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.

Love Virtually
(증강콩깍지 / Jeunggangkkongggakji / Augmented Bean Pod)
MyDramaList rating: 6.0/10

Moving straight on to the next episode of this anthology! Can I just mention how much I appreciate the diversity of the themes that are explored throughout all these episodes? It’s so interesting to dive into a new world in each and every story and the variation between lighter and darker themes is also very nice. For example, I would not have expected this episode after the intensely psychological nightmare that was White Crow. Before I started this episode I was expecting something along the lines of the Black Mirror episode ‘Hang The DJ’, as it was about people getting stuck in an online dating simulation. It turned out to be quite different and while it was refreshing to have a romantic comedy episode in-between all the darker and heavier and more emotional stuff, I do have to say that this was the weakest episode for me so far. It lacked depth and I also didn’t really feel a real chemistry between the two main actors, even though they were supposed to be the most established couple in this anthology so far.

SF8: Love Virtually is either the sixth or seventh episode in the SF8 anthology. It has a duration of about 42 minutes (the shortest of all the episodes) and was directed by Oh Gi Hwan.

We’re in the near future and, similar to Manxin, the world has fallen under the spell of an app. This time it’s not a fortune-telling app but a virtual dating app, called Love Virtually. People can log in to this app using a small patch on their temple, and in the simulation they can choose whatever face they like, not only for themselves but also for the person they’d like to meet. It’s announced at the beginning of the episode that Love Virtually has already brought about around 15 million couples, and the number of couples that met through the app greatly outnumbers the ones that met in real-life. The same goes for our main couple, who has met on the app and has now reached their 100-day anniversary. Seo Min Joon, aliased Leonardo (played by Choi Si Won) and Han Ji Won, aliased Giselle (played by Uee/Kim Yoo Jin) are just about to celebrate their 100th day anniversary with the long-awaited first kiss, when the app’s server suddenly crashes. They’re not the only ones who are bummed about the system error – it becomes alarmingly clear how many people have actually become dependent on the app when people actually start vandalizing the company’s building.
Among the disappointment of not being able to meet, the idea eventually arises to meet up in real life. The only issue with this is that both Min Joon and Ji Won don’t actually use their real faces in Love Virtually, and they’re worried about whether the other person will accept them for who they really are.

The first interesting thing to be acknowledged here is that, while people normally make themselves look more attractive and glamorous through dating apps and would rather worry about not looking good enough to the other person in real life, here we see two lead characters who worry about the exact opposite. As it happens, they’ve both had plastic surgery in real life, but their avatars in Love Virtually look like they did before their surgery. They’ve actually come to love each other the way they were before changing their faces, and they’re worried that their more attractive appearance will scare the other away when they meet in real life. They actually regret getting AI plastic surgery done because they ended up looking more attractive than they wanted and now they both keep getting approached by people who are only attracted to them because of their looks. Also, because so many people got plastic surgery through the same program, there’s a ton load of people walking around that look exactly the same. I thought this was pretty interesting to create such an upside-down view of Korean beauty standards. While plastic surgery is generally perceived as an upgrade, in this story it’s actually seen as something that only creates superficial beauty while the lead characters are specifically looking for something that goes beyond love based on visual attraction. You could say it actually poked fun at the concept of plastic surgery, and specifically on how it can basically make everyone look the same by basing the surgeries on a specific beauty standard.

What’s also funny is that people have become so dependent on using Love Virtually that they’ve actually become super awkward at flirting in real life. We see that it’s become a trend for people to approach others they find attractive on the streets and ask them for their Love Virtually IDs with one-liners such as, “what is your favorite shape?” or “what color pops into your head when you see a banana?” because the Love Virtually logo is a yellow square. Seriously, the guys who kept approaching Ji Won with bananas cracked me up, it was so random. In any case, since online dating has become the norm for the majority of the population, people don’t even stop to think about seeing each other in real life anymore.
It also takes Min Joon and Ji Won a while to decide whether to meet up in real life or not. This miscommunication was pretty similar to a regular one, where the woman kept wondering why the man wasn’t making the first move and the man kept thinking that it shouldn’t always be up the man to invite the woman. Anyways, they eventually agree to meet up, and while initially both thinking of showing up with their Leonardo and Giselle appearances, they both ultimately choose to just meet them as they look now. I thought this was a good decision because it would take away the pretense and they would inevitably find out that they both have the exact same issue where they actually look more attractive in real life but don’t necessarily experience that as a good thing.

