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AudienceofOne
This review may contain spoilers
The second instalment of HIStory3 for this year is a regressive detour into fan service that has neither the coherence nor the charm of previous storylines.One thing I usually say about the HIStory series is that it does good queer stories even if it doesn't do other things right. But Make Our Days Count is not working for me at all. Which is a shame because I was looking forward to it a great deal. However nothing can hide the fact the show is badly written, poorly characterised and has nothing to say.
This story about popular and oblivious Xiang Hao Ting who falls for the studious and impoverished highschool student, Yu Xi Gu, (whom he used to bully) seems regressive - annoyingly so. HIStory1 was little but cliched Fujoshi baiting and I have been enjoying how the series has been maturing and evolving through HIStory2 and then HIStory3: Trapped, which for all its many many many many flaws was ambitious storytelling with mature leads.
Not that my issue is with the highschool setting itself but with the awful seme-uke "gay for you" nature of the main relationship and its associated stalking, harassment and abuse. I felt like the first few episodes were basically a relationship post on the "Am I The Asshole" reddit (with the overwhelming responses agreeing that yes, you are the asshole).
I feel so sorry for Xi Gu who just wants to work and study and has this succession of classmates harass, bully, assault, stalk, abuse and finally sexually harass him. Also I have no idea when or why our male lead suddenly decided he liked him; the switch happened suddenly and without much preamble. The romance essentially came out of nowhere and, while I could believe that Meng Shao Fei's pursuit of Tang Yi could easily become a romantic pursuit, a bully swapping relentless harassment for wooing does not work as well. It's no surprise that Xi Gu assumes that the sudden sexual element to the harassment is merely a new ploy by the boy who has been torturing him.
Of course the other relationship is just as bad, with an older man, Lu Zhi Gang, dating a highschool student, Sun Bo Xiang . One particularly revealing (and slightly gross conversation) involves the older man denying he has a romantic interest in Xi Gu because he's far far too young - despite him being the exact age as his boyfriend. No one - even the writers who put that dialogue on the page - seem to have noticed the problem here. Bo Xiang (played with a great deal of charm and nuance by Wilson Lui, who impresses me weekly) is a physical and emotional child, treated frequently like a toddler by his so-called boyfriend . To make the whole thing worse, the writers inserted an unnecessarily graphic sex scene (unprotected sex, even!) between the two of them that, again, felt like fan service rather than a genuine narrative development.
I could argue that the relationship in HIStory2: Right or Wrong was equally as disturbing but there I felt like the show was saying something and had put some thought into the characters and the relationship. The whole thing was both wrong but also quite romantic and it was up to the audience to work out where the line was and whether they were fine with it or not.
I honestly feel like this iteration of HIStory3 was written to a formula containing things people liked about previous HIStory stories and BL generally. They don't have anything to say, they just pulled elements together as fan service. There is nothing that subtle or interesting about it. It's a copy and paste job that celebrates the worst of BL while romanticising harassment.
Worse than that, "gay for you" as a plot device has a tendency to whitewash homosexuality out of the picture, something that's both ironic and frustrating in a series that's supposed to be dedicated to queer romance stories. Writing gay love stories without the gay may be a standard element of Yaoi but that doesn't mean we're not supposed to be evolving past that. And this is where I see this series as mere Fujoshi baiting. And that is a depressingly regressive move from these particular writers.
The ending
This review has been updated following the final episode to make a spoiler-free comment about the ending. It kind of goes like this: OMFG!! No, just no. Watching this show is like watching someone dig a hole and every time you think it's as deep as it can go it turns out it can plumb new depths. Even people who liked this terrible drama hated this ending. Ponder that one for a moment.
