Season 1 |
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Episode Guide
Episode 1 -| Review Score – 4/5
Episode 2 -| Review Score – 4/5
Episode 3 -| Review Score – 3/5
Episode 4 -| Review Score – 3.5/5
Episode 5 -| Review Score – 3.5/5
Episode 6 -| Review Score – 3/5
What Comes After Love Season 1 is like poetry, in many ways. Most scenes are bathed in a pastel undertone, the colours vibrant but soft. The cinematography is gorgeous and captures the beauty of both key locations in the story — Japan and South Korea. Poetry itself is invoked several times, being a primary interest of Hong, the protagonist.
It all ties in quite nicely with a story that explores the concept of everlasting love — if it exists, if it’s possible, and if belief in the idea is a truly naïve thing.
If this sounds grand and dramatic, don’t be fooled. The characters feel like real, ordinary people who deal with financial troubles and lose their way in life like all the rest of us. Their love — and eventual heartbreak — comes across through little gestures and everyday words. The series stays grounded in reality, taking on a slice-of-life tone and flawlessly blending it with its grander ideas about love.
The K-drama revolves around Hong and Jungo, a South Korean woman and a Japanese man. Hong moves to Japan to explore her life and a series of coincidental meetings lead her to Jungo. The two spend time together, fall in love, and move in together. But a devastating breakup has Hong move back home. Five years later, their paths cross again when Jungo comes to South Korea to sell his novel titled ‘What Comes After Love’.
The show follows two timelines, simultaneously showing us the couple’s relationship in the past and their rocky reunion in the future. The past, set in Japan, is a well-executed narration of Hong and Jungo’s trajectory from meet-cute to break-up.
The narrative exemplifies the sweet moments of early love, its innocence and the grand promises that come along with it. Over the 6 episodes, we see this give way to the harsher realities of life and the story handles this transformation in an organic manner.
On the other hand, the present timeline of What Comes After Love Season 1 is a more reflective journey. Hong and Jungo, both, reflect on their past selves, dreams and heartbreaks with the new insight of time gone by. There is a lot of musing about mistakes, forgiveness, and regret. If you’re the philosophical kind, this slow-paced, contemplative K-drama could be right up your alley.
However, this magic doesn’t last for good. The last leg of the series becomes monotonous, and the slow pace of the story feels more like a drag than a stroll. The narrative explores so many interesting themes such as what it’s like to live in a foreign country, how to chase a dream job in a tough world, and whether stability or love is more important in a marriage. But this exploration stays on the shallow end and does not venture into deeper waters.
A bigger disappointment is how the plot of What Comes After Love Season 1 is tied up at the end. After the meandering pace of the episodes, the finale wraps up the story in a rush. In all its reflection on the past, the narrative forgoes the present and the future. Ultimately, there is too much left unexplained and the series offers but half an answer to its primary question — what comes after love?
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Verdict - 7.5/10
7.5/10