Geu Yeoreum

"when the time comes to die, these memories will be the only thing left"

those words from the very start haunted me. i had only seen a clip of this movie, the one where they're both doing homework and they eventually fall into making love with each other. the movie seems to have landed in my lap at a uniquely weird time in my life, one where i'm finding myself experimenting with love in ways i never thought i would, and this brief movie was a nice way to explore some of my own thoughts and see an interesting story at the same time.

i think, this ... movie like no other, may encapsulate the sinking feeling of a relationship feeling lost. we expect the honeymoon phase to last well into everything, that the burning feelings from the start will last you an eternity with this person. even in the healthiest conditions, we may even try to force an expectation that things will work out with your love forever. but that's now how love works, or how it feels.

it was very warm watching sui and lee kyeong grow so close in the budding of their relationship, i think this movie did such an amazing job really hammering home that it was happy. sui just had little things, and lee kyeong couldn't handle it. it was enough to make her want to be apart. she'd wonder about eun-ji, what love may look like outside of sui, with someone who's a little more talkative, what someone may look like if they're warmer. i'm actually devastated the movie didn't have time to add in scenes with their relationship going about, simply having to end with "it ended after a year".

that may just be the only part of the movie i didn't like. it feels incomplete at the end. i wish i got to see the ends of this story with sui at the end. i wonder if sui came back to the bridge they first met and also saw a heron. i wonder how she felt.

i guess it's a painful watch because i relate very hard to the two's relationship. it feels a lot like the love i've had. i've made people cry over making them feel insufficient, like they could've done more to save this. i've done it a lot. i don't mean to, i'm just wishful. and when we're wishful, selfish beings, we wonder about what life could be like with others.

we aren't good enough and ideal enough beings to work with and accept simple loves or a content life. we want more. and there's no saying whether that's good or bad; frankly, it's easy to call lee kyeong evil for how she simply left sui like that when sui didn't seem to get it quite like her love did. she's simple, she didn't think much more of it other than she loved her and did her best. her best wasn't enough.

fuck. i don't know. it's heart-breaking. i've been both people in the scenario. and it doesn't get any nicer to watch at the same time. i'm not even really sure what to add to this other than this movie just really fucking gets it. and then it sucker punches you with regret right at the end. any sympathy you feel goes right out the fucking window when that stupid heron flies by. throw-away line that means nothing and doesn't even ring a bell to lee kyeong 'til she thinks about it a little more.

that's how i feel staring at random people sometimes and getting a stare back. like when i first met my boyfriend. it fucking hurts.

Since nobody has written a review for this yet, I’ll be the first. I tried to watch it a long time ago but could not find a version with English subtitles (Even with my VPN, the official version is not subbed) so I forgot about it for a while. I decided to give it another go and found a version with Google translate English subtitles, which was a bit hard to understand at times but I could at least get an idea of what was happening. It’s a shame that it’s not licensed outside of Korea, since it’s a good series.

The show is very down ... to earth and real, kind of like Aoi Hana. There’s no exaggeration, no dramatic music, and the characters feel like real people. It’s cute and wholesome and I think like it does a spectacular job of portraying what it’s like to be wlw in an environment where that sort of thing isn’t really accepted. The show also portrays loneliness and dissatisfaction in a painfully relatable way, I could really feel what the main characters were going through because they don’t spend much time telling you what’s going on, they show you instead. I think the producers did an amazing job at creating art that imitates reality so closely, and it’s kind of refreshing, even if [spoiler]the ending was disappointing (but that only brings it closer to reality, we don’t always get happy endings)[/spoiler]

The art is spectacular and so is the voice acting. The visual aesthetic they were going for kind of reminds me of violet evergarden, and the voice acting was mellow and soothing, without the soap opera-esque crying you normally find in these sorts of shows.

It’s a solid piece. 8/10

Short conclusion: the story is incomplete. It just ends, without proper closure. The story had the potential to end up being great, but the writers clearly did not.

Who is this for?
You want to see a well animated, slice of life yuri with non-exagerrated characters and do not care for the story at all.
You do care for the story and want it to make you feel sad, dissatisfied or even empty.
You want to see weak and coward characters so you can say "at least I am better thant that".
You are a weak coward in your intimate relationships and want to see yourself in an anime so ... you can say "it's OK, others are like me as well".

Who should avoid this?
You want a GL story that is fun and complete.
You want a GL story that is inspiring and complete.
You want to see (yuri) characters getting over their limitations and eventually make healthy choices.
You just want to have a good time in general.