Disclaimer: this is a review, and as such it contains spoilers of the whole series. Please proceed to read at your own risk if you still plan on watching this show or if you haven’t finished it yet. You have been warned.

True Beauty
(여신강림 /  Yeoshin Gangrim)
MyDramaList rating: 6.0/10

Hi everyone! First of all I want to wish everyone a very Happy New Year! I am very curious to see what kind of things 2023 will bring. For my first review of the new year I chose this series which had been on my list since the trailer came out, because I happened to be reading the webtoon and was really curious about the drama adaptation. I ended up putting it off until I finished the webtoon (right now it’s just the final spinoffs, but the main story has ended). I moved it up on my watchlist as soon as I finished the webtoon. In hindsight, I don’t think it was actually necessary to finish the webtoon first, because this drama proved itself to be really different from the original cartoon. There were a lot of changes in characters, situations and dynamics between people, so that was interesting to see. I will say from the start that unfortunately, I didn’t like it as much as I hoped I would. I think it focussed more on trivial (needlessly) dramatic situations and comic-purpose fillers that distracted from the powerful message that the webtoon conveyed. Of course, there’s only so much you can include in a 16-episode drama series when the webtoon is almost 200 episodes.

True Beauty is a 16-episode K-Drama that focusses on the personal journey of Im Joo Kyung (played by Moon Ga Young) as she discovers her own ‘true beauty’ after being relentlessly bullied at school for being ‘ugly’. From childhood on, neighbors have commented on the fact that she alone must take after her mother (who is apparently perceived as being not so attractive), while her two siblings take after their handsome father. Despite being a really sweet and good-hearted person, Joo Kyung is often not even given the chance to prove what a nice person she is because people instantly judge her based on her appearance. When she enters high school, she starts getting severely bullied and treated like a slave by her classmates. One day, she musters up the courage to confess her feelings to a guy she likes, but her bullies record it on camera when he harshly rejects her, and they make fun of her again, even making one of Joo Kyung’s ‘friends’ participate in the bullying. Joo Kyung’s spirit is crushed badly and she becomes very insecure. Fortunately for her, it’s around this time that her family is forced to move back to their old house and she gets to transfer schools. When asking for online advice about what to do about her appearance, Joo Kyung is introduced to the one thing that will bring her solace: the world of beauty and make-up. It’s like a new world opens up for her, as she now finally discovers a way to cover up her ‘ugly’ face. She starts watching tutorials and teaches herself the basics of make-up and by the time she arrives at her new school, she finds that her newly found make-up skills make an incredible difference. Not only is she not bullied, she becomes insanely popular from the first day on because people find her so pretty. She immediately makes two friends, Kang Soo Jin (played by Park Yoo Na) and Choi Soo Ah (played by Kang Min Ah), and it’s like a dream come true to her. For the first time ever she can actually hang out with friends after school, she’s invited to karaoke parties and she’s added to chat groups. Of course, she remains anxious as she doesn’t take it for a granted. The more people start complimenting her looks, the more she feels like she’s betraying everyone. She’s scared that when her newfound friends discover her real face, they will start bullying her as well. In order to avoid that from happening, she sees no other way but to keep her natural face a secret.
Meanwhile, there’s Lee Soo Ho (played by Cha Eun Woo), the son of a famous actor who dislikes being in the spotlight and therefore keeps his relation to him a secret. He’s considered to be really handsome but also quite anti-social in class. He doesn’t have a good relationship with his father in general. Soo Ho’s mother passed away when he was quite young and he repeatedly discovered his father moving on with other women. Apart from being a famous actor, Soo Ho’s father is also the CEO (I believe?) of Move Entertainment, an entertainment agency that manages many idol trainees as well. One of Soo Ho’s best friends, Yoon Se Yeon (SF9’s Kang Chan Hee) used to be an idol at this company, but he got caught in a bullying scandal shortly after debuting and committed suicide because he couldn’t deal with the cyberbullying. This happened on the same night that Soo Ho’s father got into a scandal himself for being spotted with a much younger actress. Too distracted by this news, Soo Ho didn’t pick up what turned out to be Se Yeon’s final phone call to him and he’s been feeling guilty about it all this time. This event also didn’t exactly improve his relationship with his father, as he never did anything to stop the scandal spiralling out of control.
On the other hand, there is Han Seo Joon (played by Hwang In Yeop), who also used to be friends with Soo Ho and Se Yeon and who also used to be an idol trainee at Move Entertainment. Because of a misunderstanding, Seo Joon has always blamed Soo Ho personally for Se Yeon’s death, as he believed that Soo Ho conveyed to Se Yeon that he didn’t believe him in terms of the scandal.
Soo Ho and Seo Joon grew apart after Se Yeon’s death and are now on bad terms with each other. Seo Joon quits being an idol trainee and goes back to school, but what people don’t know is that he has simultaneously been taking care of his sickly mother in the hospital. Seo Joon has quite the intimidating exterior, he acts like a delinquent and people tend to stay away from him because of his bad temper, but he’s actually a good person. He just really changed after Se Yeon died.
Soo Ho and Seo Joon separately meet Joo Kyung for the first time before they actually meet her in school – Soo Ho pulls her back from a rooftop edge one time and Seo Joon is able to escape some hoodlums with her help.
As it happens, Soo Ho and Joo Kyung have also met before as children. There’s a bookstore in their neighborhood that rents out comic books, and Joo Kyung went there frequently as she got into horror comics. One time, a young sad Soo Ho was there after he discovered his father with another woman again, and Joo Kyung managed to cheer him up.
All in all, Soo Ho becomes attracted to Joo Kyung before he ever sees her with make-up on, and he’s the first person to point out to her that she’s beautiful the way she is. Seo Joon also eventually falls for Joo Kyung, and even though he only knows her with make-up on, he falls for her personality more than her looks, so even when he finds out about her real face, it doesn’t matter to him at all.