However, Love Virtually’s server is miraculously restored just when Min Joon and Ji Won are about to meet, and while Ji Won has made up her mind to meet him the way she is, Min Joon succumbs to his worries and grabs the app’s restoration as a chance to meet Giselle online instead, that way he won’t have to worry. In doing this, he stands her up, and in their first online meeting after that Giselle breaks up with him because she feels like he isn’t ready to actually face up to their relationship in real life. I personally also felt like it was a weak moment of Min Joon to decide to run out of there and meet back on Love Virtually. After all, the meeting up in real life wasn’t only an alternative for the app, it would also signify an important step in their relationship in the real world. I guess they both had different views on that and Min Joon did just see it as an alternative. Then again, this was something that strengthened me in feeling like Min Joon wasn’t actually 100% down for making their relationship a real thing yet.

After both trying to date other people in real life, they keep getting disappointed by the superficiality of their partners that only care about their looks. They can’t keep denying how much they miss each other and decide to meet up after all, which results in a bit of a ‘which version of you do I actually like more’ situation, but they ultimately decide to keep seeing each other in the real world instead of the virtual one.

Although I do think one of the main themes was that Min Joon and Ji Won were two of the few people who were actually looking for something real in a world dominated by virtual love, I couldn’t help but feel like there was also an element of constant avoidance of real feelings in this episode. This could be seen for example through the effect that everyone kept silencing each other when they were about to utter the words ‘I love you’. The way the same lines were repeated throughout several scenes also became a bit unoriginal to me, and at some point I even started thinking they were still in the simulation and those were just standard lines generated by the system. I get that it can sometimes be cute when a line from the beginning is repeated at the end, but it didn’t really work that well here in my opinion, it just made it a bit sappy. As I mentioned, the way Min Joon immediately fell back on Love Virtually despite the fact that he was about to meet his ‘great love’ in real life for the first time also made me feel like he was avoiding the reality of the situation for as long as he could. Even when they eventually ended up together, it just didn’t feel like it was completely genuine and heartfelt to the core.

At the end of the episode, the narration explains that ‘it’s not about where you meet, it’s about whether you really care for each other’, and while that’s a nice thing to say, I didn’t actually feel it that strongly from this story. It seemed to solely refer to the fact that it was good of the main couple to start dating in real life even though they met through an app, which I think is the case for many a couple in current times as well. I don’t know, it didn’t really make me go, ‘Oh, that’s actually a pretty genius inference, I hadn’t thought of that!’ like so many of the previous episodes did. I’d say it was a bit too straightforward and that caused it to become a bit too typical and cheesy, which didn’t really seem to match the overall tone of the anthology.

Besides Min Joon and Ji Won, the only two predominantly featured characters are their typical friends or sidekicks and while I liked their contribution to the story it did really strengthen the rom-com-level of this episode to have one sidekick of the same gender for each lead character, especially since they also ended up together. Goo Sung Tae (Ahn Se Ha) and Tak Soo Jin (Kim Han Na) were the typical less visually attractive sidekicks who always got ignored while their more attractive friend kept getting asked out. All that was established about their friendships was that they’d known the lead characters from before their plastic surgeries and were therefore able to judge them based on their transformations. More than that wasn’t revealed about how they’d met or what their history together was, except for the fact they seemed to work together (even the type of work they did wasn’t revealed). Whenever they offered themselves as an alternative when Min Joon and Ji Won rejected an invitation, the inviter would always give them the cold shoulder and walk away. While it was definitely cute that they ended up together, it was incredibly predictable and it also took away some variety because it only created two couples that consisted of people who were exactly the same.

All in all, while it was nice to have a lighter and more comical rom-com of an episode in-between the darker and edgier stories, I didn’t really feel that excited while watching it. I’m also not exactly sure what the message was, because even if it wanted to convey how real-life connection and honesty was better than virtual love, it was complicated and more confusing by the fact that they’d actually developed the more genuine connection through the virtual reality and meeting in real life made things more awkward. I agree that it doesn’t matter where you meet as long as you develop a true connection, but that’s true in any type of relationship and I wouldn’t have actually gotten that from this story in particular.

Before I move on to the cast comments, I just wanted to make a mention of the Korean title of this episode. In both episodes, the title refers directly to the name of the app, similar to Manxin, but the Korean name of the app is actually ‘JeungKkong’, which is an abbreviation of the titular phrase ‘Jeunggangkkongggakji’, which in turn literally translates to ‘Augmented Bean Pod’. It took me a moment to realize it referred directly to the logo of the app, which shows a heart made out of two bean pods. I guess it’s a play on the expression ‘two peas in a pod’ or something? Anyways, I thought it was quite quirky to name a virtual dating app after beans, lol. The English title initially made me think of a play on the movie ‘Love Actually’. Is it just me who feels like they could’ve thought of something more original for the English title?

It’s cast comment time! Like every episode in this anthology, this will be the shortest section of the review since the key cast doesn’t include more than four people.

