Tags
drama spotlight, hongbin, jung eugene, lee hyun-woo, opinion, seo ye-ji, shin hyun-joon, shin sung-woo
Moorim School aired a while ago but I just decided to do a spotlight now because my brain feels like it’ll implode from trying to get my Descendants of the Sun episode 10 recap done.
Moorim school is basically about four people, Yoon Shi-woo (played by Lee Hyun-woo), Wang Chi-ang (Played by Vixx’s Hongbin), Shim Soon-deok (played by Seo Ye-ji) and Hwang Sun-ah (played by Jung Eugene).
Yoon Shi-woo is an idol singer who starts losing his hearing and has become expendable to his company. They scheme a plot to destroy his reputation and have him leave the industry since his contract is almost up anyway.
Wang Chi-ang is the illegitimate son of Wang Hao, a Chinese businessman (played by Lee Bum-soo), whose only joy in life is his mother.
Hwang Sun-ah is the daughter of Hwang Moo-seong, the Dean of Moorim School, and also attends the school.
Shim Soon-deok is the daughter of a blind man, she works a part-time job at a chicken restaurant and is best friends and roommates with Sun-ah.
Chi-ang meets Shi-woo for the first time in his father’s hotel and it’s hate at first sight. Shi-woo can’t stand him because he thinks Chi-ang is arrogant without reason and Chi-ang hates him because he thinks he has not talent. Soon-deok is on one of business days and camps out in front of the hall where Shi-woo is performing to sell dumplings. Sun-ah has snuck out of school to watch Shi-woo perform against her father’s wishes. As the performance is going on, Shi-woo suddenly loses his hearing and at the same time an accident occurs. A light falls and it’s headed straight for him but he can’t hear everyone telling him to get out of the way. He looks up just in time before the light hits him and stops it with his force. Sun-ah notices this and tells him to come to Moorim School if he wants to get his hearing fixed. Later that day, Shi-woo and his ex-girlfriend meet but unknown to him, the ex-girlfriend is a trap his company set to destroy his career. They hired some guys to pretend to be thugs and harass the girl and they set paparazzi on him to catch everything. Soon-deok who is passing after a day of successful business notices that Shi-woo getting into his car and driving off after the paparazzi to get the camera and back and thinks he ran away to save himself. She beats up the thugs and does an interview with a journalist who just happened to be standing there (part of his company’s plot) on how Shi-woo just left the girl standing there and went off on his own.
His career is ruined but he remembers the girl telling him to go to Moorim School if he wanted to get his hearing fixed and decides to try to find this school. Meanwhile, Chi-ang’s father wants him to go to Moorim School but the boy doesn’t want to be away from his mother. His father’s men all but kidnap and take him to the school. On the way over, he pretends like he needs the toilet and when they let him out of the car, he runs straight for a cliff, loses his footing and falls in the water. Soon-deok happens to see him and pulls him out of the water, saving his life. Chi-ang’s father promises to take his mother back to China with him (which is Chi-ang’s only wish) if Chi-ang will go to Moorim School and he agrees. They have Soon-deok take him since she’s also attending the school, albeit without her father knowing, and that’s where she and Chi-ang run into Shi-woo again. He’s trying to find his way to the school since you have to be a student to be able to access the school which is in the middle of the forest. He sees Soon-deok and realizes she’s the girl who gave the interview that ruined his life and he gets mad at her. Chi-ang warns him not to yell at Soon-deok and they get into a fight. They roll around a bit when suddenly the school appears in front of them, the seal has been opened. Welcome to Moorim School.
Okay, this drama reminded me a lot of Harry Potter when I was watching it, since it had a lot of supernatural elements and I even renamed the characters to give them matching Harry Potter character names. Yoon Shi-woo became Shi-woo Potter, Wang Chi-ang was Chi-ang Longbottom, Shim-Soon-deok was Soon-deok Granger (my Harry/Hermione ship) and Hwang Sun-ah was Sun-ah Lovegood (because she’s awesome like Luna). I had a lot of other cool names too for the other characters too but that would take a while to write.
What I liked:
- The Premise. Like I said, the drama reminded me a lot of Harry Potter and that is one of my favourite series ever.
- The Characters. There was a huge variety of characters from all over the world in this drama, Europeans, Africans, English, and of course Asians. I loved that the writer tried to be diverse but there were some ridiculous things too. There are no moose in Ghana, okay writernim?
- The Soundtrack. I love the soundtrack. I’ve got one of the songs as my ringtone right now. There were a few fast-paced songs like this and this and my personal favourite, this, but there were some other smoother ones like this, this, and this. Depending on what’s your flavour.
- The chemistry between the characters. I loved the romance, the bromance, the womance, the side romance they were all so cute.
What I didn’t like:
The Pace. The writer dropped the ball around the 8th episode as far as I’m concerned. The drama was initially scheduled for 20 episodes but was cut down to 16 due to low ratings and I think at that point about 12 episodes were already filmed. The writer now had only four episodes left to finish up her story which took her about 6 episodes to set up. We ended up being rushed through everything and at the end of the day we got a happy ending but not a very satisfying journey.
Would I watch Moorim School again? Maybe when there’s nothing else to watch and with a lot of fast forward.
Critical rating: 5/10.
Emotional rating: 7/10. I really enjoyed it, flaws and all.
OST rating: 9/10.
Image credit to all original owners.