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This review may contain spoilers
It now seems premature to have called Abyss the worst drama of 2019. Who knew dramaland had this televisual equivalent of listeria-laden warm ice cream waiting in the wings.Ma Dong-chan (Ji Chang-wook, in the world's most inexplicable choice for a comeback drama) is a smoking hot GENIUS film maker who wins awards and grasps complex scientific theories in mere days. He agrees to get frozen for 24 hours but ends up being frozen for 20 years instead. There is a female version of him but she is mostly just pink. No, really, this excruciating Candy gets literally dressed as candy. I feel quite bad for Won Jin-ah who has a thankless role as Go Mi-ran - forced to be nothing more than a bright, happy, naive love interest for a man who's kind of a jerk.
Both Dong-chan and Mi-ran find themselves 20 years in the future and forced to keep a hypothermic body temperature to survive. While Dong-chan's fiance is now 20 years older, Mi-ran's narcisstic Freud-quoting ex is now a lecturer at her university. There's a lot of potential conflict to work with here but the show ignores almost all of it; steaming full speed for a somewhat-icky romance between a man who doesn't like his fiancé now she's old and the comparatively-uncomplicated Candy he starts making googly eyes at ten seconds after his break up.
It's not difficult to find negative things to say about this shallow puddle of a show: rather it's difficult to know where to begin in outlining them. Nobody involved in this has done anything right - not the writer, director, producer, actors or anyone responsible for anything. Even the music is wrong.
The humour of the show is similar to the worst of Strong Woman Do Bong Soon (this writer's previous work) and the show insists on undercutting any moment that could be powerful and emotional with bland, tasteless slapstick. Between the shrieking and the flailing and the forced romance, the show fails to make you care about either of these people. More importantly, neither of the leads have a character arc. Compared to a show with a similar premise - Thirty But Seventeen - it's shallow and trite with the 20 year time jump treated like a mild inconvenience and the hypothermia a mere romance roadblock.
The show seems to exist for the purpose of getting Wookie in a make-out shower scene to "cool down"; something that will only justify 16 episodes of television for the most ardent Wookie fan.
In a more succinct version of this review: this show sucks worse than Abyss. Don't watch it.
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Im Soo Hyang is well cast as Mo Seok-hee; the badass chaebol heiress who returns to Korea after an exile in the United States to solve her mother's murder. She teams up with the genuine, sweet and down-to-earth lawyer, Heo Yoon-do (Lee Jang Woo) whose mother was framed for the same murder.
While Seok-hee returns home to wreak havoc within her entitled, dysfunctional family, Yeon-do becomes her personal lawyer and gets employed by TOP: the corporation's all-seeing, all-knowing, law firm run by the controlling and Machiavellian Han Je-kook (Bae Jong Ok).
It's almost impossible to pin down the appeal of a show like this. It's pure crack, full of deliciously over-the-top plot twists and revelations: scheming mothers-in-law, corporate shenanigans, birth secrets, and murders among many others. The OST does the work of 50 actors; leaving us in no doubt about just how melodramatically we are supposed to watch this insane show. The soundtrack is like distilled makjang rendered into musical form.
And yet the show does have themes - real ones. While most shows lose track of theirs somewhere along the way, Graceful Family somehow finds some, almost by accident. Still, the appeal is rarely in the plotting, which resembles too often the standard Corporation-as-Joseon-Kingdom shenanigans that kdrama is a tad too fond of. The appeal is in the characters, especially the clever, entitled, bitchy, manipulative, but warm hearted Seok-hee herself - no Candy here - and the delightfully beta Yoon-do.
Dubbed Kermit and Miss Piggy for her bold confidence and his supportive and nurturing response, these two are one of the most shippable couples in dramaland. And it's only a shame the show didn't spend more time on the romance, even if these two never lose sight of their buddy-cop partnership.
I'm not going to lie - the show made one big narrative misstep, one that nearly ruined it for a lot of viewers and that I won't spoil. But apart from that, this is a very watchable, very enjoyable and very cracky piece of television. So dive on in!
