Time Machine (2021)

A story about two souls the universe wants to separate

Episodes 23 and 24 are superb. From what I've read from those who have read the original novel "Time Machine" that this was based on, the ending was changed in the TV adaptation, based on that information I could say that the director and writer did an amazing job in giving us a different ending--it was heart wrenching, lovely, and touching.

As with most adaptations with a different ending than its original source, it is rare that the new ending leaves an impact to the audience, most often than not the original ending is still better. Not in the case of First Love Again (2021) TV adaptation, their ending deserves to be an official ending too, especially since we are talking about parallel universes and time travel.

The male and female leads were a perfect match. They portrayed perfectly what many of us experienced back in High School and whenever we fall in love. The anger, the sweetness, being playful with each other, even the little things they captured it all awesomely. The same with the side stories with their friends, like the pain of being rejected or the unexpected surprise classmates no one expected will be together ended up getting married.

It is also worth mentioning that they effectively used all 24 episodes to tell us different interconnected stories. It was not rushed nor was it lacking. They also kept the physics of spacetime travel (yes, one word "spacetime") simple and to a minimum. If we are going to talk about how logical it was, at this point it is hard to say. In the latter episodes, there appears to be some leaps when it comes to spacetime travel, but since I have not taken the time yet to fully review and gather my thoughts about it, I can not say anything about it … yet. Regardless, the spacetime travel is overall good and easy to follow for the majority of the episodes. Those who are not keen with parallel worlds and time travel stories would find it easy to watch this.

And hey, the overall story, the romance between our lead characters, are more than enough reason to watch First Love Again (2021) even if the Science does not make sense. This is a story of two High School friends that not even the universe can ever separate. A story about two souls who will always find each other and fall in love again and again and again and again …

Citeste mai mult

What would you do if you were given a chance to change your past?

This is probably one of the most well thought out time travel dramas that I've felt satisfied with. I haven't seen Someday or One Day or any other acclaimed ones, but this made me think and wonder what was about to happen after each episode. I'd recommend this to anyone who likes time travel, romance and a mix of fantasy.

Very rarely do we meet someone who absolutely has no regrets in life. Ye You Ning was no different - he had chosen his path since a young age and followed his heart, until he realizes that his decisions cost him the things that were worth more than words. When a freak thunderstorm has him thrown back into his 2006 younger self, he is forced to make new choices all over again and change his view on life itself… he also discovers that the girl, Xia Wen Xi, whom he had declined to be the deskmate of in the past had the "time machine" - and thus starts his journey to relive his life once again.

This is no simple romantic drama. Although classified under Sweet On Series, this one is far from sweet. It's also one of the most well written time travel dramas I've seen. And be warned - the time travel aspect governs the whole plot. With only 24 episodes, we see Ye You Ning change the past and travel multiple times through various timelines, in varying situations from which he once again attempts to escape. In a way, the time machine gives him a chance to redo his days as a student and cherish the time he'd been given. What makes this drama special is that the cold male lead is literally forced to change and re-experience his life through multiple ways, each time realizing how certain small things in life could change your fate. We experience his varying parallel universes with him, and by the end of the drama, I realized that I had somehow begun to care a lot about him.

I gradually grew attached to the characters. I liked how the young and silly Xia Wen Xi communicated with the adult Ye You Ning. I liked Yang Youchung and Xiaoai; Ting Ting and Jiaqi. I loved how the relationship between the Grandfather and Grandson progressed!
Although the drama shifts to romance as promised by the title, I often wondered about the future of the two fated people. The Universe had laws after all. And this drama managed to make me wrack my brains to find out how it all ended. And it did not disappoint with the ending - the writers for once actually thought for once instead of pulling a cope out.

Both Xia Wen Xi and Ye You Ning start off as 'barely' classmates, yet the time machine forges a strong, unyielding connection that crosses both time and space. The last few episodes solidified this and I couldn't be happier.
Both the lead actors stunningly portrayed their roles with viscious intensity. It was only 24 episodes long, but it seems like I had gone along on an adventure with them. To me, time travel has never been a thing that seemed impossible - It's just that science hasn't yet reached a threshold where it can theoretically be explained. It was absolutely fascinating to watch the drama unfold.

I initially did not find the music appealing, but by the last episode, I was crying with the songs. Time's magic indeed...

