Angst and Time Jumps

This KDrama never got boring and kept me at the edge of my seat the whole time. I even went as far as sneaking my phone during class cause I NEEDED to know what happens next. I'm not usually the type to go for violent romance dramas(full disclosure: there is a LOT of violence) but this drama did it pretty well and I totally fell in love with the leads and their romance. The comedy in this drama is also very well done and really helped me through some of the depressing moments. This was actually my first ever drama and it is what got me into korean dramas to begin with, so I'd say this is a very beginner friendly kdrama to watch!

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snooze..

So I hate to say it, but this one sucked. It was basically what I would classify as the most traditional type of Korean romcom except it had a little gangster drama as well… except the gangster drama was incredibly half baked and had nothing to do with the rest of the story. They just kind of inserted it in there at the end for some drama. I genuinely was so bored the whole time I was watching this, there was absolutely nothing original or interesting besides the second leads’ romance (but also not that original either), and they barely even gave them screen time during the whole drama. Overall pretty disappointing, to be honest this wouldn’t top any list of mine because it is entirely mediocre as both a romcom and an action drama and a brainless “rotting in bed” watch and everything in between. The only upside is (spoilers) there isn't an annoying breakup or fight between the leads like in the 2016-2018 kdrama era. Very little angst overall unless you count some of the latter episodes (except the angst there couldn't even be taken seriously half the time).

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Strong start, messy and disappointing conclusion

I will start off by saying I genuinely don’t mind the sad ending here. I did cry a little bit and honestly love me a good tragedy every now and again. My issue with heartbeat is with how the sad story was executed. Things got quite muddled and draggy towards the end, and it genuinely felt like midway through the series the writer was like, “lol what if instead of sticking to what we told the viewers in the first half of the show we made it seem like the cat dude just conveniently forgot to say that SWH needed to kill someone to turn into a human? Like woopsies I guess he just ‘forgot’ that killing someone is kind of a big deal and didn’t think it was that important.” Like cmon be so fr who would actually ever miss such a big detail. The logic is just so weird and the side characters quite frankly were so boring, I genuinely never got into any of their personalities and they just felt so misplaced in this show if that makes any sense. Anywho, I did really really love this drama in the first half and thought it was hilarious and super cute and aesthetic, but damn the writing was such a letdown for literally no reason.

TBH though, I don't think it deserves a 7.4 rating. I think the reason it's that low is because of people who gave it significantly lower ratings just to bring down the overall rating and that's kind of sad. It genuinely wasn't as bad as it's made out to be. The writers just got a lil confused in the second half.

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What in The Disney Channel...

I really should have been writing things down because I have so much I want to say about this drama. I’m going to start with the reason for my review title. Warning: major spoilers. Sena is an absolute irredeemable character, and the fact that the writer dared to suggest otherwise is absolutely disgusting to me. Not only did she try to steal her sister’s lover (twice!) and tried to never let her meet her mother (btw, can we talk about what a useless plotline that ended up being?), she sabotaged her and Tae Yong at every turn and felt absolutely zero remorse for it. She’s an absolute sociopath who played with people’s feelings only for them to let their guard down so she could do it even more. The fact that she had some sort of redemption arc is absolutely hilarious to me because she was FORGIVEN by Park Ha for “saving her life” after Sena was literally the #1 REASON why Park Ha was on the brink of death to begin with. The Disney Channel “villain redemption arc” was terribly done and absolutely laughable after everything Sena had done. She doesn’t deserve anything she has and you can’t convince me otherwise. Park Ha is incredibly stupid as a character. This ties into my short rant about Sena and the fact that not one person on the planet could ever survive if they were as nice/idiotic as Park Ha. Like, girlie literally went to see Tae Moo the DAY after he stuck her in a freezer and tried to kill her, and yet she didn’t do anything about it. She forgave her sister because of a stupid liver transplant and even before that never really hated her for all the bullshit she put her through. All I need to say about Boo Young is that she’s a stupid idiot who ate persimmons straight off a plate instead of taking the whole plate with her and dumping into a river. That’s all I will say about that. Perhaps my biggest turn off about this drama was the odd romance development and the absolute mess of a toxic relationship that the leads had. Like, cmon, ML literally berated the FL and screamed at her whenever he didn’t get his way all the damn time, and half the time she screamed back while the other half she stared at the manchild with lovey dovey eyes. The relationship progression was just odd and it felt like the romance kind of came out of nowhere. Chemistry was absolutely absent and I honestly didn’t really care about the relationship nor “feel” their love for one another all the way until the end. This drama is also simply too long. Don’t get me wrong, it was entertaining enough and was pretty nice to watch in the mornings before class while I got ready, but at some point all the plotlines were being reused, they were just ~slightly~ different, and the show became an annoying drag. It was always either Sena doing some stupid shit and sabotaging Park Ha or Tae Moo making moves against Tae Yong in their stupid business. Not only were the plotlines super generic and very much the exact same as the plotlines in other 2010 type kdramas, they were just reused constantly to drag out the screen time. Now for my final grievance (as far as I can remember at least) : that ending. What. The. Absolute. Hell. Of. A. Monstrosity. Did. I. Watch? Not only was the ending weirdly vague (which is fine sometimes but I usually don’t enjoy it), it also seemed to contradict itself and didn’t lend itself to any solid interpretations. I could only see myself making “partial cases” for Tae Yong having Lee Gak’s memories and Tae Yong not having his memories at all. Any of the clues that the viewer was given to puzzle out whether Lee Gak’s consciousness traveled through 300 years did not add up, and if you found yourself arguing for either side, you would come across plot holes that would blow your theory out of the water. I would’ve been more content with either a sad or happy ending (or bittersweet) and the writer utterly failed trying to create an ending that’s “up for interpretation” by leaving way too many clues that all contradict one another. Random point, but why did everyone seem so OK in the end? Nobody was bawling their eyes out, nobody was depressed, they all kind of missed each other and got a BIT sad, but that’s totally not how I would react if I lost the love of my live. Everybody was just so damn calm and logical the whole time. Like what?
PHEW. If you read this far, thank you for coming to my Ted Talk, and I hope you learned that this drama absolutely does not get my seal of approval. It was entertaining enough, but I’d definitely think of this show as one of those “it’s so bad it’s ALMOST good” shows that I will absolutely never watch again but will sometimes think of fondly as a mildly entertaining waste of 20 hours of my life. Ciao!

