I’m really curious to see her as a different type of character. All in all I thought she was very cute and I came to like her acting more and more throughout the story.

While I was snooping through Yang Ze’s MDL list, I ended up finding some other shows with him that sounded interesting so I put them on my list as well, haha. I think he probably portrayed the development of his character the best out of everyone, undeniably helped by his outward transformation. Although honestly I really didn’t like the short hair and I didn’t really understand why his hair got cut in the first place because he literally had the same hairstyle in the historical drama as he did in real life?? At the end of the series I couldn’t even remember him being all stoic and serious in the beginning. It was nice to get a little bit of backstory about his upbringing, I thought that was a really sweet moment between them. I think that, because his character was fleshed out the most, it automatically made him the character I liked most out of everyone. I wasn’t surprised to see that he’s done a lot of historical dramas, it suits him very well. I’m very curious to see him in some more modern-day shows as a ‘regular’ person too, though.

In my head, Wei Lai’s face was like a combination of Lee Min Ho and Baek Hyun from EXO, lol. I was a bit disappointed when the kind of love he portrayed for Fu Bao turned out to be so shallow. At some point he even got a bit dominant to the point where I was like, uhm, sir, will you kindly back off now? 🙅🏻‍♀️
(Also, Alexa, please play the Charlie Curtis-Beard remix of Brooksie’s “Dude, She’s Just Not Into You”.) Like, it’s not that he ever truly crossed her boundaries or treated her with disrespect, but he was very arrogant in assuming she’d been flirting with him and would just happily throw herself into his arms the second he’d tell her he was interested. When he waited for her with that bouquet of roses in his office I was like… 😬😬 this COULD have been very romantic, but… I’m afraid it’s not. Sorry bro. 🥲 Apart from his very typical dominant male behavior, I did like it when he came out with the pink lightsaber at the end, lol. Even though he got knocked out almost immediately, he came to Fu Bao’s rescue after officially giving up on pursuing her, so that was nice of him. I’m curious to see him portray other characters now!

You may have noticed that I didn’t mention the actor’s name when I discussed Robert, but that’s because I’m not 100% sure MDL credited the correct person. They have him credited as Liu Ze Yu, but the picture that goes with it looks nothing like the guy in the show, so I’m not sure if the picture is wrong or if he was miscredited. Unfortunately every drama source site I’ve checked has a very incomplete cast list for this show so I can’t cross-reference it. Not that I really want to include his character in my cast comments, but I was kind of curious because the actor looked familiar to me.

All in all, I think Emperor or Boss is a very light, silly and cute story that is definitely not to be taken too seriously. To quote one of the comments on MDL, “A silly goofy little drama. Don’t think. Look at the pretty people. Enjoy.” 😂 As someone who personally prefers some more depth and character building, it was a bit too light and shallow for me, but I did really like the chemistry between Fu Bao and Ming Shi and the ending did make the show a bit more interesting for me. I also liked that they used the cute opening song (“By Chance You” by H.K. Group, Lon and Shang Chen) in the show as something that Fu Bao wrote herself which included all kinds of things she associated with love, and how Ming Shi started to use the lyrics as a reference list for what they could do on dates 🥺🥺 I thought that was really sweet.

I’m going to enjoy my free summer to the max now – which of course means that I’m striving to watch a bunch more dramas! I gotta keep up with my reputation of 20+ dramas per year here! No but seriously, I’m really happy to be free from college for the last time and get to catch up on all my creative hobbies and favorite pastimes. You’ll see the next review appear sometime soon!

Until then, bye-bee! x

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.

Yonder
(욘더 / Yondeo)
MyDramaList rating: 7.0/10

Hey everyone! I’m very glad to have found a moment to share another review with you. I’m currently in the last weeks of my MA and since I’ve submitted my final assignments I finally found some more time to watch series. The eighth show my Spin the Wheel app picked out also happened to be a very short one, so I was able to get through it quite quickly in-between my final assignment submissions. I must say that I didn’t remember this particular title or when I put it on my list, but it definitely must have had to do with the science-fiction theme and the fact that Han Ji Min plays the female lead, as she’s one of my favorite Korean actresses. I went through some mixed feelings while watching this, because while it looks absolutely stunning and has great acting in it, throughout the show the message wasn’t really clear to me. The ending did confirm my thoughts on it though, and for that I’m still giving it a fairly high rating. Let’s get on with it!

