I’ve not watched many j-dramas, but I think I’ve understood on lines they work on. Scum’s Wish is a drama that focuses on two teenagers in their late teens with crushes on their older tutors. They decide to start a relationship with each other under very messed up terms. The drama explores intimacy, sexual awakening, relationships between various characters. The leads explore their loneliness and try to fill it with physical intimacy.

This is a very frustrating drama to watch, there are many annoying points that make you wonder why certain things are even happening. It seems to go around in circles. But in the end, there’s some kind of realisation that intimacy can exist in many layers and one doesn’t have to be sexual with each other to attain it. The ML and FL had strong chemistry, and if you are a regular K-Drama watcher you’ll find their scenes much bolder, I felt that they could have been a good couple in the end if they sought each other from the beginning or accepted each other as themselves. Maybe they will in the future, I don’t know.

One thing that stood out to me was the concept of consent, at least with the ML. Many a times physical love is portrayed in such a problematic manner, but seems to have been done well here.