It's decent, but perhaps somewhat overrated!

Obviously this is a very decent romcom, but it fell a bit short of my expectations already early on. Took me a while to figure out what is the biggest factor limiting my enjoyment and that is the ML, Jang Ki Yong. I've seen him before performing great in Seach: WwW, but in My Roommate Is a Gumiho he just doesn't work for me all that well. It's not even a chemistry problem really, it's just that the aloof gumiho character is something that he kind of failed to pull off in believable way. It might not even be entirely his fault, his character supposed to have A LOT of character progression and probably nobody on the production team cared to tell him to adjust his character a little.

At first I did not like Hyeri in this show either, but after a few episodes I got used to her character & it did not take very long for me to realize that she is carrying the drama, alongside the second couple. Hanna is always a pleasure to watch & she had great chemistry with her partner & their characters were also written pretty well, they had some great lines and admittedly quite a few cliche misunderstandings.

Most kdramas have annoying things that I can barely force myself to watch. This one is better in the sense that the writers did not milk every single conflict and misunderstanding to the max. There are two tropes in this drama that I have always liked, namely forced cohabitation and pretend amnesia. The amnesia thing with the indignant FL was especially fun to watch, the cohabitation could've been done better though, but it was still enjoyable and fluff filled.
I especially loved how nicely they resolved the "student dating the professor" scandal. I really thought that would get blown out of proportion..

The biggest problem I had with the writing is the flea-like second ML, it felt like he is a manhwa character from Extraordinary You, his need to keep confessing, confessing and confessing when they are "on the stage" would have been more funny if they played that certain soundtrack from that show during those scenes. As far as love triangles go this one is on the weaker side of average, since the FL never hesitated, but it could not have been more unnecessary and it only ended at around episode 14. Also the whole red string of fate storyline annoyed me to no end.

There were more minor annoyances than I'd like. Like how the leads separated for a short while THREE times in the drama. I mean sure it was at most for 30-40 minutes each time, potentially not even reaching weeks in the drama's timeline, but if only they could've forgone just one of them, I would be that much more content right now.

I'm not entirely happy with the ending. I love happy endings, but this one is WAY TOO SHORT with a lot of wasted potential. The writers could have explored how he is adjusting to being human at length. I would have preferred if they spent the last 2 episodes doing just that, rather than sticking to the foreshadowed melodramatic things that ended up happening, or almost happening. Just imagine how nice it could've been, when ML was about to announce that he is turning human, he could have just turned human, like there was really no reason to really push for that dramatic ending in this one. (the whole explanation why that needed to happen & the criteria for him specifically to become human were just ridiculous)

This show is obviously very similar to Goblin & Angel's Last Mission in many ways, but Goblin is like a hundred times better. ALM:L should be worse objectively, but I enjoyed that one much more for some inexplicable reason. I rated Goblin as a 10, ALM:L at 9, so with that in mind I can only give My Roommate Is a Gumiho a 7.5.

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The most important things to know about this show are that the leads are really cute together and they have great chemistry. Also the themes shown in the show are nicely balanced, the drama is about 50% romance, 15% music, 15% gaming, 5% school life. I enjoyed the noona romance, the OTP relationship may not be the deepest I've seen on TV, but the apparent shallowness did never reach my nerve threshold (unlike in Intense Love). The fluffiness is on point and entertaining throughout most of the drama. The comedy/fluff ratio is a bit tilted, meaning that the drama could've been funnier, but still there was sufficient amount of comedic relief.

The story is on the weak side of mediocre. I enjoyed how they dealt with the leads realizing what each other's real identities were, the writers did a reasonable job there, but there is not much else to praise about the writing. It feels like most of the plot follows a template, there is not much innovation or creativity here. Luckily in a romcom the story is not that important, if the annoyances are low & that is the case with Love Scenery, at least for the most part.

The creators could've done a much better job at making me believe the gaming scenes are real, if they had just made the characters wear vr glasses & haptic gloves, then I would've been okay with all the things they supposedly have done in game.
Still compared to O2O the gaming scenes are HUGELY better here, I did not need to use the fastforward button, despite the unrealistic presentation.