Yonder is a TVING K-Drama mini series with 6 episodes of about 35 minutes. It takes place in the near future – somewhere in the 2030s. The first episode starts off by stating that, “following the new law on euthanasia in 2032, a social system was put in place to face death.” We meet magazine reporter Kim Jae Hyun (played by Shin Ha Kyun) right before this new euthanasia procedure is administered to his terminally ill wife Cha Yi Hoo (played by Han Ji Min), who’s suffering from heart cancer. Moments before the procedure is set into motion, a mysterious woman (played by Lee Jung Eun) visits their house, asking for a moment alone with the patient. Jae Hyun has no idea who she is or what she’s there for, but Yi Hoo assures him that she invited her. The woman places a kind of chip behind Yi Hoo’s ear and only leaves Jae Hyun a business card, introducing herself as Seiren before departing without another word. The euthanasia proceeds as planned and Jae Hyun forgets about the strange visit as he has to bury his wife and is thrown into grief.
Not long after the burial, he receives an email – from Yi Hoo. Although he initially believes it to be scam, he quickly realizes it’s coming from the same company Seiren claimed to be from, BY N BY. When forensics contact Jae Hyun as well to ask about the chip they found on Yi Hoo after taking her body in, Jae Hyun deducts that Yi Hoo must have made some sort of contract with BY N BY – and is now apparently sending him video messages from the afterlife.
With the help of some friends, including Hacker Park (played by Bae Yoo Ram), his editor-in-chief (played by Choi Deok Moon) and forensics doctor Cho Eun (played by Joo Bo Bi), Jae Hyun is able to get in contact with the alleged creator of this company, Dr. K (played by Jung Jin Young). It turns out that Dr. K – who himself only ever appears as a hologram for some reason – created a digital world in which people can “design” their own afterlife based on the memories they choose to retain from their lives.
When Jae Hyun decides to visit BY N BY, he gets the chance to meet Yi Hoo again, but he is too disturbed and convinced that it’s all fake to appreciate the reunion. However, this changes when he meets some other people who regularly visit their deceased loved ones at BY N BY. One of them is a young girl named Peach (played by Yoon Yi Re), who lost her father and is more than happy to have found a way to keep spending time with him. She is a strong supporter of Dr. K’s ideas and invites Jae Hyun to meet some more people who are in the same situation. Just when Jae Hyun starts getting used to the idea of BY N BY, a new phenomenon presents itself in the shape of Yonder – the actual afterlife.

As an in-between note I just want to clarify the difference between BY N BY and Yonder the way I understood it – feel free to correct me if you believe I got it wrong. BY N BY basically stores holographic images of a deceased person with a fraction of their memories from when they were alive. They’re like avatars of the real people, you can’t physically touch them. Also, as a living person you can visit them by going through some sort of barrier to cross over to them and you can only stay for a specific period of time. Yonder, on the other hand, is the actual afterlife where the deceased go after passing away, where they basically live peacefully in their personally designed heaven where no time passes. In order to get to Yonder, you have to be dead, you can’t just visit there for a while as a living person, which is the main difference between Yonder and BY N BY.
In a way, BY N BY is like a “front office” to Yonder, introducing the living to the possibility of being reunited with their lost loved ones, like a preview. What makes this system most problematic is that BY N BY also offers the opportunity to make this reunion final.

Things start going awry when the avatars in BY N BY start encouraging their living relatives to come join them in Yonder. It starts with Peach – her father invites her to come live with him forever. It’s sad that Jae Hyun might have been able to talk more sense into her if he hadn’t been interrupted by the chance to interview Dr. K himself. That same night Cho Eun contacts him to say that Peach unalived herself, leaving a note to Jae Hyun saying that she’s sorry but that she has nothing left to live for without her dad. Shockingly, the other people he met from Peach’ circle quickly follow suit – apparently everyone prefers to die to be reunited with their loved ones over trying to make their own living without them. If that isn’t bad enough, the promotion of Yonder as the ideal heaven that promises a better life after death leads to a spike in euthanasia applications and suicides. Despite being so sceptical of BY N BY and Yonder and Dr. K, Jae Hyun eventually decides to join the trend and go live with Yi Hoo in Yonder.

