High School: Love On!

I have this drama to thank for introducing me to Nam Woo-hyun and Infinite, so it's safe to say that High School: Love On! is a treasure of mine. It's also responsible for my love of Kim Sae-ron, one of the many talented young actresses right now. It's a fuzzy fantasy story, but it lacked tight writing. Alas, what might have been.

Shin Woo-hyun has everything - looks, popularity, singing and dancing talent. Now all he needs are decent surroundings. His mother abandoned him when he was young, and thanks to his classmate he's expelled from school. At least he has a loving Grandmother. little does he know his mother remarried, and is now the stepmother of a boy his age, Hwang Sung-yeol. The fates of these two boys become even more tangled once they encounter an angel. This angel is ageless, nameless, and guides souls to the afterlife without any sensitivity. She's more interested in watching drama. Well, after accidentally saving Woo-hyun when he falls from a building, she becomes human, and Woo-hyun feels obliged to take her in. She creates the name Lee Seul-bi for herself and starts living with Woo-hyun and his Grandmother, discovering the joys of living amongst people along the way, as well as the heartbreak and pain it comes with.

I can understand why people don't usually like idol actors. Nam Woo-hyun and Lee Sung-yeol honestly didn't put on great performances for the first half of the drama, but I don't think their lack of training was massively noticeable. They have plenty of chemistry with each other, if nothing else, as they're both members of pop group Infinite. Kim Sae-ron never fails to impress me; she acted mainly films before this, and always the darkest of films like A Girl at my Door, so her turnaround here as the wonder-filled cheerful Seul-bi is a nice demonstration of her versatility. She was only fourteen, and yet she managed to pull off the role of a twenty year old? That, alone, is impressive.

  It's a shame High School: Love On! was violently dragged through the mud by poor writing. Firstly it became very formulaic later in the drama - fights, separation, cuteness, repeat. Then, the focus was shifted to Woo-hyun's family drama. The useless family drama was evidently the only thing the writer could use to somehow pan out this drama to twenty episodes. It probably would have sufficed as a sixteen episode drama instead.
  In addition, after about half of the show had run it's course, Sung-yeol suddenly became crazy. I don't understand slightly why the writer decided she would the her second-lead into a self-destructive monster, I really don't. I can't imagine that it was what any of the fans would've wanted to see. The bromance was so good prior, I can't imagine why she would want to ruin it. It's beyond me. The reason I stayed was for the romance between Woo-hyun and Seul-bi. The way they so naturally became a couple, and the way they were never afraid to say how much they needed each other, touched my heart.
  The drama could have been far more successful if the writer just cast more focus on the sub-plots, all the little struggles between Seul-bi and Woo-hyun's classmates. There were plenty of interesting stories there, some which received more love than the main couple among viewers, and the tone would have remained consistent with the premise. 

Nevertheless, High School: Love On! was a sweet (if overly long) drama with a winning heroine and an adorable central romance which kept me invested despite the show's shortcomings, and a welcome fantasy twist. Although it becomes unnecessarily heavy at times, it's also chock-full of moments that remind me why I love school drama so much. The ending is sweet and absent of all the angst displayed earlier, so overall I can say I've left High School: Love On! with more good memories than bad ones, and therefore I can recommend you watch it.