One thing I might advice for future viewers is to get a grip on the time jumps and events. Those are the most rushed parts in the drama. It also provides pretty sweet high school and college memories to momentarily save us from all the angst.
I will rate this a solid 9. Despite it's flaws, it stole my attention and is one of the best dramas I've watched this year. It made me look back and think for once - what would've happened if I had done this or chosen that?
All in all, it's 100% worth watching.
I hope that both Xia Wen Xi and Ye You Ning finally get to enjoy themselves together in whichever timeline or universe they are in.

Citeste mai mult

“They were never supposed to cross paths…”

Don’t get fooled by the boring title. “First Love Again” (FLA) is a very interesting and emotional time travel drama. While lots of modern Cdramas this year started nice but got boring halfway… FLA starts with an encounter that makes you curious – and then gets better and better with each episode until the very end.

●Story:
Ye Yuening (ML) accidentally travels back in time for a while and uses the chance to change a few things casually to the better. Turns out his whole future in 2019 changes because of those little decisions. He finds out he can contact his classmate Wen Xi (FL) from the past (2006) through a special phone. With this he tries to turn things back but instead it only gets messier and messier. And so, this changes the fate of himself - and also of Wen Xi.

The story gets super interesting. I really love time travel and this one really had a clear message. I got very curious about the time-travel-cause and the man in the costume. I was also always looking forward how MLs decisions gonna affect his future every time xD Later it got very emotional and almost broke my heart. I love to feel the feels, lol. There were also some mysteries. :) It even got a little confusing - which is even better since I love it when things are not simple.^^

●Characters:
The FL is not annoying! Omg! xD Not your usual high pitched cutesy gurl. I really liked her, especially the actress. She had this mature look – probably because of her cheekbones.^^ When she played the 18 year old high schooler – I believed her. When she played the 31 year old version in the future – I believed her too. Kudos to the stylists btw. ;)
Same with the ML. He also has this in-between-look. I believed him the 18 and the 31 year old versions. In general I really liked him as an actor. His visuals as well as his acting. He slayed in emotional scenes! Damn!

The side characters were likable too. And yes, I loved the Main Leads a lot. The acting was veeery good and I got easily attached to the characters. You could see in what ways they matured. Great performance!

●Details:
I absolutely loved the colors, filters, locations and cinematography. Very beautiful, especially the future timeline. 2006 had a pink-ish filter, the future had a green-ish filter. While pink often represents first love and naivity, green stands for growth and envy. Pretty fitting, but was it intended?^^
The Opening was spoiler-free! Instead they used pretty illustrations!
The OSTs were great too. I especially liked the Opening song and also “Time Machine” by MayDay, which they used.

●Time Travel:
I’m a big fan of fantasy stuff like that. It was very interesting. Small decisions in 2006 lead to greater changes in 2019. Basically ML, with every change, opened another timeline/universe which, of course, made it hard to turn things back. Since the time in 2006 progressed too, he had to somehow balance out the mistakes from before. Only later he found out how to use the time machine correctly… but everything comes with a price…

►All in all, this drama was a very sweet and also emotional love story, with time travel and some mysteries. I loved every second of it and never got bored. Yes, there also were a few annoying things, like some love triangles and stuff, but it was kinda light and also fast paced- so I didn’t even have time to be annoyed xD The high school timeline was pretty cliché but they switched between scenes of 2006 and 2019 a lot, which made everything perfectly dynamic. The ending was perfect for me!

This is definitely one of the better Cdramas this year. Only my opinion tho. ~❤

Citeste mai mult

Amazing show

This show really was one of the best shows that I have ever watched, Many people found it confusing but it all made perfect sense to me. I cried I smiled, I stressed out, and I felt like celebrating the fact that I managed to find such a great show like this.
It is definitely a worthy watch, you will not regret it trust me. All the actors and actresses were great, they had good ways of showing the emotions that were meant to be shown. I loved the way the storyline goes and how much critical thinking it takes to understand the plot. I believe that the writer and directors did a great job, Especially when it came to portraying the characters and shedding more light on them.

Citeste mai mult

meet you countless times,fall in love with you countless times

before watching this,I have already heard about what the ending is,making my expectations lower, but still have some hope for it to come off slightly better,which was indeed better than what I thought.

I loved every character,especially xia wenxi,whether the 18 yr old one or the 31 yr old one.Looking at her and ye youning just makes me wanna wish that they just live together happily without anything to worry.