It's nice that despite FL working in the entertainment industry they've mostly forgone the typical events that go down when actresses/idols fight each other for resources, fame and whatnot. Sure there was a little of that, but the conflicts were always resolved in a civilized way and even the fans/netizens mostly behaved in the drama. ^

I was not blown away by any of the songs, but overall the OST is certainly above average with a decent amount of variety.

I'm okay with Ma Shen Shen's story. I've read in the comments how people hated this character and blaming drama logic for her unrealistic behavior. I've seen a similar case in real life, so it's not like people never break down in such a manner after a breakup, it's rare but it can actually happen, it's not too immersion breaking. As for her relationship with Sun Bin Yu, I think it was pretty fun to watch. I mean sure it was a bit draggy before the last 5 episodes, but still I had some minor laughs and I was quite happy for them by the time we reached the last episode.

The worst part of the drama is without a doubt FL's secondary love interest. I had the impression that he was not even miscast, but probably the writers wanted to intentionally frustrate the viewers with this creepy uncle character. I am not adverse to age gaps, but the 25 years? age gap between the actors looked quite jarring. Anyway all the mini plots he's been involved in were bad, or borderline annoying. I guess his relationship with the OTP can be considered a pretty standard love triangle. He does not have success and FL does never hesitate or anything like that, but still a woman that wouldn't know what's going on with her so called friend's advances certainly does not exist in real life. To sum it up his relationship with FL is just an overused cliche, made that much worse with all the creepy uncle with a mustache thing. It was almost like a teacher hitting on a 16 years old high school girl.
Now that I think about it, I don't think I have ever seen an FL call someone other than the ML ge or gege and me not ending up hating that character.


The 8/10 rating may be a bit high, but I think this was a pretty entertaining fluff romcom, perhaps even a rewatch is in the cards, eventually.

edit: I ended up watching the drama again. In retrospect I may have underestimated the story a little, I enjoyed it quite a bit more now, calling it mediocre is uncalled for. On the other hand Uncle Ulterior Motive has annoyed me even more than before, despite my best efforts to fast forward button his scenes.

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I'm a little surprised about all the 10/10 reviews. Some folks wrote overwhelmingly positive reviews to the point that I've expected that this drama would be even better than Reply 88. For the first 10~ episodes it's pretty close to that level, but at the same time unique and perhaps even more endearing. The problem is that this is a 40 episode long drama and episodes 11 to 18~ are straight up boring. There is nothing much there, none of that wholesome family vibe, or much character or plot progression. After wasting 5 hours on filler like that it cannot possibly be a 10/10.

Around episode 20 the drama slowly becomes interesting again, but it never reaches the initial heights.
I for one am okay with the sister dating the stepbrother thing, I can even begrudgingly accept the blackmail with mental illness issue. What is difficult to gloss over though is that they had very few sweet scenes together after they've properly gotten together. I mean there was so much time for that in 40 episodes..

I could go on and on how much I hated mom A and biological dad B, but It's not necessarily a bad thing for a drama to have hated characters. Human garbage can be portrayed on television too, right? But the redemption arc for mom A in the final episode felt completely unnatural and unnecessary. I would have preferred either a more gradual process involving some mutual healing over the course of like 5 episodes, or they could have just had a clean break. So yeah, the plot had some problems here and there, like how every tragic thing happened simultaneously at ep10ish and how not only did He Mei go to P, but her friend also did 16? years later. Those could've been handled much more naturally.

The ending is not that great either. It's way too open ended for my liking. The potential side couple's story is unfinished and as I said earlier, there was just such a long time available to wrap things up.

I love how they resolved the triangle fast and relatively peacefully.

Overall the drama is worth watching, there are some incredibly touching scenes, really unique family dynamics and it's unlike any other cdrama that I've seen so far, but it's not even close to a 10, lets be real people!

