alrighty it's been a few days since i finished weak hero class 1, i wanted to write down my thoughts about it asap before my perception gets molded even more by time, online posts, and fancontent.
for anyone interested in reading this HELLA long post, just note that i'm p much a drama-only person. i did read up to ch 39 of the webtoon though, and i still plan to make comments about the adapation aspect & where s2 can take the story from here based on the drama/webtoon but just note that's where all my base knowledge is coming from. this post will have spoilers about the full drama
the show & story as a whole
i feel like i generally share the same opinions as mainstream about the drama... it was a good story - the pacing was excellent imo, i don't feel like anything lingered too long or was waaay too underdeveloped. i was honestly shocked when i saw we were at like ep 5-6 when bumseok finally turned, i thought he would've turned at the halfway point (ep 4) but again based on all the developments and what was to come, it was a good time when he did.
i went in p much having some idea of future scenes, and then later knowing roughly the plot of the season. i had no knowledge of the webtoon, like i think i learned it was based off of a webtoon when i 1st looked it up to watch but i had never heard of it before despite it being popular (?). i watched 2 eps, learned that the entirety of s1 covered the backstory of sieun that was simply just 1 part of the webtoon, read the webtoon to read the original writing of the backstory up to ch 39, and then finished the rest of the drama. did not continue past ch 39 bc tbh the webtoon does not interest me, the plot of HS boys warring really does not intrigue me lol.
(also... when stories that are not romance-based have female characters/representation i'm not happy with... that also turns me off to the story. i can make excuses for romance-based stories having weak characterization for the losers lol but to my knowledge weak hero is not a romance story - even if i am really suspecting the author low-key wanted to write BL but didn't go through w it. some of the stuff i'm seeing from later ch of the webtoon... why was gray lightly blushing when he was like i could have been friends w donald? sure technically there's nothing inherently romantic but that but also...)
i kind of wish i had gone w a completely or almost completely clean slate, i think there were a couple scenes where i didn't get the full emotional hit of bc i had seen gifs of it before (like the scene where sieun smiles for the 1st time when suho is poking at him in the hospital). i started knowing bumseok was gonna pull some shit, but i didn't know the full aspect until i read the webtoon. so i think if i had a do-over, i wish i could have looked at less stuff before finishing the full series... but i think knowing the webtoon story definitely made me like less sad about & better understand the developments overall.
honing in on some aspects
i feel like this hinges on a hot take but perhaps not surprising given my comments just now, but i honestly think the drama's writing is much better than the webtoon's - and this may be bc the drama had the benefit of retrospect, of having a solidified trajectory of sieun's story after this. (note: from now on, korean names refer to the drama character, anglicized names refer to the webtoon version) i was really surprised to see how different suho and stephen are as characters, but i do prefer suho over stephen... like the character morals are still present in the drama, and both characters are ppl who you really feel for when they're suffering through the injustice, but honestly... stephen is kind of not as likeable.
like his shtick of donating all his awards and stuff to the class & being like "oh i really enjoy helping others :)" just feels kind of fictional (derogatory) to me... while suho is more relatable with his initial resistance to help someone he barely knows, and his morals of doing the right thing shown through smaller actions (stopping his hit when he realizes someone is down fr - also his fight w the baseball team is so good bc it is a really good intro to suho's character without words; demanding the bullies get back in line when they cut) rather than a grandiose kind of thing. maybe it's bc i'm cynical and irl low-key suspicious of ppl who are extremely altruistic, and stephen being the way he is makes what happens to him in the end even more unfair which is the point - but yeah. also i prefer suho in the drama over stephen's "i would wipe the floor w all of your asses academically if i applied myself but i just won't ;)" even if technically the sentiment is still there w suho's ability to beatdown. but yeah, the rewrite of suho was really good (perhaps even needed) imo.