Xia wenxi's friends are wholesome.I love how they always got each others back even when they got older.I do wish to have a friend group like hers :)

i love how ye youning would change the way he chases xia wenxi every time the timeline changes,making it feel like a new story.

everyone did a great job in portraying the characters.the story and the characters are well-written,making the drama memorable ^^

writing this short review while remembering the drama makes me wanna cry T_T

Citeste mai mult

Time machine

I don't write reviews for Cdramas much and I don't enjoy modern Cdramas as much as historical/wuxia/fantasy. But First Love Again was a Cdrama that I felt I had to give my thoughts on.

Story: I liked the time machine idea for the drama. The regrets that the MC Ye Youning had that he went back in time to fix made me want to keep watching. At first it was about saving his relationship with his Grandpa. The Grandpa arc sounded simple but came with lots of emotions watching it. Ye's grandpa plays a crucial role to Ye as his parent due to his background. After came the romance moments where Ye fixes in the past to ensure a better present with his lover Wenxi. It made it interesting to how Ye communicates through a phone that the past Wenxi has as she is communicating with the 2019 Ye although she doesn't know it. I think how easier it would be if the present Ye just communicated with the past Ye but the way they make it a bit more challenging to say for the time machine to work. It helps that the character for Ye wouldn't fall for this. At first the time machine idea with all the science and physics stuff can be confusing but it is a bit more simpler than you think. Although the last couple episodes might confuse people. I like the mix of high school and the present where they are grown up. It was a nice focus on the college life although in the original timeline they wouldn't have gone to the same college together. The ending of the drama is a universe where there is no time machine but that Ye and Wenxi are destined for each other. It gives viewers hope that some universe out there they were meant to fall in love. It was well written and the drama didn't feel too stale or cringe. Each episode makes you want to watch more since the events of the past play a huge part to the timeline of the present.

Characters: Ye and Wenxi are two main characters were well loved by me. Ye is an intelligent and independent person but he is weak inside from a sad childhood he went through. Wenxi is a bright and cheerfull girl. I loved Ye's grandpa as well as he was Ye's parent while encouraging and supporting him. The friends of Ye and Wenxi were alright. The raps that Yang Chaung would make were a bit cringe at times. Not the strongest friendship in a drama. Their high school teacher was great. He wasn't too strict and had a softer funnier side of him.

Music: I love how a song/music they used was popular during the past (2006). I thought I heard the band Mayday before and I did as I love one song of theirs before finding out another one called "Time Machine". A perfect song used as the ed theme for a drama about a time machine. The song feels like you are in the past as well. I loved how Mayday was factored in as a band Wenxi loved and still did. Nice to see older music artists get love today.

Re watch: This drama has two main characters I enjoy and their love story was well written. I would love to re watch this drama to re visit their story again.

Overall: I think this is an underrated drama. It has two good mc's and the romantic moments are great. The story is well written that it builds up emotions as you keep watching.

Citeste mai mult

One of the best cdrama but should've been shorter

I don't usually enjoy school dramas and time travel concept but in this drama, their present adult life and their past school life are going on in a parallel. They switch the scenes so smoothly and you'll get the balance between the fluff of youth love and also the maturity and angst of their adult life in every episode.

While watching, I'm in awe with the writer's mind. You can tell they did their research or they get inspired from traveling or reading materials, especially when the main leads are in Venice, whenever they started talking about books, art gallery, movies. You can't make them up without personal experience and deep research. Kudos to the writer for that.

All the actors play their characters so well. Their personality and visuals fit their roles whether they're playing as an 18 y/o or 30 y/o.

Now to the flaws, there are too many episodes. I don't find the story draggy but they're repetitive. There are many parts where you'd think "this is perfect as the ending", but there's still so many episodes to go so they created more crisis. It went on several times. This would be a perfect drama if it only has 16 episodes.

Another thing that bothers me, with all the time travelling confusion, the side characters sometimes disappeared for several episodes without explanation. It doesn't really affect the story but I keep thinking in the back of my mind where did her parents, his grandpa, his assistant or even their dog go to?

Overall, this is a really good well thought out drama. One of the best modern cdrama I ever watched.

Citeste mai mult

You Make Your Own decision About This Drama.

I felt disappointed with this drama. The story line was interesting but the constant back and forth with no real solution. They kept talking about punishment for using time but who was going to punish him. Time is science and there is no punishment. As a scientist he never really care about finding a solution to time changes. Plus how can he not know the past when he was in the future. To me does decisions where already made. If he went back and change the past his future changes but is he is in the future how can a decision from the past change the future when he did not change that moment in the past. I am gathering that the writer was also talking about destiny. If he was destine to meet her and fall in love nothing he did can change that. If you believe in destiny. The chemistry in this drama was great and the actors did a great job in their performance. I found it confusing and to many repetition on some of the episodes it got me board. The couples also took so long to get together in the past and the future. I will let you make up your own mind.

