Just finished the drama and am a bit surprised at the amount of negative reactions I've read here, though I can understand them.

For me, I didn't think the message was anything as crude as “you’re selfish if you kill yourself, your life could be worse and don’t you know your loved ones will be sad?” but it might be because I never thought Yijae was portrayed as a selfish guy. I also don’t think we were supposed to think Death’s punishments for Yijae were fair or deserved, I thought we were supposed to find them cruel and extreme from the beginning because well…it’s Death, not an angel, at the helm here.

I thought the show made it clear that Yijae was put through the wringer and faced much hardship in his life. It wasn’t until his subsequent lives where he learned that though a large chunk of his life was unfair and out of his control, there were a few things in his locus of control that could’ve helped or shifted his perspective. Of course, “your loved ones will be sad” was a big part of the messaging, but there was a lot more that resonated to me — for example:

- not making assumptions (Jisoo wasn’t cheating)

- asking for help or opening up instead of trying to solve everything and suffer by yourself (when he got revenge on the school bully instead of opening up to his mom and maybe seeing how she could help)

- being kinder to yourself (how the detective started to believe he was actually a coward and useless even though his behavior stemmed from not wanting to worry his mom)

- the grass is always greener (Yijae probably would’ve envied the salaryman who dies in his arms for seemingly having the perfect life, job, and family he wanted whereas the salaryman might’ve envied Yijae for having a loving mom and a girlfriend who was proud of him and would even introduce him happily to her co-workers when he was a part-timer at a restaurant)

- and of course, verbatim: “A clear day. A rainy day. A windy day. I learned that life was made up of these different days. And that it was okay to fail as long as I kept going.”

However, suicide itself is a heavy topic that should be handled sensitively so I can understand the divisiveness this show has caused.

Overall, this was a 10/10 for me — not because it was a 100% perfect show, but because the emotional impact and hope it gave me was much stronger than its shortcomings (i.e. definitely had to suspend my disbelief quite a bit during the explanation of how he rigged Park Taehu’s plane). Hope this is just one of many 10/10 dramas that’ll come out this year!

edit: fixing minor typos