SPOILER WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU STILL PLAN ON WATCHING THIS SERIES OR HAVEN’T FINISHED IT YET!!

White Crow
(하얀까마귀 / Hayankkamagwi)
MyDramaList rating: 6.5/10

Hiya! Let’s move on to the next episode of this anthology, shall we? When I initially saw the summary for this I was expecting something with a bit more of a horror element in it, and my mind immediately went to the Black Mirror episode ‘Playtest’, in which a guy gets stuck in a VR-horror game experiment. My expectations were right in the sense that this was definitely the scariest episode of this anthology so far, but it also had a very psychological layer to it, in which we are continuously set on the wrong track when it comes to determining the lead character’s truth. I think that after The Prayer, this was also the most symbolic episode so far, as it didn’t just include various nightmarish abstract scenarios but also used several references to Greek mythology. What’s also interesting to note is that, rather than focussing on the worldbuilding or the technology that’s used in the story, this episode is a more character-based one as it focusses predominantly on the lead character’s psyche and trauma.

SF8: White Crow is either the fifth or seventh episode in the SF8 anthology. It has a duration of about 58 minutes (the longest of all the episodes) and was directed by Jang Cheol Soo. It’s based on the short story ‘Please Save Coronis’ by Park Ji Hye.

The year is 2026 and Jang Joon Oh, also known as Juno (played by Ahn Hee Yeon/EXID’s Hani) is a popular video game live streamer with a fanbase of around 800,000 followers. One evening, her live stream ends on a less cheerful note as someone claiming to be a former classmate of Juno suddenly pops up and starts spreading rumors about how Juno supposedly did all sorts of nasty stuff in high school and eventually committed suicide in high school as a result of escalated bullying. Juno tries to calm the increasingly escalating comments by claiming those were all false rumors and she never lied, but this outburst ends up creating a controversy which hits her reputation hard.
Some time after this ‘scandal’, Juno has a chance to redeem herself by making a comeback on the first-anniversary special broadcast of WGN (World Game Entertainment) that introduces a new immersive VR-game through which players will have to overcome their psychological trauma. While her producer keeps telling her to make a big hit and secure that comeback, Juno becomes agitated when she finds out last-minute that she won’t be able to communicate with the viewers this time, contrary to what she’s used to. She also overhears two technician guys mutter something about ‘not being done’ before they’re shooed off the stage. In any case, Juno goes on and prepares to enter the game, for which she needs to lie down in the white chair that is depicted on the poster above.

The game, which is called ‘Inside Of Mind 2’ (and is apparently even more immersive version 1), takes the player through a remarkable simulation of their own fear and personal trauma, which they have to overcome in order to clear the game. Honestly, as soon as it said ‘Your Trauma Becomes Your Game’ outside the building it took place in, my mind immediately went 🚩🚩🚩 I mean, what good could possibly come from a VR-game that visualizes your personal trauma and uses it against you? Who’d actually want to play that? I certainly wouldn’t. But Juno is desperate to win back the hearts of the fans who dropped her and takes the step, with the confidence that nothing will possibly be able to scare her that much. Especially because of the carefree and bright vibe of the show set around it and the examples given through the hosts’ not-so-scary experiences of the game, Juno thinks she’ll do just fine.
However, as we may expect, it turns out Juno is severely underestimating the game – and her own mind. Of course, the game simulates the setting and the NPCs based on the player’s own memory of their trauma, so everything that appears in the game is in Juno’s head.
After connecting to the game, she wakes up in her old high school building, the one that was previously mentioned earlier by that former classmate – where she allegedly committed suicide because of escalated bullying. As a matter of fact, she’s returned to 2018, eight years prior, the year the whole ordeal went down.

After being confronted with the Jang Joon Oh from the past (played by Lee Se Hee) and the bullying she had to endure, Juno’s first mission is to ‘Find Baek Ah Young’. The obstacle: all her classmates faces are blurred. Still, it wouldn’t be so hard if she could just find the right name tag. Or so one would think. It doesn’t take long for her to realize that, whenever she takes too long to complete a mission, the students and staff that are initially not aware of her presence will turn against her, and their faces take the form of red-eyed black crows. After dying twice in a row, she’s able to contact her producer outside of the game, but he tells her she’s already been in there for three hours and has already failed the first stage more than ten times. Her producer only urges her to just move on, they will edit it so that it’ll be like she cleared Stage 1 and she just needs to ace this otherwise she’ll never redeem her reputation.

