Season 1 |
Season 2 |
Episode Guide
The Flash of Lightning Before It Thunders – | Review Score – 3/5
There’s Nothing Anyone Can Do – | Review Score – 3.5/5
The Miracle Of Two People – | Review Score – 3.5/5
The Best Feeling in The World – | Review Score – 3/5
The Gravity of Liking Someone – | Review Score – 3.5/5
Your Heart Is Safe Now – | Review Score – 4/5
Something I’ve Been Holding Back – | Review Score – 3.5/5
One is Bigger Than Any Other – | Review Score – 3.5/5
At first glance, Love Alarm is a formulaic, by-the-numbers romance, one that adopts all the usual tropes of this genre under the guise of its interesting dating app premise. Despite a slow start, Love Alarm settles into a consistent rhythm as it starts exploring its central cast of characters, asking some pretty profound questions about the benefits and drawbacks of our digitalised age, whilst continuing to develop a couple of interwoven love triangles into the fold. All of this builds toward the finale, where Jojo’s conflict reaches its climax and leaves things wide open going forward.
At the heart of all this drama is an interesting dating app called Love Alarm, which notifies you when someone nearby loves you. With Korea all but gripped in the sensation of receiving these little notifications, at the centre of this is Kim Jojo, a girl indifferent to the entire dating phenomenon. Happy with her boyfriend Il-Sik, when new boy Sun-Oh arrives at school and the two hit it off, what ensues is a messy melodrama as Sun-Oh and Jojo grow closer together. Complicating matters are Jojo’s jealous cousin Gul-Mi and Sun-Oh’s best friend Hye-Yeong, the latter happening to have a serious crush on Jojo.
This ultimately sets the foundation for what follows, as we learn more about Jojo’s past over the episodes, along with finding out just why Sun-Oh is so protective, why Gul-Mi despises her cousin so and more about Hye-Yeong’s affection toward Jojo. It’s all pretty standard romantic fare and at the heart of it, Love Alarm doesn’t really do very much different compared to other romance dramas. Make no mistake about it, Love Alarm is pure romantic territory and if I’m honest, Sun-Oh’s flawed, protective character makes him a difficult protagonist to warm to early on alongside Kim Jojo.
Love Alarm is a series you really need to persevere with to get to the good stuff. After watching the first episode you’d be forgiven for thinking this is a straight forward love triangle story and while the latter is true, the story is far from straight forward. From a murder in a park nearby, courtesy of an issue stemming from the app, to gay rights, privacy concerns and suicide, Love Alarm isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, exploring some pretty dark places across its episodes in a surprisingly mature and thought provoking way. The back half of this Korean drama in particular really hammers this home and there’s some pretty shocking moments here that definitely caught me off guard.
Aesthetically, Love Alarm looks great and adopts all the usual tropes you’d expect from a show like this. The OST (Original Soundtrack) is admittedly lacklustre, especially next to Korean dramas like Hotel Del Luna, but some of the visual cues, including twinkling indicators and subtle colour changes, are nicely implemented and certainly add a fantastical element to the series.
It’s not perfect and it certainly doesn’t reinvent the wheel but Love Alarm makes for an enjoyable and surprisingly thought provoking romantic drama nonetheless. Questions around the dangers of digitalised love, privacy and equality spring up a lot here, and in the setting of dog-eat-dog high school society add an extra dimension to the series. The characters aren’t all likable but their backstories are explored in enough detail through the episodes to learn more about them as the series reaches it’s climactic third act. It takes a while to warm up but when it does, Love Alarm presents a warm, fuzzy romance with just enough of a bite to rise above mediocrity. I just wish it bit a little harder with some of its ideas.
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Verdict - 7/10
7/10
Unfortunately I had high expectations and this show just did not deliver. Without real character development the story line felt rushed and therefore no understanding of how or why they interact the way they do. You don’t develop any connection to really care about any of the characters. If Netflix wants to get into this genre they need to follow the formula. Character development, building anticipation and better flow of story line is super critical to be effective and appreciated. This show was a bust…If you love this genre, this will be super disappointing.
The ending was disappointingly heartbreaking sorry to be blunt. It’s a typical love triangle where the second male lead (the guy bf) takes the back seat for his best friend to pursue their object of desire. It could’ve given the viewers a concrete climax and ending rather than that last scene leaving a trail of thought on whether the first love will suffice or will a new one begin.
I hated the fact tht she didn’t pick Sun-Oh. She was emotionally destroy and was battling her past and trying to figure her future when she first met Sun-Oh. She n Sun-Oh are a lot alike than she realize. Truthfully, he was her shield n her protector bc she refuse to understand that n she was confuse of the definition of what a shield is, she confuse following her heart to running away from what she truly wanted. Sun-Oh was always there for her at the right moment. Even though he was battling his demons, he always showed how much he cared for her. She got lost looking for something she already had.
I decided to watch the first episode and then I got hooked and finished all of it and I know it’s a topical love story but so much complexity is within just a romance series. However I think there were definitely too many flash back and from around ep 5 when it went to the future I was like it’s jumping all over the place but one I got my head round it and knew what was going on it all ended up making sense. Not many dramas bring tears to my eyes but this one really did a lot and they our amazing actors and they can portray the negative and positive emotions well. Unfortunately this season finished with a very open ending we have no idea what happens because we can’t read the webtoon and think that that’s the ending because it obviously wasn’t going to be. I just wish they left it open as there is going to be a season 2 fingers crossed and I hope it isn’t bombarded with flashbacks it’s just some of them were a 2-4 minutes long and we have already seen some of them tbh but I see why she did that because it really bring out the real emotion in this love story. Overall if I was scoring this it would be 7.5/10 and the reasons for it not being 10 out of 10 is because it’s very much like a love story and if it was one of them I’d rate it 5/10 Cos there are too plain these days we see them everywhere but the way the director has done this drama is almost annoying. Like something happens and then you just can’t stop watching and the sadness more towards the end I could really feel it while watching and that’s how I know it’s a good romance series. Hope this is a ok review and I personally think you should watch it if whoever reads this xx
this story is beautiful.. i love u jojo and sun-oh
this story is very romantic.
Ok, warning here, spoiler-ish comment. I agree with Sarah wholeheartedly. Although I enjoyed the love story well enough, I thought the telling of it was a little sloppy & used way too many flashbacks to fill in character’s back stories, previous events, & to try to explain changes in their feelings. Yes, there is a love triangle, but in reality, other than in the best friends thoughts, it doesn’t really unfold in any real capacity until almost the very end. Then we’re left with literally no obvious indication of what her feelings are, does she love both, neither, or only one of them? It would have been nice to find that out, then it would have been fine for them to leave it open exactly what these three were going to do with that information.
Unfortunately I had high expectations and this show just did not deliver. Without real character development the story line felt rushed and therefore no understanding of how or why they interact the way they do. You don’t develop any connection to really care about any of the characters. If Netflix wants to get into this genre they need to follow the formula. Character development, building anticipation and better flow of story line is super critical to be effective and appreciated. This show was a bust…If you love this genre, this will be super disappointing.
The ending was disappointingly heartbreaking sorry to be blunt. It’s a typical love triangle where the second male lead (the guy bf) takes the back seat for his best friend to pursue their object of desire. It could’ve given the viewers a concrete climax and ending rather than that last scene leaving a trail of thought on whether the first love will suffice or will a new one begin.