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Circle is a rare Korean science fiction drama; a mind-bending, time-warping tale with the first half of each episode set in 2017 and the second half 20 years in the future. Events unfold simultaneously in both timelines, with 2017 and 2037 being inextricably intertwined.
Future cop Kim Joon-hyuk (Kim Kang-woo) in 2037 tries to uncover the mystery of what happened to a set of twins Kim Woo-jin (Yeo Jin-goo) and Kim Bum-gyun (An Woo-yeon) back in 2017, while in that time we see the two young men embark on their own investigation around the mystery of Han Jung-yeon (Gong Seung-yeon), whom Bum-gyun is convinced is an alien.
At a tight 12 episodes, the show wastes little time on filler and instead launches itself into action from frame one. It's a thrilling ride that barely allows you to draw breath in either time period as it races to a fascinating and at times unexpected conclusion.
The future envisaged by Circle includes memory-altering technology and the show's constant questioning of how our memories shape who we are is endlessly insightful and often poignant. The ambiguity the show retains even as it answers our questions is its best quality and it's that ambiguity that has led to hopes the show would have a second season.
Circle is a rare beast from Korea and its almost-universal acclaim may make it possible for the country to start producing more hard science fiction. We can only hope that happens soon.
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While there are still six months to go, the bar has been set extremely high with Abyss: a giant mess acted by a cast who really deserved better.
The annoying thing is, like last year's Worst Show of The Year (About Time), Abyss could have been fantastic. It has a great premise, a decent cast. It could have been an hilarious - almost farcical - comedy of mistaken identities, body swapping, and annoyed aliens. Instead what we got was a turgid, unfunny mess underpinned by a philosophy that was at times confused and at others actively offensive.
Ahn Hyo-seop has a lot of potential as an actor but he is still far too green to be given a leading role. With a good director, a good script and a good female lead he could have still produced something decent. But unfortunately he only got one of those in a criminally-underutilized Park Bo-young, - who really deserved better in her first lead show since the (sometimes equally as offensive) Strong Woman Do Bong-soon.
Both the lead roles were poorly written, with Ahn Hyo-seop's Cha Min changing from scene to scene depending on what the writer needed him to do - at times an uber genius, at others the dumbest male lead to ever appear on screen. Park Bo-young was given so little to work with for her character, Go Se-yeon, that she opted for cute - an interpretation that did not work with the character or the script.
Both these characters die and are brought back to life by a glowing alien marble. The unattractive Cha Min is suddenly gorgeous, while the stunning, willowy, Go Se-yeon is... Park Bo-young. Which is to say, she's a super adorable tiny person so the idea she's now "plain" is just ridiculous.
From beginning to end, Abyss had some profound things to say about image in our beauty-obsessed culture.
Like:
“you can’t love someone who’s ugly”
"what you look like is what your soul is like"
“plastic surgery gives you a better soul” and
“dieting makes your wedding day better”
Apart from the dumb, messy plot, the poor characterisation and the wall-to-wall stupidity of the characters, it's ultimately this utterly shallow and almost vacuous underpinning philosophy that makes Abyss truly awful.
Appearance is everything. Nothing else matters.
No thanks, Abyss. No thanks.
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Honestly, this marshmallow death of a show defies analysis or intellect. It bypasses the brain and goes straight for my endocrine system and so I love it despite its flaws (or even because of them).
On paper, My Strange Hero (otherwise known as Revenge Returns) look like a revenge drama - think Sassy Go Go meets Angry Mum. Kang Bok-soo (Yoo Seung-ho) returns to his highschool after 10 years to enact revenge on his former girlfriend Son Soo-jung (Jo Bo-ah) and best friend Oh Se-ho (Kwak Dong-yeon). In the process, he befriends a class of delinquent students and faces off against school corruption.
What sets Boksoo apart from its first frame is its commitment to forging its own path and telling its own story. From start to finish, this show knew exactly what story it wanted to tell, what message it wanted to send, what tone it wanted to set and who its characters were. It never waved from that. More than that, it never opted for tropes or cliches, preferring to be entirely itself from beginning to end. Boksoo may have come back to his school for revenge but what he really wanted - what we all really want - is justice instead.
