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.

Gyeongseong Creature Season 1 & 2
(경성크리처 / Gyeongseong Keuricheo)
MyDramaList rating: S1: 7.5 / S2: 6.0

Hello everybody! It’s been another crazy busy couple of weeks but I really wanted to put out this review before the end of the month. When this show came up on my Spin-the-Wheel app I was really excited because I’d been looking forward to watching it ever since it came out. Although it’s a two-seasoner, there’s not too many episodes in each season and it turned out to be the perfect cozy horror watch before going to bed. Funnily enough, I’d just been watching Resident Evil 9 let’s plays on YouTube, and the genre of this show tied into that pretty well, so you could say I was in the right mindset and mood to watch it. Despite the fact that I’d been looking forward to watching this, I didn’t actually know what it was about whatsoever, so it was nice to let myself be sucked into the story and get surprised. I’m excited to share my views on this, so let’s go!

Gyeongseong Creature is a Netflix K-Drama that comprises two seasons of ten and seven episodes, respectively. Each episode lasts about one hour, sometimes a bit more and sometimes a bit less – I believe the second season episodes are a bit shorter than the first season ones. I watched it on Netflix with English subtitles (I always debate whether or not to watch something in my native language subs, but since I write my reviews in English it’s easier to refer to the English sub versions).
The first season takes place in 1945, in which Korea (at that point still united) was occupied by the Japanese military forces during the Second World War. The story is set in Gyeongseong, which is the old name for Seoul (much like Edo is the old name for Tokyo – I love learning something new every day). Within the capital, there’s an old hospital called Ongseong Hospital, and there’s some very shady things happening in the dark depths of that place. Under the supervision of Colonel Kato (played by Choi Yeong Joon), a top secret Japanese military program is working on the development of an alien virus called ‘Najin’, which can turn people into monstruous predators when infected. They’re experimenting on innocent Korean civilians for this, and at the start of the show one of the new captives is a young woman named Myung Ja (played by Choi Ji Woo), the Korean mistress of Japanese police commisioner Ishikawa (played by Kim Do Hyun). In order to track her down, Ishikawa calls in the help of Master Jang Tae Sang (played by Park Seo Joon), the owner of Gyeongseong’s finest pawn shop, The House of Gold. Because of their widespread connections throughout the nation, both in Korean and Japanese fields, Tae Sang and his team are often called upon to locate missing people. To maintain these connections, Tae Sang has been on friendly terms with several higher-up Japanese figures as well, such as Ishikawa and his wife, Lady Yukiko Maeda (played by Kim Soo Hyun/Claudia Kim).
Right around the time that Tae Sang receives the request to locate Ishikawa’s mistress, two mysterious sleuths,Yoon Jung Won (played by Jo Han Chul) and his daughter, Yoon Chae Ok (played by Han So Hee), appear in Gyeongseong with a quest of their own: to find their wife and mother who went missing in Manchuria ten years earlier.
As it happens, Tae Sang and the sleuths’ missions collide when they’re both pointed in the direction of Ongseong Hospital, and they end up working together to find the people they’re looking for and get them out of that wretched place. In the midst of all the turmoil and the horrors that happen whilst they’re stuck in the depths of the hospital, Tae Sang and Chae Ok develop feelings for each other and the grisly discoveries they make down below turn out to go deeper and more personal than they’d imagined.

I just want to say upfront that I really enjoyed season one. The historical setting was unique and incredibly atmospheric, the tension was built up like an actual horror movie and they did a great job at connecting dots and making you feel for the characters despite having just been introduced to them. It was really interesting to see and hear a mix of Korean and Japanese, and get a (albeit fictional) gist of the rivalry between them. While I knew that Korea and Japan had a tense history, I never really saw any representation of this in any sort of media before. I thought this series gave a really cool visualization of the Korean pride amidst the Japanese occupation, how they kept them on their side and obeyed them whilst simultaneously praying for independence one day. I thought it was really nice how they basically built the story up to be concluded right before Japan surrendered and Korea became independent; the celebration scene at the end of season one really brought everything together and was genuinely liberating to watch. As I mentioned in my intro, I had no idea what I was getting into – in fact, I didn’t even know it was going to be a historical drama – but the fact that they set it in this specific time period really added to the atmosphere and I loved it.

I’d like to talk a bit about the main characters from season one and then move on to some more comments and minor criticisms before discussing season two which, I’ll say in advance, definitely didn’t do it for me the way season one did.
Let’s start with the crew from The House of Gold. Jang Tae Sang, also called Master Jang, is notoriously respected for building himself up to a wealthy and influential figure. We learn from a flashback that he came from nothing; his mother was taken away from him at the age of seven/eight (I believe) and he was left to fend for himself after that. Right before she was captured, his mother made him promise to keep living and make a good name for himself. He kept this promise and has cherished his privileged life while being protected by his good connections to the Japanese military. Some might call him a traitor for not standing up for his own country – he also keeps refusing to join the Korean Independence rebellion – but, as was strongly emphasized during this season, this was just his way of surviving.
What I appreciated the most about Tae Sang was his character development. In the beginning, it was clear to see how dearly he was holding on to everything he had: he even agreed to the mission of tracking down Myung Ja because Ishikawa threatened to take his entire empire at The House of Gold away from him. I also clearly remember how strongly he initially opposed the idea of saving those kids they found before they moved on to finding Myung Ja. He clearly stated that this wasn’t what he’d been asked to do and he didn’t want to get involved in anything besides his mission. Thinking back on that now, it’s crazy to realize how much he changed. As he said himself after he got out, once he saw what was happening down there, he just couldn’t help getting angry. He ultimately did grow into a rebel on his own terms, even after getting infected with the Najin himself. He kept getting back up whenever he was pushed down, and never stopped fighting against Kato’s legacy, no matter how futile it seemed. I feel like, out of everyone, he went through the biggest character transformation, and it was really cool to see how he came to see things for what they were and realize he couldn’t close his eyes to the atrocities that were happening right under his beloved city. I really liked him. Even his initial behavior was supported by the backstory of how he grew up, so I couldn’t really blame him for that. What mattered was that he changed, and he did, big-time.
At The House of Gold, he is joined by three loyal employees: Mrs. Nawol, Mr. Goo Gap Pyung and Park Beom Oh.
Mrs. Nawol (played by the impeccable Kim Hae Sook – oh how I yelped in delight when she appeared on screen) has been like a mother figure to Tae Sang ever since his mother was captured. While it’s later revealed that she was the one who gave his mother up after being brutally and physically tortured by the Japanese, it’s suggested that she always stayed with Tae Sang after she was released from prison. Her character reminded me of Kim Yeong Ok’s role in The King: Eternal Monarch, the head court lady who basically raised the King of Corea. Despite her betrayal of his mother in the past, she became the most loyal employee to Tae Sang as he grew up and is always shown worrying about his wellbeing. While she’s very particular about keeping up appearances towards the Japanese, she doesn’t make bones about the fact that Korea needs to be liberated and contributes in whatever small and humble ways she can.
Mr. Goo Gap Pyung (played by Park Ji Hwan) isn’t any less loyal, although he is a lot more blunt and foul-mouthed than Mrs. Nawol – they’re often seen bickering and he always loses the debate, which is funny. Mr. Goo is more of a ‘field agent’; he actively aids Tae Sang in looking for missing people and often serves as a driver or offers another kind of support in their missions. With the help of several other patriotic people in Gyeongseong, whom I’ll address later, he has a nice network going on that usually helps him track people down, even though his skills have not been developed as deeply as the sleuths’. While initially introduced as a kind of comic relief character, he’s fleshed out quite a bit and even goes through a bout of torture himself, which was genuinely painful to watch.
Park Beom Oh (played by Ahn Ji Ho) is the youngest member of the team, I believe he was taken in by Mrs. Nawol. It’s later revealed that he was secretly working as a spy for Lady Maeda, as she promised to bring him to his mother, whom he was separated from as a child. Still, even after this came to light, he kept proving his loyalty to Tae Sang and eventually made a full return to the team.