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I'm extremely surprised that this is getting so much praise, nearly as surprised that I did not drop this early on around EP 4-5. I think my biggest gripe is that up till episode 7-ish there was nothing but pain & suffering. I realize that this is a melodrama, but in order for me to feel the value of this genre, in order to feel a sense of loss the characters' lives need to be introduced before everything went to oblivion for them. I'm giving this a 5 instead of a 1, because the main leads had great chemistry and the acting on their part was outstanding and their romance was well written too I guess. The cinematography was decent & the OST is quite memorable too. Usually I like the 16 episode format, because the writers don't have a chance to overdo fillers & they can just freely use their best ideas to full effect, there is no need to hold back for further seasons, but here I felt that 16 episodes were too condensed for all this borderline sadistic writing. That's not all, there were so many characters I felt apathetic about. Mr Shifty-eyes Architect, or that CEO? that always shouts, why did I have to see his pointless attempts at romance, just why? I like Kang HanNa, but her character made little sense to me, so I guess her acting talent might've been wasted here.
I've been reading the comments under the final episode & everyone was like "Thank God it's a happy ending, like this it's 10/10" etc, but I'm just not that forgiving. Literally 5 minutes of moderate happiness before the ending credits isn't enough to forget all the bad things, feels like the writer was pressured into changing her originally planned ending too.. Naturally there is no way that I would ever rewatch this drama. On the upside watching good melos mess me up for quite a while, but since I did not become emotionally invested in this one I'm already over it :-)

edit: For reasons unknown I kept missing the show, so after rewatching it I liked it a lot more than for the first time, so changing my rating to 6.5 stars. :-)

edit2 (a year later): I'm looking at this review that I've written and it feels surreal that I gave this 5/10 the first time around. Changing the score once more! .-)

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The cutest slipper commercial in the universe!

The biggest problem with this drama is that the part I wanted to watch starts only at episode 8~. Until then there were quite a few uncomfortable moments, due to some really weird casting and cinematographic choices. The young FL is supposed to be a 14 year old, but the actress playing her is like a second grader in elementary school, her interactions with ML were nothing bad in terms of plot and script, but the suggestive lighting & framing is really really weird at times. (I had a hard time getting past this part tbh)

Every romance drama has some flair & flavor to give a little contrast to all the sugar. This one has very few scenes outside of the leads' personal world, but what little there is, tends to be rather boring, or just plain bad. (concerns of ML's parents, ML's family things, ML's stalker, stalker's boss friend, workplace things)

Another minor gripe I have with the drama is how much FL is treated like a teenage princess in her relationship. This seems to be a recurring theme in cdrama roms these days, but I'm just not a fan.

---

So why is it still 8/10?

Well, we watch romantic comedies for the actual romance and that is really absolutely out of this world good in this one. The chemistry, the visuals, the mood, the acting, the red ears, well really everything pertaining to romance (well other than the princess thing) is 10/10 awesome. I always understood why Lusi is touted by many as THE romcom queen, but personally I did not like a single one of her dramas due to various reasons. I feel she is far better in this one than in anything else before & there is some real acting chops here, beyond just being a top of the line comedienne. (and ML of course is the perfect partner)

I too found the brother-sister relationship very amusing & wholesome, but I don't think it's possible to have such a brother in real life. :-) (I'm talking about FL's real blood related brother here of course.)

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Avoid!

Imagine the worst plot you possibly can & then spend a month to find more ways to make it even worse. That is the plot of Lie to Love. Romance could have still saved the drama, but unlike in Love is Sweet even the romance is pretty weak in this one. Cheng Xiao should just stick to singing, I wouldn't dare to assume that she has no acting talent, but she does not even seem to make an effort, her boredom on set is almost palpable. I'm sure it surprised no one that she has no chemistry with Luo Yun Xi.

I've read people saying that the first 20? episodes were quite good, it only become bad after, but I cannot disagree more. I'm honestly surprised I have not dropped this, sure things get even worse later, but it was never good.