One of the aspects I found hard to grasp in the story was why Jae Hyun suddenly changed tack. It was clear that he was initially very disturbed by the whole idea of BY N BY and Yonder, and he even called Seiren and Dr. K out on how they exploited people’s grief and memories of their loved ones from the start. When he noticed people committing suicide all over the place, he seemed genuinely alarmed – for good reason. Still, he followed them and was genuinely happy to be with Yi Hoo again for a while, as if he suddenly forgot all his (more than valid) skeptical thoughts.
The fact that I found it hard to determine his exact thought process also had to do with the fact that many things were kept very vague and abstract in the story’s narrative. Besides the amount of silent acting, I found many dialogues very cryptic – I generally couldn’t really tell what people were thinking. This in turn only added to the unpredictable nature of the characters and, consequently, the story. It really took “never let them know your next move” to a new level.

I honestly started doubting everything the moment Jae Hyun decided to go to Yonder. The entire time I was with him on how toxic it all was, how “keeping the dead alive” defeated the purpose of dealing with loss and grief and accepting death. Not only that, BY N BY and Yonder actually made money out of people’s grief, encouraging them to keep holding onto it rather than process their loss and move on. I think this was very toxic. I mean come on, to actually take advantage of someone’s grief by creating an avatar of their lost one who actively persuades them to come over to the other side? It’s even disrespectful to the dead, in a way. I don’t believe for a second that Yi Hoo or any of the other deceased people would ask their alive relatives to willingly give up their lives to join them in death.
What I also found intriguing was that apparently Yonder was so real to the deceased that they almost started forgetting they were dead themselves. When Yi Hoo got upset about the fact that their baby wasn’t growing and Jae Hyun also didn’t understand why this was happening, I was like, what? Have you seriously forgotten that you’re in the afterlife? You think new life is going to grow within death? The whole purpose of Yonder was to create a peaceful environment where every single day was the same. I thought it was weird that Jae Hyun, despite already acknowledging the repetitive elements in Yonder, didn’t even realize that no, of course his baby wasn’t going to grow. It never lived in the first place. It was only there because Yi Hoo designed it that way, regretting the fact that she never got to give birth because of her illness.

In the end I was relieved that Jae Hyun got brought back to life and confronted Seiren with the fact that what she was doing was wrong and that she needed to shut Yonder down. Even when it was revealed that Seiren was Dr. K’s wife, and that Dr. K himself was actually in Yonder with their teenage daughter, I couldn’t understand how she could’ve developed Yonder into what it became. When Jae Hyun confronts her in the final episode, it’s like she doesn’t even acknowledge what’s truly happening. She just keeps using the explanation that she built Yonder to accommodate the deceased, but she doesn’t seem to grasp that it isn’t just about people who are already dead. She is actually encouraging people to die, “exploiting people’s feelings to market a fake heaven”, to quote Hacker Park.
In my opinion, there was a different way this could’ve worked. I believe it would give many people a sense of relief to see their deceased loved ones live in a peaceful afterlife without feeling the need to join them. BY N BY could’ve just offered solace, it could’ve just existed to show people that their loved ones passed on happily and provide them with the comforting prospect that, when their time comes, they will be able to join them in that peaceful place. I honestly believe that Yonder may have been established with that initial purpose, but that it took on such extreme proportions because in reality, Seiren herself couldn’t deal with the loss of her husband and daughter.
The way this series portrayed how people kept clinging on to their lost ones, choosing to join them in death rather than cherish their shared memories and move on, was very painful to watch. It just made me feel like Peach and the others all fell victim to BY N BY’s marketing scheme, they literally gave up their lives for the ultimate form of escapism.
In the end, the thing I liked the most about the story was the final message about how memories are made valuable through the fact that you can’t return to them. You will never be able to relive them the same way, apart from replaying them in your head. BY N BY allowed people to relive the entire experience of those memories by recreating the exact environment, sounds, smells and feelings, but that in itself defeats the purpose of having a precious memory to hold onto, especially when someone passes away. What are we without memories? We deal with our losses because we have memories of our times with the ones we lost and those memories help us move on in the end.