I’m really glad we got some backstory on these three supporting characters. As I mentioned before, I thought season one did a great job at fleshing out characters and making you feel for them. I loved how Tae Sang ended up reframing their respective ‘betrayals’ as a means to survive, and he didn’t even blame them because he knew that the Japanese occupation had put them in the position to do whatever they could to survive. Seriously, I can’t stress enough how well the historical setting of the first season contributed to the whole story, how it supported all the characters’ motivations and actions. Because of how these characters were written and built-up, even when it was revealed that they had betrayed Tae Sang in the past in some way, I couldn’t even bring myself to judge them for it. I loved how realistically this season portrayed the relentlessness of this specific time period, it was really refreshing and heart-wrenching at the same time.
The only thing I have to remark on was that the foreshadowing of Mr. Goo’s torture was way too obvious. At some point, Mrs. Nawol reveals the details of how she was tortured and ultimately made to give up Tae Sang’s mother, and she warns Mr. Goo to do the same when he is ever put in the same position, which immediately raises the suspicion that he is going to be put in that same position. The fact that they actually made him go through every single specific torture method that Mrs. Nawol described was a little too literal for me. I also still find it a pity that, even after declaring to Mrs. Nawol that he would never give his torturers any information, he did end up betraying Tae Sang. I kind of wished he’d stood his ground and come out of prison like: “see? told you I wouldn’t budge” or something. Then again, as I said, I could respect that he did it as a means to survive. It was really sad to see people just accept betrayals from their friends because they knew they would’ve done the same if they were in the same position. To say that you would stand your ground while being physically tortured just wasn’t realistic anymore, so everyone was like: “don’t pretend, just do what you have to do to save yourself, I understand”.

Having said that, I really want to say something about Tae Sang’s friend Kwon Joon Taek (played by Wi Ha Joon). He was an active member of the Korean Independence rebellion who, unbeknownst to his father who kept tight connections with the Japanese, helped plan several actions to bomb specific locations that were of use to the Japanese military.
To be honest, I’m really torn about Joon Taek. While I didn’t doubt that he was on Tae Sang’s side, his action on the roof of the hospital got me really confused. By slaying those already slain and tied up soldiers and blatantly planting a Free Korea flag there, he basically gave away their location and drew attention to the path they took to get back inside the hospital. Not only that, once a soldier actually followed and attacked them, he was the first to run away. He made it sound as if he wanted in on the mission to free his captured comrades, but actually he just wanted to find them and ask them where they’d left the dynamite for the next planned rebellion mission. Are you kidding me? I couldn’t blame his comrades for being like “wtf dude, we’re not telling you shit until you get us out of here”. It felt like Joon Taek wasn’t actually as courageous as he made himself out to be. For someone who was part of a rebellion, he really didn’t seem to care much about his alleged ‘partners in crime’, heck, he basically ended up ratting out every single person in Gyeongseong to get out of that prison cell. And still, Tae Sang forgave him like it was nothing. I honestly felt conflicted about how easily his behavior was dismissed. He didn’t end up playing as big of a part as I expected him to play, and it’s kind of sad to only remember him as a coward at the end of the series. I wish he would’ve been a slightly bigger person, or at least get a proper redemption arc at the end to make up for his cowardly actions.

Moving back to the genuinely courageous people, let’s talk about Chae Ok and her dad. To be fair, I’m not completely sure about their past. If I’m correct, they arrived in Gyeongseong from Manchuria, where they’d also witnessed Kato’s human experiments take place (the Japanese military moved them from Manchuria to Gyeongseong if I’m not mistaken). However, their names and the earliest flashbacks would suggest that they were originally Korean, so I’m not sure why they’d been moving around Asia for so long. I guess they must have travelled throughout the continent in search of their wife and mother. What we do know is that, ever since they lost her, they’ve been honing their sleuthing, stealthing and fighting skills and turned themselves into actual ninja-level investigators.
What I loved the most about Jung Won and Chae Ok was that, despite their anonimity and reluctance to trust strangers, they were really just a father and daughter at their core. As stoic as they were when it came to sneaking into facilities and killing enemies, they never held back their emotions when it came to their lost one. I loved that they allowed themselves to cry when they reached another dead end, and all the more when they found out what happened to the person they’d been looking for. It just made them all the more human – like everyone, they were just trying to survive and make sure their loved ones were safe. They were absolutely fearless, and it only really hit me in season two how awesome Chae Ok had actually been for going through the entirety of season one without any special powers. She and her father stepped into the danger zone time and time again, knowing fully well they weren’t immortal and could easily die within those walls, and they still kept going back. That’s what made them such big heroes.
I’m not even exaggerating when I say that Yoon Jung Won was my favorite character in season one. There was just something about his quiet ferocity that really drew me in. He was a tragic hero without having to announce it. Whenever they split up, I was genuinely afraid that something would happen to him, because I really didn’t want him to die. I’m still sad that he did, but at least het got through the majority of it and his death happened on his own terms. I loved that we actually got to see him as Chae Ok’s dad and not just a desensitized man who trained his daughter to put her life on the line time and time again. There was warmth in the way he trusted her and let her go her own way, and it never suggested that he didn’t care about what would happen to her. His character was just very well fleshed out, in my opinion.
I liked Chae Ok from the second she was shown in that bike repair shop, where she just rushed off in that sidecar-motorcycle. She was a really cool and strong female lead, the type who didn’t need protection from a man but also didn’t suppress her vulnerability to the max. As I said, I loved that she allowed herself to cry when discovering the truth about the human experiments and what had happened to her mother. I also liked the way she gradually warmed up to Tae Sang. The way they opened up to each other whilst going through all those horrors together was very natural, and it was nice that they found an unexpected solace in each other.
Having said that, I’m going to give one hot take on their romance and that is that I wasn’t really feeling it from the start. The way their first encounter on the street was already framed to reveal Chae Ok as an unexpectedly beautiful woman, and how Tae Sang immediately started dazing off when he saw her in lady-like attire just made me roll my eyes in typical. As big of a romance fan I am, I really feel like some genres just don’t need it. It’s like what I said in my review of 365: Repeat the Year: I was so glad they kept the suggested romantic tension at bay until the mess was over, because starting a romance in the midst of chaos just didn’t feel right. Same here: I didn’t like how they immediately pushed the two of them together from day one. I much preferred the gradual build-up that was created through their united efforts in getting through Ongseong Hospital. I appreciated that at least Chae Ok didn’t immediately reciprocate Tae Sang’s interest, since that would’ve been very out of character for her. I only really started feeling it when they came to the point of splitting up, because that hug was really heartfelt.
I guess all in all I didn’t care too much about the romance plot between Tae Sang and Chae Ok; there was so much going on that was more interesting to me, and I honestly wished they’d devoted more exposure to those things. I said what I said.

Let’s dive into the depths a bit more and talk about the people involved in all the gnarly things going on below Ongseong Hospital. As I said, season one starts off with Police Commissioner Ishikawa’s mistress Myung Ja (in Japanese referred to as Akiko) being captured in one of the basement prison cells. There, we briefly meet Chae Ok’s mother before she’s taken in for the injection that would change her life for ever.
Choi Sung Shim, or Seishin (played by Kang Mal Geum) is revealed to be one of the prisoners at Ongseong Hospital who’s seemingly been there for a long time – so long that she is occasionally let out of her cell for cleaning duties. From the short flashbacks in which we see her interact with Sachimoto, I got the impression that her many years of imprisonment significantly hardened her, but that she still never stopped thinking about the family she left behind. I actually found it interesting that they didn’t really hide the fact that she was Chae Ok’s mom for a bigger, more shocking reveal later: we already see the matching necklaces in episode one, and they also quite casually reveal the drawing Sachimoto made of her, the only clue that Chae Ok has of him possibly knowing her mother’s whereabouts. At the end of episode one, Sung Shim and one other female prisoner are separated from the rest and quite literally ‘fed’ the Najin virus, after which Sung Shim assumes the monster’s full form. For convenience purposes, I’ll refer to the monster as Seishin, as that’s how Kato called her and there wasn’t really anything left of Sung Shim’s physical form anymore.
I got to give it to the writers: the decision to provide the viewers with Seishin’s identity before revealing it to Chae Ok and her dad was intense. They really made us hope that there would be some kind of special encounter, that Seishin would recognize her daughter and husband, that there was still something left of her inside of that monstruous body. The fact that she was still wearing the necklace really made me feel like she would somehow sense that her loved ones were near or something. The moment she recognized her daughter and instinctively tried to protect her from the Japanese soldiers was really heartbreaking, as well as the fact that she ultimately ended up fatally injuring Chae Ok without meaning to. Having been given the information that this ‘monster’ was an innocent woman who’d been turned into something incomprehensible for no reason, I just felt really bad for Sung Shim. The idea that Chae Ok and Jung Won had been searching for her for ten years and ended up being only a couple days late to save her before she got injected with that thing was absolutely gut-wrenching. They built up that plot so well, it really made me feel all sorts of ways.

