K-drama 49 Days (AKA Pure Love) Review

SYNOPSIS:

Shin Ji Hyun is a carefree and innocent heiress in the middle of planning her dream wedding when an accident puts her in a coma. She is informed that it wasn’t her time to die, but she was simply at the wrong place in the wrong time.  In order for her to wake up, she must find three people (non-relatives) who would be willing to cry genuine tears for her. She is given 49 days to complete the task before her soul is permanently separated from her body.  In her search for her three genuine tears, she borrows the body of Song Yi Kyung, a young woman who is completely unhappy with life.

MY THOUGHTS ON THE CAST:

Lee Yo Won (Song Yi Kyung)

I think she did a good job acting in this drama. You can clearly tell when she’s Song Yi Kyung or Shin Ji Hyun in Yi Kyung’s body. She’s much brighter and happier when she’s Ji Hyun. I didn’t like her at first because I found her character too emo and depressing, but as the story progressed, she grew on me. I like the fact that she didn’t try to be overly cute like some girls in most K-dramas. And I really like that she wasn’t stupid. For some reason, girls in K-dramas are usually depicted as stupid and clumsy, but Yi Kyung wasn’t like that.

Nam Gyuri (Shin Ji Hyun)

Honestly, I wan’t a big fan of her in this series. I thought her acting was terrible and that she looked too plastic.  As in literally “plastic”, like a doll – probably the effect of too much plastic surgery.  It’s probably partly due to that why her expressions seem so fake when she acts.  I don’t really know how to explain it – there’s just something really unnatural about her.  But there’s no denying that she’s pretty though.

I didn’t really like her character either. She’s shown as this innocent and naive rich girl.  At the very start of the show she’s seen crying and whining about being late for her engagement party while her friends had to calm her down and think of solutions on how to get there on time. I suppose the writers intended for her to be a loveable character, but she really irritated me. However, it might just be the way the actress portrayed her, because I did like Ji Hyun when she was in Yi Kyung’s body.

Jo Hyeon Jae (Han Kang)

Hyeon Jae did a good job in this show I think. His acting was believable and he played Han Kang really well. He’s portrayed as an insensitive jerk in the beginning of the show, but later we see his sensitive and caring side. He is one of the first to recognize Ji Hyun in Yi Kyung’s body (presumably because he’s been secretly in love with Ji Hyun since middle school) and he does his best to help her out. I really liked his character in the story. My sister tells me it’s because I’m a tsundere fan XD

Bae Su-bin as (Kang Min Ho):

Bae Su-bin plays a two-timing character with evil intentions of stealing the Shin family fortune. He pretends to love Shin Ji Hyun and even ends up being her fiance. He does it to help his girlfriend, Shin In Jung (who is actually one of Ji Hyun’s “best friends”) get revenge on Ji Hyun. It started out as an act of revenge, but he continues to do it for the monetary reward at the end. His character is supposed to have been extremely poor when he was younger so he has this great desire to be rich. He constantly tells us that he has nothing against the Shin family, it’s just fate’s evil doing that they got mixed up in his plans.

Jung Il Woo (Scheduler):

He’s sorta like the grim reaper in this series – although he explains that he’s not in charge of the person’s death, he’s just there to make sure that they die according to schedule. He was the one Ji Hyun went to for advice when she first realized she was in a coma. He explains the whole 49-day concept to her and guides her along the way. He wasn’t allowed to interfere according to the rules, so he mainly dropped little clues for her along the way to avoid punishment. (Although there was one time he couldn’t take it anymore and got himself involved, which resulted to him having his contract as a Scheduler extended.)

Jung Il Woo isn’t exactly the best actor, but I did like him. He wasn’t spectacular, but his acting wasn’t fake or stiff. I think given a chance, he could be pretty good. Plus, he’s undeniably cute:

Kyaaaaa~

Seo Ji Hye (Shin In Jung)

She plays the female antagonist in the show. Together with her boyfriend, Kang Min Ho, she planned on destroying the life of one of her closest friends, Shin Ji Hyun.  She tells us that its because Ji Hyun is too naive to the point that she hurts people without even realizing it.   In Jung is initially portrayed as heartless and two-faced, but in the end she realizes her mistakes and asks for forgiveness.

