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I’ve finished watching this series. I’m just leaving a comment here so that I’ll know if anyone added a post.
Here is the link to the Dramabeans summary recap of this series with SPOILERS…. so be WARNED.
https://www.dramabeans.com/2023/09/a-time-called-you-episodes-1-12-series-review/?_kx=wueU2oBhe2WpR0jpyfnjbbIkY__T0v0agusIwJPh7v99V6UE0HUjZmG43HS-wiy2.MQHthJ
We can make our own review and conclusions, of course, but it’s interesting to see how others interpret the happenings of the tale.
I didn’t read the recap, @GB, in order to form my own interpretation of the show and “spin” the ending the way I see it.
I’m tempted to watch this drama just so I can put my two cents in. But it’ll have to join the queue of dramas I need to review.
But thank you. 🙂
Hi @pkml3, yes, let it go to your ‘Plan to Watch’ list. It will be very interesting to get your take on what you think is happening. Even after watching SOOD, when I was not bitchy enough and didn’t bother to think about it… I did not ‘get’ what was taking place.
I think I’ve got a better handle on it this round, however the appearance of that ‘extra’ car accident scene still befuddles me. It’s no spoiler to say that accidents are not unheard of in this Show. I believe they are a portal LOL.
Car accidents as time portals?? Only in kdrama-land.
Today is a sad day 😞 here for us Americans. We’re marking the 22nd anniversary of the attack of Islamic terrorists on 9/11 and honoring the bravery of the first responders and ordinary citizens on that day. I can’t watch drama today.
Ah yes, @pkml3. I was reminded of this also by some shocking news/rumours/conjectures/’evidence’. I will hold a thought and prayer for all those who were involved in 9/11, and especially offer this up when I go for my weekday Mass. 🙏
Yes it’s 9/11 again. 😢 It will never be forgotten.
Praying for everyone who suffered in this horrible event 22 years ago. 🙏🏼
Sending you hugs
THOUGHTS AFTER EPISODE 12
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
These are merely my conjectures which will amount to spoilers only if correct. I’m sure there are hundreds of people who have posted explanations for ‘Someday or One Day’ and soon more will add to explaining A Time Called You. This attempt is my ad hoc notes for myself that I’m sharing for fun.
With ATCY, we have entered a new kind of time jump dramaverse… this is a time looping of multi-persons, living parallel lives who are able to co-exist within the same timeline. Or more than one person is able to time jump into another version of themselves or someone else, just a few years apart from each other, hence they have overlapping parallel trajectories.
At first it appears that the characters are fated to time loop forever, but we find elements of self-determination, free will and sacrifice that can break the loop. The interesting element of multiple time jump travelers who are not necessarily aware of each other and have different motivations adds more angst, and the fact that one of those travelers is a psycho killer ups the ante.
Multiple Selves in Concurrent Time/More than 1 Kind of Bodily Possession
Unlike most other time travel stories, this one has more than 1 version of the same person co-existing in the same timeline, at different ages, while retaining (or forgetting) their memories of their other versions.
The main example of this is Si Heon who seems to have maybe 3 incarnations, one maybe born in 1980, and two maybe in around 1988. His case involved inadvertent time jumps and taking possession of his own body in the different incarnations.
Another version of the co-existence of multiple selves is Jun Hee at 11 years of age in 1998, while adult Jun Hee is in the body of Min Ju. This would be similar to Oh Chang Yeong’s possession of his brother Oh Chan Hee.
Jun Hee and Oh Chang Yeong are examples of one person taking possession of the body of another person in a different time. The only pre-requisite seemed to be that they had to look the same. In these possessions, they merged memories with their hosts.
(To be continued…)
(Continued…)
SPOILERS
Different Ways to Time Jump
We follow the emotional journey of the girl, Jun Hee, who appears to be the one to start the time jumps, only to find out much later that we have to loop back to the boy, Si Heon, who passed her the means to time jump. And Si Heon only knew about this because in the time loop, he’d first learnt about how to time jump from Jun Hee herself.
There seems to be also more than 1 way for the time jump to work. There are several times but not always when protagonists are in moving vehicles, being transported in space and fall asleep to be transported in time.