The only thing that bothers me is that I would’ve liked way more information about Sung Shim from before she turned into Seishin. I was convinced we would at least get to know why she was locked up. It’s only revealed that she used to be Lady Maeda’s teacher, who for some reason handed her over to Kato under the condition that she was ‘well taken care of’, but we never learn about what happened between them. I really would’ve liked to know the history between Sung Shim and Lady Maeda, or at least see more concrete flashbacks of her. She barely even got any lines, which is crazy when you look at how big of a part she played in the whole story. If I’m correct she was the first successful experiment that was created in Gyeongseong, and I don’t even think it’s far-fetched to say the title of the series refers to her, or at least the Najin. In season one at least, she was the only fully developed Najin experiment, which made her a pretty big deal, so why the heck do we still not know anything about her?

Speaking of which, there’s still a lot I don’t understand about Lady Maeda as well. I’ll say a bit more about this in my discussion of season two, but from season one alone I honestly didn’t really understand what her deal was. At first it seemed like she ordered Myung Ja to be locked up out of spite that she was her husband’s mistress and even gotten pregnant with his child. I initially thought she was just punishing Myung Ja for being a ‘lowly courtesan’ while she herself was hiding her grief about being overlooked by her heartless husband. But then, when Myung Ja was freed, she didn’t even seem to love her husband and even ordered the doctors not to save his life when he was fatally injured. By then it was also revealed that she’d handed over Sung Shim in quite a similar way, which made me even more curious to the reason for her disdain towards her former teacher. I mean, she smiled when seeing her in her monster form, so I doubt she had any positive feelings towards her.
And then, towards the end, it suddenly seemed to be all about being jealous of Chae Ok and wanting Tae Sang to be on her side, which wasn’t even connected to her grudges against Sung Shim and Myung Ja. Even after finishing season two, I’m genuinely lost on what motivated Lady Maeda to collaborate with Kato, like how did those experiments benefit her? As the main antagonist of the story, I really expected her to have a more solid and defined goal and motivation. The fact that she contributed to all these atrocities without a clear reason kind of weakened the plot for me. Which is a pity, because she could’ve been a really cool villain, and I liked the revelation of her being an active sponsor of Ongseong Hospital a lot.

Before I move on to some more minor supporting characters, I’m just going to address some of the other villains and morally grey characters that contributed significantly to the story.
First off, Colonel Kato. He was without a doubt the most relentless and inhuman character of this series. Everything he said and did just made me shake my head in disbelief. I don’t know who hurt him in the past – it would’ve been interesting to see how he became the way he was – but he literally had no concern for human life whatsoever, whether it came to the prisoners or his own teammates. He was just obsessed with developing the Najin, and that was it. Honestly, it was almost comical. That scene where he watches several soldiers be slaughtered in front of him and goes: “She’s a goddess” and the soldier next to him shoots him this glance of “are you freaking kidding me right now” actually cracked me up, lol.

Of course it made sense for Kato to be merciless, because no one with at least one decent bone in his body would be able to conduct these kinds of experiments, but the fact that he didn’t even hesitate to inject a newborn baby was plain disgusting. He literally saw a dying woman about to give birth and the first thing he thought was: hey, an opportunity to save Najin. So yeah, in my opinion, he wasn’t human, and it would’ve been genuinely satisfying to see him be brought to his end by his own creation. He really just saw everything and everyone as experimental animals, it seemed. There wasn’t a shred of remorse or concern in him, so it was to be expected that he’d continue in however way he could.
My criticisms about his character are close to Lady Maeda’s: I genuinely don’t know why he started doing the experiments. He mentioned something about ‘creating a weapon’, but why and how? What was he going to use it for? Was he planning on releasing more monsters like Seishin into the world, and if so, for what? What necessitated this ‘weapon’, even after they lost the war? Seriously, it seems like my major qualm with this series was the absence of clear motivations from the villains. As if conducting these experiments wasn’t cruel enough, it made it even worse that they didn’t properly explain the reason for them. Also, I’m still not completely clear on Kato’s function. He was addressed as a Colonel, but seeing how involved he was in Najin’s development and the fact that he kept all the samples in his office, you’d think he was also connected to the science of it, right? Lots of unanswered questions there.

Another villainous character in this conspiracy was Dr. Ichiro (played by Hyun Bong Shik). At least his function was clarified: he was the director of Ongseong Hospital, who kept up the facade while also being directly involved with the experiments – he’s even shown performing a surgery on a prisoner while he’s still alive. As he was basically acting as a mediator between the outside world and the inner hell of the hospital, he was seen interacting with a lot of different people, from Joon Taek’s dad to Lady Maeda herself. In fact, it seemed like he was the person who brought all of her provided prisoners in, mentioning that she told him to ‘take care’ of Sung Shim and Myung Ja. In the end, he is assassinated by Chae Ok herself, although this kind of gave me mixed feelings. Don’t get me wrong, the guy was despicable, but I just felt like there would’ve been much more to him. Despite the fact that the whole ending of season one felt kind of rushed to me, this actually came like an unexpected “oh really, just like that?” death, and it also didn’t really do anything, when looking at the bigger picture. I was surprised how easy it was for Chae Ok to just walk up to him like that, so I guess it just felt a bit anti-climactic, if you ask me.

I can’t really explain why, but in the midst of innately good and bad people, I actually found myself drawn to the morally grey characters a lot. It was just really interesting to see how everyone tackled the times and situations they were dealt, for good or for worse. Again, the concept of ‘surviving’ was adapted differently by every single character, which made everything very complex, but in an intriguing way.
Say what you want, but I actually kind of liked the character of Police Commissioner Ishikawa. For one, he didn’t know about the experiments. He was just as relentless as the Japanese soldiers and I also don’t feel like he cared as much about Myung Ja as he did about the potential heir she was carrying, but I still feel like he would’ve been at least slightly disturbed if he found out what was really happening at Ongseong Hospital. It did bother me that he didn’t even try to understand what happened to Myung Ja, and how he didn’t connect that to the fact that something must have been done to her while she was imprisoned. The way he treated her was definitely awful, but I also thought the way he was left to die on the operating table was pretty cruel. He literally died after hearing Dr. Ichiro say that his own wife had ordered him to let him die, and that was brutal. I don’t think he was as bad as Kato, and he might have been redeemed at some point if he’d ever found out about what was happening behind his back. He was part of the police force, after all.

Lastly, I just want to say something about poor Myung Ja. Since she was the reason Tae Sang entered Ongseong Hospital in the first place (it’s actually crazy to realize it all started with her disappearance), I had the feeling that there must’ve been more to her than just the innocent mistress. I really felt for her and had good hopes that she would make it out alive, seeing as she was one of the only prisoners who instinctively steered clear of the spores that burned everyone’s skin. She kept being moved from one prison to another because Lady Maeda had ordered her to be kept alive until her child was born.
Admittedly, even though she never actually saw anything of the monsters and the experiments, from the way she’d instinctively kept dodging things that were harmful, I’d really hoped she wouldn’t have been so foolish as to drink that cup of water. After everything she went through, she should’ve sensed not to trust a random cup of water left in Kato’s office. Again, I can imagine that she was parched and exhausted, but it just really sucked that she drank it. They literally managed to rescue her, only for her to be infected with the Najin and turn into a predator which would ultimately cost her both her own life and Ishikawa’s. It was really sad to see people basically turn into brain-sucking creatures while having no idea what was happening to them. The writers definitely managed to hit me in the feels in that aspect. It really sucks that her newborn baby ended up in the hands of Kato, who immediately saw it as an opportunity to create a new generation of Najin. Myung Ja deserved a better life.

