Twenty-Five Twenty-One: A K-drama review

Twenty-Five Twenty-One is a coming-of-age drama that aired from February 12th to April 3rd 2022. It stars the actress Kim Tae-ri, to who I am being introduced for the first time in a drama. I have previously seen her in the movie ‘space sweepers’. She stars in other dramas like ‘The handmaiden’ and ‘Mr. sunshine’. Nam Joo-hyuk plays the male lead, and I have seen him in ‘Weightlifting fairy Kim Bok Joo, ‘Start up’ and the list goes on. There are a lot of cast members that were interesting to follow including Bona as Ko Yu-rim, Choi Hyun-wook as Moon Ji-woong, and Lee Joo-Myung as Ji Seung-Hwan. The story follows the friendships and relationships between the group.

This was my first k-drama with Kim Tae-ri, and I think that she is a phenomenal actress, she was able to balance the youthfulness of knowing you can do anything, with the seriousness of understanding that the world is not kind. She was such a joy to watch, and I could not praise her enough. Hee-do was a lovable character to follow and I like how we got to see her mature from a junior in high school to a full-fledged adult, she had intense emotions and was able to express them in captivating ways. She also loved hard and did so unapologetically.

Nam Joo-hyuk showed so much growth with this drama, you could see that he has taken his acting to another level, and I think that out of everything I've seen him in, his performance in this show was the best. It’s not because the other ones were bad, but because he has proven that there is no limit to how much you can enhance talent.

This drama was so overwhelmingly good. It had so many good elements, and it had well-timed pacing. There is honestly not much I can fault the director for. While watching the drama I could feel how much work the actors had put in through their emotions. It could not have been any better.

But as much as I loved this show, I also absolutely hated it, in the best possible way. It was so heart-wrenching and unbelievably sad, really a rollercoaster of emotions. The friendships, the couples, the struggles of being an athlete, the struggle of going from having it all to having to start your life from the beginning, the burnouts from high school, and the struggle of loving so much that it hurts.

Na Hee-do and Baek Yi-jin were an engaging couple to follow. The concept of loving someone in different ways was interesting to see. And the concept of being in love with one another but being able to see that staying in the relationship will cause more harm than good. I understood why the breakup had to happen, and I liked how realistically it was portrayed. There was the first breakup where Hee-do took the lead, the second one where things got messy and hurtful things were said, and the third one where nothing really need to be said and they allowed themselves to feel those emotions together. It just goes to show that two people can have so much love for each other, but it doesn't mean the relationship will be perfect.

The concept of being a hard worker and doing the best you can is another one that is needed to be potrayed. From day one Hee-do had been passionate about fencing, and even though she went through a slump, she never gave up, even though she was absolutely crushed from meeting her hero who did not live up to her expectations, she still had that determination. But on the flip side, the show also explored that it is okay to be tired and that giving up can be as much a challenge as staying. With Yi-jin, he went from living life with the notion of having a family that he could fall back on, to having the weight of the world put on him. It was not a fair situation, but he never deemed it unfair. I especially sympathized with him when he realized that his brother was embarrassed by him because he sold fish at the market. That whole scene broke my heart, and the sadness in Yi-jin's eyes when he confronted his brother broke me even more. There is a quote that he made during the show that really struck me. Something along the lines of

‘Not living your dream doesn’t mean you failed at life, and living your dream doesn’t mean you’re successful either’

This was so important for the viewers of this show to see, sometimes it can feel like not having a dream makes you lack in some way but looking at how Yi-jin never planned to be a reporter but yet thrived in that field and became so passionate about it proves that your life is truly what you make it to be.

The alternations with the flashbacks were a love-hate relationship for me. It prepared me for how the ending would be because obviously, Yi-jin was not in the picture. Sometimes I just wanted to get to the next scene after a cliffhanger on the last episode, and then it would start the next episode with a flashback and I don't think they were that important to the storyline, except for when the whole storyline ended because you could see the progression from Hee-do as a junior in high school to Hee-do as a mother to a child.

The side characters were a pleasant and essential addition to the drama and the show did a good job fleshing them out as multi-dimensional individuals. It felt like the show was following different characters through their life stories and adventures together.

Seung-hwan had those thoughts about how boring school was even though she was the smartest person in her class. She wanted things to change, which we could see with her standing up to the teacher who physically abused students. It was nice to see that being bored or fed up in school doesn't go hand in with being a bad student. I also enjoyed the exploration of a platonic relationship between a boy and a girl with no undertones of romance (with Ji-woong).In the other shows I have watched, it is not often that I see them just being friends with no slight indication of jealousy or them getting together.

Ji-woong had the band, and he showcased that you can get really bad grades, but it is not the end of the world, at the end, it was the things that he knew how to do that ended up making him successful. I enjoyed every scene that he was in and he had the most charming relationship with Yu-rim.

Yu-rim was quite complicated. Her position was understandable, she had the responsibility of having to take care of her family for a long time. I just could not let go of how much animosity she had towards Hee-do in the beginning. She explained that it was because she already knew her from when she was a child, but I don't think there's a justification for her being that cold and then just immediately switching it off after finding out that Hee-do had actually been there for her longer and more deeply than she would have imagined.

Overall, this was honestly one of the best-produced shows I've watched. The characters, the cinematography, the time period it was set in, the emotions that were portrayed so nicely the relationships, and the ending. Rating: 9/10