After watching Reply 1997 I was eventually lured towards 1994. It was an attraction that was bound to happen one day and I'm glad that the same nostalgic, slice-of-life feel continues on in this series too. But Reply 1994 isn't without it's flaws. (tldr: check out the last sentence!)
CONS:
- More than just a few of my favourite moments had a tendency to be suddenly cut short. I can't really call them cliffhangers since they reached their peaks but I was left longing for more on more than one occasion only to be fed something else completely different.
- It can drag. Somewhere along the line the length of the episodes bumped right up to an hour and a half. That's a lot when there's 21 episodes and sadly you could really feel them pumping in the filler in the end half of the very last episode. Sometimes they seem to struggle to find the balance between showing me stuff I want to see at that moment, and stuff which I sadly don't really...care about a great deal.
- Circles. I can confidently say that at least once the main love triangle almost completely reset back to square one. While this gave me a fresh sense of hope and excitement it eventually lost its lustre. Every now and then it even got painful.
- The music. This is completely personal. I'm sure quite a lot of you will be watching this to get a feeling of nostalgia but the music isn't to my taste.
PROS:
- I loved all the characters. Though my memory of Reply 1997 is hazy in places I know that I liked a larger amount of characters in 1994 than in 1997. They were what kept me going and they took me through all kinds of feels while they were at it, making you feel really connected to them all. (Sung Na Jung felt a bit too much like Sung Shi Won to become one of those favourites though. I wanted someone a bit different this time around.)
- Nostalgia: if I can call it that having been born in 1994 myself! It was both amusing and educational to watch this series because of its setting.
- Atmosphere. Like 1997, 1994 carries on that lovely, diary-esque feeling that I loved. These all feel like real people living out real lives, and for all its flaws the plot can and does make sense: sometimes that really is just how life is! They have your average conversations and life-changing events, time passes, people drift and sometimes return etc.
- Your patience is rewarded. You know those almost-cliffhanger moments I mentioned in the cons? Yep, I believe ALL of them are eventually continued but you'll likely be waiting until the very last moment of the series to get your fill.
- Fan-service. Kind of. (But not the ab-kind! Though there is some of that early on heheh.) Some characters from 1997 crossover at certain points!
- I personally preferred the college/uni setting to that of a high school, but that's probably just my age showing!
Overall I enjoyed Reply 1994 but am admittedly annoyed as it could've been so much better. Just like 1997 its ending has issues which had me counting down the last minutes with impatient frustration. But the characters are fabulous. And for all its flaws it's still a very memorable drama, which says a lot when there's so many out there.
Better than average with a unique feel, at times you'll get annoyed and tired of it but you'll find yourself coming back anyway: that's 1994 for me.
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