To the Beautiful Choi Minho

Choi Minho as Kang Taejoon

I will start off by saying that To the Beautiful You is visually stunning. I think they used some sort of camera filter called “super cute” because every person, outfit, building, dog, and tree looked awesomely attractive. Choi Minho didn’t even look human, his face looks like it was chiseled from a block of marble by baby angels (I insist that you refer to the picture to the left). Also, I love love love the theme song J-Min's "Stand Up" is very cool. I think that song in the trailer is what first got me excited about watching this drama. As far as the story goes, I enjoyed watching, of course, but it felt a bit shallow. I’m not even trying to compare it to Hana Kimi because I don’t really like to say “this drama isn’t as good as blah” about anything, so I will assess it just by analyzing TTBY as a drama of its own.

What I will say about TTBY is that I like the scale of the relationships. Since this drama involves high school kids interacting within the school environment, I think it is important the love not be taken to a weird “I will die for you” level. In school being willing to die for someone is more equivalent to Cha Eun Gyeol’s (Lee Hyun Woo) willingness to accept being gay so that he can like Goo Jae Hee (Sulli). I think the discussion brought up by including a young man suffering through the internal confusion of sexual identity (even if it is actually a girl that he likes) is at least a small accomplishment for gay tolerance. Understanding that being attracted to a person isn’t always about their gender (or any part of their identity for that matter) is a message that I received while watching this drama, even if it wasn’t intended to be more than just another cute love story.

Go Jae Hee and Cha Eun Gyeol

As for the main relationship between Kang Tae Joon (Choi Min Ho) and Goo Jae Hee, this is where I felt the lack of depth in the drama. I think that the hardest part for me to accept (ignoring the fact that obviously Sulli did not, at any point, look like a boy) is that GJH’s reason for coming to Genie, or South Korea at all for that matter, is very weird. So she was a pretty girl that was picked on for no reason what-so-ever by the evil American kids, and she saw Tae Joon on TV blathering about miracles (though, I do like the “Miracle is another name for hard work” sentiment) which prompted her to somehow abandon her family, schooling, friends, etc. and go to Tae Joon to make him do the high jump again? It doesn’t really make sense. But, the reason for her coming aside, I think that KTJ and GJH had some cute moments throughout the drama. GJH became the nurturing female-figure that KTJ was desperately needing after losing his mother, so we see KTJ become super protective of her. The scale of their relationship seems appropriate to me for a high school show as well, at least when considering it is a Kdrama. When they were happy and played around with each other, it felt sweet and real, and when KTJ shutdown about his emotions and his relationship with his father, I believed him as high school boy who is too proud or embarrassed to express himself.

Overall, To the Beautiful You passes as an acceptable use of 16 hours of my life. I don’t know if I will spend another 16 watching again in the future, but I recommend that romcom fans watch this drama if they haven’t done so already, but I think most of you already have at this juncture. If you take TTBY as it is, a cute Kdrama with some of the most attractive young people in South Korea, you will be able appreciate the visual treat that it is and the loveliness of high school friendships that it displays.

I watched this drama on Viki. Here is the link:

http://www.viki.com/channels/3475-beautiful-you