Despite my confusion regarding the fact that Jae Hyun gave up his life to go to Yonder, I do feel like he needed the experience of spending time there to come to his final realization. The ultimate message of the story eventually comes down to what he tells Seiren before he turns his back on BY N BY for good: “Every person has a door they can’t close on their own, and you need to have someone to close that door for you.” Yi Hoo had said it to him and he’d repeated it before, but it wasn’t until he said it to Seiren at the end that it really hit me. I think this phrase depicts loss perfectly: when someone passes, they always leave something behind, and it’s up to the remaining relatives to deal with that in order to finally close the metaphorical door they left open. After actually spending time with his wife in the afterlife and realizing that even Yonder had its imperfections, Jae Hyun came to the conclusion that he really just needed to leave his wife behind him. He needed to get closure by “closing the door” his wife left open for him. So in that sense, I thought the ending was very powerful because it came back to the original perspective on how unnatural BY N BY’s proceedings were. Jae Hyun just needed to see for himself what Yonder exactly entailed before he could make the final decision.

All in all, I feel like this series would’ve fitted very well within the anthology of SF8 because of its vibe, setting and Black Mirror-esque qualities. I was particularly reminded of the BM episode “Be Right Back”, where a woman gets a clone of her deceased lover but eventually realizes that even something that looks exactly like him can never truly take his place. I was also reminded of the American series Upload, which, despite being a predominantly comical show, also features a system that “uploads” avatars of deceased people to a perfect resort-like afterlife – where their living relatives can also visit them by using a kind of VR-suit.
In hindsight, I do feel like the way Yonder depicts an ethically problematic way of dealing with grief adds to the powerful message of the story – that it’s important to cherish the memories of your deceased loved ones, but also keep them as just that: memories. The fact that they died isn’t going to change, and you’ll have to close the door at some point, but that doesn’t mean you’ll have to forget about them for good. It’s a complicated process; it’s messy and it’s raw and it makes you sway between indulging in your grief and trying to get over it. I think this series did a good job at depicting that chaos through Jae Hyun’s experiences.

To mention some more practical or technical aspects of the show that I liked: as I mentioned in the beginning, it looked absolutely stunning. From the hauntingly beautiful opening sequence to the shots throughout, it’s a cinematographical masterpiece. Additionally, the music gave me goosebumps in all the right ways. I especially loved the song played during the end credits called “DIVER” by Sondia. I thought it was reminiscent of songs like “Orbit” by Hwasa from The King: Eternal Monarch and “Adrenaline” by Solar from Vincenzo (which I didn’t even watch but I love me a good MAMAMOO K-Drama OST). In general, the series was of amazing cinematographic and musical quality, and the acting was very convincing as well.

