onceiwaskingofspain
A Clever Title for a Clever Story That Asks Hard Questions but Never Loses Heart
Good Things:
• The genre blend. Part murder mystery and part school slice of life with a legal 'trial' as the bridge, and it pulls off the balancing act with only minor hitches.
• The layered relationships. Bullying/abuse takes many forms - the overtly physical, the slyly social and the manipulatively emotional - and they all play out between different characters.
• The lack of PPL. Least amount of annoying PPL outside of a sageuk.
• The social critique. The bullying/abuse starts with the students, but through the interactions of the administration, teachers and parents it also shows how the same dynamics are ingrained in adult lives as well; with the implication that the behavior is ignored/tolerated in children because it's omnipresent.
• The sympathy for the devil. There's a trend in Kdrama to prefer grossly deterministic villains; ie, a person treated badly becomes a bad person. The characters here are more realistically nuanced, and a few have satisfying redemptive arcs.
Bad Things:
• The cheese. Since it's a teen drama for teens, there's some overly wholesome asides that feel a little hamfisted. Ditto for some over-dramatized drama.
• The cinematography. The downside of almost no PPL; it's a plain and simple small budget drama.
• The instrumental OST. It's too punchy and dramatic at times, which takes away from the overall more thoughtful tone.
Takeaway:
It's not your typical high school Kdrama, but it has most of the recognizable tropes of one with a more mature subject matter and a unique format/progression thanks to the structure of the legal trial. Recommended if you enjoy dramas that interrogate bullying as a societal ill vs focusing on punishment/revenge, like cheesy high-school slice-of-life with a bit more weight and prefer difficult topics treated with compassion and idealism.
• The genre blend. Part murder mystery and part school slice of life with a legal 'trial' as the bridge, and it pulls off the balancing act with only minor hitches.
• The layered relationships. Bullying/abuse takes many forms - the overtly physical, the slyly social and the manipulatively emotional - and they all play out between different characters.
• The lack of PPL. Least amount of annoying PPL outside of a sageuk.
• The social critique. The bullying/abuse starts with the students, but through the interactions of the administration, teachers and parents it also shows how the same dynamics are ingrained in adult lives as well; with the implication that the behavior is ignored/tolerated in children because it's omnipresent.
• The sympathy for the devil. There's a trend in Kdrama to prefer grossly deterministic villains; ie, a person treated badly becomes a bad person. The characters here are more realistically nuanced, and a few have satisfying redemptive arcs.
Bad Things:
• The cheese. Since it's a teen drama for teens, there's some overly wholesome asides that feel a little hamfisted. Ditto for some over-dramatized drama.
• The cinematography. The downside of almost no PPL; it's a plain and simple small budget drama.
• The instrumental OST. It's too punchy and dramatic at times, which takes away from the overall more thoughtful tone.
Takeaway:
It's not your typical high school Kdrama, but it has most of the recognizable tropes of one with a more mature subject matter and a unique format/progression thanks to the structure of the legal trial. Recommended if you enjoy dramas that interrogate bullying as a societal ill vs focusing on punishment/revenge, like cheesy high-school slice-of-life with a bit more weight and prefer difficult topics treated with compassion and idealism.
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