Now that I’ve gone over the main characters, I’d like to touch on a couple of supporting characters that I liked, starting with the folks in Gyeongseong who kept helping out and were secretly part of the rebellion.
Na Young Choon (played by Ok Ja Yeon) was the proprietess of the local pub, the Midnight Bar, who frequently helped Tae Sang get more information about missing people. While feigning ignorance on the job, she’d always pick up on everyone who visited and passed on information whenever she heard something worthwhile. She’s the one that connects Tae Sang with Sachimoto, the painter that Chae Ok is initially looking for, and she also helps out with the big diversion when they finally manage to get Myung Ja out of Ongseong Hospital. I liked her character and how she went from a docile-looking bar hostess to a fierce rebel when the need arose.
Some others that may have had less screentime than Ms. Na but definitely played a big part in Tae Sang’s plans were Mr. Heo the tailor (Nam Myung Ryul), the (apparently nameless?) rickshaw puller (Jeon Kwang Jin) and Mr. Wang (Lim Ki Hong).
In the Japanese department, I really liked Mori, Sachimoto and Mr. Soma. Mori (played by Lee Kyu Sung) was an assistant police officer from Ishikawa’s team who was tasked with keeping tabs on Tae Sang wherever he went, although Tae Sang of course clocked him immediately. I really liked the dynamic between them, and how Mori eventually warmed up to Tae Sang. The way his face lit up when he showed his face at the police station again, so happy to see him alive, was really sweet. He was an endearing character, and I genuinely dreaded it when it seemed like Myung Ja would kill him.
Sachimoto Ryu (played by Woo Ji Hyun) – seemingly the only Japanese character who was given a first name in this show – was a painter who was recruted by Dr. Ichiro to record the physical experiments in drawings. He definitely didn’t know what he signed up for and did a great job of keeping up appearances while helping Tae Sang and Chae Ok through the hospital. He was a really interesting supporting character and I’m kind of sad he didn’t appear more often – I actually remember going “by the way, what happened to Sachimoto? haven’t seen him in a while” during the second half of season one. I’m glad he turned out to be an ally.
Lastly, there was Mr. Soma (played by Jo Jae Ryong). He was a Japanese soldier who basically switched sides after seeing Seishin in action firsthand and watch her wipe out his entire platoon. He strikes a deal with Tae Sang to help him if he gets him out of there as well and ultimately manages to flee with his family, which was nice to see. I liked that Soma started out as morally grey but then still proved human enough to want to GTFO of the situation.

As I mentioned before, this season did a great job at introducting new characters and immediately make you feel for them. We didn’t even learn anything about the janitor, Mr. Oh (Lim Chul Soo) who was looking for his captured brother, but still it broke my heart when Joon Taek spotted a decapitated head in a jar that bore the scar that he had described.
Even though Chae Ok initially went in to locate Myung Ja, she changes course when she discovers six children in a prison cell and decides to save them first. Man, that was intense. I was so happy they managed to bring them and all those other surviving prisoners to safety, those scenes actually made me hold my breath.
But the one side character that really captured my heart and brought me to tears was Choi Yeong Gwan (played by Kim Yoon Woo). My goodness, I’m still not over him. I’m not even lying when I say that his demise destroyed me more than anything else in the entire series, both seasons combined. Yeong Gwan was a student who had somehow been captured and forced to become a part of the military force at Ongseong Hospital. He was made to witness all the horrors that went down there firsthand, to the point where he actually attempted to take his own life. If it weren’t for Chae Ok, he would’ve died right then and there, but she immediately saw that he didn’t want to be there and he ended up subtly helping her and Tae Sang out multiple times, whilst continuously risking being exposed among his team members. Right up until he died, I kept saying out loud: I swear to god, if anything happens to this boy… and then he actually died while sacrificing himself for the escaping prisoners. Man, that was rough. And then seeing his mother receive his school tag as both a commemoration and confirmation that her son wasn’t coming home… Just writing about it brings the tears to my eyes again. He was the absolute bravest young man, the true unsung hero of the series. I still can’t believe they actually killed him off. RIP Choi Yeong Gwan. To think I cared so much about him when I didn’t even catch his name until his last episode, man. His character was built up so well in such a short time, this actually hit me in the heart.

Now that I’ve covered all the characters I wished to address from season one, I’d like to point out a couple more things that I wished would’ve been done better. I already pointed out some things, like the lack of clear motivation on the villains’ part and background information on Sung Shim. But the thing that possibly bothers me the most to this moment is the lack of explanation regarding the opening sequence.
The opening sequence of the first season shows a painted depiction of a girl in a blue dress falling in the water and being infected or possessed by the Najin, after which she brings it to the mainland. She is then shown leaving carnage wherever she goes before she’s captured by the Japanese military and locked up. It’s an incredibly eerie and haunting intro, all the more so because it shows the girl transforming back and forth between human and monster. You can see the monstruous prints change back into human hand and footprints, and it even zooms in on her face, soaked with tears. After seeing this intro, I was completely convinced that this would be explained as the lore behind how the Najin was discovered and how this girl was the first official victim. The Najin being some unidentified creature lurking in the watery depths gave me Still Wakes The Deep vibes, and I loved it. The opening even shows the girl being dragged away by Japanese soldiers, meaning she must have been in their prison as well. I was convinced they would reveal at least something about this lore, about who this girl was and how they managed to get their hands on the Najin samples from her. But no, apart from one very short flashback about how they discovered the Najin in one of their human experiments, NOTHING. Really?! Why would you make this intro if you’re not going to explain a single thing about it? Why would you feature this specific girl in the blue dress and not even reveal who she was? This was definitely one of my major qualms with this series, together with the lack of lore on Sung Shim. I really wished they’d give us more backstory on the origin of the Najin, I was so interested to find out where it came from and what it was and they basically just skipped all of that. My criticisms on season two regarding this point are going to be even more harsh, because I really didn’t like how they went ahead with new developments while there was still so much in the past that wasn’t cleared up. It felt like they had such a unique and interesting story going, there was so much to uncover, and they left so much undefined that I didn’t want to have been left up to interpretation.

Apart from that, I thought season one was absolutely thrilling and there were a few minor scenes that I found inconsistent or unnecessary.
In the beginning, there’s a situation in which Ms. Na tells Tae Sang she can introduce him to Sachimoto if he comes to the Midnight Bar by a certain time – by the way, was I the only one who found it random that Sachimoto was just chilling at the bar when both Tae Sang and Chae Ok were actively trying to track him down? I didn’t actually expect him to be allowed out of the hospital, so that was a bit weird. Anyways, Tae Sang sets off to meet up with them and is, of course, interrupted by some stupid Japanese customer who decides it’s time to settle his issue with Tae Sang right there and then.
Honestly, this fight was so pointless. Not just because the customer was in the wrong and he was just executing his revenge to cover up his own loss of face, but also because it really wasn’t necessary to bring in an entire squad of samurai to literally beat Tae Sang bloody like that. It was such a typical plot tool to make him miss his appointment, but then still it was excessively brutal. Also, it didn’t turn out to be worth anything, because after Tae Sang went home, Ms. Na brought Sachimoto to him anyway. So really, what was the point of that unnecessarily brutal fight?
Also, how the heck did both Tae Sang and Joon Taek completely recover from their physical wounds mere DAYS after leaving Ongseong Hospital? They even showed Ms. Na with some leftover bruises from her time in prison, but Tae Sang literally woke up at Lady Maeda’s house with perfect skin, even though he was literally coming apart at the seams when he left the hospital four days earlier. That was very weird and inconsistent. They could’ve at least left some scars, right? His face was heavily cut and damaged and dripping with blood, that shit doesn’t just disappear in four days. He didn’t have healing powers at that point, so they could’ve at least kept that part realistic.

