Fell in love with a emo girl
I was going to write a long (several thousand words) review comparing Someday or One Day to the craptastic remake, A Time Called You. But I caught Covid and I'm tired. So I made this instead that pretty much sums up my review:
ATCY manages to nearly copy SOOD scene-for-scene, line-for-line. But the end result is a soulless mess.
Ah, who am I kidding, I'm going to rant anyways and spend too much of my energy on this.
Being on MDL is probably bad for my health, because it's full of idiots who don't know anything. At some point, someone tried to justify this remake because they think audiences in Korea hasn't seen SOOD so they need to adapt SOOD for Korean audiences. Except Taiwan and Korea absolutely do watch each others' dramas and SOOD is a big hit over in Korea. Do people on MDL think only Korean dramas get broadcast out to the world? Can they even point out Taiwan on a map (probably not, since some commenters call it a Chinese drama)? And because I'm old, I'm well aware that Taiwanese dramas dominated East Asia long before the west discovered Korean dramas. So Koreans being able to watch and enjoy Taiwanese dramas is not a novel concept to me.
Then they go on to claim that Korean dramas have a higher budget and that's why SOOD doesn't have good production quality compared to ATCY. First off, I don't even think budget numbers were ever released for these two particular dramas. Second off, you can have a big budget and still have things look like beautiful crap.
Cases in point:
One of the most unrealistic portrayals of someone that just woke up from sleep (that's not a vampire).
v. SOOD
Most normal people move around in their sleep.
This is the school grounds in a backwater little town. It looks like they have a hedge maze.
Then then have a shot of the actual school and it's like they go to Xavier's mutant school in his X-Mansion.
v. SOOD
An actual school that looks representative of any random school in most of Asia. Most importantly, it looks like a school that actually might exist in a backwater little town.
Not to mention these glitches in the Matrix:
People actually from Korea has commented that, if it's actually cherry blossom season, it would be February through April and it would be too cold for short-sleeved shirts. Besides, this part of the drama takes place in July, which would have no cherry blossoms.
The FL went back into the past in July. She's killed in October the same year. At which point were they decorating for Christmas or that it's so cold outside that it's snowing?
The whole point of the first episode and the intersecting scenes of the present and the leads as high schoolers is to make the audience think the scenes in high school are a flashback of how the ML and FL met. In SOOD, you go through the entire first episode assuming it's a flashback but then they reveal the characters names at the end. It's a good surprise beginning to make the audience question everything. Well, ATCY tried and failed with either poor writing, plotting, or subtitling.
The end surprise that the person is not the same as Jun Hee from the present but Min Ju from the past.
Except earlier in the same episode...
ATCY also has a crappy soundtrack. I feel like they chose the most bland songs and visuals because those have the most chance of pleasing a mass amount of audiences. Nothing is innovative or particularly Korean about this remake. Korea netizens even point out that riding scooters is just not a thing (except for thugs) in Korea. They just directly transplanted things from the Taiwanese drama without thought.
The acting and dialogue can also be...terrible at times.
FL, having to identify ML's dead body in the morgue:
It's pretty sad and stuff, but it just goes on...
And there's more and it's just comically poor at this point...
She sure is very articulate even when faced with her boyfriend's dead body.
v. SOOD
That's all that's needed to convey grief. You don't need dialogue all the time.
Also:
20 questions upon finding your best friend and dead FL.
v. SOOD
I find the whole thing where characters talk a lot during grief and trauma a really hackneyed writing and acting choice. And I thought people always talk about how good Korean acting is???
So far, I just covered the superficial reasons for why this drama is bad. Most importantly, this drama doesn't capture any of the soul and themes of the original. Grief, loss, alienation. It's like they tried by copying almost exact dialogues towards the end episode. But those lines doesn't jibe with previous characterization. And it's missing the angsty teenage poetry.
Ah, gosh, I'm tired of talking about this inferior imitation of SOOD pandering to western audiences. There's a lot of other bad things about the remake which I didn't cover here but we complained at length to each other while watching. The only good thing to come out of writing this review is watching bits of SOOD while I work on screencaps.