With Jun Hee, she needed to listen to Seo Ji Won’s ‘With My Tears’ on a particular portable cassette tape player (‘Walkman’ for short. It is not a Sony Walkman in ATCY although it was in SOOD), and she only time jumps to Min Ju’s body in the year, 1998.
However with Si Heon/Yeon Jun, only his first time jump had him listening to the Walkman… it was combined with a bus accident. Accidents seem to abound upon poor Si Heon, whom I believe dies in each of them. I believe each accident acted as a portal to another time, into another incarnation of himself.
In 2002 Si Heon’s bus accident catapulted him into Yeon Jun’s body in the year 2006/7. This version of him is the same age as Jun Hee ie born in 1988. I call him Si Heon1/Yeon Jun1. He brings with him the memories of Si Heon.
There is a strange Yeon Jun2 who is also around 19 years of age in 2006/7 who ‘died’ with Tae Ha in a car crash, but whose body revives and is inhabited by Si Heon1/Yeon Jun1’s soul from 2002. Si Heon1 has none of the memories of Yeon Jun2.
Si Heon1/Yeon Jun1 locates Min Ju’s Uncle Bae (Uncle) and succeeds in meeting Jun Hee to continue the loop of getting her to fall in love with him.
However there’s another version of Yeon Jun (Yeon Jun3) who had died in the 2022 airplane crash. His soul enters ‘bus crash 2002’s’ Si Heon’s body and walks around with a limp. He co-exists with Yeon Jun1, but he is around 8 years older than Si Heon1/Yeon Jun1. He makes contact with Uncle but stays away from Jun Hee.
(To be continued…)
(Continued…)
SPOILERS
The Difference Between Si Heon’s and Jun Hee’s Time Jumps
The reason why Si Heon/Yeon Jun is never trapped in a dark dungeon of his mind (the way Min Ju had been) is because he enters the body of himself who is dead in another time. There was no soul to evict.
Poor Min Ju had been alive and in possession of her own body, but her soul/mind had been kicked out to the dungeon of her mind whenever Jun Hee possessed her. She finally found out how to keep Jun Hee in the dungeon instead.
From what Oh Chan Hee (Older brother to his villain younger brother Oh Chang Yeong) said, Older brother was forced to watch his body used by his Younger Brother to kill the girls. He was considered mentally sick and was sent to the psychiatric hospital, but it was his younger brother who had the killer tendencies, fixated on Min Ju for some unknown reason. We see that even in the current time, Oh Chang Yeong hung around Yeon Jun and Jun Hee, who looked like his brother’s classmates.
The Start of the Time Jump?
The time jump was made by the love triangle/quadrangle of In Gyu – Min Ju – Si Heon / In Gyu – Min Ju – Si Heon – Jun Hee with a synchronicity of longing and wishes, and the ‘port key’ Walkman. They each in some way contributed to bringing about the time jump.
Min Ju started it with the message in the Seo Ji Won cassette tape that she gave to Si Heon, which read: “I hope this music transports/takes you to your happiest moment.” However it was In Gyu who gave her the Walkman. The preparation for the jump was completed when Si Heon gave the Walkman and cassette tape to Jun Hee in 2023, so that his 1998 self would meet her. One line of the lyrics of the Seo Ji Won song was appropriately “Someday, you will come back to me.”
Ironically on her birthday, Min Ju’s wish was that one day, she’d be the kind of girl that Si Heon would like. This became both true and yet not true because it was the personality of Jun Hee in Min Ju’s body that Si Heon fell in love with.
The day Jun Hee receives the old Walkman and tape and falls asleep in the bus, is the day that Min Ju runs out of the house and gets bashed in the head. Jun Hee had told her friend Na Yeon that she’d reached her limit of missing Yeon Jun. Coincidentally, her birthday had just passed and she sends a message to Yeon Jun saying “My birthday wish this year is to see you again, even if it’s just once. Yeon Jun, I miss you so much. Please come to me just one more time.” The messages in her phone that had been all unread before, become read.
Jun Hee falls asleep listening to the Seo Ji Won song. In 1998, Si Heon visits a sleeping Min Ju in hospital and lets her listen to the same song. With all conditions synchronised, the moment for ‘fate’ to bring the two girls together and fulfill their wishes had arrived.
Jun Hee who wakes up in Min Ju’s body. This however introduced a great aberration to their reality, possibly because in 1998, Jun Hee already existed as a child of around 11 years of age. This may have caused the looping of time.