also them rewriting suho as someone who knows how to fight while stephen just got his ass beat... again, makes his fate more excruciating w how he let himself get whaled on & bullied to protect gray, and makes the bullies even more cruel but... i'm sorry i prefer suho fighting back. tbh i wonder why they didn't keep the story aspect of being put into a coma via falling from the roof but i guess it gives bumseok/bryce more direct involvement and reason for sieun to go off like he does (he's let this slide for the entire time but this time he can't given the direct action against his best friend)
i've seen posts being like suho seems to have aspects of sieun's future eunjung friends (me when i saw gerard sleeping on the desks: is this an ahn suho reference???), which i think will actually make s2 better bc it gives more incentive as to why sieun will even consider befriending the boys - rather than in the webtoon, which iirc/imo feels more like the boys just hang around sieun enough times for him to be like "fine, i guess we can be friends". bc remember, he has just lost his 2 only friends in extremely painful ways... he will need to be drawn to positive aspects (e.g., things he liked or remembers distinctly about suho) in order to open his heart again.
also... i have to bring this up bc i distinctly had thoughts about this when i saw it but them having a shower scene to match the same scene in the webtoon... literally groaned bc enough sexualization of younger characters but also of all the things to be faithful on... i get why they included it to show how suho is p much living at school and doesn't live the same life as his classmates but why... i saw an interview (supposedly, it was someone writing it up on twt) where choi hyunwook was like "it's hard to watch that shower scene bc it was my 1st ever exposure scene but i tried my best" and i'm like dude... i feel you as a viewer
other than suho/stephen, bumseok is the biggest and most obvious example of adaption change - like sure, characters should be allowed to just be assholes with no sob story to "explain" their actions, but i enjoyed them expanding bryce's character to be a bigger part of the friendship trio and give more reason as to why suho and sieun let his assholery slide until it's too late. bumseok's inferiority complex is honestly pretty relatable, and the scene where they reveal for the first time how badly his dad abuses him made me cover my mouth, but obviously it doesn't excuse the shit he ends up doing... but all together, it's understandable why he breaks down the way he does.
also, i really enjoyed how the violence at the end of the season took on more of a tone of "you can beat up whoever you want but it won't necessarily satisfy you how you like or bring back what's lost". bumseok had multiple times of beating ppl up and when he finally got his kicks in on the guy who really set off his inferiority complex, he realizes this wasn't what he wanted. in the webtoon, gray's beatdown of suho's bullies was presented kind of triumphantly, and there was definitely a sense of "hell yea" when sieun was going apeshit on them - but by the time we get to the last guys, that scene w bumseok where he can't bring himself to hit his ex-friend despite literally watching bumseok kick the shit out of suho... not only does it show sieun's warm-heartedness, but it adds to sense of defeat he has at the end with his outburst in the hallway and visiting suho after the adrenaline of fighting wears off. i think part of it was the show not wanting to support senseless violence in schools, but i think it was a nice change from the webtoon. also matched the story better since bumseok had more of a sympathetic backstory, had regret over what he did to suho, and also already got his ass beat physically & emotionally by his dad over suho anyway. no need for him to keep getting whaled on for the point to sink in
i'm also pleased they didn't super push a romance with youngyi, the initial interactions bw her and sieun were refreshing but i was still scared and thankfully p much the rest of their interactions in the season can easily be interpreted platonically. i still wonder a little if her character was really necessary given bumseok was already a 3rd wheel (like it was pretty obvious he wasn't exactly on the same standing like sieun and suho are to each other, mostly bc they didn't know much abt him really), but it is bc her headstrong nature kind of forces bumseok into the 4th wheel category and worsens everything since we all know bumseok embraced his inferiority complex rather than the discomfort of putting himself out there for his burgeoning friends.
i kind of wish though she didn't have so much dialogue of her being like "do you have a crush on me? ;P", like the times it happened were p much in a row repeatedly within 2 eps and i was like ok let's chill we know she's mainly here as a love interest but... i would've preferred less focus on her relation to male units and more about her as a character. on the other hand, her constantly checking her romantic value could kind of imply she has issues with self-confidence and is just putting up a front (also noting that she loves to post to social media of her having friends p much)... to her, it's like her involvement w ppl she considers her friends ends up hurting them in the end (seokdae getting beat up and arrested, sieun losing suho). which would add to why she was so affected by bumseok's accusation at the end, that maybe she wasn't that confident in them liking her as a person and that sieun, p much her only friend at the end of all this, may actually hate her bc she inadvertently contributed to suho's coma.
