Yes, I must be micheoseo to re-watch any part of the last episode again. I confess that by the end of episode 16 of Marry Him If You Dare (Mirae’s Choice), I was literally holding onto my sanity by a thin thread. I finished my recap watching the episode once and put it away. Today I went back and re-watched the last 5 minutes in excruciating detail and I’m going to flip on my first impression that the ending veered towards suggesting a Se Joo-Mi Rae future in the present time line. I think everything about the ending and epilogue suggest the present is still Shin-Mi Rae, both practically and emotionally the only conclusion that validates this drama journey. I still am baffled that the Korean audiences preferred Se Joo. If it was Yong Hwa fans I’d get that, but general drama viewers as well makes me feel acutely the cultural gap that would lead domestic viewers to like the nice uncomplicated rich guy v. prickly complex self-made guy. For all of Shin’s getting off on the wrong foot with Mi Rae, I totally think she was equally at fault and it was two fiery people colliding in interesting ways.
Anyways, back to the ending, Mi Rae’s voiceover was the giant clue so my recap didn’t specifically translate the two nouns she used to describe the two different Christmas miracles. I’ve gone back to correct it in the recap and now I’ll explain why it seals the deal that she picks Shin. Mi Rae says “친구” (chingoo) which means friend when she says “a friend who left coming back”, and then she says “연인” (yeon-in) which means lover for “hearing from a lover one has not heard from in a long time”. I saw it on Viki translated as “soulmate” which isn’t precise but does capture that she refers to it as more than a friend. That makes it clear what Se Joo and Shin means in her heart – since Se Joo is the one who has been in the US, he is the friend from far away coming back, whereas Shin hasn’t kept in touch with her during the entire time of his debt and lawsuit so he’s the lover that she’s reconnecting with since we saw that his lawsuit was just resolved. And Mi Rae’s last line of dialogue further seals the Shin choice for me when she says “This is the happiest Christmas of my life” – of the two guys only Shin has a connection to Mi Rae wanting to spend the best Christmas ever with a lover. It comes from the episode where she wanted to spend it with Shin and have dinner and she was so excited but he heard the horrible future and thus decided to push her away. Whereas she and Se Joo filmed the Christmas program doing fun friend things. I hope my analysis took away some of the bitterness of this drama because once I figured it out it made me feel much much better.
The epilogue is of course future Mi Rae back with her future Shin, but the pictures in the box also lean towards present Mi Rae picking Shin since she put in there in reverse order pictures of Gun from baby until he grew up. The thing future Mi Rae wanted the most was to see her Gun grow up. Forget how present Mi Rae can send a time capsule to future Mi Rae, the point is her present to future Mi Rae was to let her know that she and Shin raise their Gun to adulthood.
Since I’m feeling much happier knowing all the clues point to Shin-Mi Rae, looking at the cast going to and attending the wrap party is a much sweeter moment of appreciating their hard work and wishing them a better project selection the next time around.
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Thank you very much for sharing yours impressions, I think your like you and read you´ve made by day...
I always get a jolt whenever there are such wide cultural differences like Korean audiences preferring SJ to KS. Then I to remember, oh yeah, these are KOREAN dramas. :)
That actually makes me think better of them going on different paths after they spoke to each other. Even though she joked about dating again (a clear hint she's not engaged to Seju like Shin thought) and did say maybe for the future, that walking away from each other still bugged me.
But you could look at it as not final, but the two going their separate ways for the last three years (it also explains to her smile, which looks like a smile of someone happy to see someone after a long time) figuring out their own lives until they met again at the bookstore and finally get their Christmas together.
The cast all look great. I'm sure they are thrilled this ordeal is over.
Koala you are my "She-Ra" when it comes to giving honest opinion on a show or event. 95% of the time you write exactly what I'm thinking. I never ever comment on your site but this time around I had to just to let you know...You were on like donkey kong....Love ya from a rabid fan of your site
Did you just call me your Princess of Power? XD I love it! Thanks for the compliment. ^^
miss @koala insisting the mirae shin otp even made own analysis,when the original otp of this drama is supposed to be park seju and na mirae.
