This is a hard one to explain. Obviously 'A Time Called You' is the adaptation of something amazing, that much is probably clear to most MDL users by now and what makes hard writing this review is that it really is in many ways a fantastic adaptation. They have changed the ending, but that was literally the weakest point of the original, most other things are incredibly faithful to the source material. Most of the time when a kdrama is not an original work, the writers try to add their "personal touch", which more often than not leads to the ruination of the script. Recent examples that come to mind are 'See You in My 19th Life' and 'Kiss Sixth Sense'. Both of these are webcomic adaptations & all changes the writer has made from the source material made the scripts worse, pretty much every single one of them. However as I said this drama is different, the plot most of the time is identical to the original, with the dialog being identical as well, the changes are extremely minimal up until the later episodes. One could even say that this is a far more authentic adaptation than the Harry Potter, or Lord of the Rings movies.
As for the casting, most actors fit the original Taiwanese casting down to a T, the similarities are quite eerie actually, I have never seen something like this before. I may not be a big believer in Ahn Hyo Seop's acting ability, but he tried more than hard enough & he is visually a very good fit as well..

So then it begs the question, why is this not amazing?
I think this is the first kdrama I have ever seen where the script was -in a practical sense- perfect, yet I did not really like it. I'm just going to list the big issues one by one:

⌲ The cinematography is too pretty and vibrant, it does not fit.
⌲ The 'song' is a terrible pick and yes this is VERY detrimental in this drama. (if you have to listen to the same song 20 times in a drama, they gotta do better than this, is there even a melody?)
⌲ The OST outside of the cassette song is completely lifeless & could be described as 'nothing'.
⌲ The FL may have had the same lines, but the production team has somewhat ruined her characterization, there's not enough contrast between her two roles, the "switch" is not impactful enough! (YeoBeen acted amazingly well, this is not on her)
⌲ The chemistry could've been better.
⌲ Some of the most impactful scenes of the original are very inferior and some of them are missing, which is weird, because of how closely the adaptation follows the plot. (I think it's not a FF button malfunction, the Piano scene & the bullying of the bullies scene are missing from this? Please do tell me in the review comments, if this is a problem with me falling asleep at those critical moments and I'll just adjust my review & apologize for being stupid)

Ultimately it comes down to this adaptation being redundant, it's just unnecessary! There is no Korean touch here worth mentioning, It's a pointless adaptation. (perhaps it's all about the new product placements within a show that should be a guaranteed success, since it's a copy of something very few ppl know in Korea, but is already proven to be amazing?)


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Not trying to bash the songwriter here at all, songs that are basically just poems sang with a soulful voice can be amazing, having an impactful melody is not a requirement, it's merely a bad fit for this drama, that's all.
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edit 1: It kept bothering me, so I rewatched the last 15-20 minutes of the drama in a less medicated state than before. My conclusion is that while I'm not very happy with how the original drama ended, this just feels low effort, I don't know. Considering how one of the few changes they made is related to young Han Jun Hee's story, I sense this might be because they wanted to avoid something that can be considered risque. This I can understand, it's just that the result is much more lifeless & lacking in impact, than the original.

edit 2: There are a large number of positive reviews on MDL that criticize people like myself for not evaluating this drama correctly & that we have too much bias since we watched the Tdrama first. This criticism has merit, however I think even if we ignore the redundancy thing there is just such a huge difference in emotional impact between these two dramas. I have rewatched some select scenes from the original this afternoon & It's fascinating to see how much better those are. (The Birthday Cake scene, This is our First day scene.. generic banter & liveliness etc etc) I think someone has to dislike Mandarin or Taiwan a lot to not see this.