In summary, the main story is about Joo Kyung and how she manages to overcome her insecurity as she learns that it’s really not the outside that matters and that she shouldn’t let her spirits get crushed by other people’s opinions about her. True beauty resides within, and the right people will come to see that in due time.
In this sense, I initially expected this series to be a bit similar to My ID is Gangnam Beauty. Both series are about a young woman who is bothered by other people’s opinions regarding the way she looks, and who both decide to overcome their insecurity by changing their appearance, even though they find that this still doesn’t solve their deep-rooted insecurity. In Joo Kyung’s case, her problem is solved pretty easily with make-up. Apart from that, they’re not that similar. I’m not just talking about the specific situations that the main characters are in, but also in terms of the way in which they eventually come to terms with themselves.
I think there’s something to be said about the relativity of the premise of this story. First of all, isn’t the main reason why people use make-up that they want to look prettier and cover up bad-looking skin? So what’s the big deal? Why would you bully someone for having bad skin and then using make-up to cover it? The whole premise just seems ridiculous to me. Even more so because that’s exactly what I thought about Joo Kyung. She wasn’t ugly. She just seemed to have a bad skin condition. Truthfully, I think they exaggerated her looks in the beginning a lot. Like, what was with the caterpillar eyebrows? It was like they were trying to make a caricature of her, also with linking her fascination with horror stories to the fact that she only listened to typical hardcore music.
The way she was treated by her bullies was extra frustrating because it was just so pointlessly cruel. They really had nothing better to do and just decided to crush the spirit of a girl who was only trying to make it through high school happily without bothering anyone else. I believe that if they hadn’t started pointing out her ‘ugliness’ to her, Joo Kyung would’ve managed to stay happy and unbothered, just as she was when doing her own thing. It’s because they started confronting her with it that she became so insecure and self-conscious. She gets really traumatized, so much that even in her new school, she occasionally gets nightmares of accidentally turning up at school without make-up and being immediately ostracized by her new friends.

I will make some references to the webtoon in order to point out some major differences that the drama series made. As I mentioned before, I was less impressed with the drama than with the webtoon. In hindsight, I actually think it wouldn’t even have mattered if I had finished the webtoon before watching this. I wonder if my opinion of the series would’ve been better if I hadn’t read the webtoon at all, because now I can’t really help comparing the two.
In general lines I would say that the webtoon really digs out Joo Kyung’s long journey to self-acceptance, and it uses the theme of make-up much more prominently than the drama does. One thing I liked about the webtoon was that it was quite educational when it came to beauty and make-up. Every time Joo Kyung puts on make-up it’s depicted like an actual tutorial in itself, and it really shows her growing expertise on certain products. Her dream to become a make-up artist is explored much further in the webtoon. From quite early on she already becomes a pretty popular beauty influencer on social media and is asked to sponsor beauty products and stuff. She also gets a lot more experience in helping people out with her make-up skills. At the very end of the webtoon, she re-encounters one of her ex-bullies who also became a beauty influencer, and she’s the one that puts Joo Kyung’s old pictures online out of spite. In response to that, all Joo Kyung’s friends and all the people she’s helped before reach out to defend her, and this is what ultimately helps Joo Kyung overcome her trauma and finally gives her the courage to reveal her real face to the public.
In this shortened drama version, I found that the beauty and make-up themes remained relatively in the background compared to other (in my opinion less significant) dramatic events. I felt like the focus was much more on Joo Kyung’s anxiety of having to hide her face, her continuous confrontations with her past, and the slow buildup in her character development. It felt like it just got stuck at the point where it was one ‘comical’ situation after another in which she had to avoid having the truth about her face revealed. It kind of caused a delay in her character development in my opinion, it just felt like she wasn’t moving forward. Even in her relationship with Soo Ho, when they started misunderstanding each other, a lot of time went into a series of situations in which the misunderstanding only grew and Joo Kyung kept running away instead of talking about what was going on. This was a very annoying part of the series, especially because Joo Kyung was the one with issues and worries she didn’t communicate while Soo Ho wasn’t aware of anything that could be wrong. Whenever he wanted to talk to her to clear things up, she just went ‘I’m tired, I’m leaving’ and it was just dragged on tediously long.