Originally I was prepared to talk about love triangles, badminton, the randomly found hedgehog, or all the "barging in" that's happened in the drama, but I've decided to just end it here, this drama is not worth a more elaborate review. 3/10 :poopy emote:

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I'm a cat person, I absolutely adore those little murder machines, so because of that I managed to finish watching all episodes, but I was close to dropping it quite a few times. I like Shin Ye Eun, but she wasn't a good fit for this drama, or maybe just her character was too ridiculous? I don't know. As for L he is still a weak actor, but ultimately the main problem here is not acting, but rather the script. The story is on the boring side of terrible. I mean honestly what qualifications does one need to become a kdrama writer? I'm typically not the type to look at a painting & say "this is nothing I could do better", but in Meow the Secret Boy's case I think I could come up with a better kdrama plot in like 20 minutes. I mean sure plot is not all that important in a cute fantasy romance drama, but even the basic romance is just not done very well here, also "cat life span melo" is like the worst idea ever in a show like this.. As for the ending, it's basically a noneding. The last 2 episodes were especially boring & there is no satisfying conclusion, I don't think. We see a deus ex machina thing with the webtoon & then he is human again! Great, what's next? Is this the cliffhanger for Sabrina the Teenage Witch season 4? The whole point of the kdrama format is to give viewers a proper closure.

Honestly who is the target audience for this? The whole thing feels incredibly juvenile..
I'm okay with silly romance shows, last year I loved watching "The Secret Life of my Secretary", but that show has much better romance, it's much funnier & also it has more charm.

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From mediocrity to awful ~

Normally I don't write a review before a drama has finished airing, but I decided that I don't really care about the final two episodes anymore & I have a pretty good idea what's going to happen anyway, so here we go..

For the first 20 episodes-ish I thought this was a very mediocre, very standard cdrama with nothing but recycled plots, an incredible amount of stalling, but at least it had a decent cast & nothing too annoying happened, so I felt entertained just barely. Though the actress + bodyguard or firefighter? 3rd couple was pretty bad to be fair and there is barely any comedy worth mentioning .

After e20 though the drama turns into complete trash. (it could be e19 or e21 I'm not sure exactly when the writing shifts) Of course the problem is either the script or the original source material, I don't know. Anyway the plot becomes absolutely garbage & it doesn't feel like it was written by a human. The individual scenes are well filmed, but the plot flows randomly & stupidly, very little of it makes sense. Random start dating, random breakup, random this and that. Honestly it reminded me of the AI generated anime show called `Always Breaktime`.
Just for fun I asked Chatgpt to write a 1000 word long cdrama plot outline for me & it was way better than this, though admittedly not anymore original.

The childhood connection is rather weak as well, but I suppose I've seen worse.

I'm alright with mental illness being the main conflict of a romance drama, but this is perhaps the worst portrayal of a mentally ill person I have ever seen.

Had I finished watching this I would have almost certainly called it the worst cdrama I have ever managed to get through, unfortunately I cannot do it.

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It's not great.

The Good:
⌲ The cute second couple
⌲ The lack of love triangles
⌲ There are very few annoying things. (unfortunately the same is also true for excitement)
⌲ The beautiful people, everywhere
⌲ It's not very long & as such the pace is rather good until e12.

The Average:
⌲ The mediocre acting
⌲ The mediocre chemistry
⌲ The super shallow romance
⌲ The villains were meh.

The Bad:
⌲ The time travel plot is far below average, it's just really on the boring side & there is even less logic than usual in this genre.
⌲ The lack of comedy is a big problem, since there is no other hook for the romance to remain interesting.
⌲ Even for a low intensity cdrama this one is just lifeless
⌲ The ending follows a basic time travel drama cliche & I don't like this type of happy ending at all.
⌲ There is very little thrilling for a supposed thriller.

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It's entertaining garbage.