Lol. What?
Original story way back when was Seju (though he was a different character) and Mirae's character supposedly. Says YH fangirls. This person is always making weird comments though so they might mean something else...
Plots change all the time... obviously the writer didn't find that story suitable.
@SUNSHINE - you now CAP your name instead of the content. Good improvement! LOL... I guess you are Yonghwa's fan if not the writer? When did the second lead ever get the girl in the history of K-drama?
@sunshine is the writer because she writes nonsense hahaha
@candycane When Park Shi Hoo (before the scandal) plays the second lead.
Second lead getting the girl can happen but there needs to be tons of chemistry (enough to bury the main guy) and a nice logical sequence of events leading up to it. Here its just...
@sunshine why don't you tell us your own analysis if you think the otp is sejoo-mirae? this drama told us from the beginning that it is shin-mirae from the beginning. i don't care about the original script. it was to obvious that shin and mirae are the otp. how long have you spend your life with korean drama? even someone who never watched korean drama can easily tell that they are meant to be together.
congratulation! your broken capslock has been repaired!
it's according to korean media i'll give you the link if this site is capableof it,or you can read the comment of @hallley on MHIYD episode 16 recap of this site.
sunshine go to sleep you need .Who cares about @halley , all have their own conclusions.
yes i've read it. i know this drama should has a lot of dating scenes of mirae and sejoo. but it was before this drama aired.
you can ask to people all around the world who watch this drama. we only saw mirae-shin as the otp. no sejoo-mirae. blame on the writer or everyone who changed it into something that you hate.
if you want sejoo end up with mirae why don't you remake this drama? you could be the writer.
you are the one who can not accept the reality that all evidences point to shin-mirae.
you talk in the wrong place. please just leave a comment in JYH forum and you will get what you want because all people there think the same as you.
i'm okay whoever mirae choice, but i don't like the fact how ms.koala maltreated park seju's character.
Seju was mistreated by the writer. He was made a clingy and therefore obnoxious character, that didn't understand the word NO. That's stalkerish and disgusting.
I guess, that Western/international audience has a problem with men behaving like that. Following some netizen comments on this topic it appears Koreans want to feel loved, it isn't necessary to love by oneself and therefore Seju was so popular. That is a very alien concept to a Western person.
Koreans otoh have no problems with women not choosing how their life will go. Latest example is Heirs. *SPOILER* In the last scene LMH and WB fight and LMH declares, that WB can have the girl. WUT?! That's a behaviour a Western audience would never ever accept.
Lol why are you blaming koala, blame the writer. She's the one who fucked over Se Joo's character again and again.
@SUNSHINE
sorry to brust your bubble but to most of the international fans who don't care about YH getting the girl it's obviously Shin/Mirae
and sorry YH didn't have that sizzling chemistry with YEH to break the role like park shi hoo did!
our taste is different from yours, to us Shin as a character with many flaws but he appeals to us more than a clinchy character who can't understand the word "NO"
and I don't care about the original script even if it was YH the male lead LDG appeals to me way more, his chemistry with YEH is over the charts
plus that's her blog she can write whatever she wants!
yesss, i feel much better after hearing your ending haha
koala cant move on yet from this drama. me too. i watched the last part of ep 16 again. trying to find clue, a little tiny clue. i believe it was kim shin. but you convince me more that it was truly him. i am happy now, i think i could sleep well tonight. don't care what people think about who end up with mirae. for me it always shin from the beginning.
anyway koala, last night i re-read your posts about MHIYD before it was aired. full of anticipation. i feel the same too. now it was over. after passed the rollercoaster episodes. but i am happy. thanks to you koala.
i am waiting for their next project as well. and waiting for your another drama recap too. :)
I'll take your conclusion as the end of this drama...because like you said in last post..this drama about Mirae choice to challenge herself to follow her heart bravely or take the easy way find a rich chaebol. And she choose to follow her heart...although it's take too long to make a decision, not to mention how many heart broken and a man became a fool because oh her.
