What came as a bit of a surprise on the 2022 bingo card was the anime adaptation of WEBTOON hit LOOKISM, an action-packed rollercoaster of a manhwa that has garnered a huge fandom since the beginning of its original serialization in 2014. With more adaptations of huge WEBTOON IPs coming in the future, Netflix has announced the LOOKISM anime, which will be fairly unique in having an original anime adaptation with Korean as the original language.
The upcoming LOOKISM was slated to make its debut on the Netflix streaming platform on Friday, November 4; however, given the national period of mourning following the horrific Itaewon Halloween tragedy over last weekend in which 156 people lost their lives, the series' release has been postponed.
Plot Summary
LOOKISM, created by Park Tae-Jun, follows the life of Park Hyeong Suk ("Daniel Park" in some translations), a short, overweight, and unattractive loner who comes from a poor family and is ruthlessly bullied every single day. To escape his biggest bully Lee Tae Sung (sometimes known as "Logan Lee") he moves away from his old neighbourhood to attend school Jae Won High School in Seoul.
Jae Won is a vocational high school notorious for its liberal educational practices and highly eccentric but interesting students. One day, Hyeong Suk wakes up and finds himself in an attractive body and finally feels like he can have the kind of life that he often dreams of, but he doesn't realize how difficult it will be to keep a secret quite like this.
Unique Animation & Korean Voice Acting
One of the things that stands out about the LOOKISM manhwa is the high quality of the art and the interesting character design that leans more towards a realistic visual impression. As seen in the trailer, the animation is going to be something comparable to that of another 2022 original Netflix anime, Tekken: Bloodline; however, there is a vibrance to the art in the original manhwa that can be expected in the anime series if the source material has been translated well by Studio Mir (DOTA: Dragon’s Blood), which is in charge of production.
Previous anime adaptations of Korean comics have often gone in the direction of having the story, character names and jargon reprised for a Japanese-speaking cast; however, if the trailers are anything to go by, LOOKISM is going to have a Korean cast of voice actors for the series, something that does not happen often enough with Korean IPs. At the current moment, the LOOKISM cast includes Shim Kyu-Hyuk, Han Shin, Hwang Chang-Yung, Ryu Seong-Gon and Jeong Jae-Heon.
Things Can Get... Dark
While the plot summary may paint LOOKISM out to be largely a slice of life, the series is actually an intense thriller packed with mysteries, hard-hitting fights, and even action-packed gang wars to come much later in the story. With such a combat focused title being animated, it would only make sense to expect production to be very focused on having those intense moments truly shine. The fights, while exciting, are only a fraction of the kinds of violence that the series may subject its viewers to, should it be a faithful adaptation of the original manhwa.
The series gets into various themes and explores levels of human depravity that can be disturbing at times, and the series delves into spaces that are a far cry from the basic plot. Hyeong-Suk's life gets more colourful after getting his second body; however, he becomes increasingly more involved in dangerous things. The original LOOKISM manhwa has dedicated entire arcs to the detrimental effects of cults; animal cruelty; runaways and the grimy underground of child trafficking in Korea; slavery; the prison industrial complex in relation to minors; stalking; domestic abuse and various other kinds of intense storylines. While it is often comical, lighthearted and even heartwarming, LOOKISM can get... intense.
A Sweet Protagonist
One of the LOOKISM series' best elements is the main character, Park Hyeong-Suk. Despite all the horrible things he goes through, he is perhaps one of the kindest characters in the entire cast, and his relationship with his mother is one of the most emotionally-charged aspects of his origin story. Despite being treated terribly for a long time, his focus is largely on making life easier for his mother at first, and even as the story gets more and more unbelievable over time.
As Hyeong-Suk gets stronger and makes more friends along the way, he finds people who rely on him more and more, and even though the base abilities of his new body are way better than the one he was born with, his main ambition throughout the series is to train his real body and his mind at night when his "more attractive" day-body is resting. Due to his positive attitude and kind heart, Hyeong-Suk also ends up on the radar of various love-interests, but that's for much later in the series.
Interesting Characters
While the series does get zany and over-the-top in a lot of its significant moments, it is largely set in a world not very much unlike the real world. The double-body phenomenon that Hyeong-Suk experiences is a total mystery from the series perspective, and while there is an arc where he begins to understand the origins of the body a little more than he did at first, it only happens much later in the story, too far in to be of major significance at this early stage. It does; however, open up the story to more phenomena and occurrences that are in the realm of impossible.
Many of the characters who emerge in the series are incredibly powerful, capable of superhuman feats and sustaining grotesque levels of damage. There are a vast number of interesting personalities that emerge in the LOOKISM manhwa, and many of them quickly become companions of the main character in a fashion not very much unlike a Shounen title.
Overarching Narrative
With the series being titled "LOOKISM", viewers can expect the story to be reliant on the idea that attractive people are more favoured in society than those deemed to be unattractive. As such, viewers should expect a particularly myopic view of what beauty and attractiveness are, especially regarding the reasons why Hyeong-Suk's bullies subject him to such ruthless treatment.
Be that as it may; however, the story is truly about Hyeong-Suk's overcoming of his own mental limitations, the trauma of being bullied so viciously for most of his life, and his desire to work on himself so that he can be a happy, healthy person with strong friendships. In various ways, Hyeong-Suk is similar to many Shonen protagonists who begin their stories as downtrodden or alienated characters in some respect and are slowly working towards their version of greatness. No new release date has been announced for LOOKISM as yet.