Seo Ji Hye did a pretty good job in this drama.  I thought her acting was good and she really embraced In Jung’s character. She shows us that every one makes mistakes but it’s never too late to ask for forgiveness and change our ways. I also liked the fact that they showed her as a woman who was capable of true love by standing by Min Ho even after their plans fall apart. In the end of the drama we see her visiting him in prison and assuring him that she was still willing to wait for him, despite the fact that he almost left her for Song Yi Kyung. And of course we see in the final episode that she really did love Ji Hyun as a friend (even after resenting her for years) and even ended up shedding tears of pure love for her.

MY THOUGHTS ON THE SHOW:

A friend recommended this drama a couple of months ago, but I’ve been too busy watching old Family Outing and Running Man episodes so I didn’t really pay attention to it.  It’s aired here in the Philippines (with the title “Pure Love”) and a lot of people had been talking about it, so I finally decided to watch it last week.  It wasn’t bad, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I hoped. Some parts were a bit too boring for me and I actually spent quite a lot of time fast forwarding certain scenes because I just wanted to find out what would happen next.

I did like the concept of the story though. It’s a bit similar to ABS-CBN’s 100 Days to Heaven, where the main character dies and is given 100 days to help the people she’s hurt in life before she is allowed entrance to heaven. The idea for 49 Days differs in the sense that instead of giving the character a chance to enter heaven, they’re given an opportunity to wake up and live. (And in 100 Days to Heaven, the main character didn’t need to borrow a body, she was given her own, except in the form of a child.)  The whole idea of having a 2nd chance just appeals to me for some reason.  I wouldn’t exactly enjoy being put in Ji Hyun’s situation, but I gotta admit, it must be interesting to see how many people would cry tears of pure love for me when I’m gone.

The story was interesting enough that I finished all 20 episodes in 3 days, but it wasn’t like when I watched You’re Beautiful, Boys Over Flowers or Secret Garden, where I would stay up till 4 in the morning watching (and re-watching) episodes. With 49 Days, I watched it because the story had enough twists and secrets for me to want to know more, but not to the point that I’d be willing to lose sleep over it. I suppose the lack of eye candy was partly to blame. I mean sure, the Scheduler was hot, and Han Kang was definitely easy on the eyes, but when I compare them to ANJell, F4 and Hyun Bin … it’s just not the same.  But the women in 49 Days were really pretty though.

One thing I liked about 49 Days is the idea of redemption. Shin In Jung was depicted as this traitorous woman who set up her best friend for heartbreak and devastation, just because she felt that her friend was “too nice” to the point of being insensitive. In Jung and her boyfriend, Min Ho, set up this elaborate scenario where Ji Hyun would get lost in the mountains and Min Ho would end up rescuing her so they could fall madly in love and get married. The evil couple planned on stealing the Shin’s family fortune for themselves.  But in the end, In Jung realized what a terrible friend she’s been and asks Ji Hyun for forgiveness.  She even ended up contributing one of the 3 genuine tears that Ji Hyun needed to collect to wake up.  Even Min Ho was seen atoning for his sins in prison. Unlike other antagonists who end up getting caught, he showed no signs of wanting revenge and seemed to truly regret his earlier actions.

Such happy friends.  Their friendship may have been led astray at one point, but in the end they realize how much they all mean to one another.

Min Ho and In Jung.  Although they were horrible people that planned on destroying the life of someone who truly loves them, I still like the idea of them together.  I hated In Jung’s character throughout most of the show, but I liked the fact that she knew when it was enough.  And she stayed true to Min Ho till the end.  In their final scene in the series, In Jung tells Min Ho that she’s taking care of his sick mother and will continue doing so until he is released from prison.  She tells him she’s willing to go through anything for him especially since it was her fault that he ended up in jail.  He replies by saying that she may have started it but it was his own actions and decisions that led to his downfall.   He feels terrible for what he’s done and can only hope that the people he has hurt will forgive him someday.  He asks In Jung to let him go so she would be free from the suffering he brings her, but she assures him that she will stand by him until the end.  And maybe by the time he is released, he will finally be able to forgive himself.

I’m sure everyone has done something in their past that they are not proud of.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be as bad as deceiving a friend and leading them to bankruptcy.  But what we must realize is that while there’s no way for us to change the past, there’s no better time than the present to fix our mistakes.  I think this was the big lesson that the writers of 49 Days wanted us to learn.

