well, i finally did it. after a good dozen or so attempts i finally finished my first asian drama.

Kim Woo-Bin sealed the deal for me from the pilot tbh. i'm not that knowledgable about kpop so i didnt even know who suzy was till halfway truh, so! all him. his extremely captivating self. who just kept growing on me as it went. tears down my eyes un-

yeah i'll go for it, why not

uncontrollably, by the last few eps.

fantastic performance.

i'm glad to be able to call this my first drama. i feel like it set me up well for what's to come, serving as a good introduction to those sensibilities i clashed with through all my other attempts. it all just flows really well once you get on the same wavelength with it. the music, the surprisingly creative camerawork, dramatic editing. everything works in tandem to provide maximum entertainment, in a way that feels surprisingly sophisticated. like they been around the block so many times they got the formula perfected.

the constant twists and turns made the show impossible to put aside, so i ran through it pretty quickly. all the relationships worked well and were cute, minus the odd annoyance here and there, though those things seems kinda unavoidable given the nature of this subject matter. or genre as a whole, rather, since im guessing a romance drama of this kind can only really work if you continuously throw obstacles in the mix to prolong the end goal, lol.

so yeah. i really liked this. i really like kim woo-bin and suzy, although she has decidedly less character development and kinda freezes in place for the end spurt once focus goes even more to kim. (her closeups were effective n whatever, but compared to his.. she was basically making the same face at every major twist)

while the revelations in the end did feel a bit underwhelming at first given all the anticipation, and the sheer amount of stuff they had to cover, i commend them for the decision to slow things down for the landing. it left me feeling very sober, so any criticisms i woulda had are just faded now.

i'm not sure how to rank 'rewatch value' so i just put a neutral 5. it's not like that should really factor into the quality of your first experience, i dont think. tho i do think ill maybe eventually hop back in just cuz its my first, and i can see myself growing even fo-

fuck it

fonder memories for it over time

onto the next one!