From here on out, however, the depictions of what happened between Jang Joon Oh and Baek Ah Young start intriguing Juno more than clearing the game missions and she becomes more interested in following the characters to get a clear picture of what went down. It seems to have something to do with the two girls getting trouble for allegedly copying each other’s essay and someone lied about it. Juno ultimately ends up face-to-face with Baek Ah Young, and while she sticks her name tag on her – as was her mission – Ah Young simultaneously stabs her with a piece of glass, after which her face is finally revealed. Juno is standing eye-to-eye with her own younger self.

From here on out, the story changes drastically, as we find out Juno is not actually who she’s been saying she was all this time. While we already got a slightly pretentious impression of her from the way she interacted with her followers and forced out tears when talking about animal cruelty, this revelation opened a whole new truth. Juno turns out to be Baek Ah Young, not Jang Joon Oh. When they were in high school the two were friends. Joon Oh came from a wealthy family but never let it get to her head – she was very innocent and kind, and Ah Young strived to be like her as much as possible, starting with copying the way she looked. At some point, people even started calling them the twins because they looked so similar. However, that admiration gradually turned to jealousy, and jealousy can do very nasty things. As a matter of fact, she was the one who started spreading the false rumors about Joon Oh that ultimately drove her to jump off a roof.
Juno is suddenly approached by the NPC of her school teacher Ms Shin (played by Shin So Yool), who tells her that she’s not in the game anymore – this is all happening inside her head. During the scene where she faced her younger self, a fire broke out at the broadcasting station which caused the VR-game to overload and Juno to lose consciousness. Three months have already passed and she’s currently in a vegetative state. The only thing that can save her now is going through the entire game from scratch and admit that she’s actually Baek Ah Young and that she lied about everything. Being honest about what she did will save her, so what is she waiting for?

Just to give a bit more information on the teacher: she’s initially depicted as a really strict lady who always carries a sharp metal ruler around. This ruler is actually what kills Juno the first time she tries to clear Stage 1, as she walks into the teacher and gets stabbed by it. Not only does she carry it around, she makes a habit of hitting it against the table when she’s making a point or demanding attention. Furthermore, this teacher is the one who questioned the two girls on who copied whose essay. When the game crashes, she appears as an NPC in a more stylized outfit, claiming that the doctors and engineers sent her into Juno’s unconscious mind to get her out of there. She’s basically just there to get her to admit that she’s Ah Young and provides her with her final way out: saving Joon Oh.

However, as it turns out, this isn’t a simple task for Juno. Even when she’s given several chances to stop Joon Oh from jumping and admitting to her lies, she just can’t bring herself to do it. She’s completely convinced herself that she did nothing wrong and that she truly is Joon Oh – Ah Young is the one who jumped, and she never lied about anything. When we discover this truth about our protagonist, it creates a really interesting twist in the story. The lead character who we’ve been following and emphathizing with so far actually turns out to be the villain and the bully. We actually get to see a flashback of what exactly happened between the two girls in high school. However, even after having seen that and seemingly feeling bad about it (she actually utters the words ‘She died because of me’), when she’s given one final chance to save her friend Juno still refuses to admit her wrongdoings. That is, she apologizes and tells her it’s all her fault, but then goes on to say, “But if I must tell the truth and live as the liar Baek Ah Young for the rest of my life, I’d rather die as Jang Joon Oh and have people pity me.” After which she throws herself out of a window. When Joon Oh goes to look out of it, we see a big white crow lying on the ground where Juno has fallen, which is then scorched black by a lightning beam. The last sound we hear is the hospital machine signifying a flatline.

So besides the science fiction aspect of this episode which indicates that it takes place in the near future and deals with advanced immersive game technology, this story focusses more on its lead character’s psyche than any of the previous episodes has. I found it incredibly interesting how the story, which started out so seemingly straightforward, got such a twist which revealed the true nature of Juno. It was strangely refreshing to have a main character that was actually a pathological liar who couldn’t even recognize herself for who she used to be anymore. I mean, we could’ve noticed it through a couple of things. First of all, her facial expressions during the first scene when that former classmate listed all the false rumors and the way she was defending ‘herself’: it didn’t particularly seem like she took it to heart as personally as she would’ve probably done if it was really about her old self. Secondly, when she’s first placed inside the game and she sees how her classmates bully Joon Oh, she reprimands them for treating her like that and the way she talks to them was also kind of weird if you’d think she was standing up for herself. As soon as she faced young Joon Oh I thought it was strange how there didn’t seem to be any kind of personal connection or a ‘oh my god it’s me’ realization in her expressions. I also found it interesting how she reacted to the first mission ‘Find Ah Young’, because she said the name Ah Young with such unfamiliarity, and started looking for her as if she genuinely didn’t remember her. I think all these clues just showed how much she’s been brainwashing herself, maybe out of a sort of hidden guilt that she vowed never ever to admit to anyone. Through the flashbacks we see that Joon Oh asked her multiple times why she did those things, she gave her many chances to own up to what she did, but she always kept denying she lied about anything.