I love Yoo Seung Ho's Bok-soo - a vibrant, kind and emotionally intelligent man. I love his badass girlfriend, a rare tsundere female who was waiting for a ball of warmth to melt her heart. I love them individually AND as an OTP and I can't remember the last time that happened *cough* INAR *cough*.
The show is far from perfect and yet its imperfections add to its enjoyment - if anything the show's flaws make it what it is in the same way as it strengths.
And while it technically can't compare to the great triumphs of 2019 - Sky Castle, Children of Nobody - it is still up there as one of the best shows this year.
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This is the best drama ever.
There are few Korean dramas that have brought me and those around me such joy.
The story!
The acting!
The subs!
Lee Shi Young plays endocrinologist Joo In Ah. She works with bad-tempered surgeon Han Seung Joo (Ji Hyun Woo). Seung Joo has an hormonal imbalance that affects his behaviour and that eventually becomes life threatening. They never explain what kind of brain damage the female lead has, although her mental deficiencies are just as obvious.
Seung Joo blames Shi Young for the death of his friend. The real culprit is her awful, selfish adopted sister. But neither is the culprit really - this is just bog-standard misogynism where women get blamed for everything just for existing.
These two unlikely mental patients fall in love. They have a certain enjoyable level of cute but the real OTP is Seung Joo and his dongsaeng, Cha Jae Hwan. It's such a shame that even in this day and age they have to hide their love away.
Risky Romance is best watched and enjoyed with illegal subs hastily cobbled together from the Indonesian translation by a high school student in Jakarta. That's the only way to really appreciate the true comic brilliance of this show.
Anything else might make you realise the show is actually terrible.
But watching this train wreck unfold slowly week to week truly gave me joy. I hope it can bring you the same joy.
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Meng Shao Fei (Jake Hsu) is a cop who has spent the last four years chasing gangster Tang Yi (Chris Wu). Tang Yi is trying to go straight to fulfil his late mentor/ father figure’s wishes. While he seems to be in charge of his organisation, there are rumours that not everybody is happy. However, Meng Shao Fei doesn’t seem that interested in Tang Yi’s criminal activities: he mostly wants to know what happened during an incident four years previously when his Sunbae was killed. After playing a cat and mouse game for four years, Meng Shao Fei and Tang Yi are probably too aware of each other for their own good. So when fate throws them together a few times, sparks fly.
As a BL premise, this a pretty good one. Meng Shao Fei’s dogged – almost obsessive – pursuit of Tang Yi translates pretty well as an analogy for a romantic pursuit. Whether Shao Fei wants justice, the truth, or Tang Yi’s hot bod is something even he seems confused about from early on. It shows a laudable kind of emotional honesty that, when Shao Fei finally realises his feelings, he pursues them with the same persistence with which he pursued the original case. He will get his man, it seems, even if he’s been in denial as to what he wants him for. After all, he’s a cop and Tang Yi is a gangster.
And therein, unfortunately, lies the show's problem. The writers simply don't understand the action genre and are not capable of grappling with the ethical issues at the heart of this relationship. From the beginning, the characters seem to be pasted in from a different show; one where cops are adorable and incompetent and nobody cares that one of them has completely compromised all their unit's ongoing investigations. The action elements are not used well or written well and the writers clearly struggle with a genre they don't know how to write.
It says something about the HIStory series that I stayed shipping the main couple even as it became clear that their relationship would not work (in the real world, this of course is a clear fiction). There is a lot of chemistry here - so much so the writers copped an unfortunate amount of flak over skipping a scene where that chemistry... culminated (and then quickly threw their audience a bone - literally as it turns out).
I can admire the writers' ambition as they try to write a much-longer series in a genre they're unfamiliar with. But, unfortunately, their execution has failed to match that ambition even if the series still produces consistently-good BL stories that are far above anything else on offer today.
