See You In My 19th Life Review
Directed by Lee Na-jung
See you in my 19th life cast :
Shin Hye-sun , Bo Hyun Ahn , Ha Yoon-kyung , Ahn Dong-goo , Lee Bo-young
See you in my 19th life kdrama release date : June 17, 2023
See You in My 19th Life is based on Lee Hye and Choi Young-Rin’s see you in my 19th life webtoon. This love fantasy, directed by Lee Na-Jeong, is about a person (played by Shin Hye-Sun) who can revive as a new person every time she dies. From ancient times to the present, she has lived through a world of knowledge, battle, boredom and of course, heartbreak. After all, she’s been alive for almost a thousand years, having been reborn around 18 times with flawless memories of each of her previous life. She’s worn out: every time a life ends, she hopes it’s her last.
Ban Ji-eum (then 12-year-old Yoon Joo-won) meets Moon Seo-ha (Ahn Bo-hyun) in her 18th incarnation, an apparently rich affluent brat she befriends and later falls in love with. When her life is cut short in an automobile accident, Joo-won makes a new wish: she wishes to be reborn and find Seo-ha in her next life.
Now, in her 19th life as Ban Ji-Eum, she must track down her former buddy and rekindle their friendship. Her life as Ban Ji-eum is difficult, but she perseveres and works her way up to the strategy team of MI Hotel, where Seo-ha is now executive director. Her new goal is to bring her love tale to fruition by convincing Seo-ha to recognize her. There’s also the matter of discovering the truth about her prior life’s demise, which may have been deliberate after all. While the drama keeps true to the larger plot lines of its webtoon origins, having the authors add their own twists provides for a more creative, fleshed-out execution.
Ban Ji-eum is so intent on locating and being with Moon Seo-ha in her 19th life that she tracks him down and follows him around as a toddler. As an adult, she makes no secret of why she’s leaving a secure career to work in the strategy department – the premise may have violated the laws of time and space, but viewing Ji-eum’s actions on television is still unsettling.
The dynamic between Ban Ji-eum and Kim Ae-kyung (Cha Chung-hwa), the owner of a small restaurant and (technically) Ji-eum’s niece from her 17th existence, is the most prominent of these. Shin Hye-sun and Cha Chung-hwa return after Mr. Queen’s tremendous success, yet their easy, light-hearted banter makes it appear as if they never parted at all.
We also admire Ji-eum’s character development, at least from what we’ve seen so far. Ji-eum acquires an insular, often selfish frame of view as she moves from one life to the next. However, in her 19th existence, she is surrounded by people whose lives have been irreversibly impacted by her deaths in prior lives.
Facing the very human implications of death from a fresh angle soothes out the edges, bringing out heartbreaking moments as she struggles with longing for the people she believed she’d left behind.
As the show progresses, she becomes more likeable. Moon Seo-ha, on the other hand, is refreshingly controlled and endearingly innocent at times. A turbulent home life, the loss of his mother and Joo-won as children, and hearing problems sustained in the accident that took the latter’s life have understandably left him with feelings of abandonment and fear. He has never been able to forget Joo-won, which is why Ban Ji-eum’s forceful insistence on socializing with him makes him fascinated and fearful of betraying his first love’s memory.
Later she reveals when playing a song identical to that one on the piano and Moon Seo-ha wonders how she knows it, Ban Ji-eum reveals her identity as Joo-won to him. She responds that as I was Joo- won in past life was truly special.
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