Lastly, and this is probably just a personal pick-up: I sometimes found it hard to distinguish whether certain characters were supposed to be Japanese or Korean. Of course, the entire cast was Korean so it can’t be helped that they sounded more native when speaking Korean than Japanese – I probably picked up on this quicker because I met Korean people in Japan and can recognize what a Korean accent in Japanese sounds like. However, since the Japanese characters also kept switching back and forth between speaking Japanese and Korean, and you also had Korean characters going by Japanese names, such as Myung Ja > Akiko, it wasn’t always clear to me who was originally from which country. Looking at the historical context, it didn’t seem like a stretch to assume that some Korean people would assume a Japanese identity and stick to speaking Japanese in order to protect themselves and stay on the occupators’ side. It would’ve made more sense to me if the Japanese occupators spoke as little Korean as possible, out of patriotism and arrogance. There could’ve been a slightly clearer distinction when it came to the used languages, in my opinion.
Apart from that, I still really liked the historical context of the Japanese occupation in Korea. I’m also glad that they didn’t write off every single Japanese character as a heartless villain. That’s why I really appreciated characters like Mori and Sachimoto next to lunatics like Kato and Ichiro. Even though the Japanese were undeniably portrayed as the merciless villains, there was still some compassion that seeped through here and there, which I appreciated.
Oh and one more thing as I’m on the topic of the Japanese language use: what was up with all the Japanese characters in and on the buildings being mirrored? I couldn’t figure whether or not this was correct, although I’d like to think it wouldn’t have gone completely unnoticed if it wasn’t intended. It just kept throwing me off, is all.

To sum up my thoughts on season one: it was really intriguing and heartfelt, they did a great job at setting the (historical) scene and building up the characters, the cinematography and the music were great – I just thought Suho’s “Forever” didn’t really match the vibe of the series; it was strange to suddenly hear modern English lyrics in the context of that specific time period. I liked the transitions, the use of actual footage from that period in monochrome and the clever way they referred back to previous scenes at a later time. Honestly, the majority of season one was very well written. Around the time that Chae Ok and her dad arrive in Gyeongseong, we see a quick shot of an illegal newspaper printing workshop being ransacked by the Japanese military. I’d almost forgotten about it, but then they touched back on that some episodes later when revealing that these were the people that Joon Taek was in the rebellion with, and the comrades he wanted to seek out at the hospital were two men who got captured at this printing workshop. I thought that was such a clever way of going back to that moment, with newly acquired information. They really did a good job at that in the beginning. Besides that, the acting was amazing, I liked all the supporting characters. I thought it had a lot to offer, and I’m just sad it didn’t divulge more lore about the Najin and what happened between Lady Maeda and Sung Shim.

Season one ends with Seishin breaking out after Jung Won blows up the hospital, after which she accidentally kills Chae Ok when she jumps in front of Tae Sang. Chae Ok is somehow thrown in the water, where Seishin – briefly depicted as human Sung Shim – manages to save her life by passing on her own Najin virus to her.

Which brings us to season two. Season two takes place in 2024, almost eighty years after what went down in Gyeongseong. Here, we discover that Kato’s legacy was continued without hiatus, and now the Najin samples are actually mass-produced in secret under the cover of the Jeonseung Biotech corporation (aka Korean Umbrella). After being rescued by Seishin at the end of season one, Chae Ok has retained the exact same appearance thanks to the Najin in her system, which basically made her immortal. She still does her old sleuthing work, be it in a more modern fashion and with the addition of her newly acquired powers. She gets her jobs from Madam Na, the proprietess of the Owl Bar, which is very reminiscent of the Midnight Bar. Madam Na might very well have been a descendant of Ms. Na, now that I think of it, although this isn’t confirmed in the story. Besides Chae Ok, whose consistent appearance is explained by the Najin, we are introduced to Jang Ho Jae, who is the spitting image of Tae Sang. Their likeness isn’t immediately explained, but I did feel like it was more than a coincidence – he wouldn’t have to look the exact same way if he was just his descendant, all the more if you looked at the other descendants from season one characters. For example, Ho Jae runs a trading business with Kwon Yeong Gil (Heo Joon Seok), who is revealed to be Joon Taek’s grandson, and we even meet Mrs. Nawol’s daughter, who is now a grandmother herself. She’s a loyal informant of Ho Jae, whose business stands right where The House of Gold used to be.

Ho Jae and Chae Ok meet (again?) at the location of a missing person they’re both trying to track down. Their first face-to-face encounter cleverly mirrors the one from season one, although this time is more bittersweet since Chae Ok immediately recognizes her great love while Ho Jae doesn’t – although hearing her say “Master Jang” does seem to twitch something in his brain. This twitch was enough for me to deduce that he couldn’t be Tae Sang’s descendant, because that shouldn’t have been a trigger for him.
His identity becomes a bigger question when several people around him, including Yeong Gil, seem to actively want to keep him from finding out more about this “Master Jang”. It’s eventually revealed that Ho Jae is actually Tae Sang, and that he used to be a different (and much more troubled) person. A year earlier, he got into an accident that made him lose his memory, and Yeong Gil is determined to keep him far away from those hurtful memories of the past.
However, other people seem to think differently. It doesn’t take long for us to be introduced to Seung Jo (played by Bae Hyun Sung), a young man with Najin powers who seems very eager to bring Ho Jae back to the person he used to be. He is revealed to be a part of the experimental program at Jeonseung Biotech, led by a man called ‘Captain Kuroko’. By the way, the current director of Jeonseung Biotech is Shin Ji Oh, Kato’s biological son (I don’t know who he managed to persuade to have his baby). The corporation was built on top of the remains of Ongseong Hospital and is still under management of Lady Maeda, who also managed to survive for eighty years in the same form after (probably) injecting herself with the Najin.

Just to give you a heads-up: this season was so all over the place that it might take me some time to formulate my thoughts coherently. In contrast to season one, they introduced a whole bunch of new characters without any proper build-up, and they even randomly introduced backstories in the last couple of episodes that really didn’t contribute anything to my perspective of the characters. The very few flashbacks to the direct aftermath back in Gyeongseong were less than satisfying and still left me with all the lingering questions I already mentioned. As such, this part of the review will mostly be criticims, as there was very little I could make sense of.

My first qualm is as follows: why would Seishin have passed on her Najin to Chae Ok? I get that she didn’t mean to kill her daughter and it was framed as a way to save her, but in hindsight she actually forced her daughter into an unwanted immortal life. Chae Ok says it herself in the final episode: “I’m less afraid of dying than of having to be alone for an immortal eternity.” That just made me think of what I already mentioned before, how she literally went through all the atrocities of season one without dying, despite being mortal. I’m positive that this wasn’t the life that Chae Ok wanted, and I’m actually surprised that her mother forced it onto her, even if it was well-meant. She managed to save her daughter, but at what cost? Chae Ok never got to live the life she wanted with Tae Sang. Instead, she has been living as an immortal Najin-infected for seventy-nine years.
As I already said, Ho Jae is actually Tae Sang himself. Shortly after Japan surrendered, he was lured into a trap by Lady Maeda, whose men killed all his loyal people. Tae Sang was injected with the Najin and put back at The House of Gold, where his newly acquired predatorial instincts forced him to kill Mrs. Nawol, who was still barely alive after the attack. After that, Tae Sang was taken in with the rest of Kato’s experiments and allegedly spent seventy-nine years trying to fight off his Najin-instincts. During his most recent act of rebellion, Captain Kuroko had enough of him and removed his Najin and memories, after which Tae Sang was allowed to live on as Ho Jae. As it turns out, Yeong Gil had begged Lady Maeda to keep him alive in turn for keeping him oblivious of his past. However, Seung Jo, who had regarded Tae Sang as a respectable hyung, is now on a solo mission to bring him back to his past self, even when this goes against the orders of his direct superiors. Seung Jo, by the way, is Myung Ja’s son, who was injected with the virus by Kato as soon as he was born and thereafter raised by Lady Maeda as her own.

I’m going to have to stop here again to address a couple more qualms. First of all, I HATED the way they got rid of Tae Sang’s employees. Did they seriously built up Mrs. Nawol, Mr. Goo and Beom Oh like that in season one, only to kill them off like that? Lady Maeda literally just woke up on a random Tuesday and chose violence. I hated it. Not just because I loved the characters, but also because in the grand scheme of the historical setting of season one and the great contributions these supporting characters made to the story, it was just a plain shock value massacre. I didn’t even get emotional, that’s how “WTF” I was when it happened. It was so unnecessary. I’d been curious to see what became of them (especially since Mrs. Nawol apparently had a daughter that I didn’t know about), not to see them be slaughtered and strung up like that.
Secondly, while the thought that Seung Jo was Myung Ja’s child had crossed my mind before, I immediately dismissed it because it wouldn’t make sense timeline-wise. He was born seventy-nine years ago, so he should’ve been an old man by then. Even taking into account the fact that the Najin kept you young, it still didn’t make sense since he was injected as an infant. Both Chae Ok and Tae Sang, and even Lady Maeda, retained their appearances from the time they acquired the Najin, so why did Seung Jo’s transformation stop during his twenties even though he was injected way earlier than that? I guess it wouldn’t be practical to carry a baby around, so I get that it was more convenient for plot reasons to have him be a bit older, but I still found it weird.

