4 - Between Virtualities: Time Travel in Someday or One Day (2019) and A Time Called You (2023)

The Taiwanese TV drama, Someday or One Day, portrays a complex love story which traverses different times and selves. The drama was well received by the public and critics, and collected quite a few awards in Taiwan. The shorter film adaptation/semi-sequel (2022), which had almost the same production team and actors as the drama, contributed to its transnational popularity in Asia, and this year, Netflix Korea released a Korean version. This paper adopts a dual approach: a cultural analysis and a philosophical inquiry. Firstly, it compares the production, circulation, reception processes and the plots of the two drama versions to analyse the sociocultural implications of the differences. Secondly, as the dramas delve into heavy topics such as life and death, this paper deals with philosophical questions. Interestingly, both in the Taiwanese and Korean versions of the drama, the English titles are more intricate than the native language titles. This paper analyses the complex themes of time travel and dissimilar selves in relation to post-subjectivity and anti-ontology. For instance, Deleuze’s concepts of the “virtual” and “difference” and François Jullien’s notion of “between” seem particularly helpful to deepen the analysis of the dramas.