The Good:
⌲ The acting*
⌲ The chemistry
⌲ The comedy in the first 2/3rds of the show
⌲ The whole double Scooby-Doo crew thing
⌲ Ultimately I was entertained enough.
⌲ There were an endless number of cute/fluffy romantic scenes

The Average:
⌲ The romantic story itself could be better.
⌲ The second ML (It's a weak triangle, but still..)
⌲ The special ability (the drama does not follow its own established fantasy rules regarding how the eyes are supposed to work and it's just a really dumb concept.)
⌲ The corporate stuff is quite digestible until nearing the final episodes. (usually this is far far worse)

The Bad:
⌲ The plot goes from silly nonsense to complete -still very silly- chaos near the finale.
⌲ Typically Chinese fantasy shows get an "it's a novel" ending these days, here the plot is completely packaged in that, so it's the first 10 & last 10 minutes-ish.
⌲ The main villain (I mean what is the end goal here, really?)
⌲ The Police in the final episode (I guess the censors needed a little extra push?)
⌲ The mom wakes up after 15 years of coma & she is like your regular cdrama mom from 1 second onward. (my daughter aged 15 years, but everything is FIIINE)


* I've read many posts about people bashing Zhang Yu Xi for her bad acting. I think you all are just lacking context. Had you ever seen a Chinese romcom comic, you would probably immediately recognize all the "silly overacting" postures & various other things. The goal was clearly doing that on screen & the cast did it as well as I could possibly imagine anyone doing.

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It's good, but overrated!

I started this show about a week ago, but long after the show has ended, so I have seen & read many glowing reviews & saw how folks proclaimed this drama being the best one they have ever seen.
I not for one moment have felt that way, but it took me quite a bit of introspection to -I think- figure out why.
I mean at the very least we’ve seen amazingly well acted emotional scenes, that are up there with the best of the best in Kdramaland. There is a lot of good music, romances & one amazing bromance thing, so at the very least I can understand why someone would rate this at 10/10 amazing..

Let me explain, why to me this is far worse than 10/10 & why I felt something is really wrong with this drama throughout most of the episodes. Disclaimer, I’m a rather nitpicky person. I can find logical flaws in almost anything, but that has not prevented me to give 10/10 ratings to flawed shows before.
Let’s start with a TLDR to not waste anyone’s time with my long rambling: Many and perhaps most of the minor details in this drama are either wrong or off. This pile of immersion breaking lack of attention to detail is just too tall for me.

---

So here I go:

I could go on and on about -tiny or large- time travel related plotholes, but I have begrudgingly accepted them, because time travel shows always have a ton of these. (Though the level of disregard for consistency is on another level in this drama.)

Music is an important part of this drama, but the sound is completely unrealistic in most scenes. Not only does everything sound like an overly perfect studio recording, but also every guitar in the show sounds like $20000. These kids are not millionaires, yo! Sure the guitar point is very nitpicky, but I have never at any point felt like I’m listening to music made by a very talented up and coming band, or anything remotely live-like. (as in live music sounding like a live performance)

Sol Ina is just too old for this role. Yes, she acted amazingly well here & I’m happy for her success. I’m sure no one could’ve done better in her place, but I would love to see a big budget kdrama where the teens are played by at most 22 year olds. Just to reiterate again, yes she is stunningly beautiful and everything, but she's not a teen & can never pass as one. If this only happened in a couple of flashbacks it would’ve been fine, but she is a teen the entire time.
This point applies to Ryeoun as well. He is not a believable Korean teenager at any point in time. He is 25, what could he have possibly done, right?

The portrayal of disabilities in Korean media always have been very annoying to me. Here it’s probably the best I’ve seen so far from them, but there were still quite a few weird moments. Being deaf is very difficult to portray well to begin with, I don’t know. Largely because you want to keep the audience entertained, but if you as an actor do over the top emotional faces in every single scene, then the end result cannot possibly be something believable. Though of course the actors followed well what was asked of them. I can somewhat understand why they choose to do it like this. Imagine if the story was almost the same in every way, but Cheong Ah had not been deaf just an introvert, if Eun Gyeol's parents were able to hear, but lived a very hard, tumultuous life. To me it seems like most of the plot would have worked just the same. I strongly suspect that the writer added decided to go with the CODA thing, because there were a couple really big hit shows that featured disabilities. Deafness is not completely an important, integral part of the show.

