“Age of Youth” aired July 22, 2016, to August 27, 2016, and had a cast that I am personally not all that acquainted with. There were familiar faces here and there, but it was my first time encountering our 5 female leads, so that was pretty interesting. I’m not one to be a huge fan of the romantic comedy genre, but I have to say I am quite surprised. This drama had me laughing, crying, and sometimes even a little bit spooked and I like that about this drama. However, with all the changing mood shifts throughout the drama, I sometimes found it to be a bit jarring. The first few episodes I couldn’t really tell where and what the show was going for, but after a while, I could see that perhaps it was trying to be a little different than most coming of age melancholy shows. The dynamic between the five women who lived in this house was my favorite part of the entire show itself. The female leads were all distinctive, and had different points of views on life, and lived vastly different lifestyles. The way they all interreacted and how their friendship grew throughout the show was really the most satisfying part. Having seen them grow individually as characters and how they dealt with the obstacles that life threw at them was compelling. I think this drama has some really special qualities about it and I really did enjoy it, but I still have some gripes with it.
The intro sequences were really strange to me, the openings really seemed out of left field. I guess they sort of matched the title of each episode, but I wasn’t really about it. I enjoyed the first episodes’ little drawings incorporated throughout but wished that it would persist the entire drama itself. The ending of the drama was strange to me, it was a little forced to wrap things up, and still left us with a lot of questions. I know there is a season two but for a first-time watcher during the broadcast of the show, we are left wondering so many things. Like whatever happened to the roommate that Jung Ye Eun replaced? We heard a little about her situations but it seemed more serious than that and we never really got anything more about it. They built it up and then nothing really came of it. There are other questions to be asked about each female lead, but I don’t want to really go into spoilers about it so I can’t really talk about it. I felt that this drama dealt with some pretty serious issues but I don’t think that 12 episodes were enough to get fully fleshed out storylines for each of the girls. We would see things happen and situations they were all in, and of course, we got our outcomes, but truly it wasn’t enough time to sort through it all. It sometimes felt just a tad rushed for my liking and I think that perhaps 20 episodes would have done this show better justice.
The female leads in this drama were all great. They all won my heart in some way or another, even though during the first few episodes I was unsure about some of them. I have to say that Ryu Hwa Young as Kang Yi Na was my favorite housemate, and her lifestyle and “job” were my favorite. I know this may sound weird if you have seen it, but I kind of wanted to dive deeper into her lifestyle because I genuinely found it interesting. Han Ye Ri as Yoon Jin Myung was great as well and I think she is a great actress. Her emotional scenes had me in tears and I really want to watch some more dramas with her in it. Park Hye Soo as Yoo Eun Jae was pretty good as well, her character was a little wishy-washy for my liking because she just never seemed very strong and so unsure about everything, that I have to say I was a little annoyed with her. But, I grew to be attached to her character anyways, especially when she had scenes with Shin Hyun Soo as Yoon Jong Yul. Han Seung Yeon as Jung Ye Eun was the girl that I’m sure most were annoyed with. She was the typical Korean female lead that you see where you are just not sure why she is so attached to someone who treats her the way they do. She is whinny and overreacts to everything, but even though she can be annoying she was still fun to watch. She just seemed the most generic to me out of the five girls. Lastly Park Eun Bin as Song Ji Won was great. I loved her character and her personality. Her confidence and boldness was pretty important to the story, and was infectious as a viewer, as she got a lot of balls got rolling which leads to bigger events, and I appreciate that about her character. I just wish the writers would have flushed out her storyline a little more. We just never got enough time with her.
Like I said before the show could have had more episodes to really pull us in and give us more information on each girl; their love and personal lives were all intriguing and I think I would have enjoyed the drama so much more with more development. But with what we had to work with, I’m still pretty fond of this drama. The girls have latched onto my heart, and each of them truly was great characters, I just wish they had more time to shine. This romantic comedy was something that I really enjoyed and may get me more into the romantic comedy genre. I hope that I can watch more of what each of our leads has done because I was impressed by them all. I also hope that season 2 will give us a little more information on some of the girls because the ending was a little too vague. Overall though, I thought it was a pretty great drama that drew you into the world and got you invested into each one of the characters enough for me to want more.