Before I forget, I have one question about this drama : are all the characters in this story blind?? There were so many scenes where a character would walk by next to the person they were looking for, without realizing it was them, all because they weren’t directly in front of them. I guess according to this show, there is no such thing as peripheral vision~

There’s this one scene where In Jung enters just as Yi Kyung was leaving the house.  Apparently In Jung couldn’t see her because she was too preoccupied with closing the gate.  Either that or Yi Kyung has some sort of secret ninja powers that made her invisible as she ran across the garden, just meters away from where In Jung was standing:

–

There’s this other scene where Min Ho doesn’t realize that there are two girls standing in his apartment lobby because he was in such a hurry to leave.  He walked right by them without noticing anything.  Never mind that one of them is his girlfriend and the other he has very strong feelings for:

The characters in this story may be blind, but they’re pretty smart. Song Yi Kyung realized that someone else may have been using her body because for some reason her hair had gotten softer due to Ji Hyun’s conditioner, Min Ho deduced that it was Yi Kyung that was spying on him at the hotel based on one bead that fell from her shoe, Han Kang was absolutely sure that Ji Hyun was in Yi Kyung’s body because she knew his certain things about him and could play the piano in the same way she could, etc. I know that it’s possible for people to figure out these things in real life, but usually not in the K-drama world. In most series I’ve watched, the characters need to be presented with so many clues before they figure out what’s going on.  It can get pretty frustrating at times.  But in this drama, the characters pick up on even the tiniest clues.  I mean what are the chances that your friends would figure out that your soul is borrowing another person’s body? If it happened in real life, most people would just think that “wow, they have really similar personalities”. But in this drama, Han Kang, Min Ho and In Jung figured out that Ji Hyun was possesing Yi Kyung.  Han Kang even took it to the next level but successfully figuring out that Ji Hyun wasn’t allowed to reveal who she was and that she was there to complete some sort of mission so she could live again. Brilliant huh?

“My hair is so soft!  Someone is possesing me!”

I liked how the story went but I wasn’t too pleased about how the drama ended.  It was okay, but I wish it ended on a happier note.  After all of Shin Ji Hyun’s hard work, she finds out that she was meant to die just shortly after she woke up. I was hoping that something will finally happen between her and Han Kang but she ended up dying!  And I’m not really sure what to make of the whole revelation of Song Yi Kyung turning out to be her long-lost sister either. It’s obviously supposed to be a good thing because that would mean that the Shin family finally found their lost daughter, and that Song Yi Kyung wouldn’t be alone anymore, but for some reason it seemed to me that the writers just wanted to throw in a good thing to the story after they killed off Ji Hyun. I can imagine them thinking along the lines of “Oh, let’s give the audience a big surprise at the end to distract them from being sad over Ji Hyun’s death”.  But I do like how the ending gives the audience the message that we should treasure every day and live life to the fullest.  The final scene shows Song Yi Kyung and Han Kang standing next to Song Yi Soo’s and Shin Ji Hyun’s graves.  Yi Kyung and Han Kang tell Yi Soo and Ji Hyun that they’ve learned many things from the two, and for that they are happy.  I cried a lot in the last episode, especially towards the very end.  It was both sad and happy in its own way, if that makes sense.

I suppose I would have liked the drama more if it focused more on the romance between the characters. The entire time I was watching, I kept hoping for some sweet moments between Han Kang and Ji Hyun/Yi Kyung, but the most they did was hug and go on a picnic together!  I was even hoping that Ji Hyun would become a Scheduler too and she’s end up with Yi Soo and they could be a couple for eternity. Oh well~

But at least I was treated to some sweet Yi Soo x Yi Kyung scenes.  They’re adorable~

As for the soundtrack, it was okay. Some of the songs were pretty nice, but I didn’t like it enough for me to want to download it.

I didn’t really have that many favorite moments in the show, but I did enjoy the scenes when Ji Hyun would call for the Scheduler. Like during the time he was at the concert in Episode 2. I also liked all the Song Yi Kyung and Song Yi Soo scenes.  Other than that, nothing else really sticks out for me. Probably because I prefer silly comedies with a hint of a love story over drama.

MY RATING:

I would give this drama 3.9 out of 5 stars. It was good, but not something I would watch again because some parts were too dragging. I mentioned earlier that I skipped a couple of scenes because I got bored with the characters saying the same things over and over again. There were also a lot of parts that were too unrealistic. The plot is good enough that it made me want to continue watching till the end, but the lack of sweet/giddy/mushy moments kept me from enjoying it thoroughly.

If you’re interested, you can watch the series on dramacrazy by clicking this link.