Review of Extraordinary You / 어쩌다 발견한 하루

After watching the drama Tomorrow, I was on a massive Rowoon kick. As a recap, this was all sparked by my friend I was visiting in New York. When we were on a bus to Flushing, she was raving about Rowoon and how she binged watched all of Extraordinary You in two days, and I had waved her off.

Then, when I got back home later in the weekend, I ended up binging Tomorrow. That led me to purchase a Viki subscription for the month to watch all of Extraordinary You because she was raving about it and then I remembered I had heard other people raving about it before.

And that, my friends, is how I ended up binge watching all thirty-two episodes of Extraordinary You in two days.

Granted, some of the times I didn’t watch all the way through—I genuinely hate filler and some subplots, so I will admit I pressed fast forward at some parts and just read the dialogue as I did it. My hot take for the day is that television shows typically almost always have some kind of filler somewhere, and that it’s not necessary for the main plot.

Anyways, I’ve rambled enough. Onwards with the review!

When Eun Dan-oh realizes she’s a side character in a webtoon, she sets out to change her fate.

The story of Extraordinary You is set inside of a prestigious high school for wealthy students, and the main character of the drama is Eun Dan-oh. She’s the daughter of a wealthy man and suffers from a heart condition, so if she’s too stressed out or over exerting herself, her little watch starts beeping and letting everyone know that her heart rate is up.

She’s betrothed to Baek Kyung, who, in reality, could not care less about the fact they’re supposed to be getting married. He’s not the nicest person, and his family only wants them to get married so they can get the benefits of being attached to her family’s wealth.

One day, Eun-oh realizes the world she lives in isn’t real. She finds herself in different scenes and scenarios, and she finds herself being aware of the fact some of the decisions she actually wants isn’t what she is capable of doing.

With the local school chef, who has been fully aware the entire time, she attains a copy of the webtoon she’s in.

They’re all not real, and the world they live inside of is at the whims of a mysterious author out in the real world. Eun-oh is specifically devastated to realize that she’s not the main character of the webtoon—the poor girl on scholarship that’s bullied by the other students actually is.

Worst of all, Eun-oh is going to die in the near future. When she realizes this, she decides it’s time to change her fate before she does actually end up dead.

Even when she tries to change scenarios, it doesn’t work, until one day she realizes the nameless student in her class, number thirteen, has the power to help change the main storyline.

She bestows him the name Haru, and together they decide to help change the fate of the characters. When the original second male lead (the violinist) becomes aware that this isn’t a real world, he decides to live out his life on his own terms, too.

However, changing the story comes with its consequences. Baek Kyung also becomes aware at some point and clashes with Haru, because he randomly decides he’s going to pursue Eun-oh for real this time. Haru is aware of the fact that if he keeps continuing with the story, he’s going to disappear forever.

But still he helps out Dan-oh, who tries to aid the original female lead, too. Eventually, Dan-oh’s heart continues to get worse, and after a series of events, Haru ends up disappearing.

The writer writes him in as a member of Baek Kyung’s squad, with his memories erased, but everyone aware knows who he really is.

Eventually he gets his memory back, but Dan-oh dies due to her heart condition, and comes back with all her memories gone. The side plot at this point is that all of these characters are basically copied and pasted from an original manhwa that was historical, and everyone but the chef is unaware that the ending is deeply tragic.

The chef also has his own subplot where he lost his love in the historical webtoon, but she’s now a student that’s unaware in this version. Baek Kyung ends up having a change of heart throughout the series and decides to let Eun-oh and Haru do their thing romantically.

The series then follows this tension all the way through, and when their story ends and everyone gets ready to graduate, Haru disappears. Eun-oh goes off to college, where she sees Haru and their story begins in a completely different webtoon presumably.

Overall Thoughts

This is a really cute drama. I haven’t binge watched a sixteen episode drama like this in a really long time, which shows how much I ended up enjoying this one.

There were moments I thought were a little excessive and over the top for my tastes, and I found the female lead a little more annoying—but she had more dimension.

The male leads just exist in a vacuum where there is very little characterization, and then there was the entire memory and forgetting trope that happened to both the FL and ML. Granted, I enjoyed the drama overall, but those little things got on my nerves at times.

Follow me on Instagram and Goodreads below for more content.