Speaking of Seung Jo, I genuinely disliked him. He was one of the examples that proved my point that this season did the opposite with its characters than season one. Even with the bit of backstory we got on him and his later revealed attachment to Tae Sang, his intentions continued to be vague and I couldn’t gauge him until the very end. It seemed to me like he was torn between his admiration for Tae Sang and his urge to please his ‘mother’, but didn’t really support either of these causes to the end.
First of all, if he really respected Tae Sang so much and was so bent on bringing him back to his powerful Najin-self, why did he still use the opportunity of his powerlessness to beat the shit out of him? Did he really just do that because he could defeat him in that moment? To feel powerful over him for just for a second? Because if that’s all there was to those horrible beatings, it doesn’t cut it for me. He didn’t even do this just to Tae Sang, it really seemed like he only fought people that he knew were either weaker than him or who couldn’t fight back whatsoever. There was nothing intimidating about him, really, he was just a brat trying to feel good about himself.
I think that was the biggest difference between him and Tae Sang and Chae Ok: to him, being powerless meant losing everything. Seung Jo was literally born with the Najin-power in his system, he was used to healing upon attack and never dying, so the exposure to being left vulnerable must have been unfathomable to him. If you think about it like that, it’s understandable why he chickened out of helping Tae Sang in his final rebellion. Unlike Tae Sang and Chae Ok, who had already lived a life of mortal combat. In that sense, I understood why he couldn’t live without his powers. Still, I just didn’t get him. He still went after Chae Ok, even after claiming to be on Tae Sang’s side, and in the end he also still killed Lady Maeda, so it didn’t really seem like he cared that much for either of them. In the final post-credit scene, we even see him give the order to Shin Ji Oh to distribute the Najin-virus in water bottles throughout the country, so there’s really not much to redeem him for, as far as I’m concerned.

As for Lady Maeda’s death, while it was definitely a long-awaited moment, the fact that she let Seung Jo get her that easily was also kind of anti-climactic. Having said that, I’ll admit I was never happier to see the spores return and land on her face, also because it felt like nice karma after her whole speech about how it was stupid to think that all human lives were equal.
Which leads me back to my question from season one: what the heck was Lady Maeda’s deal? Are you seriously telling me that she literally spend almost eighty years of cruel experiments – which they weren’t even doing obscurely anymore, they just recruited people to partake for money, like freaking Playtest – just to still try and get Tae Sang to ‘be her friend’? Because that would be insane. If all of this turned out to be the result of her petty jealousy, which seemed to be the case because she kept snapping at anyone who took Tae Sang’s side over hers, that’s honestly a very weak premise for a villain. That definitely should not have been enough reason to keep torturing and killing innocent people for so long.
Also, who was that old lady that was posing for Lady Maeda? How did the burn scars in her face all disappear but not the ones on her hands? Who was she, and how did she even get involved in this whole conspiracy?! I’m genuinely lost here.

In season one, there was at least the element of the Japan-Korea conflict, but now they were just picking out random people from the streets, which really didn’t make any sense. What was the point of mass-producing Najin? Were they really going to pull an Umbrella and cause a massive outbreak nation-wide? Is that what the post-credit scene suggested? I don’t even know where they meant to go with this storyline, man.
As I said, I would’ve much preferred a direct continuation from season one, back in Gyeongseong, rather than have the whole unique historical setting taken away and replaced with a modern mainstream story about mass-produce. It just lost its entire charm for me in season two, and I didn’t get to find out any of the things that I was actually interested in. So that was a pity.
Season two was basically just pointless fight scene after pointless fight scene. We didn’t need that whole ambush assassination attack to kill off Mrs. Nawol, Mr. Goo and Beom Oh. We didn’t need Tae Sang and Chae Ok to literally be beaten bloody every single episode, with mere moments of respite until the next attack. It was a wild continuation of people being attacked, killed, kidnapped and hit by cars until it actually stopped making sense to me.

Lastly, what was up with that random backstory about Captain Kuroko at the end? In one of the last episodes it was suddenly revealed that he had this random woman around him (who also isn’t even credited by name) who he apparently had a connection with and he promised her he would cure her hands with the experiment so she could play the cello again. Mind you, I didn’t even catch that his name was Kuroko. Looking at the cast list for season one, it seems like there was someone named Kuroko, one of the soldiers or captains I guess, so maybe he was a descendant of his? It was said that he’d been personally injected with the Najin by Kato himself, but other than that there’s really not anything we learn about him. So yeah, another undefined antagonist. At the end it just felt like they were throwing in brief backstories for the sake of it, even though that literally changed nothing about how I felt about the characters. It wasn’t nearly enough to make me empathize with them, if that was the intention.

The only ‘good’ new supporting characters were the people in the police department and Granny Antenna and her grandson, but even they weren’t fleshed out to the point where I actually found myself caring a lot about them.
There was Yoo Myung Joon (Lee Sung Wook) and Noh Ji Soo (Han Dong Hee) on the police department that got involved in the case. If I remember correctly, the whole story of season two started with Ho Jae being forced to work with the police to clear his own name. That plotline disappeared somewhere along the way, as well. One second he was being made to work with the police, the second he was suddenly suspected of putting Yeong Gil in a coma – I repeat: all over the place.
Also, it almost felt like they were trying to duplicate the Yeong Gwan story with Granny Antenna’s grandson, Ahn Jong Hyuk (Park Tae In). He got lured in by a job at Jeonseung Biotech and then had to partake in an experiment that would allegedly cure his leg, and instead it turned him into another predator. While I’m glad they got to ‘save’ him in the end, it definitely didn’t have the same build-up or impact as what happened with Yeong Gwan. The only character that really felt wholesome to me this season was Granny Antenna, Mrs. Nawol’s daughter, who ended up taking in Chae Ok after her Najin and memories got removed and she got to live a normal life as a mortal girl before reuniting with Tae Sang.

All in all, season two just felt thrown together and it wasn’t in the slightest the continuation that I was waiting for. They left so much unexplained from season one and just skipped ahead, normalising all the things that made season one so thrilling and scary. Even the Najin wasn’t special anymore as the samples were being mass-developed and there were multiple monsters being kept at the facility. Seishin had been a unique case; she evoked special feelings because we knew it was Chae Ok’s mother on the inside, but the monsters that appeared in season two were just several of many that didn’t evoke those kind of mixed feelings because we didn’t know the history behind them. At this rate, I honestly hope there WON’T be a third season, because I’m sure they’d only skip ahead even further, with even less possibility of making up for past plot holes. I guess season two just completely lost me, storywise. The reason why my rating is still on the positive side is purely because of the acting, the cinematography and the music.

I feel like I’ve discussed everything I wanted about the characters and the story, so let’s move on to my favorite segment: the cast comments! I repeat, where the casting and the acting was concerned, I really have no complaints. The writing may have gotten weird at some point, but the performances were solid. I loved that I got to see some new and unexpected sides to actors I already knew, next to meeting a lot of new faces as well. Props to everyone speaking Japanese, too!

What is there left to say about Park Seo Joon? At this point, he’s just such a solid actor that I can’t bring myself to say anything that I haven’t said about him already. It was very interesting seeing him in this 40s style role, it suited him very well. I think I’ve only seen him in one historical drama so far (Hwarang), other than that I know him from Kill Me, Heal Me, She Was Pretty, Fight For My Way (which is still my favorite role of him), What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim? and Itaewon Class. Apart from FFMW, I hadn’t seen him get into any serious fights in series before, so this show definitely changed that (to the point of overkill). I guess it wasn’t the most unique role I’ve seen him play, but I still think he adapted to the historical setting and the character very well. It was nice to see him evolve into a braver person after hiding behind his comfortable wealthy life for so long – the fighter came out of him very naturally. It was cool seeing him in this.