By all means watch and enjoy but temper your expectations about the show's plotting. It does fall short.
Watch it for the romance instead.
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There's a certain type of show that, for all its crazy Makjang flaws, you just CAN'T. STOP. WATCHING.
Yes, there's a Candy and a crazy second female lead and a perfect second male lead for you to have SML syndrome over. Chaebol scheming and a company to fight over like it's still the Joseon era.
Every trope under the sun and then a few more to tide you over: Amnesia, Trucks of Doom, Noble Idiocy, Evil Stepmothers, Asshole Male Lead cured by the Power of Love.
But, but, but... it's just so cracktastic you can't stop watching. Even when the show is extended and it's a good 8 episodes too long, you keep pressing play on the next episode. Even when whole episodes go by with people having the same conversations over and over and endlessly crying for no good reason, you don't drop it. You can't.
THE PLOT
When Ko Eun Sung (Han Hyo Joo) is thrown into the street with her autistic brother, she is taken in by self-made businesswoman Jang Sook Ja (Ban Hyo Jung). The Chairwoman sees herself in the younger woman and eventually throws her entitled family for a loop when she leaves the younger woman all her assets, including her company.
Yes, it's a standard Cinderella plotline with her and the Prince, Seon Woo Hwan (played by Lee Seung Gi, apparently a perpetually geriatric toddler) having the requisite number of misunderstandings and near misses before settling into the inevitable pining, sexless true love.
THE ENDING
The Shining Inheritance mentioned in the title is not just the money everyone starts fighting over once Grandma changes her will. What the older woman is bequeathing is not her money but her vision for the company she founded. It's this lesson about what's important in life that underpins the show's overly-strong moral message.
The show's moralising, especially in the back half, is definitely its weakest part. And it doesn't help that far too long is spent on a second female lead who needed to stop crying and monologuing and just get a damn life. But there's no need to spend too much time thinking about deeper messages when you can't stop watching because of how addictive the whole guilty pleasure is.
Crack is crack.
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Maybe it didn't. Maybe it had different writers, different producers, a different production company. Maybe it came from a strange, horrible parallel universe where What The Duck was dark, twisted, disturbing and grimly unfunny.
Not that What The Duck's humour was its best quality. To state the obvious, some of season 1's most powerful moments were not typical campy Thai BL moments involving confused schoolboys, a Boy Sompob OST and a cut to a fish tank. Parts of season 1 were dark. But they were dark in a thoughtful and intelligent way that suggested the writers understood the theme they were trying to explore.
This season's darkness is shallow, almost trite, in its obvious shock value - a kind of second-rate gay soap opera designed to horrify you into watching more.
Assault,
Rape.
Abuse.
Incest.
It does not make me want to watch more. It makes me want to drop it. Which I have.
What a disappointing ending to the series.
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This is a fantastic romp story about con artist, Yang Jung-gook (the always-fun Choi Siwon) who is married to badass detective, Kim Mi-young (the always-excellent Lee Yoo Young).
Yang Jung-gook's marriage is failing because of the Very Big Lie rotting at the core of their relationship. Both parties are holding on because of their genuine love for each other, but it seems as though their marriage won't last either way. Yang Jung-gook's plan is retirement; the perfect way to leave the life of crime behind him and turn his lies into truth.
The most-recent snag in his retirement plan is loan shark, Park Hoo-Ja (Kim Min-Jung, in the performance of her career), who blackmails him into running for the Assembly. Hoo-ja has big plans for her father's company - most of which involve her taking control of it despite competition from her older Unni, #1, who is in jail (Hoo-ja is the fourth of five daughters).
The premise of a con artist married to a cop was enough for me to press play on this show. Add in the potential romp-factor of him conning his way into politics and I was always going to watch. Amazingly, the whole thing is as fun as it sounds. From the first frame, this show is fast-paced, witty, well-plotted, well-characterised, fantastically acted and just a whole heap of damn fun.
