2012
16 eps
tvN
Romance Comedy Drama
Six friends navigate high school in Busan in 1997 — the height of the first K-pop idol wave — while a flash-forward wedding reveals that one of the men in the group married one of …
Both are built around questions of who you really are under the person you've been told to be. The pacing is genuinely warm without tipping into saccharine.
2013
21 eps
tvN
Romance Comedy Drama
University students from across Korea share a boarding house in Seoul during 1994, while a future-flashback teases which of the men the central female character eventually marries.…
Both are built around questions of who you really are under the person you've been told to be. The pacing is genuinely warm without tipping into saccharine.
2023
8 eps
Netflix Japan
Romance Comedy Drama
Sawako Kuronuma is kind, earnest, and completely terrifying to her classmates — her resemblance to the ghost from Sadako and her habit of talking to herself in quiet corners has gi…
Both are built around questions of who you really are under the person you've been told to be. The pacing is genuinely warm without tipping into saccharine.
2020
16 eps
Bilibili / Huanxi
Youth Drama Coming Of Age
Ma Tian is a well-off transfer student who walks into an ordinary inner-city high school and immediately clashes with Lao Gou — loud, broke, and genuinely the most himself person M…
Both are built around questions of who you really are under the person you've been told to be. The pacing is sharp comedic timing that earns the laughs rather than demanding them.
2015
20 eps
tvN
Slice Of Life Comedy Romance
Five families in a Seoul neighborhood navigate life, love, and growing up in the late 1980s.
Like Lady Bird, it leans hard into coming of age. The emotional territory — growing up — is the same. The pacing is genuinely warm without tipping into saccharine.
2001
Theatrical (Studio Ghibli)
Fantasy Adventure Drama
Ten-year-old Chihiro's parents are transformed into pigs when they wander into a spirit world. She has to find work in the bathhouse of the witch Yubaba, navigate a world with rule…
Like Lady Bird, it leans hard into coming of age. At its core, it's about questions of who you really are under the person you've been told to be. The pacing is emotionally heavy — you'll need to sit with it after.
2005
16 eps
MBC
Romance Comedy Drama
Sam-soon, a 30-year-old pastry chef dumped on Christmas Eve, enters a fake-dating contract with the arrogant CEO of a restaurant chain while both are nursing heartbreak — and slowl…
Both are built around questions of who you really are under the person you've been told to be. The pacing is genuinely warm without tipping into saccharine.
2022
16 eps
KBS2
Drama Romance Family
A carefree young man from a North Korean defector family impersonates the long-lost grandson of a South Korean hotel mogul to fulfill the dying grandmother's final wish to reunite …
Both are built around questions of who you really are under the person you've been told to be. The pacing is genuinely warm without tipping into saccharine.
2022
16 eps
MBC
Romance Comedy Drama
Noh Go-jin is Korea's most arrogant math genius — the CEO of a private education company who treats everyone around him as furniture. Lee Shin-a is his assistant, long-suffering an…
Both are built around questions of who you really are under the person you've been told to be. The pacing is genuinely warm without tipping into saccharine.
2024
16 eps
KBS
Romance Drama Comedy
Two orphans who grew up as fake siblings reunite in adulthood and must navigate the fine line between family and love.
Both are built around questions of who you really are under the person you've been told to be. The pacing is genuinely warm without tipping into saccharine.