If I could give it a 100 out of 10 rating, I would. I absolutely can not stop thinking about this drama. I finished this yesterday and my heart was so overwhelmed by the beauty and the sorrow of this drama. I was at a loss of speech. I even dreamt about this drama after watching it. This show really hit me on a personal level having gone through some of the things that this show portrayed.

I am a sucker for good musicals. And having Ji Chang Wook and Hwang In Yeop together in one drama? I was already intrigued. I was so eagerly waiting for it and oh lord the waiting so worth it. Never in my dream I thought I was about to witness one of the most mesmerizing, magical kdrama of all time.

I feel the main question posed in this show was how do children become functional adult in a society that in its core is dysfunctional and rotten? How do you remain a soul that still remembers how to dream, remembers its innocence? How do you keep your uniqueness in a society that is trying hard to put everyone inside the same box.
Human society is a broken one. You are an outcast if you behave or think even slightly outside the societal norms. This is a society that will kill the likes of Galileo and Alan Turing but will praise and worship morons.
So how can children, the most vulnerable and weakest section of the society, not have any impact of this filth? How do they keep their childish heart alive in a world that is constantly pushing everyone towards a meaningless rat race?
Why would anyone be claimed as successful or failure just because they don't meet the average standard of human imagination? After all genius can only be born if they can exist outside of the box.

This show was so beautiful, healing, magical, mesmerizing... I can keep on adding adjectives and it will not be enough. This show touched quite a few heavy topics like abandonment, trust issues, emotional abuse, child sexual abuse, student suicide, mental illness and yet somehow remained light like a feather throughout the show. It made us cry but did not make the story dark and gloomy. Best part of the show was it did not even bother making sense of the magic. Because that is what magic is. After all as they said in the drama "Magic does not create miracles, but allows you to discover them". This show will make you feel in your heart that you do believe in Magic. Because the true magic exists in living a happy satisfied life and not in adapting to society to look happy and successful while living with a heavy heart. And this show so rightly said "So what if you don't have accomplishments? You can still be happy without the approval of others"

It reminded me of the lines by Aldous Huxley
"It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly."

Annara Sumanara <3

*Few points at the end*
A really good point of this show is that absolutely everything remains platonic. Even though there was a slight hint of romance at the beginning it gets quickly side tracked by everything else in their life.

Acting: Ji Chang Wook's acting skill does not need to be analyzed by me. He is one of the best Korean actors. Even though he has made some weird drama choices in recent past, I am so glad he took up this project. He made the character of Magician so believable.

Hwang In Yeop too is tremendously talented. His expressions were so spot on to express the struggles of a child pushed down by the burden of parent's expectation, societal norm. I would be disappointed if he does not get an award for his acting here.

The female lead is a talented one she acted very well in Beyond Evil but here i did not find her believable as a high school student at the beginning. But it did not matter because that was never the point. The point was to show how class discrimination gets heavier and heavier no matter how much one tries to keeps their head up and she was spot on with there expressing the dilemmas. Plus it was visible that she is a great dancer because of how she moves during the musical scenes. She has done an amazing job.

Direction: I have never seen another musical kdrama till now. I don't know if they exist but I must say the director here understood the assignment so so well. Often musicals get heavily loaded with too many unnecessary dancing scenes. Even some of the greatest Hollywood musicals have this flaw. But NOT THIS ONE.

One negative point is that it has two typical black characters. Especially the school bully. For some reason I just hate a school bully for the sake of existing without any character depth in them. Because children usually do not become black or white. They are most often product of their own environment. So a random student bully to make things hard is never to my liking. The reason of her existence was only to make things hard for the leads for absolutely no reason. But other than this i have no complain and I still absolutely love this show.