I really loved seeing this side of Han So Hee. I’ve only seen her in fragile, timid roles before like Abyss, Nevertheless,, Reunited Worlds and 100 Day Husband. I know she’s also done stuff like My Name, but for me this was the first time I saw her in an action role. I loved the tenacity with which she portrayed Chae Ok. She switched very smoothly between being badass and breaking down, and I can imagine that it must have been a pretty emotional role to play. It was sad to realize that all she ever wanted was to have a normal life, but she just kept encountering trouble. During her first proper kissing scene with Tae Sang, when he told her “Only good things will happen to you from now on”, I actually remember going: “Naw, that’s adorable. Not true, but adorable.” xD I mean, she quite literally died shortly afterwards, so yeah, those words didn’t really carry that much meaning. I feel like she was one of the few people who consistently had believable reactions to finding out all the stuff about the Najin and seeing people act the way they did. The fact that she stayed grounded and relatable as a character in the midst of all that craziness was oddly comforting. I think she did a really good job.

I hadn’t actually seen Claudia Kim/Kim Soo Hyun in anything before. I just want to emphasize that my issues with her character were purely related to the writing, and not the actress’ acting. I really enjoyed her performance as Lady Maeda, especially in season one. I loved the Kyoto-dialect in which she spoke and how she was such a cool figure to be revealed as a villain. If only her motivation and history with Sung Shim could’ve been explained, that would’ve already helped a lot. I’m sad that it feels like they ended up making her a villain for the sake of it, rather than actually establishing a proper reason for her actions. I feel like she would’ve been a way more complex and interesting character with a little more backstory. Other than that, I think she did a great job portraying the serenely intimidating power of Lady Maeda.

Kim Hae Sook is an absolute treasure. I was really excited to see her in this that I didn’t even mind seeing her in a type of role I’d seen her in before, cold and resolute on the outside but warm and caring on the inside. I’ve seen her in I Hear Your Voice, Pinocchio, About Time, Room No. 9, Start-Up and My Demon, and there’s a bunch more of her shows on my list. I loved her banter with both Tae Sang and Mr. Goo, and it was cool to get some backstory on her. This is what I mean: I didn’t need her whole life story, but just revealing how she met Tae Sang and her reason for sticking with him contributed so much to her character. I loved the depth she brought to Mrs. Nawol. I wished we’d actually gotten to see some scenes of her with her daughter, cause until it was revealed at the end of season two that she was Granny Antenna’s mom, I didn’t even know she had a family outside of The House of Gold. I don’t think she ever mentioned a daughter, either. Anyways, love love love Kim Hae Sook.

I cannot express enough how happy I am that I got to see Jo Han Chul in the role of Yoon Jung Won. Honestly, this is what I mean when I’m curious to see actors who are usually cast in comic relief role play a serious and emotionally-heavy role. I’ve seen Jo Han Chul in King of High School, Healer, The Producers, Oh My Ghostess, Tomorrow With You, 100 Day Husband, Romance is a Bonus Book, Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha and The Sound of Magic, and all I can remember of him are unserious roles. Honestly, he impressed me so much in this show. I said before that Jung Won was my favorite character in season one, and that’s all because of the way Jo Han Chul portrayed him. From the exhaustion from having searched for his wife for ten years to the emotional release when he learned that the monster he had shot at repeatedly had been his wife, to the silent resolve to sacrifice himself in order to bring the whole operation down. He was an unsung hero and I’m actually mad there wasn’t a single reference to his character in season two. It would’ve been nice to get a final reunion with him, Chae Ok and Seishin together, where the latter recognized the both of them and protected them in some way. I can’t deny his death still felt a bit in vain – I respected the sentiment, but it still didn’t actually solve anything and I think it would’ve hurt him deeply seeing the fate his daughter had to face for eighty years all by herself. Yoon Jung Won was the goat, and so is Jo Han Chul. My deepest respect to this actor! In fact, I respected him so much I actually drew a portrait of him as Jung Won, about to enter Ongseong Hospital for the last time.

I cannot express enough how happy I am that I got to see Jo Han Chul in the role of Yoon Jung Won. This is what I mean when I love to see actors who are usually type-casted in comic relief roles play more serious and emotional roles. As far as I can remember, I’ve only seen Jo Han Chul in unserious roles, like in King of High School, Healer, The Producers, Oh My Ghostess, Tomorrow With You, 100 Day Husband, Romance is a Bonus Book, Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha and The Sound of Magic. I said before that Jung Won was my favorite character in season one, and that’s all because of the way Jo Han Chul portrayed him. From resignation and exhaustion to heavy emotional release and finally the silent resolve to sacrifice himself. I’m actually mad that there wasn’t a single reference to his character in season two. It would’ve been nice to get a final reunion with him, Chae Ok and Seishin together, where the latter recognized and protected the both of them. I can’t deny his death still felt a bit in vain – I respected the sentiment, but it still didn’t actually solve anything and I think it would’ve hurt him deeply seeing the fate his daughter had to face for eighty years all by herself. Yoon Jung Won was the goat, and so is Jo Han Chul.

I had no idea Wi Ha Joon was going to be in this! It was really nice to see him, despite the lack of backbone Joon Taek suffered. I’ve only seen Wi Ha Joon before in Something in the Rain and Romance is a Bonus Book, but there’s still a lot more of his shows on my list. It was actually quite refreshing to see him in a role where I didn’t necessarily like him, lol. I guess Joon Taek was also kind of ambiguous, seeing as his actions went against his proclaimed morals. On the one hand I judged him for being a coward and ratting out every single person involved in their invastion of the hospital, but on the other hand I also couldn’t blame him because, again, it was his means of survival. I think this was actually a very important message of the story, and enough to redeem him in the end. In the grand scheme of things, I’ll forgive him – what mattered most was that he was an ally to Tae Sang, and that he was. It was cool seeing him in this unexpected role!

Another actor that keeps growing on me is Park Ji Hwan. Ever since I saw him in Touch Your Heart and Our Blues, every new role I see him in just blows my mind, purely for the fact that this man is such a chameleon. I’m really curious to see him in the other stuff that’s still on my list, cause I’m definitely seeing him again. I absolutely loved him in the role of Mr. Goo. It was really cool to see him tap into different sides of his acting skills, from the comical parts to the painful parts. Seeing him bicker with Mrs. Nawol one moment and getting his fingernails pulled out the next definitely wasn’t on my bucket list, but it was really nice to get to watch him as a character in a more dire situation. I’m still not accepting his death as canon, by the way, I’m refusing to believe that that’s how he ended up after everything he did for Tae Sang and the team. He was a really good guy and a great supporting character. Hail Park Ji Hwan!

Ahn Ji Ho was a new face for me, even though he appeared in Move to Heaven, which I’ve watched. Initially, he instilled the same motherly feelings in me as Yeong Gwan did: “if anything happens to this boy…” Little did I know, he’d actually been passing on information about Tae Sang to Lady Maeda. BUT STILL! He was a bean, and I’m also not accepting he died like that with Mr. Goo. He had his whole life ahead of him, which he lived out fully in peace and harmony. Canon. Anyways, although he didn’t get as much screentime, I still think he did a good job and I wish him good luck on his next projects, which I might be watching!

It was really interesting seeing Choi Ji Woo in this show. I’d only seen her in soft romantic youth stories before (The Universe’s Star and Age of Youth S2), so it was very surprising seeing her take on the loaded role of Myung Ja, especially once she got infected. I liked getting to see a new side of her acting, also because it’s been a while since I saw her in anything, and I think that she delivered a great performance in the scenes that she had. I still feel sad about how Myung Ja met her end, how excited she was to be back with Ishikawa and then to be discarded like that again while she had no control over what was happening to her. A very grisly demise for such an innocent poor woman. She did a great job.

