Not worth the wait

3 long years after the insanely good and very high rated first season, I have to say I’m very disappointed with season 2. It fell way below what I was expecting, and honestly felt like a completely different show to me.

First off, I was very sad that the original cast made it so far for half of them to be killed off by the second episode. They introduced way too many new and not important characters with no character arch or background on any of them. The cast from season 1 is what gave the show such great charm, and these new characters had nothing to them at all. Not to mention, none of the good characters from season 1 remained except for obviously Hyunsu and Eunyu. Everyone else that was there I could care less about. Give me back Jisu!!!

Next, the storyline was just so all over the place?? There were 5 different storylines going on, all of which added barely any substance to the plot. We definitely could have done without Yikyung and her weird monster baby, that pretty much added no value other than, that monsters are evolving, which we knew would happen at some point. Didn’t need to be some weird sub storyline. Keeping with this thought, I could give a shit less about the people at that damn stadium. It became pointless to me after Eunyu left it to find Eunhyuk, but instead we spend most of our time here instead of the more important plot points. Who was Chief Ji? Why was she so suspicious? Was she harboring a monster? Was she a monster? Guess we’ll never know that because they didn’t explain anything. What was with the old man and Hanni?? What was their added value?? Why did they want us to care about these soldiers so damn much? They were a tad bit more important to the story though as they did come across more neo-humans, but why do I have to care about them? We were gonna end up at the research facility at some point with or without them.

And lastly, my BIGGEST issue with the show: where the hell was Hyunsu for half the show?? Main character but they gave him no main character energy. He was sidelined to make way for these less important characters. Last we saw him, he was petrified/turned to stone by Uimyeong at the research facility as it was crumbling, then what happened?? How did he get out? How did he become unfrozen? How did he find Yikyung and her weird monster baby?? And then he’s just gone? for three episodes? and magically shows back up for the last 2?? For a story about Cha Hyunsu and him being the only one that can stop monsterization (maybe) he sure was given dust. What happened to Uimyeong after he petrified Hyunsu? He was j chillin until Dr. Lim showed back up? I mean none of this story made any sense and lacked what made season 1 so popular.

All I can say is, I was very disappointed with the long and highly anticipated wait for season 2. With the return of Eunhyuk at the end, I have slightly higher hopes for season 3. I hope season 3 can redeem any lost hype that season 2 didn’t have and bring back the feeling of what made Sweet Home so incredible.

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Fair Adaptation from the Webtoon

When this first came out and everyone was raving about it and about Park Jihoon’s stellar performance I was really excited to watch it. But, I saw that it was adapted from a webtoon and decided to read that first. There’s currently 3 seasons with it still being updated, and ended up being quite confused on season 1 compared to the webtoon.

However, after finishing season 1 in the webtoon I realized that the show is a prequel to it, and are things of which we only see through Sieun’s/Gray’s flashbacks. I was then very interested to see how they would flesh out the flashbacks into a series. The webtoon starts with Sieun/Gray arriving at Eunjang, which we see at the end of season 1.

I do have to say, it’s not quite like the webtoon, or accurately adapted. As seen in the series, Sieun is a loner who only cares about academics. He has no sense of a goal for life and is lost and tries to fill that hole with excelling in academics. Stephen/Suho approaches Sieun after he realizes that Sieun is lost and has no clear goal and takes him under his wing. He begins to show him what life is like outside of academics and how much fun he can have. Sieun wasn’t bullied at first nor did the bullies mess with his grades by placing a fetanyl patch on him as we see in the show. And Stephen/Suho was not a martial arts fighter, he was just a good guy that liked helping others.

Their friendship with Bryce/Beomseok is pretty accurate though, but also not at the same time. They became friends because Stephen/Suho approached Beomseok/Bryce in the cafeteria because he was alone. There was no background information about Beomseok/Bryce being bullied at a former school. He did however have an inferiority complex as he did in the webtoon, but it stems from when he heard girls saying how handsome Stephen/Suho and Gray/Sieun were. The more he started hanging out with them, the more he felt inferior to them. This is what led to his fall into delinquency and started targeting Stephen/Suho for bullying and even got Oswald and friends to start it. They started a group chat with the class, excluding Sieun and Suho, and spread a rumor that they were romantically involved. Gray/Sieun had no idea Suho was being bullied because Suho shielded him from it. He wanted to handle it on his own, because he couldn’t live with himself if anything happened to Sieun, which eventually led to him falling off of the roof after being lured there by Beomseok/Bryce and his friends and falling into a coma while Sieun was at a Math Olympiad. Which leads to a very big character arch for Sieun as he is terrified of going to rooftops because of what happened. It’s his thing, he DOESNT do rooftops.

In the series, Sieun/Gray tries to shelter Stephen/Suho from the bullying and goes himself, completely opposite of the webtoon. We also see in the series that after finding out about Stephen/Suho going into a coma, he immediately goes to Byuksan and finds and beats up those who were involved, but never actually beating up Beomseok. In the webtoon, Gray falls into a 2 month depression and doesn’t go to school, and only after his return does he get revenge on Beomseok and Oswald and friends and he actually beats up Beomseok to the point of unconsciousness.

But of course. this seems to be a little too boring for a show so I guess you have to add some pizzaz lol I’m not sure what the whole gambling thing was about but it was completely unnecessary. Even though we get no parental background on any of the characters in the webtoon, I do like the fleshing out of sieun’s parents, and why sieun is the way he is.

So I guess, in short, the series is nothing like the webtoon, but you gotta do what you gotta do to get views and spruce up the story. I would say season 1 of Weak Hero Class is “loosely” based on the webtoon. So for my webtoon readers, don’t get your hopes up for a good adaptation. Try your best to understand why they changed and provided different storylines for the series as to make it more appealing to those who did not read the webtoon.

The series itself, apart from the webtoon, is great. If I get rid of all biases towards the show adaptation, I do have to say I can see why it has such stellar reviews and I do have to admit Park Jihoon does an amazing job at embodying the character of Gray/Sieun. All actors in the show gave an amazing performance, and the music also played an integral role in setting the emotion for the show as I almost cried when we all thought Suho died (even though i knew he didn’t). The show had a great production value and I see why everyone likes it. If i hadn’t read the webtoon i easily would’ve given it a 9 or maybe even a 10, but because of my bias of reading the webtoon beforehand, I gave it an 8.5.

I still enjoyed the season 1 and am now very looking forward to season 2 since these are the characters I know and love and are attached to. All I have to say is they better not fuck it up haha

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