Plot Summary: Our MC, Joon, is a new college student, having worked hard to study and test into the college his high school crush is attending. Upon moving into a share house, he meets a weird but strangely familiar looking woman at the the entrance. He soon recognizes her as the recently retired idol, Lee Duna. Once recognized, Duna, afraid of having her location revealed, waits outside to request/threaten him not to tell anyone. This wait prompts her to collapse and Joon, as a new dormmate, to help her. And thus the two become closer, beginning Joon's tumultuous "spring" (romanctic life).
Plot
This donghua adaptation is about a new college student Joon, who now attends the college of his crush and whom he wants to get into a relationship with. Since the story is set in a modern college setting (likely Korea, since it is a manhwa), there are drinking parties and many activities stereotypically associated with college. This donghua falls under the romance category, with multiple potential candidates for our MC. The plot progression is not perfectly linear so watching it as single episodes may cause some confusion (usually resolved with the pre-OP scene in next episode); however, this is not much of a problem if you binge watch the show. The show starts off with a "conclusion" of what we can expect in this season, then goes back to tell the story on how it reached that point (this follows the manhwa so I can't exactly fault it). Many people like to skip the OP and ED, so I do warn you to be wary of doing that with this show, as there are rather important plot elements/exposition pre-OP, usually expanding on side character backstories or continuations of previous episode events.
Characters
The characters are all believeable and unique enough to recognize individually. All the characters were great, and I like them all. The internal monologues provided good insight into each characters thoughts at certain times, though if you don't have a sharp ear you may not notice the difference in intonation that differentiates between speech and internal monologues. How the characters evolve/change throughout the season is also great a believeable, helped by all the monologues/character thoughts.
Animation
The animation is 2D, which is a bit different from my usual preferance, but the art style and animation quality is pretty good. The designs are basically pulled directly from the manhwa, and the asthetic is consistant with our modern world (it is set in "today's" world afterall).
Overall/Final
I very much enjoyed this romance donghua. While it is a bit different from my usual preferances, I still think it did a good job presenting the story. I very much enjoyed this romance donghua, though some of the narration about "future events and their conclusion" worry me. The progression of the relationships were reasonable and the characters, especially the MC, was not too dumbed down (like many romantic/harem works). I highly recommend this to anyone who likes the fluttery romance stories. It does have some drama and cringy moments, but overall an enjoyable watch.
Adaptation Review (may contain spoilers):
The adaptation of The Girl Downstairs Manhwa is probably the closest one will ever get to a perfect adaptation. When watching this, there are 2 things that stand out as different from the source. Those 2 differences are:
-Removal of the Fairy: So the fairy in the manhwa was a semi-supernatural author tsukommi self insert which was a bit annoying. The removal, in my opinion, was a good call.
-Severely toned down drinking and smoking: The FMC Lee Duna was a very heavy smoker; this got removed and replaced with "playing with a lighter". In addition, only drinking that is directly relevant to the core story is adapted, some of the less relevant displays of drinking were removed.
There is two big cuts from the manhwa to the adaptation: the Busan trip (got changed), where lots of "degenerate" behavior and irresponsible drinking happened, and the picnic that the group of 6 went out on that led to the subsequent drinking party that led to the group breakup.
There are also some minor changes, like minor changes to where some events take place, but what the scenes portrayed was not modified, so no harm no foul, though it does create minor disconnects.
For presentation, Lee Duna's instability is not as well portrayed. They could have better showed her drastic mood swings.
Overall, this was a very very faithful adaptation of the original story, where there are some changes to presentation, focusing on visual in the donghua vs text/monologues in the manhwa. The differences in atmosphere are so small it is scary how close it is to the original work. In fact, its faithfulness both excites and worries me; I love perfectly faithful adaptations, but the foreshadowing narration and knowing how the original ended scares me (the original ending was very disappointing and unfulfilling). If this adaptation did not cut out those two events, it would have been rated a 9.8 on the faithfulness scale. On a final note, the donghua adapts chapters 1-54 of the manhwa.
Adaptation score(how faithful to source): 9/10
Edit: Of course, right after I finish watching and post this review there is an "extra" episode that gets released. I'm not sure how canon it is, but be sure to find and watch it. I guess it could be considered an ending.
