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In Twenty-5 Twenty-One—written by means of Kwon Do-eun and directed by means of Jung Ji-hyun—Min-chae stands in because the target market. She is Na Hee-do’s teenage daughter, fallen out of affection with ballet and her mom in a single shot best to run away to her grandmother’s house. She stumbles upon her mom’s diary entries and coaching logs (a fencing gold medallist) transporting us to overdue 90s and 00s infancy. Min-chae gasps at placing moments in her mom’s love tale and feels cheated by means of cliff-hangers. Similar to us.
A romantic drama has no trade having this many plot twists and cliffhangers however 2521 does and is all of the higher for it. It’s the tale of Na Hee-do (Kim Tae-ri) and Baek Yi-jin (Nam Joo-hyuk), their friendship and love, their partners in Ko Yu-rim (Bona), Ji-woong (Choi Hyun-wook) and Seung-wan (Lee Joo-myung). It has all of the dramatics—a touch during the airport and a gold medal falling off a desk in sluggish movement. However extra.
The sequence is in regards to the ephemerality of adlescent, it talks about means of rising up by means of slowing down the timelapse, it presentations an off-the-cuff put out of your mind for anhedonic interests and underlines the ones glad recollections which may be studying curves. More than one occasions within the sequence the characters behave in egocentric techniques and provides themselves credit score. Hee-do and Yi-jin cross their separate techniques early directly to both get items of lifestyles in combination or to make goals come true. As Hee-do places it, it’s certainly about how every now and then being egocentric is usually a thoughtful factor to do.
The sequence starts with South Korea’s IMF disaster of 1997 and the commercial and social privations intensely felt by means of our younger to a fault coterie. The atmosphere paperwork a bedrock to write down characters past their age, feeling and experiencing scenarios they’re a long way too delicate to enjoy. Yi-jin is pressured to rebuild his lifestyles with one foot into his twenties and an extended line of collectors in his circle of relatives’s wake. Hee-do is reasonably unaffected, but it surely takes the toll on her mom with a profession in information just for the fencing prodigy to fend for herself at eighteen.
The overdue 90s when era was once a couple of light-years out of the pocket and but inside of grab makes the tribulations confronted by means of characters shifting. Unexpectedly, lengthy distance—like a couple of hours’ force from the town—is on the a long way finish of a rainbow and measured in painful mins and miles. A cell phone is a pricey present for fogeys of restricted method and the caller ID is a characteristic that may have stored any person from embarrassment. It provides extra time to concentrate on their hurting as an alternative of what’s going down round them.
That is such a background knowledge that provides top stakes to Hee-do and Yi-jin’s friendship and eventual love tale, their dating constructed on tiny measures of kindness, a a long way larger accomplishment in comparison to the ironic distance coupled with bodily intimacy and existential dread lately. It may well be old fashioned, however actual. When they’re consensual in opting for the type of like to co-exist in, it rings true. Once they really feel actual ache because of each and every different’s movements and but again each and every different in techniques few do, it rings true.
The arcs of Ji-woong and Yu-rim and the lonesome however dissident disposition of Seung-wan be offering a welcome perception into appreciating the prevailing. The primary two are hopeful in love, the latter seldom sways from the bigger image. It’s a bond that holds the gang in combination, a bond this is hyperaware of the lives they’re main whilst appreciating the teachings realized at the approach.There have been numerous theories in regards to the drama’s arc adopted bypolarizing response to its end result. However not anything comes just about the little moments of pleasure that Twenty-5 Twenty-One was once ready to muster. Like the way it controlled to converge a lady and a lady inside of Hee-do—most commonly because of Kim Tae-Ri’s efficiency and the writing—by no means infantilized by means of any person round her. Or the non permanent shot of Yu-rim and Hee-do rubbing Ye-ji’s head earlier than their teammate’s ultimate fencing fit as she quits the game which best makes you marvel—why is quitting now not extra romanticized in popular culture?
In combination they embrace Hee-do mantra—turning tragedy into comedy as a coping mechanism. It’s onerous to not be fed on and enthralled by means of the display’s mixture of bleakness and cheer, of a direct urge to comprehend days long gone by means of. “Keep an eye on the gap”, they’re taught in fencing. Hee-do and Yi-jin aren’t star-crossed enthusiasts, they’re infrequently tragic. They’re two individuals who sought after like to last more than themselves and instinctively knew that controlling the gap was once the one approach to reach it.