One of the major changes that were made in the drama version was Soo Jin. In the webtoon, Soo Jin isn’t even a classmate or a friend of Joo Kyung’s. She’s another beauty influencer who uses Joo Kyung’s popularity to her own advantage and pretends to be her friend while she actually just wants to make her look bad. She comes back in the end with a whole backstory of an abusive relationship and after coming out with the truth about that, she finally becomes a supportive friend to Joo Kyung.
It seems that in the drama, they merged Soo Jin with Joo Kyung’s other classmate friend in the webtoon (I believe she’s called Chae Rin). Anyways, in the drama, Soo Jin is in Joo Kyung’s class and becomes close friends with her from the first day on, together with Soo Ah. She’s also childhood friends with Soo Ho, or at least she’s known him since childhood because of their rich parents’ connections. But Soo Jin is suffering from a lot of pressure. Her father hits her a lot and constantly pushes her to be the best of her class, but she’s almost always beaten by Soo Ho, and her grades actually start dropping the more stressed she gets.
Soo Jin is introduced as such a sympathetic character though, she’s the first one to discover Joo Kyung’s real face during a school trip and immediately proves that that doesn’t mean anything to her. She even starts helping Joo Kyung out in situations where she’ll be forced to reveal her face in public. From the get-go it is clear that Soo Jin is not a fake friend, she continuously stands up for Joo Kyung and we get a lot of empathy for her when her problematic home situation is revealed.
However, and I really feel like this was added purely for the sake of creating drama, a wedge is created between Soo Jin and Joo Kyung when Soo Jin suddenly starts developing a romantic interest in Soo Ho. Even when she already knows that Soo Ho and Joo Kyung are together, she uses the fact that Joo Kyung hasn’t told her yet to her advantage and confesses her feelings to her friend, causing the situation to become really awkward for Joo Kyung. Soo Jin puts Joo Kyung in a really bad position by acting like this, and her jealousy eventually reaches the point where she ‘teams up’ with Joo Kyung’s old bullies to post Joo Kyung’s old pictures online, and also the video that was taken when she was so harshly rejected by that one guy.
Honestly, I didn’t quite get this part. On the one hand, it was really predictable that Soo Jin would be made into the standard petty bitchy character at some point, but at the same time it was also unexpected because they started out establishing her as a really cool and relatable character. I just kept hoping she wouldn’t become petty because it wouldn’t fit the character she was made out to be. When they still went ahead with making her petty, it just felt unnatural to me. I didn’t believe Soo Jin had any evil intent, she even confessed to Soo Ho herself that she really liked Joo Kyung. So then why did she still let herself get swept away in her own jealousy like that? Even in the final part, after two years passed, she immediately came to Joo Kyung to apologize for her past behavior, making up for it by saying she just ‘wasn’t in her right mind’. Like, I understood where she was coming from and I mostly blame her dad for putting her in that position where she just felt like she had to be the best at something, but it still didn’t make sense that it would suffice to steal Soo Ho away from Joo Kyung. I don’t know, I found it weird. I’m glad she did turn out to be a good person in the end, but it really felt like they made her temporarily petty just to add some additional drama to Joo Kyung’s love life. Knowing her friend’s feelings only caused Joo Kyung to start acting so annoyingly evasive towards Soo Ho, who wasn’t aware of anything. Honestly, there were so many things that could’ve been resolved so easily if it weren’t for Joo Kyung making a huge deal out of everything.
On a side note, Soo Jin’s father really was a bastard. There was this one scene where she literally just walked into the room and he just hit her for no reason. Like, the poor girl really needed a break. I also hated him when they were meeting with Soo Ho’s father and he just kept talking shit about Soo Jin, his own daughter, how she was so disappointing and all that, while she was sitting right there. I’m glad Soo Ho found a way to get her away from that situation. It’s not surprising that Soo Jin felt a stronger connection to Soo Ho, as he was the only one who knew about her home situation, he was the only person who could comfort her in that respect. But it still never really felt as if she was really in love with him, and I also thought they were much better off as friends. In any case, Soo Jin’s father really sucked and I felt really bad for Soo Jin, because even her own mother didn’t actively try to stop him.

