Series Opinion Piece: Someday or One Day 想見你 - A nostalgic and mysterious time-travel romance with a philosophical outlook on life

Warning - Contains spoilers for Someday or One Day. If you haven't seen or finished the series yet, you may want to do that before reading this piece.

If I could travel back in time, and it could only be for a trivial reason, I'd travel back to when this show was airing and the actors were promoting it. Why? Because Someday or One Day has been one of the best Taiwanese dramas I've seen to date - possibly my favourite Taiwanese drama of all time. It would have been more fun to watch the series live, coming up with theories about what would happen next. Nonetheless, it was still amazing to watch it in it's entirely recently. Why did I choose to watch the show? Honestly, I saw a clip containing a cameo with an actor I really liked (Simon Lian) and was really confused about his role in the story, so I decided to watch it from the start. And I'm really glad I made that choice.

I guess I'll start broadly by talking about time travel as a genre. Time-travel dramas are often very popular and I personally love them. Why? Because time-travel often goes hand in hand with the nostalgia genre, where stories are set in a familiar time and place in the past. So there's a certain element of world building - a mirror is created to those 'good old days' that we often think of so fondly, but cannot access tangibly. 

There are also many lessons to be learnt in time travel stories, often revolving around the idea of 'regret' - the actions of our past will always have consequences and the future is haunted by these. Sometimes no matter how hard the characters try, they can't change things. Other times, they succeed to make a change, only to find out that there are different, but equally tough, consequences for the alternative path they choose to go down. While time travel is a very fantasy/ Science-fiction-based concept, time-travel stories are often rooted in a realistic feeling - that life is more often bittersweet than we want it to be. The characters experience both wins and losses with the changes they make in different time lines. If the story is not meant to be comical, but a more thoughtful and dramatic story, there's a very philosophical quality to the lessons we can learn about life and all it's happiness, misery, love and regrets.

All these concepts feature strongly in the drama, Some Day or One Day. While the story is largely centred around an on-going time-travel loop, which needs to be broken, it also features doppelgangers and body-swapping elements, and combines several genres including: romance, mystery, nostalgia and school-life drama. While this sounds kinda messy, the scriptwriters make it work. With only 13 episodes, the script is tightly woven and the different genres often tie into each other, so those elements are not as segregated as they seems. Although the story is complex at times, it is simple enough to follow if the episodes are watched consistently. With cliffhangers at the end of each episode, it's hard not to binge watch the whole show in one marathon, especially since all episodes have now been released (the drama finished airing early this year). While I didn't binge watch it personally (being a person who doesn't like binge watching dramas), I looked forward to each new episode in great anticipation because there were so many beautiful things about the drama: I loved it's retro soundtrack, it's beautiful settings, it's fun 90's costumes and it's portrayal of a beautiful, heartbreaking romance between two time-trapped lovers. And although I liked all those things about it, the thing I like most about Some Day or One Day were the philosophical themes explored throughout the story.

To set the scene again, the drama is about two identical looking girls in two different time lines: Chen Yun Ru is a gloomy, introverted 17 year old girl who is miserable with her life in the year 1998: She has few friends, her parents are in the midst of a messy divorce and favour her irresponsible younger brother. To make things worse, she has a crush on a guy who has clearly put her in the friend zone. In a different time line, Huang Yu Xuan is an assertive, lively and outgoing 27 year old woman who has become depressed in the year 2019: It's been 2 years since her loving boyfriend, Wang Quan Sheng passed away in a plane crash. Partly because she feels guilty over their last fight, which she believes caused his death, and partly because she feels as if she can't move on, Hung Yu Xuan spends her days looking for some proof that her old boyfriend might have cheated on her so she can stop loving him. What she finds, instead, is a path that leads to travel back in time and into the body of Chen Yun Ru, whose one-sided crush, Li Zi Wei, is the spitting image of her dead boyfriend. So what philosophical concepts can we find in strange and mysterious story?

I guess one of the main ideas it explores is the concept of letting go and finding acceptance for the things in our lives that we can't change. On the door of the no. 32 coffee shop, run by the uncle who is so central to both timelines in the drama, hangs a sign that says: "When one door closes, another one opens. All you have to do is walk in." This quote seems to be directed at Huang Yu Xuan. When Wang Quan Sheng dies, Huang Yu Xuan feels like she's stuck in limbo. The only thing she wants to do is to preserve her memories of him by doing exactly the same things they did together when he was alive. She hangs onto the door that has 'closed'  and refused to through any new 'doors' in her life. It's painful for her because she can't move forward, but she also can't go back to the way things were.  However, Huang Yu Xuan is forced through a new door when she's given a walkman that allows her to travel back in time to Chen Yun Ru's life. There, she discovers that she's ironically stuck in an actual limbo - in a continuing time-loop with horrifying consequences for all involved. In her journey to be reunited with her boyfriend, Huang Yu Xuan eventually discovered that the more she tries to hold onto him - to keep him from being separated from her - the more painfully she loses him. In the end, the only way she can keep him from meeting his terrible fate is to let go of him, as well as their entire past together. It's this acceptance and sacrifice that sets her free from the continuing time loop and leads her into a new life where she eventually finds happiness.

