The story moves way too fast, the acting is over the top in the typical Japanese way, the clothes are horrendous...and I love this movie. It's just so campy and fun and unashamed (complete with a ridiculous musical number at the end). It has all the components of a typical Asian love story; jerky male lead, spunky female lead, secondary male lead you'll probably like better than the male lead, romantic tension, a makeover montage (!), and all in a short and easy to digest time frame!

What I'm trying to say is...this probably won't be the best movie you've ever seen. But you'll definitely have a lot of fun watching it.

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Let me say this right off the bat.

I don't have an inherent problem with age gaps between adults as long as the relationship is a healthy, appropriate, mutually beneficial one. When it comes to relationships between a teenager and an adult (because I think it’s important to separate this issue from that of age gaps between two adults since they are not the same thing), it's a little different. The maturity difference between a 17-year-old and a 19-year-old is probably not (typically) going to be so vast as to make a relationship between two people of these ages a problem. Widen the gap to, for example, 17 and 25, and I'm unsure how likely it is for such a relationship to survive, but I'm willing to give the story a chance. Widen the gap further to 17 and late 20's/early 30's, and you're going to have to do it like High School King of Savvy did where the high schooler is played by a grown-up for me to be able to immerse myself in the story and not feel weird about it.

So I’ll be totally honest and say that I struggled with the age issue here. I wanted the leads together, but I also wanted the male lead to be older. There's definitely not a reason, in terms of story, that he couldn't have already been 20 or 21 years old. Even 19 would have been better (although still not preferrable). (For reference, Korean age is calculated differently than in the West, so while the drama says he's 18 or 19, he's actually a year or two younger in western age.)

Age issue aside, there is a lot to love about this romance. Great chemistry, realistic compatibility, mutual respect and genuine attraction. Overall, they're an adorable OTP. My only complaints about the romance outside of age?

I don't know why Soo Ha had to already be in love with Hye Sung at the beginning of the drama, considering they barely knew each other outside of their one encounter years ago. From a writing standpoint, it would have made more sense if he had searched her out simply because of his desire to look out for her and follow through on his promise. Love could have come later. That being said, this is a very chaste drama. There are a couple kisses, and they are very tender and sweet, but they are very appropriate for the male leads age. Beyond that, the leads have very little physical contact.

Now that all of that is out of the way.

This is technically a court/crime romance drama (with a side of supernatural), but while there’s lots of court and crime drama to go around, there’s also an awful lot of drama law Logic as well.

For the first half of the story, the court/crime drama is set up in a ‘case of the day’ format. But halfway through, the overarching mystery takes precedence, to the point that it overshadows the rest of the drama almost completely, and I eventually began to lose all interest in the story. (Watching the last few episodes felt like a chore, which is never a good thing.)

No one’s choices made any sense. The villain was cartoony and not smart. His backstory could have been compelling, but the writers handled it so poorly that I didn’t care. As I said earlier, the story was Rife with drama law logic, and the legal system was treated like a plaything to be used however it’s owners wanted to use it, the rules constantly changing. (For example, the villain (who had some terribad facial hair at one point) CUTS OFF HIS OWN HAND!!!! in order to frame the male lead for murder, and of course, the police find said missing hand and arrest the male lead for murder. Because all the proof you need of a murder is a severed hand.) It was all just incredibly stupid.

I could express disappointment here at the supernatural element of the drama and how it was handled, but I honestly don't mind that we never got any explanation as to why Soo Ha could read people’s minds. It was clearly only in the story as a means of bringing Soo Ha and Hye Sung together, and I was perfectly okay with that.

In terms of characters, I loved both leads. Soo Ha is all the good things. Intelligent, sensitive, kind, protective, genuine, encouraging, supportive. He never comes off as childish or immature (which may or may not be realistic, depending on your personal opinion of the maturity level of teenage boys).

Hye Sung is a fun mix of confident and awkward, brash and intelligent, and extremely lazy. She flies through life by the seat of her pants and when something goes wrong or opposite of how she expects, she just finds a way to go with it. In a list of female drama characters I wish I could be like, she would definitely be on that list. (But I’d like to be her After she’s already gone through all of the craziness in this drama. No crazy murderers needed in my life, thank you very much.)

Kwan Woo is incredibly kind. He's one of the kindest male drama characters I’ve ever seen. He’s modest and unassuming, with a sense of justice that is almost unparalleled. He’ll follow a case to the end. I struggled with some second lead feels simply because he’s so wonderful, but ultimately, he wasn’t meant to be with Hye Sung. He was honestly too good for her. Like, he was too good of a Person. I have a feeling his extreme kindness eventually would have driven her nuts.

Do Yun was never an intriguing character. As is typical in older Korean dramas, she was a mean girl. As is not typical in older Korean dramas, she had absolutely zero interest in our male lead. (Which makes sense. It’s one thing to pair up an almost-but-not-quite-adult teenage boy with an older woman. It’s another thing to stick him in-between Two adult women. That’s definitely past my comfort level.) She almost becomes an ally to Hye Sung at the end, but the writer’s chose to leave the two as frenemies instead.