In the end, I wish we had the foresight to watch ATCY before our rewatch of SOOD so that I can wash the bad taste of this drama out of my eyeballs.
ATCY manages to nearly copy SOOD scene-for-scene, line-for-line. But the end result is a soulless mess.
Ah, who am I kidding, I'm going to rant anyways and spend too much of my energy on this.
Being on MDL is probably bad for my health, because it's full of idiots who don't know anything. At some point, someone tried to justify this remake because they think audiences in Korea hasn't seen SOOD so they need to adapt SOOD for Korean audiences. Except Taiwan and Korea absolutely do watch each others' dramas and SOOD is a big hit over in Korea. Do people on MDL think only Korean dramas get broadcast out to the world? Can they even point out Taiwan on a map (probably not, since some commenters call it a Chinese drama)? And because I'm old, I'm well aware that Taiwanese dramas dominated East Asia long before the west discovered Korean dramas. So Koreans being able to watch and enjoy Taiwanese dramas is not a novel concept to me.
Then they go on to claim that Korean dramas have a higher budget and that's why SOOD doesn't have good production quality compared to ATCY. First off, I don't even think budget numbers were ever released for these two particular dramas. Second off, you can have a big budget and still have things look like beautiful crap.
Cases in point:
One of the most unrealistic portrayals of someone that just woke up from sleep (that's not a vampire).
v. SOOD
Most normal people move around in their sleep.
This is the school grounds in a backwater little town. It looks like they have a hedge maze.
Then then have a shot of the actual school and it's like they go to Xavier's mutant school in his X-Mansion.
v. SOOD
An actual school that looks representative of any random school in most of Asia. Most importantly, it looks like a school that actually might exist in a backwater little town.
Not to mention these glitches in the Matrix:
People actually from Korea has commented that, if it's actually cherry blossom season, it would be February through April and it would be too cold for short-sleeved shirts. Besides, this part of the drama takes place in July, which would have no cherry blossoms.
The FL went back into the past in July. She's killed in October the same year. At which point were they decorating for Christmas or that it's so cold outside that it's snowing?
The whole point of the first episode and the intersecting scenes of the present and the leads as high schoolers is to make the audience think the scenes in high school are a flashback of how the ML and FL met. In SOOD, you go through the entire first episode assuming it's a flashback but then they reveal the characters names at the end. It's a good surprise beginning to make the audience question everything. Well, ATCY tried and failed with either poor writing, plotting, or subtitling.
The end surprise that the person is not the same as Jun Hee from the present but Min Ju from the past.
Except earlier in the same episode...
ATCY also has a crappy soundtrack. I feel like they chose the most bland songs and visuals because those have the most chance of pleasing a mass amount of audiences. Nothing is innovative or particularly Korean about this remake. Korea netizens even point out that riding scooters is just not a thing (except for thugs) in Korea. They just directly transplanted things from the Taiwanese drama without thought.
The acting and dialogue can also be...terrible at times.
FL, having to identify ML's dead body in the morgue:
It's pretty sad and stuff, but it just goes on...
And there's more and it's just comically poor at this point...
She sure is very articulate even when faced with her boyfriend's dead body.
v. SOOD
That's all that's needed to convey grief. You don't need dialogue all the time.
Also:
20 questions upon finding your best friend and dead FL.
v. SOOD
I find the whole thing where characters talk a lot during grief and trauma a really hackneyed writing and acting choice. And I thought people always talk about how good Korean acting is???
So far, I just covered the superficial reasons for why this drama is bad. Most importantly, this drama doesn't capture any of the soul and themes of the original. Grief, loss, alienation. It's like they tried by copying almost exact dialogues towards the end episode. But those lines doesn't jibe with previous characterization. And it's missing the angsty teenage poetry.
Ah, gosh, I'm tired of talking about this inferior imitation of SOOD pandering to western audiences. There's a lot of other bad things about the remake which I didn't cover here but we complained at length to each other while watching. The only good thing to come out of writing this review is watching bits of SOOD while I work on screencaps.
In the end, I wish we had the foresight to watch ATCY before our rewatch of SOOD so that I can wash the bad taste of this drama out of my eyeballs.