PS: contrary to popular belief, I absolutely hated the last 4 episodes :D

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This one freaking hurts!

I didn’t know much about this movie (nor did I want to know) before starting, so I was very very confused initially and really didn’t think I was going to like it. I ended up crying so hard that it gave me an absolute monster of a headache later in the day. This movie is absolutely incredible, and I think it should be watched without much context in order to make the twists and turns more surprising and make the movie an overall more enjoyable ride. I 100% absolutely recommend this, and I can never say this enough. I genuinely don’t have any words to describe how much of a mess this movie left me in (in a wonderful but very sad way ahah)

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So I will admit the ending was a taddd underwhelming but I absolutely love this drama and I literally had such a hard time balancing my schoolwork and this drama because all I wanted to do was find out what happened next. Definitely don’t start this if you have a busy week ahead. The storyline was (un)surprisingly repetitive, but I actually didn’t mind it one bit. The romance/confession scene could’ve been smoother but they were together in the end so that’s all that I care about. Overall, I loved how we got to see the backstories of most of the characters on the bus and really get down to the big reason why the bus was blown up in the first place. It was interesting to see how easy it was for them to survive the bomb explosion but how exponentially more difficult it was for them to save everyone else. Lovely drama, I 100% recommend to anyone, especially to my Happy Death Day fans.

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I didn’t think I would be writing such a positive review for this drama since I wasn’t the biggest fan of it initially. Obviously, the exceptionally high ratings gave me a lot of high hopes, so I was instantly more critical than usual when starting it. While the beginning was okay since I was still trying to get into the groove of the drama, by the second half I was really enjoying the storylines and the episodes absolutely flew. Loved how they were introducing cliches and instantly overturning them. Thought it was a nice touch. Hari was absolutely adorable, I love her personality. I thought the ML falling in love with her was done a taaad too quickly, but it was cute seeing him chasing her so I didn’t mind too too much. The second couple wasn’t my favorite but they were definitely not as bad as some others had said. Their bickering wasn’t too annoying, so I was rooting for them too. Some other complaints I had was just the Hannah Montana wig logic where Shin Hari transformed into a whole different person just by wearing a wig which was more than annoying, and also the fact that they seemed to throw in a really abrupt conflict in the last 20 minutes and didn’t really let the drama settle afterwards. Overall, none of my complaints are too major and I genuinely enjoyed the ride that business proposal took me for. Once again, Ahn Hyo Seop, doesn’t disappoint ;)

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The most emotional zombie drama I've ever watched

