If you are given a second chance to do the things you love, will give it another shot? As a fan of sports dramas, Love All Play became an instant favorite for me. I love everything about this drama from the casting down to the little details like OST. Here’s what made me a fan of it.
Love All Play | 너에게 가는 속도 493km (Going to you at a Speed of 493km)
Release Date: April 20, 2022
Characters
Park Ju Hyun as Park Tae Yang
Chae Jong Hyeop as Park Tae Jun
Park Ji Hyun as Park Jun Young
Kim Mu Jun as Yook Jung Hwan
Seo Ji Hye as Lee Yoo Min
Synopsis
A badminton prodigy, Park Tae Yang is known for her record-breaking smashes inside the court. As she’s about to reach the peak of her career, she got involved in an incident wherein she decided to run away and work at a sashimi store.
Trying to win her spot back, she joined the company-run badminton team named Yunis, where is never welcome. Rumors of her bribing the judges during a competition circulated during her hiatus that it made her career stoop down in an instant.
Still dreaming of playing her favorite sport, she pursued her passion once again. Now, she meets Park Tae Jun, another badminton prodigy who is wanting to quit because he always thought that badminton is nothing but a career and its time for him to switch.
“When the doors open”
From its main theme song entitled ‘When the doors open,’ the whole song speaks so much about the drama itself. It’s about taking the risk to reach your dreams. Every time I watch a certain Korean sports drama, I always look forward to the OSTs and characters. I love how the theme song simply excites me every time a new episode starts and it plays as the intro.
All the athletes, especially the Yunis squad highly represents what it is like to be when given a second chance to play making this drama in high adrenaline every episode.
Park Taeyang
Trying to bounce back from a huge setback, Park Taeyang is probably one of the strongest but lowkey drama characters I’ve seen. She handled a traumatic experience by running away and slowly gaining herself back. Trying to earn a second chance, she managed to face the consequences of her previous actions after three years of hiding.
Despite knowing how people will treat her, she is calm and tried to calmly control her emotions while working hard, she also asked for forgiveness so she could win the trust of her team once again. I always think her cool character is what athletes should have.
Park Tae Jun
Definitely a walking green flag, Park Tae Jun, well-played by Chae Jong Hyeop is the ideal athletic boyfriend material. But then, even if he is a great athlete, he was constantly overshadowed by the image of his sister Park Junyeong being the greatest badminton athlete during her time.
Despite his bright personality, he is trying to run away from all the comparisons that he even hid the fact that he is brother of a great athlete. Park Tae Jun, at some point, also decided to quit badminton but he meets his childhood friend Park Taeyang who definitely inspired him to continue.
Park Junyoung
Three dramas in a row, the actress playing the role Park Junyoung just literally annoyed the hell out of me. One thing is for sure, Park Ji Hyun is a great actress. However, she’s been given extremely pathetic characters from Do You Like Brahms, Yumi’s Cells, and now in Love All Play.
She’s good at portraying toxic female antagonist characters that whenever I see her in dramas, I tend to skip her parts already. Her character in this drama is surely no exception.
The Park twins
From badminton’s Park twins to becoming the Park Park couple, this kdrama couple is probably one of my favorite ships in kdramaland. I love how they silently root for each other and how vocal and showy they can be at times.
This is probably the couple that will be my safe zone if I feel the need to re-watch a drama that will motivate me to keep going. It’s just that no matter how many times they fought, it doesn’t feel toxic at all. It’s only the circumstances that challenges them, not the amount of love and sacrifice they are willing to share.
The bickering athletes
To spice up the drama, we always love to see athletes bickering during games and the way this drama showed it is on a different level. Compared to other sports kdramas I’ve seen before, the bickering athletes here are too funny to watch! You’ll think you are watching children fighting over petty things but ends up being friendly with one another at the end of the day!
Love All Play is available on Disney+.