I have to admit that this was the first time during this anthology that I genuinely got annoyed with the lead character. Not even necessarily because she kept lying, but because she just couldn’t seem to realize the important issue at hand. I got impatient with her when she didn’t just move on with the game (seriously, she had at least five opportunities to stuck that name tag on!) and even after understanding what was happening and what she had to do to get out alive, she still couldn’t bring herself to do it. I mean, in hindsight, she wouldn’t even have had to publically admit she was Ah Young when she woke from her coma. All she had to do was to utter the truth within the neverending game inside her mind, right? Anyways, I guess that once she finally admitted it to herself, she couldn’t even bear the idea of living with that truth herself after she’d wake up. It was a very original and interesting character psyche and I liked that that’s what gave the episode the darkest edge, even more so than the horror elements in the game (which admittedly were PROPER scary). Turns out, the human mind can be an even darker and scarier place than a horror video game, and that definitely puts things in perspective.

Also, I just want to mention that in hindsight, I don’t actually think Joon Oh unalived herself because of the bullying. Of course, I don’t want to take away the effect the bullying may have had on her decision, because it definitely didn’t make things better, but I honestly think it had more to do with the fact that Ah Young betrayed her, and consequently with the fact that she lost Ah Young as a friend. I mean, it would make sense when looking at the final scene of Joon Oh jumping after which Juno is seen crying and finally admits that she died because of her – Joon Oh jumped after Ah Young confirmed that she wasn’t her friend anymore, and that seemed to be the final blow that (quite literally) pushed her over the edge.

Let me just address the symbolism used in this episode. As someone who loves Greek mythology I definitely liked getting a reference to that. First of all, the name Juno. Of course it was derived from Joon Oh’s name, and it’s also the signature she put under all her drawings in Roman alphabet. Interestingly, Ah Young ends up using Juno as a ‘stage name’ while referring to herself as ‘the game queen’. The queen aspect here refers to the fact that Juno is the Roman name or alias for the Greek goddess Hera – our first link to Greek mythology. Secondly, the most direct reference to the episode’s title is made when the homeroom teacher starts telling a story from Greek mythology about how crows got their black color. The story goes as follows:

“Crows were originally Apollo’s messengers and had beautiful white feathers. One day, one of these white crows came back late with a message because it wasn’t focussed on its task. When Apollo asked why it was late, the crow covered up its mistake by lying that Apollo’s wife Coronis had an affair. Apollo believed the crow and killed his wife for being unfaithful. However, he only finds out the crow lied after killing her. Apollo then got very angry, burned the crow to death, it’s white feathers scorned black by the fire. Thereafter, all crows were cursed to have only black feathers.“

The teacher then adds, “Why do you think the crow lied to him? Didn’t it know a higher power such as Apollo would find out the truth? The crow simply didn’t want to be hated. But as a result, an innocent woman got killed.” I think we can all agree that this story is a direct reference to the relationship between Ah Young and Joon Oh. Ah Young was the lying crow who didn’t want to be hated and therefore started spreading false lies about Joon Oh. After all, these lies caused Joon Oh to die, a direct link to what happened to Coronis. The short story this episode is based on is titled ‘Please Save Coronis’, so we can determine that Joon Oh is meant to symbolize her. In any case, Ah Young’s lies were never found out because she kept covering them up and only after choosing to die rather than come out with the truth, we see her, literally depicted as that white crow, getting punished by Apollo. I mean, she’s even wearing a pure white outfit which gets scorched to black in the final scene, so how literal is that? It even gives the classmates who turned into black crows during the game a different layer, because it wasn’t just a scary picture, they were actually the other crows that turned black after what Ah Young did to Joon Oh, so that was really cool and clever symbolism.

I think that, after The Prayer, this episode definitely had the most obvious link to a mythological story, and in this case I was able to follow it with much more ease. Despite my dislike of horror stories, I was still fascinated while watching it because it took such an unpredictable twist in the lead character’s psyche. I also thought it was powerful to introduce this severe trauma psychology simulation within the context of a hyped setting of game entertainment and making it about a pathologically lying online celebrity who just wanted to make a comeback. If you look at where Juno got as a BJ (which I had to look up because apparently it’s a Korean term for Broadcasting Jockey – a live streamer on a broadcasting platform), it can be said that she really went to great lengths to protect her own truth. As the teacher also says, ‘Most celebrities would just lay low for a while after they made a mistake’, but that’s the point: Juno has basically brainwashed herself into forgetting she was Ah Young the liar out of her guilt surrounding the real Joon Oh’s death. If I remember correctly, depictions of this kind of twisted psychology also appeared in What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim? and Kill Me, Heal Me. In both of these series there was a character who had done or witnessed something bad but then adapted some sort of coping mechanism that made them believe that they were the ones who underwent that bad experience themselves. I think something like that must have occurred in Ah Young’s mind as well, that completely taking on Juno’s identity was her coping mechanism of taking as much distance as possible from her truth as Ah Young. Interesting stuff.