Romance is only so so, I did not really feel the chemistry, nor are the romantic plots very engaging. Then again this is probably the most realistic part of the drama, because teenagers falling in love is the easiest thing in the world, no elaborate plots are needed.

The main villain is very sterotypical and boring, her actions were very silly & her end is anticlimactic. The family situation at that house makes no sense. They could have made Cheong Ah's backstroy much more interesting without opting for this whole "her father ignores her suffering" plot.

The late nineties Korea in the show is -you guessed it- highly unrealistic.

----

My fellow MDL user, I’m sure you’ve noticed by now how most of my criticisms are about realism. It would be a logical conclusion that this is a me problem, since kdrama as a genre tends to be very lacking in realism & anyone who wants realism should not watch kdramas.
I agree with this of course, but if a show’s end goal is not just to entertain with comedy & sugar, but maybe to educate about disabilities, to present gut wrenching moments and to make the audience empathize with the characters, then realism becomes rather important, or at the very least a fantasy setting should respect its own established rules & just in general the writer should not insult our intelligence.
Just look at the various Reply dramas, every single one of them has a similar blend of teen romance, bromance and to a lesser extent family tragedies to Twinkling Watermelon, but they are far more reasonable in every way, the emotional scenes in those are really really great, while the comedy and romance still get to shine.

The overall presentation is a bit childish. So perhaps we should just judge this as a teen programme. That’s fair, I’ve given it some thought & perhaps watching this at the age of 14 my mind could have been completely blown, I don’t know. Most of us on MDL are adults though & with that in mind I decided to settle for a rating of 7.5, because despite everything I've said, here and there there were moments of real brilliance in the show.

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Adults probably shouldn't waste their time with this!

This is one of the worst cdramas I have ever watched. Truth to be told I wanted to drop it after ep5, but I had nothing else lined up & I needed something to watch during my 5 hour workout session. Naturally I have had my fair share of high school & college romance cdramas, but this is perhaps the first time that I felt this bored. People talk about liking slow burn romances & I usually like slow burn romances as well, but there has to be a hook, such as good comedy, or interesting characters, or sometimes even just the audiovisuals. In this show there is nothing like that. Uninteresting characters go about their school lives in a really boring & dragged out way, at least that's what happens in the first 25 or so episodes. (out of 36 episodes) The OST is weird, the visuals are nothing to write home about and even the actors are bad. I don't really blame them though, I mean how well can a 15-16 year old girl act in a supposed college romance story? (and FL is still far better, than the at the time 16-17 years old idol ML)

The last 10 episodes are much better, if I consider those a separate drama that's probably a 6/10, though it's quite difficult to forgive the extremely bad separation plot.

As for the second ML, for the first 25+ episodes he doesn't do anything beyond misunderstanding FL's every little action for FL liking her. After the fifth time I started smashing my fastforward button. His other love line is bad as well. The actor is an adult, but he is no acting genius , that's for sure.

The writers that wrote this worked on Put Your Head on My Shoulder & A Love so Beautiful before. I find it baffling how could those people come up with a script this bad. My disappointment is comparable to when I tried watching Start Up.

Just to say something good about the drama, I found that FL's gradual transformation process was really great. It's not jarring like in Ugly Betty, or other soaps that follow this trope. Another thing that comes to mind is that FL really looks like her mother in this drama. The mom was a phenomenal casting decision & she is probably my favorite character in the drama.
edit: I thought of another good thing! The drama has one "real" kiss scene and I think the way they hid the touching lips was relatively good. A hundred times this over cheek & forehead kisses. (or stupidly playing with angles)

Honestly I don't understand why this drama has an MDL score of 8.3. It's not funny, it only has a little fluff near the final episodes & as I said it's badly acted as well. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I mean sure there are many that get mesmerized by beauty & then proceed to watch whatever happily, but we are watching literal kids here. I'm not sure what the average age on MDL is, but I have some uncomfortable thoughts about this.