As we’re on the topic of changes that the drama made, I can’t leave out the stories of Joo Kyung’s siblings and their respective love interests. Im Hee Kyung (played by Im Se Mi), Joo Kyung’s older sister who works at Move Entertainment, may have been blessed with her father’s good looks, but she has a whole story of her own. She’s a very independent strong woman, so dependable even that she doesn’t let men take care of her. She’s the type of woman that just carries a toolbox around with her in case something needs fixing on the way. She’s quite outgoing and confident, and for some reason she falls at first sight for Joo Kyung’s homeroom teacher Han Joon Woo (played by Oh Ui Shik), even though he is the complete opposite of her, very emotional and sensitive. The relationship between them is something that doesn’t even exist in the webtoon. It’s only in one of the final spinoffs that Hee Kyung meets some random guy from her work who shares her love for camping and that’s it. They created Han Joon Woo from scratch and although their scenes did make for a lot of comical situations – they were a cute couple, undeniably – I still felt like it was one of the things that distracted from the main story’s development, especially when they got a lot of attention as a couple, and progressed even more passionately than the main couple.
I really liked Hee Kyung and Joon Woo’s characters, though. Hee Kyung was so badass when she found out how the scandal regarding Se Yeon came to be and she just went and confronted Soo Ho’s father with it without even caring about her own reputation. As she’s in charge of taking care of new groups that are about to debut, she discovers at some point that one of Se Yeon’s unpublished songs is distributed to a new debuting group without even crediting Se Yeon as the original artist, and she doesn’t stand for it. It was really cool how she stood up for Se Yeon like that and how she ends up taking care of Seo Joon as well when he agrees to resume his singing activities at Move Entertainment.
On the other hand, I really liked Joon Woo for the way he addressed his class after Joo Kyung’s old pictures got posted and everyone started ousting her. It was so great that there was at least one person who told everyone, ‘What the heck are you guys doing? You just saw how your friend and classmate has been treated in the past and you’re not even worried about her when she skips school for an entire week? What a bunch of great classmates you are.’ It was kind of sad that they needed this reprimandation to come to their senses, though, I’d hoped from certain people that they wouldn’t have hesitated to support Joo Kyung.
In the webtoon, when Joo Kyung finally decides to show Soo Ah and Chae Rin her bare face, they don’t make a big deal about it at all, they’re only like ‘why did you hide this for so long’ but never actually get angry with her. So I really hoped that at least Soo Ah would be the first one to stick with Joo Kyung as soon as it was revealed, but she initially responded just like everyone else. Admittedly, she was the first person to go back to her side, especially after discovering Soo Jin’s involvement, but I would’ve liked her to just show her loyalty from the get-go.
Talking about Soo Ah, in the drama she is part of a very lovey-dovey couple with fellow classmate Yoo Tae Hoon (played by Lee Il Joon). In the webtoon, she only gets together with her childhood friend Tae Hoon in one of the final spinoffs, and he doesn’t even appear in the main story. More than that, he’s a very timid introverted gamer, so his character is also nothing like the drama adaptation. Anyways, they were a fun couple, be it on the in-your-face-aegyo-cringy side.

Another change when it came to a character was Selena. Selena (played by Go Woo Ri) is the beauty specialist that Joo Kyung becomes a fan of. Because of her tutorials Joo Kyung learns about make-up and she eventually even starts working at Selena’s own beauty agency that manages the make-up for celebrities. Even when meeting her in real life, Selena is really strict towards Joo Kyung, she’s not favorable towards at all, and she’s basically just her mentor and someone Joo Kyung strives to be like.
In the webtoon, Selena is actually Soo Ho’s older sister, who is closely involved with everything concerning his father. She goes with Soo Ho when he has to go to the States and everything. She’s much more involved in Joo Kyung and Soo Ho’s relationship and becomes an actual sister-figure to Joo Kyung. So that was also an interesting change, how they actually kept her character seperate from the main story.

Let me just go back to Joo Kyung’s siblings. Besides Hee Kyung, there’s also her younger brother Im Joo Young (played by Kim Min Ki). He wasn’t that different from the webtoon in that he was the annoying little brother, but he definitely gets a bigger role, especially when he falls for Seo Joon’s younger sister Han Go Woon (played by Yeo Joo Ha). The funny thing is that Go Woon isn’t that different from Joo Kyung when it comes to natural looks, she’s even in a similar position where she gets bullied for her looks by her classmates. Joo Kyung sees this happen one time and immediately reaches out to Go Woon. Go Woon, just like her brother, has great singing skills, so when she gets the solo part of her choir recital, she asks Joo Kyung for help with her make-up and Joo Young falls for her on the spot when he sees/hears her perform. He keeps following her around, even when she makes it repeatedly clear that she’s not into him. It was kind of funny that, even after teasing his own sister for her looks so much, he ends up falling for a very similar looking girl, haha. I thought that was kind of a nice twist. The little brother was pretty funny.