(To be continued…)
(Continued…)
SPOILERS
The Required Sacrifices
Instead of remaining determined to meet each other in 1998, or to fall in love in 2007, and to repeat the loop in 2023, Si Heon1/Yeon Jun1 in 2022 decides to change the trajectory of ‘fate’ by dying in the plane crash while letting his older self, Yeon Jun3, meet Jun Hee, and possibly to figure out with her how the loop might be broken. Si Heon1 gave up the opportunity to have a future with Jun Hee.
Discovering that the time loop aberration involved the deaths of three out of the foursome, Jun Hee finally gave up her self-centred wish to be with Yeon Jun (even if only once), imitated Yeon Jun1’s decision to sacrifice a future with any version of him, and started the process that would lead to the dissolution of all their shared history. It is particularly apt that she is only able to do so because Min Jun allowed her to take over her body and In Gyu destroyed the tape (gift from Min Ju to Si Heon) and the Walkman (gift from In Gyu to Min Ju). It took the generosity/sacrifice of all four of them to break the loop.
The Ending
In SOOD, we are reminded at the end that the 11-year old Jun Hee had already met 18-year old Si Heon in 1998, and that they would have a long future together to meet and fall in love, without a horrible time loop.
In ATCY it is Si Heon, who in 2011 is a CEO of his own webtoon production company, who continues to remember Jun Hee. We see Jun Hee as a young adult in 2011, running to catch the bus which Si Heon has just boarded. Once again the planets align when on the moving bus, the radio plays the same Seo Ji Won song that Jun Hee starts singing to, attracting Si Heon’s attention. He ascertains that the girl is not Min Ju, which means she could be Jun Hee.
While they are finally drawn by ‘fate’ to meet each other on a bus that transports them in space, it’s most appropriate that they both alight before they introduce themselves. One trusts that as they now share the same space, and moment in time, without anyone reviving from a comatose or dead state, that they can finally start a romance without harrowing time jumps. LOL.
Hey @GB
SPOILERS here,
many many
SPOILERS
I haven’t written here in a loong time. Hello!
What I want to say: there is only 1 reincarnation of each character, only they live in different bodies at certain points of their lives. And in different times, going back and forth.
1. JunHee is born in 1988 meets SiHeon in 1998 when she’s 10. He’s around 18.
Then in 2007 she meets SiHeon again at college. It’s the same SiHeon from her childhood only he’s in YeonJun’s body this time.
They love eachother until 2022 when SiHeon (in YeonJun’s body) dies in a plane crash.
A year after, in 2023 she travels to the past and wakes up a couple of times in MinJu’s body, the first two having control of it, the third locked inside her until MinJu dies.
While she’s there for months (in the beginning it’s spring, and MinJu dies on October 13th), her body in 2023 is with no soul in it most probably, in a state of sleep – for a much shorter time, minutes or hours.
So after her birthday in 2023, she lives for a few weeks in 1998, comes back to 2023 for a couple of days, goes back to 1998 and after seeing SiHeon painting returns to the present, 2023, meets SiHeon in SiHeon’s body – he must be 43-42 or something, I think he was 17 or 18 in 1998.
And then goes back to 1998 until almost the end.
2. SiHeon is around 18 in 1998, befriends MinJu, then falls in love with JunHee while she is in MinJu’s body.
MinJu dies on October 13th 1998, he goes to study in the US and returns in 2002 where he soon after has an accident.
He wakes up in YeonJun’s body in 2006 who has been also in an accident and lost his love interest. We are not told as with MinJu if the real YeonJun stays inside his body and can witness what SiHeon does. Maybe he does, maybe his soul died in the accident in 2006 too, we don’t know.
Anyway SiHeon in this body finds the JunHee he fell in love with in highschool. In 1998 she was 36 in an 18 year old body. Now she is 18 or 17 in her own body, before the part he knows happened to her. Anyway, he studies hard to get in the same university as her and introduces himself to her making her love him too. They live until 2022 when he dies in the plane crash.
He wakes up in his own body in 2002 (he left from there), having been in a coma for a few weeks. So a few weeks that body was without him, and he spent that time in between 2006 and 2022, many many years.