This one’s a toughie! On one hand, I absolutely fell head over heels for all of the characters in this drama and absolutely loved the fresh new take on the zombie genre. On the other, there were simply too many instances where logic was completely thrown out the window and the characters were frustrating as hell to watch. My main gripes probably were due to the amount of self-sacrifice and very cliche survival tropes which sometimes repeated themselves in the drama. The drama also created a seemingly impossible survival situation for our main characters. The zombies were simply too fast and there were too many of them for their survival to make sense half the time. I mean, hell, the characters are almost always facing them head on and we’re just supposed to believe that most of them can get out of it alive time and time again? I feel like humanity would die in a heartbeat if such a situation occured in real life, but I suppose the seemingly impossible stakes were there mostly to build tension so I’ll forgive it. Something that I absolutely loved about this drama in particular was the amount of side stories that went on all around even outside of the school. There was only one of them that I didn’t care for, but the rest were extremely entertaining and, although not too impactful, rounded out the story to show how everyone was impacted by the virus. I have a ton of other small complaints but I didn’t want to list them since they weren’t too bothersome and would make me look like a bit of a jerk haha. I would definitely recommend this drama to my zombie lovers, but I would warn them not to take the drama too seriously and be prepared with some tissues, because the best part of the kdrama is definitely the emotions it made me feel, especially at the end!

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Cute, mindless fun

I binge-watched this drama in one sitting and I have to say I am absolutely in love. I will definitely check out the other two dramas in the series because this one was so wholesome and lovable. I thought they did a great job of concluding the series, and while I was a little bit confused at times about how Hyo Seop’s character was truly feeling (which is usually not that hard to figure out in romance dramas) it was eventually cleared up and the drama concluded with the fact that he found her face pretty despite how “ugly” it supposedly is (what are they even talking about, the actress is stunning!). I mostly watched this drama for Ahn Hyo Seop, but I also found some new favorite actresses and I can’t wait to see what their other projects are. All in all, I would definitely recommend this to all my romcom watchers, as this drama has a super happy and wholesome ending with plenty of cute moments throughout.

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Ok look...

I actually liked this. Ever since the beginning, I was really enjoying the drama. I think maybe part of the reason why I liked this a lot more than I thought I would was because I had the lowest possible expectations when I was going into it. I was waiting for the sh**show that plagued BOF to begin but it never did. Of course there was the classic angsty 2010 type drama in The Heirs, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as all the other stuff I’ve watched, and I really appreciated the Heirs for providing an entertaining and actually not that messy of a storyline for me to enjoy. I think the only real problem I have with the drama is that it dragged immensely towards the end, and that I couldn’t for the life of me understand how the Jeguk group drama + Kim Won’s love life ever fit into the main storyline. The weird love triangle between the Jeguk High teacher, her student, and Kim Won was barely explored, and it just felt oddly out of place the whole time. I didn’t mind it and actually thought it was pretty entertaining, but I can’t help but be a little upset at the way it ended lmao. Now, onto the characters that stole the show, because I have 2 in mind. First, Choi Young Do. I thought I grew out of my middle school bad-boy phase but I guess I didn’t, because although I hated CYD with a passion in the beginning, he absolutely stole my heart towards the end and I rooted for him the most. I was partly hoping the writer would find him a second female lead to fall in love with, but alas. Needless to say I really felt bad for him in the end and had major SLS around episode 10 and on. Second, Kim Tan’s mom. I can’t remember her name but oh my goodness was she iconic. Her sadness at being discarded and hidden away combined with her cockiness and pride as well as her mild alcoholism made her very enjoyable onscreen for me. She was definitely a beloved character, and she was imperfect in the most perfect way and I loved her for it. She definitely deserved better. Overall, I think the Heirs was an incredibly enjoyable ride as long as you don’t take it too seriously. Surprisingly I liked it a lot more than BOF even though they get compared at around the same level. Besides a weirdly inconclusive ending (it got wrapped up but it just felt off.. Idk) the heirs was a great, mindless drama. I would definitely recommend if you’re like me and feel kind of entertained by the characters’ misery (so odd because i used to hate it but i crave it these days). Happy watching!

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I can't believe I actually cried watching this

This has got to be the strangest movie I have ever seen PERIOD. I'm such a sucker for anything psychological so this movie intrigued me right away. Even though I got kind of bored and watched most of it at 2x speed, I had an absolute blast, especially towards the ending. Like other reviewers mentioned, this movie's characters feel oddly alive, despite the overall strangeness of their personalities and plot. They are all a tiny bit (scratch that, VERY) crazy and are extremely flawed, but there's something so real and so raw about their emotions that just makes them feel like they are actual, real-life people. Everyone's motivations, no matter how weird or messed up, seemed to make sense, and even the insta-lovey, extremely flawed and extremely toxic Romeo and Juliet romance felt really fitting and honestly super endearing in this movie. This might be hormones, but (spoiler alert) the weirdest, least-explained, and extremely illegal reunion of the couple in the last 5 minutes of the drama made me shed a tear, and the ending was just as romantic as it was absolutely f***ed up, unrealistic, and kind of scary. Overall, kudos to the entire team behind this drama. I might revisit this weird nightmare a few years down the line, and I'll enjoy every second of it when I do. Would recommend.

