Finally finished this show after so long. I started watching it back when it was airing and dropped it around episode 9 (17-18) and picked it up again this year after enjoying KHY's performance in Lovely Runner. But I still faced the same issue with the show this time around, almost abandoning the drama around the same spot. I wondered if I'd outgrown stories like this — I rarely watch dramas set in high school anymore with few exceptions, but after finishing the show I realize that's not the case.

Let me start by saying that this show has a very unique and interesting premise. Eun Dan-oh is a young spunky teenager with a terminal heart condition who becomes "aware" that she's a side character in a comic book doomed to die without her say-so. Then she meets Haru, a mysterious character who might be the only one who can help her change the story and her fate.

Sounds cool, right? We meet a fairly large cast of other characters at Dan-oh's school, including the A3 (a parody of BOF's F4), made up of Baek-kyung (Dan-oh's childhood friend and fiancé), Do-hwa (who also becomes aware and joins Dan-oh in her quest), and Nam-ju, the leader of the A3 and top dog at the school. There's also Ju-da, a scholarship student and Nam-ju's love interest.

The show cleverly parodies a lot of cliches from popular high school dramas and stories, and so the comic in which these characters all exist is as cliched as possible. Nam-ju is the revered, perfect ML of the comic with a hinted-at hidden depths, Ju-da is the pretty, Mary Sue-esque female lead with a tragic backstory, and Do-hwa is the second ML, doomed to lose the battle for Ju-da's heart. Baek-kyung also embodies several cliches as a potential love interest for Dan-oh; he's rude to her without cause, but it's okay because he has a tragic past.

We then find out that Dan-oh and Haru and basically a lot of other characters in this current story were actually recycled from a previous story, where they first became aware and tried to also change the story, but failed. This raises several questions: who is this writer? Why do they recycle these characters and their storylines? If Dan-oh and Haru already failed once to change their fate, how can they do it again, and succeed this time?

This set-up was really great, and I was looking forward to seeing how Dan-oh could change her fate and fight against the writer. But somewhere around the halfway mark, the story started to lose steam. The story begins to focus too much on the Haru-Danoh-Baekkyung love triangle (not really a love triangle because Baek-kyung was never really in the picture for the real Dan-oh), which didn't interest me at all. Dan-oh stopped wanting to change her fate and just wanted to spend all her time with Haru. Baek-kyung for whatever reason realizes he actually likes Dan-oh and hovers around her and Haru like a dark cloud, constantly claiming to be the one who can change her fate but basically doing nothing. Haru as a character just existed for Dan-oh's sake; no personality or anything even when he became an actual character in the story. The story became repetitive and boring because nothing of note happened; they just kept circling around the same thing.

At that this point, I had more interest in the comic's FL, Ju-da, who might have been secretly aware for a long time and might actually like Do-hwa instead of her fated Nam-ju, but even that became a dead end as she still eventually chose Nam-ju for a completely pointless reason.

The show's ending may seem romantic to some, but for me, it is quite bleak, or maybe bittersweet. The comic ends and a new one begins; this time the characters are in college, and Haru and Dan-oh reunite as extras who can run around and do what they like, I suppose. But they're still characters and subject to the writer's will. And it makes me wonder what the point of all their struggle was if the writer was still going to finish the story anyway and they would be recycled (not all, justice for Do-hwa and Ju-da!) in a new story. The "happy ever after" doesn't feel earned; it's just something that happened. I don't think that's a worthy ending of such a brilliant premise with such a dynamic FL.

And there's still so many unanswered questions. Again who is this writer, and what is their motivation? Why do some characters become aware and others not? Why was Haru the only one who could change the stage? And why was he still able to change the stage when he became a named character? I'm sure the writer would have noticed him messing up the story at that point.

I also think introducing the writer as a character would have improved the show a lot; it would have provided an actual antagonist that the characters could rally against. Instead they were all just circling the drain, unable to do much to change their fate.

I think this show had all the ingredients to be truly great; apart from such interesting concepts (I really liked the idea of the stage and the shadow), the casting was near perfect. KHY was great as Dan-oh; I can't imagine anyone else in the role, and while the cutesy act got a bit old after a while, I really loved the way she could switch between stage and shadow Dan-oh and the difference was clear. Her comedic timing and facial reactions were also amazing. The writing really let her and the character down in the second half of the show. LJW was amazing as Baek-kyung, even though I disliked the character, and I think that's a testament to his skill as an actor. He was a standout for me. I also really enjoyed Do-hwa and Ju-da and their actors are really good; they were probably my favorite characters and I'm sad that they were not utilized to their full potential, especially Ju-da. The OST also is one of my favorites.

But the show couldn't fully take it to the end. I feel like it would have helped maybe if it had been shorter and cut out all the filler so the plot was tighter and more coherent. But at least the first half was great and really had me; I only wish the show had stuck the landing.