From this point on he lives a linear life, from 2002 until 2023 when he talks to JunHee again. The poor many lives 21 years longing for his lover who he cannot meet for if he meets her and she does not fall in love with him in YeonJun’s body then his past is altered and he might disappear.
Unlike her, he cannot go back into YeonJun’s body for the simple fact that after the first time after he returned from the time travel to his own body, YeonJun died. So SiHeon has no body to go to anymore.
The only difference between these two is that she goes to another body in the past, and he to the future.
And he stays for so much with her in one go in YeonJun’s body because unlike her who is only asleep and keeps being waken up, he is in a coma in 2002.
Oh and.. SiHeon does not alter their past when choosing to go on the plane knowing he’d die, that is the only path he thinks he can take if he wants to go back to 2002 and make sure JunHee gets the tape from himself around 43 year old in 2023 and is able to meet him in 1998 so their story can start.
The only thing he alters is that he gives his future version the rings. And phone.
Thanks @oli… yes, it’s been a looooong time!! Do come by more often and chat with us!
It’s so nice to get more explanation. This clarifies more.
What would the alternative have been if the Si Heon of 2022 took the other plane ticket and did not die? I imagine that it would mean that 43-year old Si Heon would disappear because 2022 Si Heon would not die to go back into his 2002 comatose self?
About the incarnations of Si Heon: there are at least 2 of them living concurrent parallel different lives in the same timeline. That’s why 43-year old Si Heon could meet 36-year old Si Heon at the airport.
Back to the chemistry analogy:
In order for Si Heon to be transformed into Yeon Jun. He needed to be listening to the song on that Walkman, and then be asleep/in a coma (or dead). I presume if Yeon Jun had been alive, he’d have also been kicked out to the dungeon of his mind and trapped there while Si Heon lived in his body. But the real Yeon Jun had died.
Then in 2022, Si Heon dies in the plane crash, but because he was not listening to the song playing at the time of his death, he re-enters his own 2002 body.
Another condition for the transformation is that the bodies had to look alike.
The lookalike was Yeon Jun who was in cram school with Tae Ha and who died in 2006/2007. Which begs the question, if there had been no lookalike at all, ie no Yeon Jun, would Si Heon have remained in a coma and awoken in 2002 without ever jumping into another body and time? Then Jun Hee would never have met Yeon Jun. There would have been no time jump and no story LOL.
A point where Si Heon could have stopped the time loop was by not giving Jun Hee the Walkman and tape in 2023. By rights the Walkman belonged to Min Ju, and the tape belonged to Si Heon. On their own they would have worked no magic. 1998 Si Heon would have grown up and maybe met Jun Hee whom he had seen as a child in 1998. They might have had a perfectly fine relationship without the time loop complications introduced by the Walkman getting into Jun Hee’s hands. 🙂
The Movie version of SOOD is out…
https://dramanice.la/someday-or-one-day-the-movie/watch-someday-or-one-day-the-movie-2022-episode-1-online
That hair though …
I will probably rewatch this show and will use the above for guidance
Hi @monmor, sure thing. Hope our posts are helpful rather than confusing.
I stopped watching the movie for a bit. It gets even more convoluted LOL.
oh my I have not been sure whether to watch the movie. Because I prefer the longer drama series for the character And plot development.
@monmor I’ve taken a break from this time jump show to another time jump show without the convoluted time loop problem LOL.
I’m trying out A Twisted Fate of Love (2020) and find it quite watchable. A mixture of heavy and light, a touch of ‘magic’, with mixed motivations of revenge and romance. I’ll see if I can actually go the whole hog of 43 episodes!!!
I had just noticed this show. I will have a gander.
about time loops. My daughter told me to think parallel timelines when watching time travel. Now I realize thinking time loops would have helped with a time called you. I guess there were both.
@monmor, yes, there were both time jumps and a time loop in ATCY. In the movie the fact that they were able to loop back in time, made it a bit crazy with multiple versions of a person in the same timeline.
At first I thought of parallel timelines but in ATCY, the timeline seems to be one and the same.
I really loved that it was always the same soul who was her love.The Rowoon twist was pretty cute.
Finally finished this drama and am loving the ending. That no matter what, he could find her. Like @monmor said, it was always the same soul they loved. 💕
I guess this is what they call soulmate? Not that I believe it in, but it is a beautiful take on the idea of a soul mate.
