“Flowering Heart”and the best dieting episode I’ve seen in a show for little girls.
Ok, so if guys have been following me for a while, you know I’ve been interested in the South Korean series “Flowering Heart” for a while, and that it recently received a dub that is being released on Youtube. I expected to like this show, but it has done something that really surprised me.
(Note: Each FH episode is 10 minutes longer but ever episode is a 2-parter, so ’ll treat episode 5 “Diet of Despair” and episode 6 “True Beauty” as one episode for this post.)
Meet Juyeon. She classmate of the three main characters, and is overweight. During a scene in which the class is receiving school physicals, she is at first insecure over the perfect weight of the girl in front of her. She is then teased by the boys behind her. She then decides to run away, saying she’ll do it “later”, as this made her too scared to weigh herself in front of people.
She later goes to the “Problem-solving Club”, run by the three main characters, asking for help dieting. She is seen to have serious self-worth issues when she sees the character Trump (yes, all the characters kept their original names and they didn’t change his. I’m sad too.) leave the PSC building. She then thinks to herself “why do people only like those who are good-looking?”.
With help from the PSC, Juyeon later starts exercising with Min as her couch. This doesn’t last long, because Juyeon receives a bomb-shell. It is revealed Juyeon was dieting only to impress a boy she likes. It is revealed the boy needs to leave South Korea and move to New York, and Juyeon is devastated. The next day, she starts binge-eating out of despair. She is so ashamed she let herself do this she says she’s done dieting.
As this is a magical girl series, Min (pictured above) transforms into a personal trainer to help convince Juyeon to not give up so easy. This is where the show started surprising me. They tell her she shouldn’t focus on dieting for a boy, she should be dieting for herself. After showing an exercise montage, Juyeon weighs herself. All of the girls congratulate her, Juyeon comments “but I only lost 2 and a half kilograms!”. The girls then tell her that’s fine. Dieting doesn’t happen overnight, and losing weight too fast can lead to even worse problems. They put a huge emphasis of pacing yourself.
And here is when the show got really good.
Juyeon’s crush is leaving much earlier than expected. She feels she has not made enough progress in her diet, so she decides not to confess to him. They also show the extent of her bullying, and that the boys she likes was the only one sticking up for her.
Then, the obligatory magical girl mascot, Chess says this.
“Who says somebody can only confess after succeeding on their diet! What’s important is her heart!”
Ari then transforms into a stylist to give Juyeon a confidence boost. They all comment on how pretty she is, despite having not lost any significant weight. Her beauty was there all along, she just wasn’t being confident in it. She confesses to the boy, and they agree to swap phone numbers so they can stay in touch. She didn’t need to lose weight, she just needed to love herself.
Many dieting episodes have similar morals, but I have yet to see any executed like this. Juyeon is adorable, and I hope she becomes a recurring character as the show progresses.
If you would like to watch the show, you can find it here.
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