I Love Yoo 151 Analysis (pt.1) - The Masquerade Party
Episode 151 is... intense. We see the culmination of what's been bubbling under the surface for both Shin-ae and Yeong-gi... and their moment in the rain is filled with call-backs and references to previous moments they’ve shared, and feelings that have been building under the surface. And some stuff that’s completely new (apparently).
Upon learning of Yeong-gi’s sentencing and his real name, Shin-ae decides to confront him. She feels a slew of heavy emotions that confuse her.
“I feel like shit. Why do I feel like shit? Shouldn’t I be pissed?”
Although she feels disappointment over having been lied to (and expects herself to be angry), her intense emotional response is instead caused not by a sense of betrayal but rather a more pressing issue — the imminent loss of her friend.
This is what she finds intimidating in Ep. 133, when she reflects on how Yeong-gi seemed “out of reach”. It was not his aptitude at work, but rather this sense of her not being able to reach him that she found intimidating.
This has been a recurrent idea since the formal, Shin-ae wants to bridge the distance and reach him, be there for him. But the events around him, and perhaps her own inability to understand him prevent her from doing so.
And now that subconscious fear has come to fruition; she didn’t reach him, she didn’t know what he was dealing with and now she is in the process of losing him. She “feels like shit” because the impending sense of losing Yeong-gi has overtaken, along with a complicated mix of concern, guilt, sadness and grief.
These emotions are so strong it pushes Shin-ae to action, and she tracks him down at his school to confront him – a last ditch effort to “save” him. Him being her friend. Him being Yeong-gi.
The loss of “Yeong-gi” is further emphasized by the reveal of his name — it feels as though the Yeong-gi she once knew is already on his way to being gone. And the one who’s left would be Nolan Oliver T. Lochlainn.
But she doesn’t know Nolan.
After Yeong-gi ignores Shin-ae, she begins to voice her feelings of betrayal:
“I met this person once, weird fella. He offered himself as someone I could talk to… Because he could tell I was putting up a front…"
Yeong-gi and Shin-ae are drawn to each other because they relate to their feelings of hurt beneath their outward appearances. (If we're being specific Yeong-gi is initially drawn to Shin-ae due to understanding how it feels to put on a mask to hide one's own misery. Later, Shin-ae reciprocates interest because he extends a hand, letting her remove her mask).
This focus on facades, including the flashback dialogue at the beginning of Ep. 151 ("Will you be my partner?"), brings into focus something that may have long been forgotten, the beginning of Shin-ae and Yeong-gi's relationship — the masquerade.
The Masquerade party where the two meet, symbolically represent this similarity — how they wear masks to blend in with the others and hide what they feel.
Perhaps the poor quality of Shin-ae's mask in relation to Yeong-gi's, and how it's immediately removed at the party reflects the "poorer quality" of her deception.
Yeong-gi also bumps into Shin-ae, causing her to drop her mask. He notices it and picks it up from the ground.
Later, when Yeong-gi asks Shin-ae to be his partner, he is wearing his mask. And when Shin-ae accepts his offer, she is not wearing hers.
When Shin-ae accepts his offer to be "partners" (friends) later in the comic, she chooses to trust him without her facade. But Yeong-gi has his mask on even when he asks to be partners, and continues to wear it after she accepts.
Additionally, Yeong-gi's mask is on his face, making it symbolically indistinguishable from his actual face to Shin-ae. In contrast, Yeong-gi not only causes Shin-ae to drop her mask, but is also in possession of it throughout and by the end of the party, emphasizing how he easily notices and differentiates between the mask and Shin-ae, as it is separate from her.
When we compare the two and how they wear their masks, Shin-ae is significantly more straightforward with her feelings. She isn't very great at lying and hiding her disdain for others, such as with Yui, when Randulph insults Yeong-gi to gauge her reaction, or during her falling out with Maya.
Instead, when she does don her mask, it's done out of:
compassion for others — she tries to stay strong for her father
self-preservation and protection — she has been hurt and terribly bullied before. Why trust others who may only hurt you in the end?
emotional repression — she has a bad relationship to her own emotions and uses artificial stoicism to convince herself that she’s okay. If she acts like it, maybe she'll feel like it.
Yeong-gi by contrast… is far more manipulative in his deception. He has:
hidden his deal with Kousuke from Shin-ae, carefully distancing himself from her without her knowing
Managed to make his friends think he was fine for years
Lied about his abilities in school
Faked his left-handedness to have writing that makes him seem more incompetent
So what we see is that Shin-ae, who is actually very honest, reaches a point where she lets down her facade quicker than Yeong-gi and becomes emotionally open. And she would never be capable of pretending she was emotionally close to someone. This may be part of the reason why she doesn't explicitly and consciously notice Yeong-gi's distance — she herself is honest, why wouldn't someone she trusts be too?
But Yeong-gi is wholly capable of being deceiving. He originally tries the route of least resistance (slowly cutting off Shin-ae), but now being confronted, he chooses a more aggressive approach — pretending to not care for her at all.
However, we cannot forget their similarities — Yeong-gi’s "deception", despite being more convoluted, is born from the same reasons as Shin-ae.
Yeong-gi is just trying to protect himself. Yeong-gi hasn't ever felt he could be honest with anyone about anything, even the most minute details (like his capability and potential, even his right-handedness... which is frightening).
But when it comes to his relationship with Shin-ae, he’s trying to protect her from himself.
But how could Shin-ae understand this convoluted mess of sincerity and insincerity? She cares about him, she trusts him, she wants him in her life, but he still says no.
This disconnect in how the characters act and their desires is what results in this heartbreaking falling out. Shin-ae dropped her mask a long time ago, but she now learns that Yeong-gi never did.
Could the boy who asked to be partners, who introduced himself as Yeong-gi, who extended his hand to help her... have just been a facade this whole time?
(we're gonna answer that question — in the next part since you can only put 10 pictures in a post — and spoilers: no. Part 2 focuses on what is genuine and what we can see behind the mask.)
