Our Beloved Summer: Summer Warmth on Cold Winter
It was a cold winter day. I don’t exactly remember how I bumped into it, but I remember the reason why. Back at that time, I was just a newbie in kdrama-watchers' world. The reason I started watching Our Beloved Summer was because of one of the OSTs, Christmas Tree, that was sang by V of BTS. The snippets I saw in thee music video seemed interesting enough to give it a shot. I started watching at episode 13. It is one of my habits to watch drama backwards. At that time, ep 13 was the latest. Lucky me. And to understand why what was happening in ep 13, I had to watch rest of the episodes. Our Beloved Summer is one of the rare kdramas that starts with a breakup. It’s no spoiler, since you will know it by the end of the first episode. However, the question is - why did they break up? For me, the question was how they actually end up dating in first place, given their polar opposite personalities and the relationship between them. And that was the reason that kept me going with the drama. Before my eyes, a heartwarming storyline unfolded itself. It was more slice-of-life than romance in my eyes. Poverty, loneliness, abandonment, childhood trauma, life goals. I have never seen another drama covering all of these well like this one. It will make you think. I could personally relate to the male protagonist at some points, maybe that's why I loved it even more. The relationship portrayal in this drama is beautifully realistic too. My only complaint was about the love triangle. If it wasn’t for the love triangle, the friendship could've been stronger between the two. I felt like their friendship was negatively affected thanks to the love triangle. If you want to watch a heartwarming slice-of-life romance drama this winter, this one might be for you.