Will be back to write more and read the comments before this. A drama worth watching. Also for the beautiful scenes that you just want to wallpaper.
I’m glad you enjoyed it @grace.
I believe it was a blessing that you did not continue with SOOD before watching the rest of ATCY, because those who just watched SOOD would have been comparing so much, and their enjoyment of ATCY would have been affected.
I just listened to some of the podcast by kfangurl and the ladies of Dramas Over Flowers on how they really liked SOOD. They went on to watch ATCY and they compared. Dramas Over Flowers gave ATCY a less than stellar review but I felt that they were biased because they’d just been talking about or watching/re-watching SOOD.
I may agree that the music could be a little more unique and earwormy for ATCY but I don’t fault it for the acting or the production values or for being true to SOOD.
Anyway, if anyone’s interested to hear what these other reviewers had to say, you can go to their podcasts.
https://www.dramasoverflowers.net/podcast
This is kfangurl’s full review some 3 years ago.
https://thefangirlverdict.com/2020/12/22/review-someday-or-one-day-taiwan/
Hi,
I’ve been a silent reader here for some time and some series, and today I feel I’d like to share some of my thoughts as well.
I have just finished the K-drama version (I actually had to bingewatch and were happy to find another series which gave me this must-go-on-watching-feeling again, since I hadn’t been able to find a suitable series for some time).
I really loved the drama and it’s ending. I’m a huge fan of time travel stories. In my opinion it was really well-made, not annoyingly stretched to 16 episodes, like you sometimes find it in K-dramas and with the perfect amount of brain food that keeps you thinking about the characters and the plot for more than the time you’re watching. Additionally there are some wonderful pictures that stay in your mind for some time, even if you’ve finished the show.
I actually had to stop in the middle of episode 11, firstly, because I needed some sleep and knew I wouldn’t be able to finish anyways that day and secondly, because I needed to sort out the different story lines of the characters and I actually wasn’t sure wether I had understood everything right and if every story line really made sense. So when I woke up in the morning I found my brain working really hard at entwining everything and thinking about how the story could be brought to a satisfying ending in my opinion.
I also wondererd about the different sorts of time travels that appeared in the series. I mostly got to the same conclusions like Oli.
I thought it a really interesting choice to have two different types (or three). 1) Time travels caused by accidents into “dead” bodies 2) into the bodies of people who are still alive and whose personality is pushed aside to some sort of hidden place deep down to some unknown place. And with the ability to come back and take over again, when they really think they have to interfere (althogh it doesn’t happen in all situations). These time travels were only possible when listening to the music on the walkman. What I think to be very interesting is, that the walkman time travels are reversible, when the people are woken up by someone, so they can go back and forth if they want to. Whereas the time travels into dead people’s bodies happen by another accident. Although I have to admit, that Si-heons last time travel back into his original body confused me some hours after finishing the show. When he travelled for the fist time into the dead body of Koo Yeon-jun, I thought he had left his own dead body. But as he gets back there during his last time travel, he can’t have been dead actually, can he? Maybe I misunderstood something completely and one of you can help me to understand?
What is different in this story too is, that the different bodies that the person coexist for quite some time. In the stories I know (e.g. American series ‘Once upon a time’) this usually is a huge problem and shouldn’t happen. I also pity Nam Si-heon who has to watch Koo Yeon-jun being a happy couple for many years. I think it doesn’t help to know it’s you, but not being able to experience it at that time. Feels like watching a video of the old times after someone has died. This is some sort of cruel.
Well, after a certain amount of “brain acrobatics” that morning, I felt I got most things sorted out satisfyingly to go on with the rest of the show. I went into the last 1 1/2 episodes with some questions of which I hoped to get an answer to. I didn’t get my answers but I didn’t mind at all, because I think they managed to create a wonderful ending. What I especially liked was how they showed the changes in the future world happening after the past had been changed. In time travel stories they usually just go back to the future and you learn about the changes bit by bit as the new situation is shown. Here they used a different way to portray the changes. You can literally SEE everything that changes falling into pieces and disappearing, like relationships by photos and messages falling apart and blending with the sky or air or people being deleted from phone messages. I think this was really well done and satisfying because it emphasizes a lot more that things fall apart and maybe rearrange to new patterns some day.