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This is one of the most wholesome web dramas I have ever seen. I genuinely loved everything about this and binged the whole thing in one go (which isn’t hard, let’s be real). I absolutely loved the facial expressions of the actress and the way such a short drama was able to flesh out the characters and give them so much humanity. I almost wish this was longer because I genuinely got so freaking emotional at the end once everything was concluded, however I appreciate the short, sweet, and simple style of storytelling that this drama delivered. It was a very refreshing and 100% happy and enjoyable experience all around. Probably the only reason I can't give it a 10 is because the drama is just too short for me to consider it.

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This drama is one of a kind - it takes the entirety of Korean society's standards of beauty and social norms and completely stomps all over them in a fragrant, pink fashion. I had many predictions for how this drama would end when I started watching it, and this drama went against all of them and presented the audience with something so incredibly empowering for women who may not fit a society's harsh standards of beauty or lack confidence in themselves. While the message of this drama was a lot more wholesome than other similar dramas, the storytelling was a bit clumsy, which is why it didn't receive a very high rating for me in the end. While the overall story was quite entertaining, 16 episodes were just too much for a simple story like this. The last few episodes of the drama were filled with Min Jae Hee going back and forth between wanting to be with Seo E Do and not feeling confident enough to proudly date him, resulting in her hurting his feelings as two separate people over and over again. There's no trope I hate more than the "pretending like I hate your guts so you start hating me and our separation is less painful for you because I don't deserve you/ I'm trying to protect you" trope. Kdrama writers, I beg you, please STOP. It's not cute. It's just annoying and a cheap tactic to increase the episode count of your show. All in all, this drama has a cute message and was full of really wholesome and extremely funny moments, however, I'd recommend to anyone watching it to be very liberal with the speed-up/fast forward button(s) in the latter half of the drama unless you enjoy driving yourself mad with endless, pointless conflict.

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Not enough story for 20 episodes

At the beginning, this drama actually made me look forward to Mondays so much. On my watchlist, I had this drama at a perfect 10/10 star rating for about ten episodes until it started getting ridiculously repetitive and the plot felt very dragged out. Overall, the story was great with amazing characters, cinematography (those color palettes!), and romance. Unlike Lovers of the Red Sky, their love story felt very organic and well-paced. As the drama progressed, the focus naturally shifted away from romance and became more about court politics and family drama (in typical sageuk fashion) and while this was not as interesting to me (as someone who lives and breathes rom com), I saw it coming and expected something like that from a historical, anyway. It was fine. Until the love line also got needlessly angsty. These two literally spent the better two thirds of the drama trying to figure out if they should or shouldn’t be together. The same problems kept arising over and over again but were dressed up as slightly different issues. The political story also got quite stale and followed the format “let’s go investigate something, have lots of fruitless dialogue about that thing, and kill a bunch of people.” This is the main reason why I dislike anything action, but I digress. In the last couple episodes, I also became an avid hater of Dami, something I never thought would happen. Her hero complex and suicidal tendencies disguised as selflessness got incredibly out of control, and it was hard to root for a character who was so hopelessly throwing herself at danger and calling it self-sacrifice that I just wanted her to die at the end and have the drama be a tragedy. The lie she told Jun Ji Un (that I won’t spoil) before doing something unforgivable (at least in my opinion) was something that I wished he would hold against her. It was such a majorly fucked up thing to do that I completely stopped rooting for her at the end. Despite my hundreds of complaints, this drama did bring many good things to the table, and I absolutely adored the male lead from beginning to the end. I’d still recommend the drama to anyone that has some spare time, but just be prepared to use that speed-up button if you’re impatient like me.

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By now, I think I’ve realized that open endings are the bane of my existence, however the pseudo-happy open ending of this drama didn’t really hit me very hard probably because I didn’t really care enough about any of the characters. It was a semi-entertaining watch with a mildly interesting plot and mildly interesting characters. Everything about this drama is just “meh” and I don’t really know why. I reckon it’s a mistake to try and judge this drama on the same level as a 16-episode Korean drama, however I do really feel that you’d have a better time watching a Korean drama than this one, and it’s sad because this is regarded by many as one the best BLs of all time. For a BL, I was hoping for a little more skinship and less “fish kisses” between the leads, but it’s not really a deal breaker, as I prefer emotional connection over actual kissing, and this drama definitely delivered on the emotional aspect part, as short as it was. Even though nothing about this drama was memorable, I still had a fun time watching it, so I’d recommend this as long as you keep your expectations low.

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