YMMV / I Love Yoo

• Abandon Shipping:
  • After the incident with Mrs. Hirahara, a portion of the fanbase abandoned shipping Shin-Ae with both Yeong-Gi and Kousuke because they think that Shin-Ae's life kept getting screwed over (or at least made even more stressful) by her association with the Hirahara family. Those fans migrated to Dieter/Shin-Ae after episode 77.
  • Recent episodes have made a substantial number of people stop shipping Shin-Ae with Kousuke in particular, pointing to the power imbalance, not only with Kousuke being significantly older than Shin-Ae but also her boss, and Shin-Ae's visible discomfort around Kousuke as their reasons for doing so.
• Arc Fatigue: Many readers felt this during the lengthy flashback arc.
• Crack Ship: Soushi/Rika is a pretty popular ship because of their rebellious personality despite never share an on-screen interaction.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Some fans (especially Kousuke/Shin-Ae shippers) tended to focus on Mrs. Hirahara's support for setting up Kousuke and Shin-Ae together while sympathetic to Shin-Ae's background, and ignoring that Mrs. Hirahara only ever does it in a manipulative and forceful way that ignore both characters' feelings. This seemed to die down after she gives the date rape drug to Sang-Chul Kim.
• Die for Our Ship:
  • Alyssa is subject to a lot of hatred by the fandom, mainly just because she's Yeong-Gi's girlfriend. (The fact that she may have been one of Shin-Ae's bullies in the past doesn't help.) This became somewhat diminished once it became clear that the two aren't really invested in having a real romantic relationship, as it is really a glorified Arranged Marriage that neither of them is (sincerely) interested about. But she still tends to get a lot of readers ready to pin any evil attributes they can on her.
  • Amazingly, Dieter managed to avert this entirely despite some not-insignificant amount of Ship Tease between him and Shin-Ae. His Ensemble Dark Horse status might have something to do with this.
  • Was inverted with Mrs. Hirahara, at least initially. She was engaging in very, creepy controlling behavior to try to force Shin-Ae and Kousuke into a relationship, and the Shinsuke shippers cheered her on and yelled for more. She eventually crossed too many lines for even the most rabid shippers, but it took a while.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Despite his limited screentime and plot involvement, Dieter is incredibly loved by the fandom for his Nice Guy personality and interaction toward Yeong-Gi and Shin-Ae. A Day of the Dead poll shows him to be the most popular character by a significant margin outside of the three leads.
  • Min Hyuk Park is incredibly loved by the fanbase despite having zero plot impact and sparse appearance due to his interaction with Shin-Ae.
  • Mr. Bang, Shin-Ae's landlord is unexpectedly popular with the fanbase due to his kindness (within reason) toward Shin-Ae and her father.
• Fountain of Memes: Shin-Ae due to her over-the-top expressions.
• Ho Yay:
  • Shin-Ae finds the entire Hirahara family attractive. Yes, that include Mrs. Hirahara and she remarks several times about it.
  • The first time Shin-Ae meet Alyssa Cho as a grown up, she rather blatantly stare at the latter's breasts and blushing.
  • Yu Jing kisses Shin-Ae on the cheek in episode 91, and Shin-Ae gets flustered.
• Iron Woobie: Shin-Ae, poor girl. Raised by a clearly affectionate but overworked father, bullied when she was young, had no contact or help from her mother, and constantly struggling financially. All while being roped into the Hirahara family drama simply because of bad luck or her own kindness to the point of almost being sexually assaulted, learning that a supposed act of generosity was really a trick to force her into the Hirahara family business, and falling off a balcony. On top of that, her father is hospitalized for his alcoholism and both of them are nearly evicted. All of this stockpiles to the point where she ends up failing her college entrance exam.
• Jerkass Dissonance: One of the first things we see from Kousuke's mother, is a Death Glare directed at Yeong-Gi and it's implied she might be a Wicked Stepmother. However, she tries to offer Kousuke an arranged marriage with Shin-Ae in an offhand comment, and suddenly the shippers think she's the best thing ever. It gets worse in subsequent comics. She's so controlling it's borderline-abusive, and has made blatantly clear she wants Shin-Ae primarily as a baby-factory for her son, but the shippers are only too happy to give her a pass. However, the reveal that she has been supplying Sang-Chul with his date-rape drugs finally seems to have turned even most of the Kousuke shippers against her.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Megan Cho's action of warning the Hirahara brothers about the date-rape drug by Sang-Chul towards Shin-Ae singlehandedly turned the fanbase's opinion of her.
• Ron the Death Eater: Kousuke seems to be drawing A LOT of these reactions from readers and while some of them are understandable as the more unlikeable parts of his personality have showed more frequently, some of them are frankly ridiculous, like blaming every single thing that goes wrong with Nol and Shin-Ae's lives on him even the ones out of his control, claiming that he hates his brother and has it out for him, blaming him for his mother’s actions or even assuming he's conspiring with her despite growing evidence that he knows little if anything of her schemes and one of the most baffling: getting angry at him for reacting badly as a 10 year old meeting a 5 year old Nol, not taking into account what it meant for him as a child to realize that his father did have a mistress and secret son.
• Sarcasm Failure: The Audience Reaction when Kousuke claimed to be 12 in Kousuke's corner. A lot of fans didn't get it.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Mr. Yoo was hospitalized in episode 46. One would think this would be the perfect opportunity to officially introduce Shin-Ae's mother or sister, but neither are mentioned or make an appearance by the time Mr. Yoo recovers. Subverted in episode 83, where Shin-Ae’s sister appears and reveals that she was the one who paid for Mr. Yoo’s hospital expenses and the rent. Shin-Ae's mother's lack of appearance is finally explained in Episode 127 that she passed away recently.