I want to note that Racket Boys is the first kdrama I watched while it was airing. This means I had to deal with waiting for new episodes to come out instead of just clicking next. Why is this important? I feel like many dramas are good for binging but not enough for waiting for new episodes to come out. Racket Boys definitely survived the test of me wanting to know what happened even though they made me wait two weeks for the final episode.

First off, I like how this drama focused not only on teen athletes but also on the people around them. We get the backstory of Haekang's parents which I think was interesting and definitely contributed to the character development of the parents. Yes, you heard that right, even the parents have a solid character development even though the show is teen-focused. Some people might not have liked the extra storylines involving the villagers (I originally did not), but I started fall in love with each of the villagers featured from the city couple to Big Grandma from Busan (lol I really love how she had a lasting impact if you know what I mean ;P).

Onto the teens! I thoroughly enjoyed the acting displayed by the actual teen actors! Yes, you heard that right! The teenage characters are actually portrayed by actual teens! A lot of them have been featured in works before inclusing Tang Jungsun (who I loved both in CLOY and Move to Heaven). Although later on, the writers decided to focus on the romance between the teens, I think each of them have solid character development, even the class president lol. He turned out to be one of my favorite characters. I really liked how they brought cameos into the show to show the teens interacting with other adults (aka badminton players) and didn't have them just interacting with their parents.

For the episodes themselves, I felt like they were always laggy in the middle, but they made up for it on a lot of cliffhanger endings. I'm the kind of person not to watch previews, but in this case, I always watched them several times to figure out what could happen in the next episode. I also really enjoyed watching all of the badminton scenes 10/10 for cinematography there.

While I would not say this is the best kdrama I watched, it was definitely different and intriguing enough for me to enjoyably remember even after it ended.