Let me talk a bit about Joo Kyung’s parents now that I’m on the topic of her family.
Joo Kyung’s mother Hong Hyun Sook (played by Jang Hye Jin) is quite the aggressive type. She is very hard-skinned, having to deal with comments regarding her handsome husband, but she never seemed to have acknowledged the fact that people made a deal about her being not as attractive. She is the typical ‘tough love’ kind of mom who doesn’t cut her children any slack until she realizes they’re really struggling with something. She’s really hard on Joo Kyung as her grades aren’t that good and she feels like her daughter is just ‘wasting her time on that make-up stuff’. She even throws away Joo Kyung’s make-up products several times in order to punish her. The only time she changes is when she finds out how much Joo Kyung has been bullied, and then she’s suddenly the most caring mother ever. One thing that I did think was weird though, was that, the day after she found out about her daughter’s bullying, even after comforting her so warmly, the first thing she did was to bring Joo Kyung to a plastic surgery councellation. That really made me go, excuse me? Like, is that the way you want to deal with her issues? Instead of making her see that other people’s opinions of her don’t matter, instead of properly comforting her, now you’re just basically confirming her insecurites and have her get plastic surgery, as if that’s going to make her problems go away? That was kind of an unexpected decision, like, you really want her to stop using make-up that badly? But I’m glad they ended up walking out of there after realizing that Joo Kyung might as well just keep using make-up, because that’s more than enough to make her look better. After that she finally approves of Joo Kyung’s dream to become a make-up artist as well.
The father was something else. Im Jae Pil (played by Park Ho San) was popular in the neighborhood for being such a handsome and generous man, but in the meantime he was unemployed because he got scammed out of all his money. He’s trying to track down the guy who scammed him, but in the meantime he tries to find something to sell to earn some money, although it never really works out. I found the father’ character’s storyline another example of something that mainly distracted needlessly from the main story. He was a funny character, admittedly, but I honestly wasn’t that interested in what he was up to.
In general, Joo Kyung’s parents and family as a whole got a lot more individual attention in the drama then they did in the webtoon, and I didn’t necessarily find that it contributed that much to the story. I would’ve preferred seeing more development in Joo Kyung’s personal journey rather than seeing a whole scene in which her father chases some guy down the street and consequently getting into trouble for spending too much money on a cab.

I feel like I’m having a bit of a hard time constructing my arguments, because I have to admit I didn’t expect the drama to be so different from the webtoon. I just hope I’m getting my points across properly. What I mean to say is that if it had been up to me, out of all the events that happen in the webtoon, the drama could have made a better selection on which scenes/chapters to add to to the series. They could’ve chosen to give Joo Kyung a couple more opportunities to improve her make-up skills and use those skills to help others. Scenes that would’ve made a bigger contribution to Joo Kyung’s character development and the reason she ultimately felt confident enough to come out to her friends about her natural face rather than being forced out by a leaked video. Instead they brought way too many minor storylines into play and made them bigger and more important than they needed to be.
There was too much focus on the fact that Joo Kyung couldn’t escape her past of being bullied, because the bullies kept coming back. Hye Min, the girl who used to be Joo Kyung’s ‘friend’ but who was used by the bullies to take advantage of her, also transfers to Joo Kyung’s school (I believe) in the webtoon, but after becoming her friend there she starts becoming obsessed with Joo Kyung and starts copying her in everything, resulting in her becoming Soo Ho’s stalker, she actually starts believing she is Joo Kyung, like it turns into a pretty disturbing thing. To not keep something like that in but create completely new scenarios of characters that aren’t even in the webtoon for example, turning it more into a filler arc than an actual meaningful one that tests Joo Kyung’s confidence and ability to stand up for herself, that’s basically what bothered me the most.
The whole car accident that Soo Ho and Seo Joon get involved in after finding out about Soo Ho’s father’s presumed involvement in Se Yeon’s scandal, doesn’t happen in the webtoon either, and I really felt like they only put them in the same hospital room together to create an occasion in which they could finally make up. I wasn’t interested in how the comic book store owner was preparing for a blind date, or how Joo Kyung’s father was trying to sell scented candles to old ladies in the neighborhood, or how one of the other teachers suddenly started poking her nose into Joon Woo’s relationship with Hee Kyung. A lot of events were really dragged out while they didn’t need to be, and they exaggerated some situations to the extent that they became really unrealistic. Honestly, when they both smashed into that car window and Seo Joon just fell to the ground while Soo Ho kept dramatically flying through the air with a single tear seaping from the corner of his eye, like I just couldn’t take it seriously.
Situations that in the webtoon only took up a short time because they were only supporting tools to help Joo Kyung get over her insecurity, took up most of the space in the drama, rather than focussing on how Joo Kyung developed herself along with her make-up skills. It just felt like in the end she didn’t undergo a really big character development. It seemed like she just decided one day that she wouldn’t put up with people talking behind her back anymore, and that’s when she started talking back to them. I did think it was really brave of her to just show up at school again with no make-up, that was a bold move and I was glad that everyone respected that move.
But all in all, the buildup was just unclear to me, especially when they still went ahead with Soo Ho going to the States and then having to wrap up everything in just the final two episodes. Soo Ho going to the States is only the end of the first part in the webtoon, because in the webtoon he actually doesn’t come back for a very long time and Joo Kyung actually ends up dating Seo Joon for a pretty long time. She is the one that inspires him to pick up music as a career again, and then they are painfully forced to break up when he becomes a trainee again and is discouraged to date because it will distract him from his career prospects. It isn’t until after they break up and both have to get over their heartache that Soo Ho comes back and finds his way back into Joo Kyung’s heart. She actually gets over Soo Ho initially, when he doesn’t come back. I get that they couldn’t fit all that into the series, but that’s why I was surprised that they still added in the part where Soo Ho left. It was so close to the end of the series and I didn’t know how things were going to be wrapped up within the two remaining episodes. I didn’t expect they would’ve included it at all since originally it’s the bridge to the second main part of the story – Joo Kyung and Seo Joon – and it was clear that they weren’t going to include that relationship in the drama.