Joon Gook is a terrible character. He’s poorly written and not interesting. There was a point where I could have been compelled to care about his backstory, but then he went off the deep end, and I stopped giving a shit.

Sung Bin drove me batshit crazy. I don’t know what the determining factor is on whether I will like or hate a character who’s really persistent in the love department (because I’m very picky when it’s comes to characters like that), but whatever it is, she definitely fell into the ‘HOLY BANANA PANCAKES BATMAN WHY WILL SHE NOT GO AWAY?!’

And we’re not even going to talk about Dae Suk, Do Yun’s ‘father.’ Mainly because the actor playing him was bad at his job. Like, really bad. Like, he consistently makes weird facial expressions that don’t look like anything I’ve ever seen anyone else make when they Aren’t constipated, bad.

Truthfully, I only finished this drama because it would have been a waste Not to finish something I had loved so much in the beginning. Throughout the first half, I was completely committed to the story. Then the aforementioned mystery and drama law logic completely sucked the life out of everything in the second half, and I had to take a break before watching the last few episodes because I was so stressed out. It was okay when the court drama was about Other people and not about our main characters. The ‘crime of the day’ set up didn’t require me to invest all of my energy into it, so I could focus that energy where it should be focused, on the romance. But when I had to divide my energy between our adorable OTP and the insanely frustrating court/crime drama surrounding them, I found that the OTP was not a compelling enough reason to do so.

If you’re looking for a drama that accurately portrays the legal system in South Korea and handles it’s overall mystery in a way that is actually satisfying…you’ll probably want to pass this one on up. But if you can handle drama law logic (and a romance between a teenager and an adult), then I still recommend this drama. There are a lot of good things about it.

Just don’t pay too much attention to all the stuff that happens outside of the romance, and you should be fine.

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I tried so hard to make it to at least to one particular scene in this drama (I'm sure no one is surprised by this, but it was the scene where Terry is shirtless and Da Hua accidentally walks in on him in the bathroom).

I never got there.

This drama didn't know who it's OTP was, and it suffered severely for it. Terry always felt like the clear choice considering how much time he and Da Hua spent together and how Deep he fell for her, but the story could never fully commit to that choice, and I was left looking for a reason to root for them. I needed there to be a reason for Terry and Da Hua to have to be around each other, for them to get to know each other as people, for them to fall for each other, and what I got was the opposite of what I needed.

And I fully place the blame on Da Hua as a character.

Da Hua had no underlying motivation for any of the choices she made. She actively put herself in situations where she was going to be uncomfortable. She actively put herself in situations that Guan Jun was bound to misunderstand and then tried to smooth it all over each and every time. She chose to bail Terry out of the mess he had gotten himself into by lying and creating the contract to begin with. And her determination to finish the ‘contract’ was So. Annoying. It Hurt. Terry was still going to have to tell everyone that Liang Yian was dead thus making the contract pointless and void. She actively did the opposite of what would have been logical in every situation she was presented with.

And before anyone tells me I’m an idiot who clearly didn’t understand the real reason why Da Hua wanted to finish the contract, let me stop you right there.

I know what the drama writers were trying to do. They were trying to trick me into believing that Da Hua wanted to finish the contract because she was falling in love with Terry.

Falling in love with Terry my derrierriere (that is a spelling Choice, not a mistake). While he was clearly starting to have feelings for her, there was no indication from her that she had any interest in him At All. There were no tender glances or accidental touches, no inner monologues about how kind or smart or handsome he was, no lingering in his presence or just generally wanting to be around him all the time. Every time Terry attempted to make a move, Da Hua would practically Fly out of the room, she was so intensely uncomfortable with his attraction to her.

She did not like him.

Which was stupid, because…there was a lot to like.

I mean, he was an idiot who agreed to pretend his fiancé wasn’t dead and subsequently dragged someone else into that mess, but he was still an utterly lovely person.

And could we not have gotten some actual exposition on this whole idea of real love verses being enamored with someone’s physical appearance?

I have no problem believing that Terry was actually falling in love with Da Hua as a person and not because she looked like his dead fiancé. And I have no problem believing Guan Jun was also falling in love with her as a person and not because she was suddenly ‘beautiful.’ I think both actors did a good job of making their feelings for her seem believable.

I Do have a problem with there being zero exploration into what it means to be in love with someone verses what it means to be in love with your idea of someone, considering that was one of the major messages of the drama. There were very valid reasons for our lead to question the motives of these two men, and for us, the audience, to do so as well. But the writers never even touched on those reasons accept to mention them in passing. How am I supposed to pick one of them over the other if I don’t actually know if either of them are truly in love with her?

For my part, I did want her with Terry. If only because of how amazingly good the actor was at giving tender, gentle looks in her direction, and because he was a hottie Mchottieson, and because he was just so incredibly nice. (Makes terrible life choices, but he's still very nice.)

But the drama was too frustrating to finish, and I honestly probably could have substituted it with another drama and been much happier.

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