I would say the only thing that occasionally bothered me a little was the consistently slow pace of the story and the way in which the characters interacted with each other. I would’ve liked maybe a bit more variety in pace and dynamic between both events and people. The ambiguity of certain dialogues also made it hard to follow things sometimes. For example, at some point it is suggested that Jae Hyun isn’t completely honest with his own feelings, and we also see a flashback in which Yi Hoo tells him this, suggesting that this was already the case before she died. In what way he wasn’t honest with his own feelings, I don’t know. I don’t think it had to do with the fact that he was only acting defensive towards BY N BY but actually yearned to get back in touch with his wife in the afterlife, since he kept coming back to the unethical nature of the service Yi Hoo signed up for.
Also, what exactly was that liquid that Yi Hoo got in Yonder when she snapped after realizing her baby wouldn’t grow? She was admitted to some sort of clinic because she got upset – something that isn’t supposed to happen in Yonder – and then they gave her some sort of medicine to take “when she didn’t feel happy anymore, and that it would take her somewhere dark again.” After they both drink it, Yi Hoo is seen closing her eyes while Jae Hyun is brought back to life. Does that mean that medicine took Yi Hoo to an even deeper layer of death? As in, beyond Yonder, where she really wouldn’t experience any feeling again? Where did it end for her and why did it bring Jae Hyun back to life?
It may have just been me, but I personally need these things spelled out to me otherwise I just won’t understand what’s going on. It also bothered me that no one, not Seiren or Dr. K, could give a clear factual answer to what Yonder actually was. Like, there must have been a simple definition, but they kept beating around the bush and stating cryptic statements. I couldn’t blame Jae Hyun for getting agitated because heck, how hard could it be to just call it by its name? While the lack of clear definitions regarding the concepts of BY N BY and Yonder did challenge me to make sense of them myself, I still would’ve liked some more clarity on the truth. Speaking of more clarity, I would’ve really liked to get some regarding Yi Hoo as well. Since she dies so early into the show, we basically only get to know her through Jae Hyun’s memories of her. We never get to see her thought process in deciding to sign up for BY N BY, and we never find out how she really feels about everything. It’s like she only exists in the show as a fragment of Jae Hyun’s memory where she’s depicted only as he wants to remember her – which again, is also kind of the point, I guess. In any case, I’m just trying to say that while I respect the ambiguity within the show, because it illustrates perfectly how things aren’t just black-and-white sometimes, I personally would’ve liked to get more explanation on what was happening for my own better understanding.

I’ll move on to some cast comments now, which probably won’t take up much space because the short duration of the show also facilitates a fairly small cast of characters.

While I haven’t seen any other dramas with Shin Ha Kyun, I realize that I know him from the movie Inseparable Bros, where he plays a physically incapacitated genius. I think he did a really good job in Yonder. The difference between Jae Hyun’s behavior and expressions in his flashbacks with Yi Hoo and after losing her are the perfect depiction of how losing someone important can just suck out the life and joy from someone. It was really nice to see him smile so widely and goof around with his wife in their shared memories together, all the more because it stood in such contrast with his personality at the start of the show, right before his wife is put down. After making the connection with his performance in Inseparable Bros I know he’s also a great comical actor, and I’m very curious to see more of his acting.

As I mentioned in my introduction, Han Ji Min is one of my favorite Korean actresses and I’ve loved her in everything I’ve seen her in so far. From Rooftop Prince to Hyde, Jekyll, Me to Wife I Know to The Light in Your Eyes and Our Blues, and there’s more series on my list that I’m very much looking forward to. Even though the majority of her scenes where of her character when she wasn’t alive anymore, she still managed to put so much into Yi Hoo’s character. I especially loved the flashback scenes of their worryfree time together, when they’d stroll down a Christmas market or went swimming. Those scenes were so important because they gave much needed insight into the relationship between Jae Hyun and Yi Hoo, how they interacted and experienced valuable moments together. After she got “uploaded” to BY N BY, I found it much harder to gauge her character because she seemed very different from her bubbly self when she was still alive. I have to admit I didn’t understand half of what she told Jae Hyun because it was so cryptic. She couldn’t say what she was, exactly, and even when Jae Hyun asked her what Yonder was, she only answered with “the place I’m in right now, the place where you aren’t”, like, riddle me that! Despite the fact that I would’ve liked to get a more definitive image of her character, I think Han Ji Min did an amazing job portraying a wide variety of emotions again, so this series definitely didn’t have any negative impact on her position on my faves list. I’m really excited for the next thing I’ll get to see her in!