Of course I know Si Won from Super Junior and I’ve seen him in several dramas before, such as Oh! My Lady, Skip Beat!, She Was Pretty and Revolutionary Love. There’s a few more things on my list that he appears in. While I generally like his acting and the way he always brings a welcome comical element to his characters, I couldn’t help but feel like his portrayal of Min Joon lacked sincerity. As I mentioned before I didn’t feel a lot of chemistry between him and the female lead, which was a pity because this is the most blatant portrayal of a romantic love story this anthology that has appeared in this anthology so far. I wish there could’ve been a bit more to his character and personality that would’ve made me warm up to him more. In stark contrast with the previous episodes, especially White Crow, the psyches of the characters weren’t even discussed, and the way everything was only portrayed from the outside without much depth only added to the shallow tone of the episode. Which is a pity, because I’ve seen Si Won perform much better and I know there is more to his acting. Still, it was nice to see him appear in this anthology and I’m looking forward to the other series on my list that he’ll appear in.

I’ve seen Uee/Kim Yoo Jin before in You’re Beautiful, My Girlfriend is a Gumiho, High Society, Manhole, and she also made a guest appearance in She Was Pretty, apparently. In any case, she’s a familiar face and it was nice to see her in a more comical role than I’ve seen her in so far. Still, I had the same issue with her performance as with Si Won’s in the sense that I felt like I only ever saw the outside of their relationship, and there wasn’t any depiction of the depth and genuinety of their feelings for each other. Although I definitely felt like Ji Won was more determined to make it work in real life than Min Joon, I still found it hard to keep up with what both of them were really thinking and in the end I wasn’t even that thrilled at their first real kiss either. Again, I know that Uee is capable of much more, and it’s not like her or Si Won’s acting was bad in this episode, but it just didn’t really grab me that much. I still liked seeing her in this episode, and I’m curious to other shows that she appears in that I’ll watch in the future because she always seems to pop up when I least expect it, haha.

I’ve said this many times before about Ahn Se Ha, and it only adds to the stereotypicalness of this episode that it was again the case here, but he’s always typically cast as an ‘unattractive guy’. He’s an amazing actor and I always find it a pity that he gets typecasted like that. I’m always happy to see him whenever he appears in shows, and so far I’ve seen him in God’s Gift: 14 Days, She Was Pretty (it’s like a reunion!), High-end Crush, W – Two Worlds, Moonlight Drawn By Clouds, 20th Century Boy and Girl, I’m Not a Robot, 100 Day Husband, Abyss, Nevertheless, and Dali and the Cocky Prince. I’m sure I’m going to see him in a lot more shows that are on my list, because he’s also one of those actors who just makes appearances everywhere. His role as Min Joon’s stereotypical unattractive sidekick was not very original, but he still made something out of it. I honestly thought he and Si Won had better chemistry than Si Won and Uee. 🥲

I didn’t recognize Kim Han Na from anything, but I see she appeared in The Third Charm and there’s a couple of more dramas on my watchlist that she appears in, so I’m curious to see more of her in the future. Her character was basically the same as Sung Tae for Min Joon – she was Ji Won’s standard sidekick who were typically depicted talking and walking together during lunch breaks. I didn’t really have much to go on apart from that, honestly. The only individuality she was given was the fact that she and Sung Tae ended up going their separate way while leaving the lead characters to their own devices in fixing their relationship situation. I wish there would’ve been a bit more elaboration on the friendship between Soo Jin and Ji Won (and Sung Tae and Min Joon for that matter). Again, I don’t mean to say that her acting was bad, it was just that her character (as everyone else’s) didn’t really leave that much of a special impression. I hope she’ll leave a more memorable impression in the next thing I see her in!

So yeah, I think this might be one of my shortest reviews of this anthology and it was also the only one I was able to finish within a couple of hours. Of course, in an anthology there’s bound to be an episode that you like a bit less than others, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it was bad. I just found that it didn’t link as much to the tone of the other episodes, and also the repetition of the app-concept which we’d already seen in Manxin just didn’t make it jump out as much as other storylines. I kept waiting for a plot twist or darker edge to the story that didn’t appear and in the end I wasn’t really sure what exactly the overall message could have been. I think my main issue with it is that the feeling of watching something scifi that took place in a more futuristic world was the least apparent in this episode. Of course, we’ve seen other stories that were set in the near future and didn’t really show a complete different world or setting, but it was even less apparent than in the other near future episodes. It could’ve just been a regular romantic comedy in the style of Love Alarm, but that didn’t necessarily include any science fiction elements other than one specific virtual reality app. So yeah, that was a bit of a pity. Still, it was refreshing to watch and it definitely made for a nice breather after the intense story from White Crow, haha.

I’m actually going to make it before the end of the year, guys! I’m going straight with the final episode and I’ll probably be able to finish the initial page with all the reviews on it in a couple of days. I’m very excited for the final episode, because the preview already gave me the feeling that it would be a bit more dark and somber in theme.

See you soon! x