While everyone's performances are top-notch, Kim Min-Jung's brilliant, impatient, entitled, loan shark steals the show. By the end, you're not just hoping that Jung-gook wins, you're hoping Hoo-ja does as well. Her battle against Unni #1 mirrors Jung-gook's battle against political corruption to the extent that you're almost sad that she has to lose in order for him to win. This is really an amazing performance by an actor who was always good but never stood out to me before.
The cinematography, editing and music are original and enjoyable and the show almost entirely avoids tired tropes from any genre. At 18 episodes (36 half hours), you would expect the pacing or plotting to suffer but it never does. It's unflaggingly good from beginning to end.
But what makes My Fellow Citizens so completely satisfying is the inherent sense of justice that underpins the show. This show has a story to tell and a message it wants to convey and it's not afraid to do it. This is as much a show about the corrupting power of greed as it is anything else. It's also a show that never lets a character - whether it's a flawed hero or a beloved villain - get a pass for their actions.
It really is one of my new favourites and I wish it had gotten more love while it aired.
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This review may contain spoilers
Like dramas with contract marriages? Think this is the drama for you?YOU ARE WRONG.
STOP NOW.
DO NOT PRESS PLAY.
This is the strongest warning I can possibly give about a drama.
At the beginning, this drama had a lot of things happening that were ridiculous - and by that I mean silly, overblown makjang. To be honest, for the first few episodes, I kept watching just to see how ridiculous the plot could get.
Unfortunately, it's not the overwhelming list of silly that is the problem here.
List of silly:
Amnesia
Hypnosis
Drugging
Stalking
Cancer scares
Kidnapping.
And more...
The biggest problem with this drama is that it is a shocking apologia for domestic abuse of a particularly subtle and manipulative kind.
Cut it whichever way you want: Xia Lin's husband is almost sociopathic in his possessiveness. He controls her every move, manipulates her, gaslights her, tracks her, stalks her, lies to her, imprisons her. And worst of all, all of this is framed as evidence of his great epic love. It is not. This is not romantic, it is hugely disturbing and hugely wrong.
This is the story of an abused woman who tried to escape her abuser but ends up falling back into the relationship anyway. It would actually work quite well as a warning against men who behave like this; using their wealth and power to control another person. Ling Yi Zhou is the most abusive male lead I've seen in a drama in a long time.
The only acceptable resolution to this scenario would be Xia Lin being strong enough and brave enough to leave this toxic relationship behind and forge her own path in the world without Ling Yi Zhou. Anything else serves as a justification for horrible domestic abuse.
Even after the huge TWIST I admit I kept watching because I wanted to see how the show would handle the revelation. But by the time he was microchipping her with diamonds to track her every move, I realised I was done.
I am not just sorry I watched this - I'm upset that dramas like this exist.
I wish I could give dramas a 0 because if I could, I would.
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Unfortunately for Love Cheque Charge, while the premise is a good one the writers clearly had no idea how to fill their ridiculous episode count. While Taiwanese dramas often suffer from a filler problem in the back half and resort to tired tropes and Makjang to fill it, Love Cheque Charge suffers from a filler problem from the first episode.
It's also plagued by poor characterisation that makes it difficult to care about the leads and their annoying over-used set of friends and family.
George Hu plays George Hu, which is to say he's personable and attractive even if his character is kind of a jerk for very little reason other than male leads are supposed to be. He's also a sexist jerk, which is not someone you'd want any woman to end up with. This is a common issue with Taiwanese dramas but for Love Cheque Charge it's a big one since they refuse to acknowledge the male lead's behaviour as wrong.
Phoebe Yuan tries her best with the annoying and poorly-written Xu Man Man whose personality changes in each scene so you never know who she is or how she's going to respond to anything.
