These opinions are all my own and, as always, super glad others seemed to really love this take on HYYH. I personally didn’t, but not everything is going to be my cup of tea. Namjoon's story was my favorite in HYYH.

To start, Dogeon is an entirely different character from HYYH’s Namjoon. Dogeon's vibe was a lot more clean cut and he was was more of a rule follower than HYYH Namjoon. The iconic scenes from the Notes/MVs where he and Tae run away from the cops after getting caught spray painting seems like something Dogeon would never do. Most of the big events from his story don’t happen in this drama and he’s not given a ton of story on his own.

In order of who got the most story:
Haru, Jeha, Cein, Jooan, Hwan, Hosu, Dogeon comes in last.

Most of Dogeon and Hosu’s stories involve supporting other characters, but Hosu at least got the story with his narcolepsy and his mother abandoning him.

Namjoon’s closest relationship (and the most interesting one to me) was his relationship with Tae in the OG story. There’s more of a supportive relationship set up here with Jooan and Haru instead. Dogeon and Jooan’s story was colored negatively by the only scene in which Dogeon lets out his emotions and talks about hating that no one comforts him… is followed by him apologizing for “unloading” and Jooan abandoning him. End result: he still has no support system. That was perhaps the most heartbreaking aspect of his entire story. Dogeon is a character that exists to serve literally everyone else.

Every time it seemed we were finally giving him focus, it cut away to another character’s story without giving depth to his. His time in the hospital, the start of episode 12 before it cut to Jooan, and we don’t even get his personal thoughts in the aftermath of nearly being killed?? What was the nosebleed storyline? It was just dropped completely. Did the delivery boy story from the Notes happen here? Who knows?

The writers didn’t seem to be interested in Dogeon which made this drama less enjoyable overall for me, but I’m glad fans of other characters enjoyed it.

My general thoughts on everything else: it's entertaining for the most part. The episodes are long and you can feel it. I did enjoy the group scenes where they're all together, Cein's birthday party was my favorite group scene. Some of the acting in a few scenes was a bit cringy and choppy, but I don’t think that was the actors’ faults. I think the director should’ve made some different choices.

The best performances in my opinion were Hwan and Jooan’s. I thought those actors did a great job in their portrayals. Surprisingly, the relationships I found the most interesting (for however much we got to see of them) were Hwan & Dogeon and Hosu & Dogeon. I don’t remember any real interactions between Hosu and Dogeon (Hobi and Namjoon) in the OG story, so that was a pleasant surprise. Hwan and Dogeon were great together and I wished we got a lot more of that.

For Dogeon’s sake, I hope there’s another season because I really think he got the short end of the stick story wise. It seems like they were clearly setting up for another season and I read they supposedly filmed 24 episodes. It’d be nice if they could give Dogeon more, but I’ll always have the OG story that I enjoyed.

I’m glad others enjoyed this a lot more than I did.