i personally think it's pretty likely youngyi will return in s2, i was surprised when they kinda wrote her off real quick at the end but no way she (and seokdae) are gonna be 1 season characters... i'm really betting she will return in s2 and (cringe) become sieun's love interest fr. i'm not necessarily against them being a thing, but i don't think there's enough development bw them yet at this point to be for it / not a huge fan of their dynamic in a romantic sense... honestly if anything, i would be for suho/youngyi, but sieun has the main character rizz i guess lol. anyway that one scene in the hospital where they handwave a love "triangle" bw sieun, suho, and youngyi... ngl the 1st time i watched it i really felt like it was less suho & sieun -> youngyi and more suho & youngyi -> sieun (and i'm not even talking about the scene afterwards where suho calls sieun warm-hearted which i think a lot of ppl tend to interpret romantically. also i feel like the term "warm-hearted" is such a good, succinct descriptor of sieun's character - to me, it doesn't necessarily mean kind per se but that he cares).
the gilsoo story (hopefully i'm spelling that right, i feel like i saw su before but idk the hangeul being used. but apparently u and oo are both used?? all my korean lang knowledge is from duolingo so forgive me)... i was wondering how relevant this addition is to the overall story (idr it being in the webtoon, i know gilsoo as a character wasn't in the stephen story for sure but idr if there was a gambling thing going on), but i was thinking on it while writing this and i realize it could actually be a good lead-in to s2 developments... it could be that gilsoo was part of donald na's network of dealings and sieun taking him down is partially why donald goes after sieun... and then seokdae could come back and help sieun take down donald based on his knowledge of how gilsu worked and who he worked with... i am aware that eugene supposedly plays a role in taking down donald by impacting his networks (this was based on a reddit post i read, i literally don't know) so if you remove that (sorry man, but for the record i also don't enjoy eugene as a character based on what i've read so far so. not sorry) this could be a good way to have a continuity bw the 2 seasons. if they don't do something like this, then that's unfortunately mediocre writing, or i'm missing info of what exactly gilsoo is adapting from the webtoon.
where do we go from here
and now another extremely hot take... i actually think the ending of s1 is a satisfying conclusion to suho's story. this is mainly due to that last scene bw suho and sieun in the hospital (which is also actually my favorite scene out of the entire show, with the surrounding context. i had actually seen gifs of that scene beforehand, but i was so happy afterwards that i never got spoiled to the surrounding context bc i was able to get at least a good chunk of the emotional effect... genuinely felt that crushing feeling in my chest every time i thought of that scene the day after finishing the show. i'm really affected by ppl mourning/yearning for things they no longer can have) - their soft apologies to each other for hurting the other, albeit if it's technically one-sided, i think is a good wrap-up of sorts since suho will be in the coma indefinitely (webtoon knowledge lol). it does provide a sense of finality of their friendship to sieun, not only the imagined apologies but the realization that they both made their choices and sieun (and tech suho) is left to deal with the aftermath.
but also narrative-wise it makes sense for sieun and suho to never interact again - it's what drives sieun's protectiveness of his friends, the fact that his 1st/recent close friendships were shattered and are no longer accessible to him. him regaining suho's friendship via suho waking up in s2 (if it's not at the very end after everything w the association) just weakens that point imo, he needs to develop his relationships w the eunjang bros separately. i've heard stephen does get mentioned/"show up" via memories but i'm under the impression he p much disappears after his flashback arc (outside of the impact on gray's character) - honestly i wonder why the author left him in a coma instead of straight up killing him since that "good bye stephen" seemed to have a lot of finality to it... but i mean the emotional hit to gray would've def been way worse if he had died straight up. anyway low-key suspect the author might have him wake up in a post-story side story but that's just wishful thinking. i personally suspect suho will get "written off" p early in s2 since they didn't already in s1 - like sieun will go back to seoul to visit suho and the hospital will be like "oh sorry he got transferred and we can't tell you where due to confidentiality" and i guess the grandma died or got put in a nursing home to remove that possibility bc no way the grandma wouldn't tell suho's friend about where he went. and sieun will be in despair for a few moments until his eunjung friends are like "hey you good?" (via text message or maybe they came w him) and he decides to move on idk lol. all in all, i don't think suho is gonna feature a ton in s2 and i think that's for the better.