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12 year old me would've loved this!

This is a family drama mostly catering to children's tastes. I think 10-14 old children would absolutely love this, but for adults it's not that great. Not only does the drama have giant plotholes, but also the story has very little to offer. I mean sure the FL did a phenomenal job portraying a mystical cathuman, but that's not enough to carry the entire show. The leads may have had okay chemistry, but their relationship had very little substance and the whole thing with ML rejecting FL's advances, despite dating and even living together has been quite frustrating.
Also the whole "rollback" thing is a horrible waste of time, they should've just cut the show short, or come up with something else, like filling 3-4 episodes with fluff instead..


Still at least the show is not trying to be anything more than silly & juvenile. I had some good laughs here and there. Compared with Meow the Secret Boy this one is HUGELY better.

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This show was great. This is probably at the limit of what a cdrama romcom can be today. The leads had great chemistry & they looked adorable together and it's great that focus has been so much on them, there is not much side tracking during the 32 episodes. The production quality is extremely high, the audiovisuals are up there with the best Asian dramas that I've seen. I may have enjoyed watching the GoGo Squids, but this is my first cdrama, where the gaming aspect truly works and they made a great job at making that exciting. The aerospace parts were also relatively interesting and kind of novel too I guess. Ultimately the story is not all that revolutionary or anything, but it's just so wholesome and the drama kind of made me relive the feeling of watching Asian dramas for the first time. My need for fluff & sugar has been also completely satisfied. It's so refreshing that the main couple is not opposed by anyone, there are only supporting voices and yet the drama is still funny & interesting enough. The complete lack of a love triangle is always a giant plus as well.

It's great that the FL is an artiste, but none of the usual annoying tropes are used. In this drama even the paparazzi are kind of cute. Supportive netizens appear the be becoming a trend in modern cramas, that's always something I'm happy to see. Personally I love it, when in a drama a normal person is dating a celebrity and we get scenes describing situations where people meet their friend's significant celebrity other for the first time. Trope-ish or not, that just never gets old for me and in You Are My Glory we had a lot of that..

I already mentioned how I found the production quality to be excellent. The OST deserves further elaboration. Individually the songs are not that great, I've heard way better in a cdrama (hello there Perfect and Casual), but the mixing is really outstanding, music is used perfectly to help set various moods, I never felt it being detrimental.

Sexuality in cdramas & especially in kdramas is often portrayed very strangely. Like 35 year old FLs are almost never ready to have premarital sex. I understand that many people like it how sex is not a major plot point in these shows, unlike in Hollywood productions, but in my opinion the opposite can be even more annoying. Not in this drama though, this is how I think all drama couples should approach this matter. (implying sex in a realistic time frame, without bringing it into major focus)

Obviously nothing is perfect. The single biggest problem I found with this drama is the main driving force of conflict, what little conflict we've had, namely ML's low wages as an aerospace engineer. This is extremely unrealistic, in China a state employed aerospace engineer will never have problems affording medicare for his parents. So the entire plot about ML wanting to switch carriers due to low compensation feels wrong. Frankly it surprised me that the censors let this go, though perhaps having hundreds of Chinese flags everywhere made them happy enough to ignore this not so minor detail.

I'm sure a rewatch will happen eventually, 10/10!

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This drama is just awesome. There are so many great things about it:
-Many memorable scenes
-The retro feeling
-The 90s kpop
-The amazing cast
-Everyone had great chemistry with almost everyone.
-Amazing parents (this is a first for me after 30+ kdramas)
-Gay storyline in a kdrama that feels almost natural
-Good cinematography, especially outstanding for a slightly aged show
-Amazing ending

The biggest negatives for me were the mandatory love triangle and the older brother, despite the older brother's amazing flashback romance I just couldn't accept his predatory behavior as a teacher. Normally I don't care about age gaps at all, but this just irked me. Also they dragged on this semi dating bullshit for way too long.

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