The way they met in the end was exactly what I whished for and what made sense from my point of view.
After thinking about the ending for a day I have to admit, that one thing was missing (or did I miss something while watching?). I really would like to know what happened to Min-Ju and In-gyu.
And there’s another question that keeps my mind busy: I still don’t get why all the time travelling happend at all. What was the initial action and reason for all the developments? Whose “fault” was it? When the two were meant for each other they could have met just like they finally did.
I have decided to watch again. Maybe I can sort it out then.
I’m sorry for the long post, but this just shows how I liked the drama.
Welcome to the blog, @Susiwatchingkdrama.
I’ll let @GB and others comment on your post since I didn’t watch this drama.
Hi @Susiewatchingkdrama, no need to apologise for long posts around here. We tend to write a lot when we like a Show!!
You said:
The 2002 accident left the body of Si Heon in a coma, ie he was not dead. That body would later be inhabited by 2022 YJ who was supposed to die in the plane crash. 2002 Si Heon would grow up with a limp and become the older Si Heon we see in 2023.
Yes, I interpreted the disintegration of everything to do with the loop trajectory to be a sign that the romance due to the looping time jump was not meant to be. It was an aberration that had to be corrected or they would loop forever.
You also said
In one of my comments, I guessed what might have happened if the time travel loop had not occurred. What I posted was: “A point where Si Heon could have stopped the time loop was by not giving Jun Hee the Walkman and tape in 2023. By rights the Walkman belonged to Min Ju, and the tape belonged to Si Heon. On their own they would have worked no magic. 1998 Si Heon would have grown up and maybe met Jun Hee whom he had seen as a child in 1998. They might have had a perfectly fine relationship without the time loop complications introduced by the Walkman getting into Jun Hee’s hands.”
My understanding of the looping was that there was no actual beginning, although there could be an end. The Show does not explain why it started in the first place, only that Jun Hee could not let go of her grief in 2023 and that older Yeon Jun made the decision to gift her with the Walkman of his past.
I also commented above on the conditions that were necessary for the time jump to work. One of these conditions was having a lookalike in the past. Also one thing I did not think of to add, which might have fulfilled the condition for a time jump was perhaps the existence of the young child Jun Hee, who in 1998 already had a crush on teenager Si Heon. In this kdrama (but not in the Taiwanese adaptation) we can say that the First Love rule holds sway. Si Heon/Yeon Jun was little Jun Hee’s first love.
So the planets aligned for Jun Hee in 2023 to time jump.
1) There’s a lookalike in Min Ju who lived in 1998.
2) Jun Hee had already met Si Heon when she was a child and had liked him then.
3) Min Ju’s walkman with the cassette tape that Min Ju had given to Si Heon in 1998 came into Jun Hee’s possession in 2023.
4) She fell asleep while listening to it.
5) Min Ju had been attacked (or had a car accident) and was unconscious so Jun Hee could enter her body.
This cannot be said to be a true beginning because YJ would not have known about the Walkman’s ability to bring on a time jump if Jun Hee had not earlier made the jump and told him. So how it begins is not explained. But I like how the ‘planets aligned’ so that it sort of made sense that the Walkman could be the ‘port key’ to open the portal to the past.
Hi @GrowingBeautifully and @packmule3 for your warm welcome.
Wow @GrowingGeautifuly, I didn’t expect such a detailed and fast answer. Thank you so much! This helps me a lot and makes my brain almost explode at the same time, because some things seem to become more complex the longer I think about them.
I’m really sorry, that I missed some of the things you have already been explaining and writing about.
It’s interesting that you mention that there’s no explanation why it started in the first place, only that Jun Hee could not let go of her grief in 2023 and that older Yeon Jun made the decision to gift her with the Walkman of his past. This kept me thinking. Maybe he couldn’t bear the loneliness he had experienced for so many years either. On the other hand I remember him and Min Ju’s uncle talking about “a plan” they had at the cafe in one of the first episodes. So I’m not quite sure, if it was only because she was still grieving.
Something my brain isn’t able to understand is your idea of how not giving the walkman to Jun Hee would stop the time loop. Maybe it’s because I often tend to struggle with the concept of time loops and how they affect things. Would the “not giving it to her” change the past? Or would the past just stay the same and the time loop disappear? Sometimes I think I’m not clever enough for time jump stories. Maybe this makes them even more fascinating.