About the K-viewers choose Sejoo over KS, it's not about cultural...but about someone choice, wish, and don't forget about age. Claiming all the viewers as YH fans is belittling YEH and LDG fandom...isn't it? And how we know all YH fans want him to get MR?
From the K-nets respons we can see most of them are young female who wished to have a chaebol as a lover, they don't see MR doesn't love him, doesn't care how she keep lying to SJ until the end that she already knew SJ is a chaebol from the start, don't see the point KS suffering because he want MR to be happy, and don't forget he do that because FMR asked him to. And think the more a man made confessions, the more he loves someone, THIS...only people who are matured can see something is wrong, but for teenage girl..it's wonderful.
like this(Y)
Thanks for explaining to me the allure of SJ. You did a great job and now I understand even though that is wholly beyond how I would view picking a guy. My reference to YH fans liking SJ is simply because as a character he's not very attractive hence I couldn't figure out how viewers could prefer him over Shin other than because they like YH playing him. You explained that to me and now I get why his character might appeal to some viewers.
I've seen a pretty even divide of YH fans wanting him to get MR or YK, no shade I think his fandom easily would have their own preference of which leading lady character they like for SJ.
LOL..you can't assume all YH fans like SJ character, especially the last 4 eps. You can see how the writer made him like a fool...and that's why he's the 2nd lead.
I like se joo character as a vj, but when he's a chaebol, uugghh.
the writer ruin his character since 4 last ep.
Exactly. In the end it's all designed to be vicarious. Chaebol? Sign me up. And I also think that there's some weird reverse Oedipal trend going on in Korea right now. It seems like young and immature guys are all the rage over there, or so the entertainment industry would have us believe. I don't get it, but hey, I'm not Korean.
I agree , there's no other explanation why the JYH's fans wanted sejoo/mirae ending eventhough she didn't love sejoo ,and sejoo didn't really love mirae like shin loved her .Don't forget the yellow toy car = Mirae .
This.
I love Se Joo, so the way the writer wrote him on the last for episodes of this drama pissed me off. The writer murdered his character. It was so different from the Se Joo who showed respect to Yoo Kyung at the udon shop.
Some people were talking about a korean article that was released as to why the audience responded more positevely to Sejoo (it just talks about the character not the actor), some of the translations were posted on twitter but I still can't find the article or anyone that has the full translations but the bits I got was that people liked that he was the only characyer that was affected or swayed by FMR (or destiny) that even if they kept telling him otherwise he kept control of his present and his decisions. I guess over there they saw it as a virtue while here I just saw it as he was being clingy as hell lol. Again these were knly bits mentione a few twitter posts and I was hoping NB would post it but nope.
Anywho, I will go with Koala's interpretation of this ending, it does actually make me feel better about the hours I wasted watching this lol
Ah sorry I mean that WASN'T AFFECTED* by FMR.
I also did the same thing..keep repeating last part..but gun is the name of her nephew, from oppa. But she considered him also as her baby, thas why oppa said if you (mirae)like this, other people will think he is your baby.
And for ending i think it goes more to se joo because when mira said “friend and lover ” thecamera pointed to se joo..i guess this is win win solution from the writer....the future mira with kimshin while present mirae with se joo.
When Mi Rae said friend coming back it was separate from lover reconnecting. She was referring to two different persons. It's spoken grammatical structure with the pause. Think Eats, Shoots and Leaves vs. Eats Shoots and Leaves. I also meant the baby in the epilogue is the same Gun as FMR and FKS's baby Gun, but his name may or may not be Gun in the present timeline. We don't know since it's a silent scene. It's the same baby actor used in the flashbacks to Gun though. The point it that baby is to show FMR that in the present MR timeline she had a baby boy w KS that they raised to adulthood.
It DOES make me feel better.. Thank you very much, Ms. Koala!
These two weeks, I cannot bear to watch the last two episodes after the See Joo proposing scene, for fearing that I may go berserk. Especially after knowing that so-called open-ending in Ep 16.
Kudos for the cast & crew for their hard work, even with the drama having so low rating and the plot going downhill.