Let’s move on to the cast comments!

So Ahn Hee Yeon or Hani is a member of the idol group EXID. Admittedly, I’ve heard of the name and I’ve seen her in two shows before (The Producers and Busted), but neither of those appearances made as big of an impression as her performance in White Crow did. I thought she was really good. It was really interesting to try and gauge her as a character after finding out she wasn’t who she’d been pretending to be, and there was an element of frustration in the fact that she couldn’t even admit to herself who she really was. She created an incredibly troubled and struggling character, and even after it was revealed that she was actually a bully, I still couldn’t help feel for her a little bit, mostly because of how she ended up coping with that secret. It just gave her a really sad layer, which in turn reminded me of another Black Mirror episode, ‘White Bear’, which I now realize is very similar in title as well. The BM episode also features a woman who initially invokes sympathy as she seems to get randomly terrorized by people everywhere she goes, only to find out that she’s a murderer who’s been sentenced to undergo daily psychological punishment as her memory gets wiped at the end of every day. In a way, Juno is punished for her wrongdoings by this game (guided by her own mind) while she doesn’t even remember what she’s done to deserve it. I think she portrayed the emotions Juno went through while going through this terrifying rollercoaster very well. I also thought the transformation she went through in terms of appearance from teen Ah Young to adult Juno was really well done, she really seemed like two different people!

I thought Lee Se Hee looked familiar to me but I don’t actually think I recognize her from anything. I see that she appeared in the movie Midnight Runners, but I don’t remember her from there either. Anyways, she portrayed teen Joon Oh with a lot of integrity and genuinity. It was undeniable that she was the honest victim of the situation, but what was the wryest thing was that she actually gave Ah Young so many chances to confess. She asked her time and time again to admit it was her, she gave her the chance to be honest, and I honestly think the reason she ultimately jumped had to do more with Ah Young’s betrayal than the fact that her classmates bullied her over some false rumors. This was also proven by how Joon Oh reacted to seeing the adult Ah Young appear in front of her in that last scene. She didn’t get angry at her, and I honestly think she would’ve forgiven her. She also seemed genuinely shocked and saddened to see Juno jump out of the window, and to see the white crow lying on the ground below. I think her performance was really good, also in terms of emotional acting. I’m curious to see more of her in the future.

I found the character of Ms Shin very interesting, and Shin So Yool did a really good job in maintaining that enigmatic vibe, even after she turned into an NPC that was guide Juno through the game and get her to wake up. I guess that she used to be famous for always carrying a metal ruler around, but it was freaky how the object actually became a weapon in the game simulation. I mean, Juno is stabbed by it when she bumps into the teacher during her first attempt to clear Stage 1. It made me think of the book ‘The Midnight Library’ by Matt Haig, where a significant supporting character in one’s life would become their final guide in choosing a way out of purgatory. In a way, the game became Juno’s purgatory as she got stuck there, in-between reality and virtual reality. In any case, I found the teacher character very mysterious and interesting, even though she was just used a ‘tool’ to make Juno wake up both literally and symbolically. Because she remained so stoic and maintained such a pokerface, I could never really gauge the character or whether she was actually concerned about her students. It may have been nice to get a little bit more information on her. Still, she was an interesting character.

So yeah, I think that out of all the episodes I’ve watched so far, this was the most psychological one and the least technological one. While the advanced game technology undoubtedly played a big part in making Juno face her fears (and ghosts) I still missed a more direct link to the science fiction theme. Besides the references to a classical story I also didn’t discover any other links or references to the previous episodes, it really stood on its own as an independent story. It was a very interesting choice to focus on a problematic and unreliable lead character instead of the specific worldbuilding around it. I noticed that this also took place in a less distant future, 2026. I wonder if there’s a specific timeline between the episodes that these stories follow or that they’re actually meant to all be seen separately.

Anyways, it was another interesting episode. Horror is not my favorite genre, but I was able to watch it without getting nightmares, luckily. I believe the next one will have a lighter note as it focusses on virtual love and dating, so I’m very curious to move on. I might actually finish this before the end of the year, y’all! 😀

See you soon!

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