Citeste mai mult

A lot of time travel dramas these days tend to focus on one the leads going to the past and the whole drama is set around the past but this one takes the meaning of time travel in a different way.

For one, this drama actually shows the consequences of changing details of the past. Whether big or small, it has a big impact. I actually appreciate that and like this concept because most dramas just tend ignore this part, allowing for the one who time travel to do whatever they want.

This drama not just focuses on the past (2006) but also the present time (2019) as well. This can be a good and bad thing. The good is you see the effects of one's action in the past impacting the present time. You see the correlation of the main leads in the past and in the present time, how they both help each other out. Now the bad part, there are a lot of back and forth between the time period and a lot of times when they switch time period scenes, the scenes can be pretty random and not have any real purpose for the episode other than to fill in the minutes of the episode. For me, it started pretty well, seeing the present ML getting help from the past FL to save not only his grandpa but also his past self from bad decisions. The relation of the present time and past time worked really well here. After that was solved, the drama sort of went astray from this idea, as it seemed more like I was watching two dramas instead of one. If I had to be honest, this is where the drama got a bit boring for me, even though I still enjoy the cute scenes of our ML & FL (mostly during their high school days).

We really see the risk factor and big consequences towards the last few episodes of the drama. Though I kind of wanted more happiness in the final episode, I do like how this drama wrapped up the last episode, even though it kind of felt bittersweet to me, but it made sense, like time is trying to realign with itself after being changed so much by the ML.

Overall, not a bad drama. A great cast, good osts, story plot can be confusing at times, especially with all of the scene switch of the past and the present time and understanding how the time theory & consequences works, but I say this is an above average drama.

Citeste mai mult

The exact meaning of The Right Person at The Wrong Time

A lighthearted romance sci-fi genre turns to a very complex and deep storyline. The story started from 2 different timelines colliding with each other when the male lead tries to get the best version of the future by slightly changing his past.

You get the best of both worlds of 2 different types of romance, the very innocent and charming coming of age story and a more mature adulthood type of story. It is far from your typical cliches plots, the romance is naturally adorable, and the male lead is not your everyday obnoxious character. It's a fun drama in the beginning, but it will get on your feels as it starts to bring more depth to the story. Other side characters also bring warmth and have an impact on the main story. You can tell it's a great show by watching the first few episodes.

The concept of this drama is an amazing idea, the story, the scriptwriting, the acting, the chemistry, most of it was excellent, but there is a lot of back and forth between the 2 timelines that it feels like ur watching two different shows at once. It gets pretty confusing throughout the middle of the show. The writer still did a pretty good job "explaining" how the logic works tho, so it's easy to make sense of it.

Overall, it's still a good watch. I had a great time guessing the unexpected plots. The two leading actors were amazing convincing us to be the age of 18 and 31 at once. I'm glad to find 2 new actors I'm not really familiar with. Would I recommend this to others? Yes.

Citeste mai mult

First Love Again is a very good and well presented time travel romantic drama. The juxtaposition of past and present was cleverly done and the consequences of each action during the time travel were seen immediately post facto. The leading couple has great chemistry and they love each other steadfastly. The supporting cast and their interconnected stories were played out well and the actors did a great job delivering their characters. In this thoughtfully told fantasy drama, the leading couple did a great job presenting their character’s emotions and struggles while loving each other for the first time over and over again. Episodes 21 and 22 went a little too deep into the metaphysical explanation of the time machine but the last two episodes and the moments leading to a nice ending were fantastic. Enjoy it!

Citeste mai mult

This sh*t made me cry ?

I don't wanna drag this review for too long. I just wanna say that this drama is highly recommended especially for time-slip fanatics out there. This is the second time-slip drama of Patrick that I've watched. The first one is Someday Or One Day and it's on the top of my list right now. I gave my full length review for that one so go ahead and check it out. While SOOD has a heavy and mind-blowing plot about time, First Love Again gives us the light rom-com genre. FLA is not that deep to be understood since it has a cliché storyline. Yes, there will be loopholes and cliff-hangers on the plot but the actors supplements it with their superb skills in acting and make it more interesting.

It starts with a light story but it also has its own serious moments particularly in the last episode which made me cry, like for real. ?I should not tackle that here and you wouldn't want me to give you spoilers , right?

Citeste mai mult