Nine Times Time Travel is a 20 episode Korean TV show that aired in early 2013. This is another modern Korean fantasy drama, albeit one that it is unusually understated and low key in comparison to most of its more melodramatic &/or romantic brethren.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
Here's your basic story: A man receives a visit from his older brother shortly before said brother passes away. The older brother appeared to be insane during the visit and was claiming he had found a way to alter time. The man goes to retrieve his older brother's body and investigates his death, and he soon finds that his brother was not crazy at all; he actually had discovered the means to travel back in time via some magical incense sticks. The younger brother collects the remaining incense sticks (9 of them), and thus now possesses nine chances to alter the past. Light a stick and you'll go back in time to an exact set date for 30 minutes until the incense burns out, then you're zapped backed to the present day (where whatever you've just done in the past is instantly reflected in the present).
The story focuses primarily on the young brother, who experienced a family tragedy when he was a teen that forever impacted his life and everyone he loves. He therefore decides to use the time travel incense to change crucial events in his family's history in order to prevent this tragedy from happening in the first place. He has the best of intentions, but altering the past soon becomes much more complicated than he imagined. Every change he makes for the better in the past creates unexpected future results, and he soon finds that various friends & family members lead vastly different lives or no longer recognize him in the present. As such, he keeps going back to the past to try to undo the unintended future changes he created, but things only seem to be getting worse and soon are spiraling out of control, and, he's quickly running out of magic incense sticks to rectify the situation.
From there on in, it's just a matter of seeing if this guy can somehow set things right before time runs out. Moral of the story: It's probably best to not mess around with the past no matter what your intentions are.
Lee Jin Wook plays the lead and primary focal point of the show, and he's quite good in what is an understated role. Everyone else is mostly a supporting character, and they're pretty good in their roles too (particularly the love interest in the present, and the younger versions of everybody in the past). Although, I must say I could've done without some of the overacting from the evil scientist dude and the lead's doctor friend...and, while I'm on the subject, I've never understood why the directors of some these KTV shows would want or allow actors to perform in this manner. In this medium, overacting occurs far too often with the some of the side characters; constantly flashing a clumsy menacing stare or wildly waving your arms around does not help make a character more evil or funnier, respectively. It doesn't work and its distracting more than anything else, and you usually end up occasionally chuckling at the supposed bad guy and growing annoyed of the guy who's supposed to be the friendly comic relief. A lot less brooding & mugging, and a little more subtlety for these 2 particular characters is definitely in order here, as is also true with many other non-protagonist characters on many other Korean dramas.
This show doesn't seem to have a whole lot of money to throw around, but it never looks overly cheap; productions values are solid for its given budget, but there is very little excess in any form or fashion to be had here. It's paced well enough, and the story & writing is quite good as well; it almost seems that this was written in advance (and, not "on the fly", like most K-dramas are). The interactions across time, between the younger and older versions of the same protagonist, are quite well done in particular.
There's definitely a minimalistic feel to this entire show (which I found to be somewhat refreshing for this genre), and this approach extends itself to the story as well; it retains many familiar melodramatic elements & themes & story lines that you'll find in this genre, but it does so w/o love quadrangles, meticulously styled auxiliary antagonists, etc. For Korean TV, this is basically a no frills drama about the implications of trying to change your past, and overall, it is quite good at accomplishing this.
Summary: This is a subdued, and rather well done, KTV time travel melodrama that I rather enjoyed for the most part. Yeah, it's got some flaws, but what K-drama doesn't? I can see that it might not play all that well to some of the masses that most K-dramas are geared towards, as it's just neither a very flashy, sexy, or romantic soap opera type of show. There's nothing wrong with flashy/sexy/romantic K-dramas, and I like some of those shows too, but if you don't necessarily need or want a show like that, while still getting your K-drama fix on, this show might work quite well for you.
Bottom Line: 8.5 out of 10 stars!Very Well Recommended!