Most importantly, while there's a lot of humour to be milked from the premise, the show doesn't capitalise on it. Show should at least be fun but it isn't.
After four episodes - and with Netflix telling me I have 70 to go - I'm dropping the show because I just don't care what happens to these people. Most importantly, since becoming a couple is often the main point of these shows, they'll no doubt drag things out and assassinate their characters till the point where I care even less.
Honestly, there are so many of these types of shows around that you can choose any one of the others to watch. So do that instead.
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There are two distinct and competing parts of this show and therefore this review: the first is the production overall, from the cinematography and the music to the acting; and the second is the plotting.
For the first element, this show excels at being a beautiful, compelling, moody psychological thriller with outstanding performances from all the actors involved. The directing, music and acting all combine to effortlessly create a gripping and emotional show that draws you in and keeps you watching. This show is expertly made and that deft production shows in every frame.
Park Sung-woong is always a fantastic performer in everything he does and he brings out every layer of the complicated and conflicted Yoo Jin-gook, a detective and older brother of the female lead. Jung So-min is very good as female lead Yoo Jin-kang who is drawn to but also wary of Seo In-guk's complicated anti-hero Kim Moo-young.
But it's Seo In-guk who really shines in this. In fact, it is the performance of his career. Ziggy is well known by now not just for acting a part but for living it. He doesn't create a new person, he completely inhabits them down to his fingertips. But even knowing that about the actor, this is still a tour-de-force of a performance - one that propels him up above the regular pack of Korean actors and puts him into a class of his own. After this drama, there are few people who would argue that he is now on a different level - one inhabited by the likes of Yoo Ah-in and Bae Doona and even Park Sung-woong himself. If it is possible for an actor to have a new breakout role - one that doesn't launch his career but that finally takes it into orbit than this is it.
It's difficult to discuss the other elements of the show without spoilers - and this is one drama where the wrong word can potentially ruin it for any future viewers. However, beneath the fantastic production values and Ziggy's blazing acting triumph, this show struggles with its plotting and characterisation. In some respects, this is due to its source material - Japanese writers tend to create strange, almost surreal characters that only infrequently behave like normal people. This somewhat wars with the Korean sensibility in the back half and the plot falters as well. Combined with opaque character motivations this can make a lot of the episodes frustrating to watch.
Regardless of how poorly the back half was written and how dissatisfying the show was overall, the show is entirely worth watching for Ziggy's mesmerising extraordinary performance.
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Even if "there" is the body of the cute and popular girl with the perfect boyfriend - the girl that you desire to be.
Tomita Miu truly shines in this body-swapping tale of Ayumi Kohinata; a friendly, happy, pretty and popular girl who finds herself swapped with ugly, overweight and miserable fellow student, Zenko Umine.
At a short six episodes, this mini-series is tightly and expertly-written and explores not just adolescence, bullying and beauty standards but also envy and the demoralising and dehumanising impact of abuse. If you think that's an awful lot to pack into six episodes, you'd be right. If I have any criticism of this show, it's that a lot of the emotional journey was told in shorthand due to the length. The final episode, in particular, was rushed and truncated and lost several opportunities to tell a larger story. I anticipate the inevitable Korean version, extended to 16 episodes and lingering painfully over every melodramatic moment.
Aside from the performances, some of which were truly exceptional, this show's strength lies in its ability to surprise and to continually undercut audience expectations, especially around the usual cliches and tropes of Japanese dramas. The female characters feel real and three-dimensional, -there's not a sign of kawaii culture anywhere except in the unfair expectations of a beauty-obsessed culture- and there isn't a tsundere man in sight.
The writers could have told this story in stale cliches - Ayumi as a bully, Zenko as evil - but regularly refuse to do so, insisting we see the entire picture even when it's tempting not to. Both female leads are completely the product of their lives until this point and they take that into their new bodies even if they don't want to.
In fact, if it wasn't for the mini-series format and the rushed final episode, this would be a 10/10 drama.
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