Oh, I didn’t know there was a First Love Rule.
I really like your ‘planets aligned’ idea, it makes so much sense and how you call the Walkman a “port key”.
My steaming brain just got an interesting insight and I really have to laugh about myself. While thinking about the beginning I asked myself: Who benefitted most from the time jumps or how many people benefitted in the long run? Would it be possible to find the “true beginning” by answering this question? I thought I had to think this over more deeply. At least one of the murders wouldn’t have happened, Min-Ju would be alive, In-Gyu wouldn’t go to prison and wouldn’t commit suicide, Si Heon would’t have the terrible accident on the bus and he and Jun Hee could meet at some point in the future. And then it struck me, that this was what the story actually is about. Ha, ha, I can’t stop myself from laughing.
So I’m trying to answer my questions myself:
There are two people who benefitted most because it literally saved their lives: Min-Ju and In-Gyu. She was the one who kept listening to the song all the time in 1998 and he was the one who had the idea of giving her a new Walkman for her birthday.
This alone would have been enough to cause the “magic”.
But as both of them are not really “makers” (active and outgoing) they get the help of a) a person who means a lot/most to In-Gyu and b) a person who is almost the complete opposite in character to Min-ju and on the other hand her lookalike. They gain something from helping too, a healthy body on Si-Heon’s side and not having to grieve over the loss on Jun-hee’s side. And of course getting to meet their soulmate, maybe as a reward?!
So I guess the ones who started everything were actually Min-Ju and In-Gyu. And maybe this is why the first episode starts in 1998 at the record shop with the two/three of them.
I have to admit, I really like this idea, the longer I think about it.
I really wonder what it is like to work in the team who works out and discusses the plot of a series. It must be mindblowing. I’d really like to know what their ideas about all these things were.
Oh no, I forgot about one thing: The murderer actually had the chance of murdering only because of the existence of a magic Walkman and cassette, right?! Without it, it would have “just” been a car accident for Min-Ju.
So I guess I’m back to zero again.
@Susiewatchingkdrama my take on the tale is that the time jump was a mistake. Trying to assuage the grief or enable one’s other version to live/relive the romance is an aberration that destroyed much happiness and lives. The strange wedge in of the murder, I feel now is no longer so out-of-place, was to show that selfishly going with the time jump opened up time to being abused… in this case by the worst sort of individuals: the pscyho-killer.
If you think about it… although the killer only got hold of the Walkman at the end of our tale, his going into the past to kill happened in the beginning of the 1998 timeline, because he caused Min Ju to be unconscious. That was a great time twist on the part of the Writers. I heartily applaud them.
You probably know that ATCY is based very, very closely on Someday or One Day. Therefore to know what the creative team wanted to convey, we have to go back to the creative script writers of Someday or One Day rather than to those of ATCY.
I saw or read something about how the writers wanted to do something extremely different in their story (which I believe was not based on any IP) and talked out all the loops and trajectories. The result is this time travel/time jump tale, which is unlike any other.
Ah… found it in Wikipedia: “Chien revealed the creative origins of Someday Or One Day and how one of the producers, Ma Yi-ting, wanted to create a “drama that would make people cry without knowing it”. Chien derived inspiration from a dream: “In my dream, I was writing in a hurry; writing about the love story of a male and a female protagonist who have been together for 13 years. The drama used flashbacks extensively, taking them from age 29 back to their high school days, showing their mutual love.” He told Lin about his dream and they wrote the story together. The result was described as “[a] script written with God guiding the screenwriter’s hands”.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Someday_or_One_Day
Here’s a translation of the interview with the writers in MyDramaList. You’ll probably be able to find more stuff if you search.
https://mydramalist.com/discussions/some-day-or-one-day/46677-translated-very-long-has-spoilers-interview-and-other-infos?page=1
Above I posted links to reviews on both SOOD and ATCY. Bear in mind that the ones who first loved SOOD so much, are rather more finicky when they review ATCY. personally I’m fine with the Korean remake. It was true to the original and edited out the parts that were not necessary. I enjoyed both versions of the same tale. 🙂
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Hi @pkml3 I just realised that this thread has not been put into the A Time Called You category. Please Categorize it.
Thanks!
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