I just felt very bad about Seo Joon because in the drama, they really just made him the typical second male lead that didn’t stand a chance from the start. Joo Kyung never once develops feelings for him, and he’s just left by himself. This hit especially hard since he was my favorite character in the webtoon, and his relationship with Joo Kyung in the webtoon goes so much deeper than in the drama – the drama doesn’t even scratch the surface of the significance that Seo Joon holds in Joo Kyung’s life in the webtoon. So that was a bit of a bummer. I actually shipped Joo Kyung with Seo Joon the most in the webtoon, and I was really curious what he would be like in the drama. I actually expected there to be a little bit of chemistry between Joo Kyung and Seo Joon, like, that she would be swayed by him at least temporarily to indicate a tiny bit of the bond they develop in the webtoon, but there was none of that. It was just really painful to watch Seo Joon make that final attempt of asking her for three dates when he just knew his chance was gone forever when Soo Ho came back. I felt for him a lot.

I think I’m just going to get on with my cast comments, having mentioned most of my remarks about the series itself. I will definitely go over it again later to make sure the construction makes sense, but for now I kind of just jotted down my thoughts.

The thing I like most about Moon Ga Young is her duality when it comes to portraying different types of people. She can really go two different ways, timid and insecure like in EXO Next Door, or the typical pretty but snooty princess-type like in Jealousy Incarnate and The Great Seducer. Honestly, the difference between her character in TGS and True Beauty is hilarious because she’s a completely different person. So I like her versatility. I was really curious to see her portrayal of Joo Kyung, and I have to say she reminded me a lot of Switch Girl, a Japanese drama with basically the same kind of concept. I do feel like she added some elements which she could’ve done without, such as the animated high voice, like she could’ve portrayed Joo Kyung with a bit more sincerity rather than making a caricature out of her. I was really curious to see how they would create the transformation of Joo Kyung on Moon Ga Young, who seems to just be naturally gorgeous, so I felt kind of an anticlimax when they went as far as to give her those caterpillar eyebrows in an attempt to make her look ‘ugly’. Like, it just made it a bit less realistic or something.
So yeah, this is definitely not my favorite drama of hers, but I think she can do much better, I’ve seen her do better, so I will not give up on her.

One reason why I couldn’t help but expect something similar to My ID is Gangnam Beauty, was because Cha Eun Woo played the male lead. His character here just seemed so similar to his character in My ID, the only guy that sees through the FL’s ‘mask’ and sees her ‘true beauty’ from the start. I do like that he wasn’t the exact same person, though. Soo Ho definitely had more emotion and expressed his feelings way better. I liked how straightforward he was, and when Joo Kyung started acting evasive, he just kept following her around until she finally talked to him, because he didn’t want there to be any misunderstandings between them. I’ve seen him more recently in Rookie Historian Goo Hae Ryung, and I have to admit that, again, I saw a different side of his acting in True Beauty. He was really cute when he got drunk, lol. The way he started singing that aegyo love song to her while half-asleep was adorable. He really acted out Soo Ho’s love for Joo Kyung very well.

I’ve only seen Hwang In Yeop before recently in The Sound of Magic, but I remember him becoming a big new hype because of his role as Seo Joon, so I was really curious to his performance. I really liked him. I may have been a little biased by my love for Seo Joon in the webtoon, but I definitely saw Hwang In Yeop’s charm in his performance of him. I just felt really bad for him, lol. I would’ve liked to see him get at least one chance with Joo Kyung, or at least an indication that they became as close as they get in the webtoon, but even at the end of the drama, it still felt like Joo Kyung didn’t feel a 100% comfortable around him, knowing that he had feelings for her, and that was too bad. Seo Joon is such a sweetheart, he really loved Joo Kyung so much but never got the chance to express it. I also didn’t like the fact that he was confronted with Joo Kyung’s natural face so indirectly, by being shown the video by a friend. He actually already found out before that, when Joo Kyung came to visit Soo Ho in the hospital without wearing make-up and they tried to hide it from him. In the webtoon, she finally ends up showing him when they’re dating and it just makes sense because it’s such a personal thing for her to reveal to him as a sign that she really trusts him. So in the drama he doesn’t even get a chance to personally address the issue, and that was kind of a pity. I really liked him here, he was possibly still my favorite character, even though the whole adaptation in itself didn’t really sit right with me.