tbh, given the ending of s1/sieun's backstory with suho, i think people should actually go into the drama either having read the backstory itself via webtoon, or have the knowledge that suho's story is literally only 10-15 ch out of a 200+ ongoing webtoon. i think that's definitely what made me accept suho's coma more easily - i've read a few fix-the-ending fics where suho wakes up and while those are sweet & i get why they're wanted, i think it is unrealistic given the knowledge of where the webtoon goes from here. but tbh, i'm really surprised they chose to focus the ENTIRE s1 on the stephen backstory... like how tf are you gonna adequately cover the rest of the gd story in the next season? i'm saying that bc i heard the original plan for the weak hero drama was to have 2 seasons, but bro you need 3 seasons even if you remove a bunch of the fights and reduce the length of time spent on flashbacks... again, i have very little knowledge of the rest of the webtoon after ch 39 (arguably nonexistent) but idk. also the reference to donald na and the association at the very end... it is really super random given the story of s1 and how they did not mention ANYTHING about HS gangs/wars until now. again, given that the webtoon's literal MAIN STORY is about this gang wars stuff, i'm surprised they spent so much time on sieun's backstory nor did they have ANY mention of HS wars (btw was none of that happening in seoul? or is everything happening in the neighborhood that eunjang is in)... like tbh i feel like they could have provided enough meaning if they had just dedicated 3 eps to suho. to my knowledge, there's not TOO many events they pulled from the main story to write the s1 story, so there's a ton left to get into. plus there's like maybe at least 10 significant relevant characters to introduce in s2... how are they gonna develop all of those units well? s1 did p good w its current number, but idk how good self-contained stories can be when there's like billions of units involved. i personally think they'll remove a good number of units to the chagrin of webtoon fans, but man it is necessary fr.
anyway all that p much implies i am interested in watching s2 when it releases (i'm saying it will but i guess it's not really set in stone yet?). i actually wasn't really planning on it when i was in the middle of s1, given that i'm not interested in weak hero's webtoon & therefore its actual story, but man park jihoon. he really drew me in and i want to see where his character goes in s2. honestly still can't get over the fact that he used to be a relatively well-known kpop idol with a cute image and all his prev acting roles are cutesy characters... really explained why he seemed super comfortable in interviews & variety show esque stuff. as everyone else has been saying, the acting was good in this drama - i feel like i really realized what subtle acting was from this, but also for the record weak hero class 1 is the 1st tv series i have finished in maybe years, i don't watch much stuff out of depressive laziness lol. park jihoon's expressions were subtle but definitely enough to key you in on sieun's various emotions despite being relatively emotion-less - i read he purposely spent a lot of time developing that, and his hard work obviously paid off. his "crazy eyes" at the very end when he's in eunjung... ugh so good to show how much sieun has changed from that 1st instance he was bullied by youngbin.
hold on! what do i hear...
one last thing before i finish up - the soundtrack. omg. i was listening to hero and homesick on repeat for like 2 days... the music & lyrics match the show really well. homesick and again's lyrics... genuinely was struck by them when i read them for the 1st time. homesick is also very nostalgic-sounding to me bc it reminds me of music i listened to during a recent period in my life, so there's that too. hero is really good as well, and also them playing that acoustic version during the ep 7 credits... ough...
personally, i associate the songs this way, maybe this is common thought but i was like eureka when i came to these realizations:
hero - general
brass knuckle - general
homesick - sieun's pov
self - suho's pov
again - honestly... bumseok's pov. originally i thought of it as sieun, and it does match sieun imo, but i read the lyrics again thinking about how this plays when bumseok realizes what he's done to suho and i was like wait...
