Review of Lovely Runner / 선재 업고 튀어

When people ask me what one of the best investments I had this year was, I tell them that my year-long Viki Premium subscription has hands down saved so much of my sanity. I’ve been watching so many dramas from Asia that it has kept me together as I’ve become unexpectedly employed, as I focused on my blog more than part-time, it became a medium in which I generated an income.

If you’re into reading more reviews like this one by the time you finish this review, feel free to click around on my site. I’ve been focusing extra hard on it lately and watching/reading more shows, books, and movies. It also has become a modest, yet critical form of income for me in the past few months.

Anyways, in the world of Korean dramas, I knew immediately when Lovely Runner was coming out. It appeared straight on the home page of my Viki, and I didn’t watch it at first because someone who borrows my account started watching the first episode, and then never returned to it in the following months.

For some reason I also didn’t watch it because the male lead’s actor was the villain in Strong Girl Nam-soon and I absolutely hated that drama. It was not good in my book, and I even left a pretty scathing review on the blog (which is rare).

But if there was something I was going to close 2024 out with, it was going to be Lovely Runner. I wanted to see if the hype was legit, and then I ended up binge watching the entire show over the course of a week.

Let’s get into the review!

A fan of an idol travels back in time after his death to save him, but ends up changing the trajectory of both of their lives.

This series focuses on the heroic efforts of our female lead, Im Sol. We begin in the modern day, when she’s an older adult, and she’s bound by a wheelchair due to an accident she had while she was a teenager. When her favorite singer and idol is having a concert, she barely makes it there, and is denied entry into the arena.

That doesn’t stop her and she stays to enjoy the concert from outside, despite it being about to snow. Im Sol then wheels her way home on the side of the bridge, then has an encounter with the idol himself: Ryu Sun-jae. He gives her his umbrella, leaving her with sparkling eyes, and we see later on they had a connection even in this timeline.

However, when Im Sol is still venturing home after that, she spots the news alerts on a building saying Ryu Sun-jae has. been found dead. She’s shocked to see this and falls into a shallow river, and the wristwatch she’s holding sends her back into her high school years—she can still walk during this period.

Suddenly, Im Sol sees the chance to reverse everything she knows from the future. From a fire happening to Sun-jae’s awful fate, she can do whatever it takes to stop the tragedies that are to come from happening. He thinks she’s a weirdo at first from how she stalks him, but warms up to her.

It’s kind of obvious he has a crush on her, as she unconditionally is supporting him and showing up even when it seems like no one else is (despite him being the golden swimming boy). The chemistry between these two actors is real, although the female lead is the only convincing high schooler here to me.

We move back and forth with Im Sol, as she jumps through time several times. The wristwatch becomes an important plot device, as it’s how she manages to go back and forth, and at first Im Sol is hesitant to tell anyone about what’s happening to her, especially when it comes to how she might be seen as insane.

Eventually, though, the puzzle pieces come together. And because this series doesn’t want to end at twelve episodes, we progress immediately into the stalker that once kidnapped Im Sol in the past appearing in the changed future.

That’s going to be a major plot point in the final arcs of the series, and it becomes pretty standard Korean drama fare with that plot point. Every time she goes into the past and changes thing, the future changes as well—it’s a typical time travel show in that aspect.

Overall Thoughts

I don’t think the show is groundbreaking in any way, as it rehashes a lot of the same tropes we tend to be familiar with if you watch a lot of Korean or Asian dramas, but I did find it refreshing. It stands out compared to other recent shows, minus Mr. Plankton. That ended up being my personal Korean drama of the year.

Anyways, the chemistry between these two is really good, as I mentioned before, and I find that the show is very much binge worthy. I haven’t binge watched a show like this since I watched The Red Sleeve a few months back, and that I managed to finish in two days. Don’t ask how or why, but I did that.

I say if you haven’t seen this go for it. My only complaint is I wish we got to see some of the other characters beyond the best friend and the brother. I wanted to know more about the world these two leads were living in, and we didn’t really get a glimpse of that.

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