I only remember Park Yoo Na from My ID is Gangnam Beauty, and I really liked her character there. I just can’t really picture her as a bad person because she just comes across as so cool and mature. I initially liked what they did with Soo Jin’s character, because I really thought she was going to be the classic bitch character, but then she was so cool. Until they still made her petty. I don’t know, I can’t help but feel that it wasn’t natural to have her make that decision, even when she was bitter about not being able to meet her father’s expectations, it just felt wrong to go about it that way. I liked how she kept standing up for Joo Kyung, even after everything that happened. I hope to see a new side of her acting one day, because I generally like her whenever she appears in a drama. She was also in Sassy Go Go, The Package and Hotel Del Luna, but I would like to see her in more!

I really liked seeing Jang Hye Jin in this. I immediately recognized her as the eccentric North Korean mother from Crash Landing on You and it was funny seeing her as another eccentric mother character, be it in a different way. Because of her initial lack of compassion I found it a bit hard to warm up to her, because she always found something to nag about. I initially didn’t know that she wasn’t even slightly aware of her daughter’s bullying, I thought she knew about it but maybe didn’t know it was that severe? But anyways, the one moment where I really saw her as a mother was when she saw that video of Joo Kyung being humiliated. Right then, she really was a mother witnessing her child going through something horrible and I’m glad she changed her mindset after that. I guess I will see more of her acting in the future, I’m really curious to see more sides of her acting.

I’ve only seen Park Ho San before in My Mister, but it’s been a while so I don’t remember a lot from his performance there. Anyways, as I’ve mentioned I think he was one of the characters that occasionally got more screentime than necessary. In my opinion, no matter how interesting and funny his character was, he could’ve remained more in the background. Not to say anything bad about the actor per se, but I just didn’t think the character was that significant in terms of Joo Kyung’s story, besides being her dad. I don’t really know what to say about him other than he was occasionally funny, although I sometimes also couldn’t quite make out what his thoughts were. The scene where he was stuck in Soo Ho’s house and interrupted him as soon as he saw him kissing Joo Kyung reminded me of that scene in Parasite where they’re hiding under the couch while the lord and lady of the house start getting it on, lol. I did like that he was such a sensitive dad when it came to his daughters spreading their wings, like how emotional he got when Hee Kyung got married.

I’ve seen Im Se Mi in several things before, like Heartstrings, Shopping King Louie and About Time. I really liked her character here, I think Hee Kyung may have been one of my favorite characters because she was so badass. She was so different from the typical female drama character, and I loved her dynamic with the homeroom teacher. It was a really refreshing relationship the two of them had, so I didn’t mind that change in the adaptation. I actually liked that she got a bit more screentime, the only thing was that at some point, there was more romantic progress between her and Joon Woo than there was between Joo Kyung and Soo Ho, so their relationship kind of seemed to take over from the leads’ in a way, haha. I actually found myself thinking multiple times how much more interesting the Hee Kyung X Joon Woo couple was compared to the main couple. They may have given it a bit too much attention in that sense. But yeah, I really liked Im Se Mi as Hee Kyung, she was one of the few characters that remained mostly the same to her webtoon counterpart. I’m curious to see more from her!

I thought Kim Min Ki might also be an idol or something, I thought I recognized him from somewhere, but I don’t see anything I’ve seen him in. Same as with Hee Kyung, I liked that they gave Joo Young a bit more story, but at some point his love story with Go Woon also started living a life of its own that I didn’t really find necessary to explore too much. I mean, it was cute enough, I’ll admit that, but yeah, there were too many side storylines that were distracting from the main story, and his was one of them, unfortunately. I did like his performance though, he initially seemed to be so much ‘cooler’ than Joo Kyung but he definitely was her little brother alright. He became a real troll at some point. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud when someone randomly mentioned ‘a piece of trash’ and he would just pop up, ‘did someone call me? :D’ haha, he was really weird and funny.

I realize I haven’t mentioned much about Soo Ho’s father in person yet, but I think it’s important to mention that he really was a good person after all. It turns out that he never knew anything about what happened with Se Yeon, as it wasn’t his job to keep a close eye on the rookies. It turns out that someone else from the company published Se Yeon’s bullying scandalin order to cover up Soo Ho’s father’s scandal of dating that younger actress, but he was never aware of that, just like he wasn’t aware that they were planning on giving that debut song to a different group without even crediting Se Yeon for it. He really wanted to become closer with Soo Ho again, and I did feel bad for him when he got that heart attack. He was really looking forward to spending time with his son, he’d already searched for good places to eat together and stuff. He was a good person, so I’m glad Soo Ho made up with him again in the end. As for the actor that played him, Jung Joon Ho, I haven’t seen him in anything before, but I probably will. He looks familiar though, maybe I’ve seen him somewhere but not in a major role, anyway. It was a nice twist that he wasn’t a typical jerk dad, but that he actually had no control over what had happened. In that sense, Soo Ho also had to change his prejudice about him, just like Seo Joon had to change his prejudice about Soo Ho.

