Review of Weak Hero / 약한영웅 Season 1

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

When it comes to blogging, or even watching movies and whatnot, I’ve been in such a weird headspace lately. I started a new job after quite a bit of a spell of not having any besides freelance and contract work, and now that I am actually working, I’m not watching as much as I used.

Part of it is fueled by my newfound YouTube addiction, but part of it just is that I can’t stay awake long enough to get everything I want done. I haven’t even been going to the movies lately to see them in-person because I simply am just tired after I get everything else done.

Call this a regular phase of corporate America and adulting, but I want to find a balance and go back more to the things I love. Sometimes life is simply trying to find a balance between the things that keep you alive, providing food, shelter, and warmth, and the things that you actually want to spend your life enjoying.

I had been meaning to watch Weak Hero for the longest time, as I heard such good things about the show, but it took me a hot minute before ever getting to even the first episode. I did end up watching the show as a weird form of escapism from my own life—my season two review is also going up not long after this one.

Let’s get into the actual show and review! I don’t want to ramble too much in the introduction.

A top student, although physically weak, joins up with a new gang of friends to take down their school’s bullies.

Our main character in this series is Yoon Si-eun, who, at the beginning of the series, is our Weak Hero from the English title. He’s one of the top students in his class, despite his father kind of being there kind of not, and his mother being a well-known hagwon teacher who’s never actually there. He spends all of his time studying, which leads him to disassociate with his fellow students.

Things change though when the class bully, Jeon Yeong-bin, sets his sights on Si-eun. He seems like the perfect target: quiet, nerdy, and not likely to put up a resistance. And at first, despite being physically weak, he holds his ground against Yeong-bin. But when Yeong-bin sees that, he decides to escalate his threats against Si-eun.

And that’s when Si-eun becomes acquainted with Ahn Su-ho, who happens to be the strongest fighter in their class. Together with Oh Beom-seok, the son of a politician, they form a trio that fights against the bullies in their class. There are moments beyond the violence of the show where we see these kids just being teenagers, which should be normal for them.

What’s interesting about Weak Hero, in both season one and season two, is how it dramatizes school violence in Korea. Sure there’s definitely bullying issues in Korea, and at the time of typing this universities, which are seen as making or breaking young kids’ future careers, are increasingly exploring denying those with bullying records admission. However, I can see some people watching this show and thinking that maybe Korea might be a little wilder than expected.

That’s because the violence tips to a scale that reminds me of 2000s Korean cinema, albeit more school friendly. The bullies are misfits who attend class, but have a penchant for running like gangs outside of the borders of the classroom. Even sometimes the violence creeps into the classroom, as we can see in moments throughout the show.

What makes this interesting though is not only how our three main characters enter combat against the violence inflicted upon them, but also how they grow and change from it. We see how Si-eun becomes a more hardened character. Before he never used to do anything but study and keep his head down, but in a metaphorical sense he’s no longer weak and puts his head up.

Overall Thoughts

I tend to like 2000s Korean cinema, so I thought Weak Hero was tame in terms of violence compared to Korean movies as a whole, but a bit elevated compared to other school dramas I’ve seen. I do wonder if we’re starting to see more violence in Korean dramas and television as a whole as we entered the mid-2020s—is it because of changing society conditions and increased pressure against youth? Not my discipline of study right now, but I’m interested to know.

Regardless, I thought this was a well done drama. All of the actors did such a good job throughout the course of the show in making these characters come alive. They’re also fairly dynamic characters, not really static, and we got to see growth from them throughout the series even though this was only eight episodes.

I say pick this one up if you’re interested. Season one, or class one, is only eight episodes long, so it’s worth trying a few episodes before seeing if it’s something you want to keep watching. I found it to be quite interesting overall.

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