This idea of letting go and acceptance is also important to Chen Yun Ru's story line. When she gets a second chance to date Li Zi Wei by using Huang Yu Xuan's identity, she refuses to let go, even when she knows it's wrong and she could endanger all their lives. Ironically enough, the more she clings onto him using her fake identity, the more he knows that she's not the real independent Huang Yu Xuan who he loves. This creates a great feeling of unhappiness when he rejects her. In addition to this, Chen Yun Ru holds onto these high expectations for an ideal life, for how people should act towards her, and as a result, sets herself up for great disappointment when thing don't work out the way she wants. It's not till she's saved by Huang Yu Xuan and told that she has too many expectations for this world that she starts to let go of her unrealistic ideals for life. 

The same ideas about letting go could be applied to the character of Li Zi Wei. The more he tries to stick to the free-spirited Huang Yu Xuan, the more he pushes her away. Her dreams to work in Shanghai scare him because it'll mean a period of separation, which sounds horrible since he has given up his life in another time just to be with her. When the time loop closes in and he meets his future self at the airport, he realises he needs to let everything go in order for things to continue moving on - which is the reason he gets on the plane despite knowing it will blow up and he'll end up back in his previous timeline. Through these 3 characters, we are shown the importance, and healing power, of being able to let go, as well as the peace that comes with acceptance, even when it is the most difficult thing to do.

Another interesting idea explored is the idea of the self fulfilling prophecy, particularly in regards to having a negative mindset. Chen Yun Ru is an insecure, sensitive and introverted teenager who feels like everyone in the world ignores and rejects her. She's pretty much on the brink of depression. On the one hand, she's a character you pity because her circumstances are not ideal and it'd be hard not to be somewhat miserable in her shoes. On the other hand, it's difficult not to judge her because she sets herself up for disappointments. She has high expectations for how others should behave towards her, but low expectations about how she should behave towards them. As an audience member you can see that she is not unwanted or rejected by those around her (in fact Mo Jun Jie has a massive crush on her!); instead she acts in ways that shut out the world and can be misunderstood as being aloof. Instead of saying a simple hi to her classmates, she prefers to listen to her music by herself. Although she wants the love of her family, she is also ashamed of them and only completes her duties with a sense of  grudging obedience and the belief she is sitting on the high horse of doing the right thing. Chen Yun Ru places her judgement on things before she fully understands the people or situations, and this often leads her to think negatively about them. In doing so, she acts negatively towards them and gets a negative response. Taking this to heart, she then thinks that this is a reflection of how people think of her: that she's not good enough or lovable enough, when it is really her lacklustre reactions towards them that has caused this self-fulfilling prophecy. However, she is lucky that both Mo Jun Jie and Li Zi Wei overlook her gloomy exterior and befriend her for fun (and to pursue her for the sake of Mo Jun Jie's crush!)

When Hung Yu Xuan takes over Chen Yun Ru's body, she gives the girl a different life by bringing her into the social world of her classmates, by actively caring for her family without judgement for their faults and by bringing a sense of carefree fun to her friends without expecting anything in return. Huang Yu Xuan is a much better version of Chen Yun Ru, not because she's some superior being, but because she doesn't harbour unrealistic expectations for others. She is open-minded and thinks about those around her, rather than focusing on herself and her own imagined deficiencies. This makes others, particularly Li Zi Wei, attracted to her. However, I think the series does well not to blame Chen Yun Ru entirely for her attitude either. While it was difficult to watch her wallow through her self-pity, moodiness, negative-thinking and at times, downright selfish behaviour, you are forced to remember, time and time again, that Chen Yun Ru is only a teenager while Huang Yu Xuan is a fully grown adult with the advantage of experience and hindsight, the two pillars of wisdom. This is most clearly illustrated when she tells Chen Yun Ru's brother they should be proud 'their' mother is a bar hostess because she can put her own pride down for the sake of providing for her kids. As an adult watching, I had to step down from my own judgements many times and think back to my own moody teenage days. Funnily enough, I could relate to Chen Yun Ru more than I care to admit.

The last philosophical idea I want to talk about from Some Day or One Day is the importance of living in the moment and appreciating the things we have, so we don't make mistakes and harbour massive regrets. It seems like all the main angst in the drama is caused, in part, by a lack of appreciation for life in the present - Chen Yun Ru doesn't appreciate the things in her life (her friends and family) and her unhappiness drives her actions into the continuing limbo of suffering for all the characters. Similarly, Huang Yu Xuan also creates her own sense of guilt and misery from tossing aside what she has - breaking up with Wang Quan Shen/ Li Zi Wei - to take on a promotion in Shanghai. While it's not wrong to look for more, the lesson seems to be that we shouldn't forget or ignore the good things we already have. After all, we aren't blessed with the chance to go back in time to fix our mistakes. And really, is that even a blessing?