I really liked what they did with Go Woon’s character. She also didn’t change much from the webtoon version, except the fact that Joo Young fell for her and she actually got an admirer of her own. Apparently Yeo Joo Ha also appeared in Itaewon Class and Love Alarm S2, but I don’t recognize her from there. I really hope that was her own singing during that recital, because she has an incredible voice! I liked how strong she was, she had less difficulty standing up to her bullies than Joo Kyung, and I really liked how she just had this natural confidence about her, despite her looks. I liked her performance!

Oh, how I love Oh Ui Shik. He always makes me smile and he is always such a welcome addition to any cast. Even though his character was created anew for the drama adaptation, I’m glad it was performed by him. As I mentioned also in Im Se Mi’s bit, even though I loved his character, sometimes I felt like he stole the spotlight just a little too much, haha. For example when the whole drama happened with Joo Kyung’s pictures and video being leaked and he was just worrying that Joo Kyung was skipping school because she wasn’t okay about him dating her sister… that was a moment where I really felt like, why are they using this to distract us from the issue at hand? That was a major event for Joo Kyung’s character development, and adding something funny to it kind of diminished the effect for me. But I have nothing bad to say about his performance. I really liked his chemistry with Im Se Mi, they got more passionate kissing scenes than the main couple, haha.

I guess I recognize Kang Min Ah from Sassy Go Go, but I don’t remember a lot of people from there. In any case, she looked familiar. I think she was also kept mainly the same as her webtoon counterpart, also in terms of looks. It was a funny addition to make her a couple with Tae Hoon, at least it gave her more to do in class than only hang around Joo Kyung. I just mean to say, it just gave her the chance to be her own person with her own life, without purely existing as Joo Kyung’s supporting friend. It can’t have been easy for her either, because she is kept out of Joo Kyung’s secret most of all, even after Soo Jin, Soo Ho and Seo Joon have all found out about Joo Kyung’s real face. So I get that she may have been a little indignant about that, but I was glad that it didn’t last long. She still remained a loyal friend to Joo Kyung. She had a nice energy about her, she was a nice presence to have in the drama, and very positive. She also immediately accepted Hye Min as a friend when she transferred to their school.

I really wished I would’ve already seen Extraordinary You, because there was a reference/cameo appearance of two characters from that series at some point and I wasn’t able to understand it. I just saw a lot of enthusiastic comments under the episode about it, haha. But it’s coming up on my to watch list, so it won’t be too long before I’ll be able to understand the reference (hopefully).
(Edit 280823: I finished watching Extraordinary You and revisited the cameos in True Beauty to gain a new understanding of them. You can find my updated reference to the cameos in my EOY review here.)

So yeah, it may not have been a very lengthy or detailed review, but that’s kind of how I felt about this series. It is what it is. I’d hoped more of it, as I was really curious how they would adapt the webtoon into 16 episodes. I didn’t expect them to leave out so many important parts and replace them with a lot of irrelevant side stories. I just didn’t really feel it, unfortunately. Even though there wasn’t a problem with the acting per se, I just didn’t get why they chose to change certain things, or why they chose to add certain things that weren’t in the webtoon. I assure you that there is A LOT happening in the webtoon, about 200 episodes worth of stuff, and in the webtoon nothing felt irrelevant because it was all really meaningful to Joo Kyung’s growth and it all came back to help her in the end as well. Like the part where she helps a woman with burn scars on her face with her make-up so she can still make a grand appearance at her daughter’s wedding. There are so many situations in the webtoon that push Joo Kyung to learn things the hard way and become better at standing up for herself, even with Soo Ho and Seo Joon loyally at her side. I feel like this series let a lot of good opportunities slip to have the same effect. Now the story was as much about Joo Kyung as it was about Hee Kyung and several other people, there was a distribution of storylines instead of focussing on just Joo Kyung’s story, which was the most important one. I wish there could’ve been a more gradual change, in which you could really see her grow and develop.
Again, I understand that an adaptation is always risky because you can never put in everything, but still, I was hoping for more.
I felt like there was too much distraction from the powerful message that Joo Kyung needed to learn, the message about her own true beauty, and that it lay in her kindness, her good heart and her ability to see the good in people even after they’d hurt her. It was so typical of her to forgive Soo Jin just like that, and even Hye Min. The progress she makes in recognizing her own worth was much more clear in the webtoon, while in the drama I didn’t feel that much difference throughout the story.
Still, I’m glad I gave it a chance, but I’m also glad I can now move on to some other (more recent) things that I’ve really been looking forward to, and of which I also have some expectations. All in all, I think it’s actually better to watch True Beauty before or without reading the webtoon altogether. It may have been a bad decision of me to first read the webtoon, because that way I already formed certain opinions and expectations in my head, which weren’t met by the drama adaptation. I really don’t want to say that the drama adaptation is bad, so I’ll just keep it at that I like the webtoon better.

[Edit 170723: I just learned that there will actually be a second season of True Beauty, which will hopefully give more development into the story of Joo Kyung’s growth, and when it’s released and I’ve written my review, you can find it here.]

I will be back soon with a new review, and I’ll also keep adding some more Japanese and Chinese dramas to the mix, so stay tuned!

Bye-bee!

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