in summary
weak hero class 1 was a good drama/season. the writing of the season's story was solid, and the actors do a good job of showing not telling through their expressions/body language. the cinematography/editing is pretty, really liked the constant use of blue. the choreography/editing of the fights is also good (again, suho's fight w the baseball team... chef's KISS), even if there are definitely shots where you can pretty clearly see the gap of space bw the hit and the person being hit (complete tangent, but i always think of this video essay every time i think about fighting choreography so i kind of judge all fighting choreo off of that lol. yes i know it's just 1 person's opinion but whatever they're right). my very 1st opinion upon finishing it was "this was an interesting adaption of the webtoon (positive)" and that p much summarizes it. i don't know if i'd ever rewatch it (kind of the case w p much everything for me though, i'm p lazy and don't enjoy re-doing things), but i'm glad i watched it in the 1st place. also i definitely do not have a network of ppl who consume korean media bc i had never heard of this show before i saw it in passing on IG but it came out literally a year ago lol... based on that, i wouldn't even be surprised if i ended up missing s2 when it 1st comes out
also real quick now that i mentioned it... the IG vid i saw was an edit/cut of sieun and suho's 1st meeting with the music "sweet little bumblebee". cannot get over how much that song does not fit them yet that was my 1st experience w this show/series
an aside
alright i waited until the very end to bring this up bc i know this is not everyone's cup of tea but. i have to mention it given the nature of my other posts on this blog. i did touch on this kind of topic earlier though so y'all should see this coming
the ship of suho and sieun :) y'all know me, i think it's cute bc i love genki-adjacent units x reserved units. but overall i think what is most engaging about this drama is the complicated relationships bw sieun, suho, and bumseok (not shipping) and how other folks play into that storm. also i have read fics and seen fanart and honestly i'm not a huge fan of the popular depiction of the ship... like babygirl sieun, suave or super excited suho... no offense, but that's not how i would characterize them... idk how to really explain bc i don't have much plans on producing a significant number of fancontent (if any), but i feel like they would be a very reserved kind of couple. like suho would barely change how he treats sieun bw friends and dating, maybe just a bit more flirtatious language just to get a rise out of sieun. maybe sieun would warm up to suho but he would still be very reserved, half the time he would still push suho off if he tried to kiss him or get handsy but in an annoyed way rather than embarrassed (if you don't let me study by god i will not be responsible for what happens next). idk, this one is less clear in my mind bc i feel like i'm getting affected by the fan stuff i'm seeing and the amt of time since finishing the show is making me lose my memories lol. btw still on the fence about some of the suggestive dialogue in the drama, maybe it was meant to just show suho was a playful character but also stfu about being a married couple in a past life... (sarcasm. but also the "stop playing hard to get" line during the pool scene got to me more since i hadn't seen it online anywhere before, really wish i understood korean so i could tell if that was an accurate translation or not)
talking about suho/sieun... honestly i was surprised when the webtoon author explicitly covered ppl seeing gray and stephen as gay... pleased there was no homophobia bw the 2 which i was honestly expecting, just them brushing it off & being like "damn ppl just don't understand our bond". but also it isn't entirely out of left field to say gray may have had some romantic feelings toward stephen, w the way he reacted to the idea of them dating, which is apparently a reaction he has never had again in the webtoon... not looking that deep into it though, same-gender-friend-crushes happen. again, i don't read the webtoon so idk where they go from there. just adds more to gray's sadness when he reflects on the past if anything
Re-reading this now post s2 release... I haven't watched s2 and idk if i will (mostly out of laziness and burnout) but i've seen enough clips and ramblings on twitter and wow. I was genuinely shocked suho features quite a bit in s2, that they deviated from the webcomic and had suho be a constant prescence in sieun's life even at eunjang - kind of makes sense since he was such a huge part of s1 and really sieun's story in the tv show so it would be kind of weird to just act like he doesn't exist after all that. I saw a tweet today or yesterday that was like "lol sieun knew suho longer asleep than awake" and i'm like goddamn fr... boy was DEDICATED to his bestie who he honestly didn't really know that well... i mean part of it is him feeling like he contributed to the series of events that led him to the coma and part of it is caring for/latching on to someone who showed him affection and closeness when he had v little of that beforehand but damn. I don't mean to make it abt shipping but whew makes it hard to be like "oh ya they are just very very good friends. Bros for life". I am glad to see tho that tv show sieun x wolf is a ship since ppl also shipped their webcomic counterparts... unfort we lost the sieun x donald ship it seems.
(I'm also very surprised at how they wrote s2's story aka [major spoilers] killing off donald na within 1 season PLUS having suho wake up at the end. I mean it's partially them not knowing if they'll have a s3 so they went all in on s2, but then wtf are they gonna talk abt in s3 if they do end up having it? I think i said i suspected this would be a 2-3 season tv show but damn.)