Moving on to another favorite actress, I was really happy to see Lee Jung Eun in this. She’s featured alongside Han Ji Min multiple times, in Wife I Know, The Light in Your Eyes (where she played her mom) and in Our Blues as well. Besides that I’ve seen her in King of High School, Who Are You: School 2015, Oh My Ghostess, Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo, Tomorrow With You and Fight For My Way, and of course the movie Parasite. I’m sure I’ll see her in many more shows, old or new. She’s always such a familiar face and she always delivers a stellar performance. Despite Seiren’s disputable choices in developing Yonder, I can’t deny that she performed the role very well. Seiren may have been quite stoic, but it’s not as if there was no emotion behind it. Especially in the final confrontation scene, it was clear to see that Jae Hyun prompted her to think twice about the true repercussions of creating Yonder. Similar to Yi Hoo, I would’ve liked to see some more character building in Seiren. Like, was that even her real name? What was her life like with her husband and daughter when they were still together? We only see her in one flashback, standing at her daughter’s grave, but she never actually talks about her experiences or emotions throughout the whole process of developing the company based on her husband’s ideas, for example. She remains kind of an enigma, and while that does have its charm, I think it would’ve evoked more empathy for her character if there had been a bit more immersion into her psyche. I think this has more to do with the writing of the character, because Lee Jung Eun’s performance was still great.

Bae Yoo Ram was another familiar face that I thought was a very welcome addition to the cast of Yonder. In series with dark themes it’s always nice to have a light and uncomplicated character that adds a little humor and perspective to the whole thing without it becoming too much. I’ve seen him in a couple of movies such as Midnight Runners and Be With You, but also in dramas like Producer, Oh My Ghostess and Run On. I liked Hacker Park a lot, not just for the humor he brought but also because he was one of the people that kept Jae Hyun grounded and connected to the world of the living. He was there the moment he came back to life and I think he was also one of the few people who never felt the need to go to Yonder despite clearly not having many people to spend his life with. I liked that he was the one to throw the truth about Yonder’s purpose into Seiren’s face at the end. He was a really nice character and I liked how he kind of started making advances on Cho Eun at the end by saying he’d “close the door for her”, that was cute.

Yoon Yi Re hasn’t actually been in that many projects so far, I only see two movies and three series on her repertoire. I’ve seen 20th Century Girl but I have to admit I don’t remember her from there. I still have some shows with her on my watchlist, so I hope I’ll get to see more of her. Peach – or Yoon Soo In, as she eventually reveals her real name to be – was kind of a tragic character. She wasn’t able to let go of her father and decided she’d be happier clinging onto him forever in a bubble afterlife universe instead of exploring her potential in the many years she still had to live out her life. You might say she was “weak”, but I think to say that would be to truly underestimate the way losing a loved one – especially a parent you didn’t get to spend much time with before – can weigh you down. I think that for Peach, she didn’t just have to move on from her dad, she had to move on from the truth that she never got to know him properly, and that’s why the opportunity to reconnect with him must have resonated with her so much. Still, it was sad to see such a young and bright person utter that she didn’t have anyone else besides her father – how lonely must she have truly been behind that bubbly exterior? I think the actress did a very good job in portraying that friction between her cheerfulness and darkness. I hope I get to see more performances of her in the future!

To sum up this review, I think this was a short but powerful series. Although I struggled to find a way to relate to the mindsets that were depicted in this show while I was watching it, in hindsight I feel like the problematics of the depicted issues are actually part of the message. I feel like this may have made for a good movie or drama special or anthology episode as well. I personally would’ve liked it even more if some parts had been defined a bit more clearly and there would’ve been a little more flesh to the characters in terms of background. With just a bit more information on how Jae Hyun met Yi Hoo or Hacker Park, on his profession as a magazine editor, and on the history of Yonder through the relationship between Seiren and Dr. K/Jang Jin Ho. With a little bit more context, it would’ve probably blown me away even more. Still, I was very impressed with the depiction of the story, including its cinematography and soundtrack. I’m all for discovering hidden gems while going through my watchlist, and this was definitely one of them.
I think the ultimate message of the story really has to do with the fact that grief is a complicated and painful process and it affects everyone differently. The ideal way to deal with it is to accept that you’ll never be able to meet with them again and make peace with the fact that you’ll be left with only memories. Still, those memories are worth so much, as they are proof that the people who left are never truly forgotten, and they ensure that they’ll always be with you in an intangible way. They would want you to move on and find a way to move through their absence, and it’s best to honor that wish with everything you’ve got.

Thanks again for reading through this review until the end! I’ll be moving on to my next watch soon, so keep an eye out for the next mystery review!
Until then, bye-bee! x