I don’t know what it is about Kim Do Hyun’s face, but I just like it. He made appearances in Goblin, My Absolute Boyfriend and Arthdal Chronicles, but I’ll remember him best from his role as Ishikawa. The nonchalant, bordering-on-arrogant way in which he carried himself felt very natural, and I liked the morally grey aspect of him. I was actually curious to see how he would react to finding out about Kato’s program, and if that would’ve made him feel differently about Myung Ja’s transformation. It seemed cruel of him to just be like: “woman, you’re clearly of unsound mind, begone”, when there was clearly something wrong with her that was beyond her control. Anyways, I liked his performance and I think he conveyed his character’s motivations very well.

I am actually gobsmacked: not for a second did I clock Choi Yeong Joon as the pregnant girl’s dad from Our Blues who acted alongside Park Ji Hwan. He also appeared in Arthdal Chronicles, The Sound of Magic and Strangers Again, which I watched recently, and I still didn’t recognize him. I guess he made a more incredible transformation into Kato than I realized, because I literally couldn’t think of anything I might have seen him in before. He was a very persistent villain, I’ll give him that. He played the role very well, to the point where I got consistently frustrated with his lack of humanity. I still wish they would’ve supported his character a bit more with substantial backstory that explained what drove him to conducting these experiments and what drew him to the Najin so much. I feel like overall, the villains got very little to back up their motivations and intentions, while the good guys were all fleshed out much better to evoke more empathy. Not that I needed anything to redeem Kato for me, but it would at least be nice to get an inkling of where he was coming from, you know? Just like Lady Maeda. Still, nothing wrong with his performance, he did great.

My final shoutout for the season cast comments goes out to Kim Yoon Woo, who played my beloved Choi Yeong Gwan. I still can’t believe they didn’t let him live. He was one of the characters that I was praying for so much, and he was so much braver than half the people who ended up escaping in the end. Just looking at him with his shaved head and little round glasses made me tear up. I haven’t seen this actor in anything yet – seeing from his MDL page he’s only just starting out as a drama actor, so I really hope he’ll be able to play many more impactful roles in the future. Yeong Gwan was one of the people who kept me invested in season one, I was really impressed with his performances. Justice for Choi Yeong Gwan. T^T

Moving on to the cast members of season two, I really didn’t like seeing Bae Hyun Sung as a villain character. xD In my head, he’s still the sweet boy from Our Blues – he played Park Ji Hwan’s son there – What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim? and Extraordinary You. He actually made me genuinely dislike Seung Jo, which I guess is a good thing, unless the writers intended the viewers to sympathize with him, because in that case they failed miserably with me, haha. Still, I can’t blame the actor for what’s in the script and I did think that he performed the role well. I didn’t actually expect to see him in this show, so that was a nice surprise and I’m curious to see him in even more surprising roles. I guess he can’t play boy-next-door types forever #sadness.

I’m actually cursing my bad memory right now: I’ve seen Lee Moo Saeng before in Something in the Rain, Melting Me Softly and The Silent Sea, and I still didn’t recognize him. He has such a characteristic face as well, I’m such a goldfish. The only thing that bothered me about Captain Kuroko was that I still have no idea who he was. There was nothing wrong with the actor’s acting, there was just everything wrong with the script and the way he was written. Did they actually refer to him by the name of Kuroko or am I not the only one who missed that? If he really was a descendant of the Kuroko from season one, couldn’t they have at least made the link? Anyways, I just missed a whole lot of context surrounding his character which made it hard for me to gauge him or even truly understand where he was coming from, which was a shame. Other than that, his acting was solid.

I just realized I didn’t really provide a character analysis of Yeong Gil, but I don’t actually think it’s necessary and he was in a coma for half of the series anyway (sorry not sorry). What mattered was that he genuinely cared about Tae Sang’s wellbeing. While it originally seemed like he might’ve been getting in the way, I do feel like he just wanted to protect him. From the way he was yelling at him and breaking down when he thought his friend didn’t make it down in the old prison cells, it was clear that he cared about him deeply and was even willing to jump in front of him if he got the chance. Despite the fact that Yeong Gil’s character wasn’t built up as effectively either, I could still appreciate him for being an ally and looking out for Tae Sang. I think Heo Joon Seok did a good job at portraying the different layers of concern he felt for his friend. Looking at his MDL, I see that he’s been in quite a couple of shows that I’ve watched, such as Oh! My Lady, The Girl Who Sees Smells, Suspicious Partner, Fates and Furies, and Our Beloved Summer.

The only thing I should remember Han Dong Hee from is a supporting role in The One and Only (which I don’t typically think back on), but other than that she was a new face to me too. I kept fearing she was going to get killed whenever she dashed off on her own to follow Tae Sang, but I’m glad she made it through. Apart from that, as was the case with most of the new characters in season two, there wasn’t a lot of backstory that made me feel for her, and her part was basically over before it began, so that was a pity. Still, I think she did a good job for the amount of screentime she got.

I’m ending these cast comments on a positive note, since I feel like I’ve been very critical throughout this review. I was really happy to see Lee Sung Wook make an appearance in this drama. I feel like I’ve mentioned this before, but I really like this actor. He appeared in Duel, 365: Repeat the Year and Extraordinary Attorney Woo, and I particularly like him from his roles in The Silent Sea and Forecasting Love and Weather. I’m very excited to get to see more shows of him. Knowing what a great actor he is, I was almost sad to see him in such a randomly thrown-in supporting role that also didn’t really contribute much in the end. I really wished they’d done a better job at fleshing out the season two characters like they did in season one. They should that they could do it within a short timespan before, so why not do it again? I really would’ve liked to feel more for Lee Sung Wook’s character. Still, he did a great job, as always, and I’m still happy I got to see him again.

To end with my favorite character from season two, I just want to give a shoutout to Park Hye Jin who played Granny Antenna. She appeared in Lie to Me (major throwback, barely remember it), The Moon That Embraces the Sun (my first historical K-drama, a classic), About Time and Missing: The Other Side Season 1 (another gem). Honestly, when she mentioned something to Tae Sang about things ‘having been a certain way since her mother’s time’ I didn’t even think she was referring to Mrs. Nawol. Again, while I loved the revelation that she was her daughter, there was never any mention of a daughter in season one, so I wouldn’t have minded if she hadn’t been directly related to her. Of course, it was nice to have her come in as a source of information, and to have her take care of Chae Ok after she was cured from the Najin. I liked Granny Antenna’s perseverance, how she always stood up for Tae Sang and even came to the police station to give the force a scolding for going after an innocent person. I really felt for her when her grandson was missing and got so angry when she had to actually witness him in his predator form on television. I feel like she was the only character in season two that they managed to give enough within the limited time to warm up to. She was lovely.

I can barely believe I managed to write this review in one day. It’s been a while since I’ve managed to just sit down and slide through it without needing several days to edit and rephrase things. So for that, I’m giving myself a pat on the back.
All in all, I thought Gyeongseong Creature was a very interesting story that had a lot to offer. The initial historical setting really set the mood and the context of the Japan-Korea conflict contributed greatly to the general feel of it. The first season had me on the edge of my seat for the most part, especially during the mission in the hospital. The tension arch went down a little after that, when they kind of went back and forth between escaping and getting kidnapped again, and the ending felt a bit rushed.
Season two completely lost the plot for me. It skipped ahead and went in a direction that I personally didn’t care for, I couldn’t relate to the new characters as I did to the old ones, and I just lost sight of what was going on completely. I think the main issue, especially with season two, lay in the fact that there didn’t seem to be any solid motivation for the villains to continue these experiments for more than eighty years. It’s a pity that promising characters such as Lady Maeda and Kato lost their spark once I realized this, and then it just became one big question mark. As I said before, I very much preferred the historical setting of season one, and I wished they would’ve just taken up the story from there for season two. Moving it to a modern society just took away the whole charm and uniqueness of it, in my opinion. It really felt like they ended up going for the doomed lovers trope, while that was actually the plot I was the least interested in. They left so much uncovered and just skipped ahead without looking back.
So yeah, I have mixed feelings. I’ve never really felt such a distinct difference between two seasons in a K-Drama before, so it was interesting to put those thoughts into words. As far as I’m concerned, it should’ve ended at season one, and I’m not particularly looking forward to a season three unless it’s like a prequel that actually dives back into the Najin lore, which I doubt is going to happen.

Anyways, that’s going to be it for this review. Thank you for reading up until here if you did. I am very curious to find out what I’ll be watching next.

Until then!
Bye-bee! xx