Nevertheless (알고있지만) Drama Review
A review of the Korean drama Nevertheless (알고있지만).
I’d never read a webtoon before, but when I saw the plot of this drama on my Netflix recommendations, I pressed play immediately. I generally hate having to watch dramas as each episode comes out slowly, because it’s the bane of my existence.
I’m not a patient person when it comes to movies and television, and, if you know me in real life, if I start getting bored with a scene I start to fast forward. I'm not the best person to watch a movie with.
But this plot (despite my burning hatred for romance and all things flirty) had me hook, line, and sinker. Our main characters go to art school and major in sculpture, so the background is a college romance at art school.
The female lead has gotten out of a relationship that has left her cynical about love, while our male lead doesn’t believe in commitment but is extremely flirty. There’s an undeniable spark between them, but both are resistant.
Content
From the beginning, we get a major hook: the girl’s name is Nabi (Korean for butterfly), and the guy (played by Song Kang, his name is Park Jae-eon) is obsessed with butterflies. He draws them, even has a tattoo of a butterfly on the back of his neck—a horrendous choice in my opinion, but power to him.
Our main character, Nabi, has been scorned by her ex-boyfriend, who she breaks up with in the opening of the show. He has made a sculpture exhibit where he has depicted her sexually in public, and has labelled the sculpture with her name, making it extremely obvious who it is depicted.
Park Jae-eon is Nabi’s hoobae, and he has a major reputation for being a playboy and going through girls. He woos Nabi by making her a glass dreamcatcher in the welding lab in the school, and then their relationship seems to evolve into that grey area between friends-with-benefits and potentially being a couple.
This begins to mess with poor, traumatized Nabi’s mind because of her past experiences with men, and she begins to spiral down this path of insecurity. Until the second male lead, her childhood friend, shows up and complicates everything.
I really enjoyed the cinematography in this drama, as well as the setting of an art school. I absolutely loved the fact that all of these students are art students because that was something I myself could relate to. I went to an art high school and then a fashion college, and while I myself am limited in the artistic realm, I absolutely love artists and their creativity.
This was a dive into that psyche with the typical romance troubles of a K-drama, since Nabi also is trying to get her senior show together and get one last sculpture that she’s passionate about.
I found myself not caring for Song Kang’s character, however, because he does come across as fake for the majority of the drama.
Nabi is right to not trust him because he seems like he’s acting and putting on a show, going through the movements of what one might want in a girlfriend and checking off his little list of what he should be doing.
But I kept watching because I loved the dynamics between the characters, their university struggles, and the beautiful shots of their daily lives. It helps that this drama is only ten episodes and was released one by one every Saturday by Netflix.
Overall Thoughts
While I mentioned the merits of this drama in the previous section, there are indeed some fair warnings to be included in this review. Both the main actors are completely stellar actors, but in this drama they tend to fall flat, reduced to an archetype where they can’t seem to broke out of this static facade.
This drama represents college very well in a way that’s universal to more Western ideologies (e.g. the concept of friends-with-benefits or even having the opportunity to major in art), which can be the most appealing draw to this one.
If there’s a season two, I hope Jae-eon fixes himself and gets his act together because no woman should be dating this man.
Rating: 3/5