A core focus of many time-travel stories is the idea of going back to a specific point in time to fix a mistake that causes immense pain and destruction in the future. While Huang Yu Xuan is given the chance to go back to another time to erase the mistakes of the past, her actions don't necessarily create the perfect solution - in fact, the solution involves wiping out her entire timeline and existence. To that end, Some Day or One Day shows us that regret is pointless - you can't just erase or change a mistake, and even if you could, the outcome would be different to what you think. The series shows us that the key to our happiness is in the present - create your own happiness by appreciating life in the here and now to avoid leaving regrets; live in the moment and forgive and make peace with the things in your past - only then can you move forward.

Through Some Day or One Day , we see that everyone goes through bad times and sometimes you don't have a deeper understanding of what other people are going through when you don't look below the surface. One of the interesting things about the series, and definitely one of its strengths, is its exploration of issues such as depression, through Chen Yun Ru, and same-sex attraction through the real Wang Chen Sheng (before his body is taken over by Li Zi Wei). Feeling different and isolated can really take it's toll on people, and their mental health, as evidenced by both these character's desires to end their own lives. So another important message through the show is to treat everyone with respect and to always try to think of a little bit more about those around you, whether it's classmates, workmates or immediate friends and family members.

Philosophical thoughts aside, the holistic story-telling and production quality of this drama is just fantastic. Some Day or One Day really is a beautiful, aesthetic and thoughtful piece. The romantic and angst-ridden rifts of Wu Bai & China Blue's Last Dance really set the nostalgic and longing mood of the series. The the backdrop of the show, set in dreamy cafes, old Taiwanese food stalls, quaint old high school buildings and lush green parks, really takes you back to simpler times. And the acting is very, very good. Because of the complicated nature of the story (being both one about time travel and body swapping), Alice Ke and Greg Hsu had to act not only as 2 different people, but also as different versions of these characters through the different stages of their lives. I was impressed to see them both give such warmth and sincerity to all their different roles, whether they were acting as the depressed versions of Chen Yun Ru & Wang Quan Sheng or the happily-in-love versions of Huang Yu Xuan & Li Zi Wei.  To compliment all these things, the story was well-written, with good pacing and interesting twists and turns. There were no filler episodes and as far as I can tell, the plot was devoid of plot holes (or at least not glaringly visible ones for a time-travel story).

While this drama is pretty close to perfect for me, no drama is realistically ever going to be 100%. There were some tiny things that I wondered about when I had finished the show. For example, a lot of thought was given to Chen Yun Ru's character, but on the flip side, very little thought was given to the real Wang Quan Shen once Li Zi Wei took over his body. Whatever happened to him? Did just relinquish control because he was so pained about his one-sided love? I suppose he never got the chance to go back to being himself even if he wanted to since he died in a plane crash as an adult in his later years.

Another thing I couldn't help thinking about was the 'fixed' timeline with the (additional) happy ending. Since they fixed up the issue with Chen Yun Ru, it's implied that she continued living and possibly gave Mo Jun Jie a chance to be more than a friend to her. But in the new timeline, particularly in the bonus ending scene, we see that Li Zi Wei and Mo Jun Jie are still friends and that he's met and developed feelings for the new (and real, non-time loop version of) Huang Yu Xuan. However, this begs the question: wouldn't Li Zi Wei and Mo Jun Jie have noticed that she looked exactly like Mo Jun Jie's girlfriend? My theory for this is quite a bittersweet one - after Chen Yun Ru recovered from the car accident, she was less obsessed with the boys and Mo Jun Jie eventually got over his crush on her. While they remained friends, they drifted off after high school. Years later, Li Zi Wei meets a girl who looks familiar (like Chen Yun Ru) but has that personality and spirit of the girl he has always loved (Huang Yu Xuan). That's what I believe would be a plausible explanation....But I guess you can also have the happy ending where they date similar looking girls, who are just different people. Whatever you choose to believe!

I really want to finish on a pretty note and that is the amazing chemistry between the leads. While it can be hard to invest in a pairing when you know too much about the real lives of the actors, this was not the case in any way with Some Day or One Day (For those who don't know, Alice is married in real life, so there could be no real ship per say). I loved watching Alice and Greg as a couple in this drama because they had this amazing on-screen chemistry that was both tender and playful. Not only did they create a beautiful love story, they were able to play out this relationship in several different stages - as high school students, university students and working adults. I think there's something distinctively different between showing puppy love compared to showing the mature love of a couple who have experienced loss and tragedy. But there was a real depth and sweetness to all their couple scenes that felt convincing and comforting to watch.

Some Day or One Day was a real dream to watch and some of the best drama work I've seen come out of Taiwan recently - To be honest, I think this one is my favourite Taiwanese drama of all time. It ticks off so many boxes in acting, production quality and script-writing. But it also has deeper layers and meaningful lessons which the viewer can really think about and take away, as we have here.