Letter #51: Alchemy of Souls (Part 2)

Good morning, Erin.
 
So, it turns out there are shows out there that aren’t Single’s Inferno 2, and one of them was the second part of Alchemy of Souls, which I’m sure you know I was eagerly anticipating after finishing the first part and which I’d been diligently keeping up with, every week—until the weekend of the finale (for aforementioned Inferno reasons).
 
Though—fear not!—I did not tarry long. I mean, I definitely took several breaks during the finale to watch So-e x Se-jun fan videos on YouTube, but I didn’t much delay the general watching of the final two episodes, in terms of proximity to their air date. Which, exciting dating-show speed bump aside, brings us to now.
 
So…did I have a good time? Was it a worthwhile follow-up? Is there any chance this whole thing was just tacked on, explaining the strange (if heart-racing) finale to Part 1? Was it great—or, rather, was it as good as something that doesn’t have Jung So-min in it can be? 
 
Only one way to find out. On to the theater! 
 
0. I did my best to avoid (most) spoilers in my letter about Part 1, but any chat about Part 2 requires spoilers for Part 1, so I’m actually going to just throw caution to the wind and give spoilers for both—so, I guess set this aside, if you haven’t watched either part and feel like you want to give them a shot (which I totally think you should). But also know that I’m going to take advantage of the assumption that you haven’t yet seen them and do what I did in the Part 1 letter: hide a big ol’ personal secret somewhere amidst all the rambling. And it will be juicier than “scented bath products,” this time. (Or will it? Maybe this is all a big troll-job. Or maybe I’m going to reveal something extremely intimate. Only one way to find out, though. What will you do???)
 
1. I quite enjoyed this semi-sequel, semi-continuation. (Of course, I’d have preferred the series to have continued with Jung So-min as Mu-deok, but…well, she’s one of the actresses I’d like an excuse to have in everything, so maybe my preference is irrelevant, here.) It’s fun, it’s tense, it’s wonderful to get more time with characters I adore—so, whatever else I can say, I think it was a success. But, much like with Part 1…was it good? Eh. It was entertaining, and I gobbled up every second of it. Even if the whole thing was just an exercise in fanservice or sort of didn’t need to exist (and there’s a fair argument that it didn’t), I appreciate it. I’d have an even harder time arguing for its objective quality than I would for Part 1, sure, but I still think it was a really good time. 
 
1A. …but something was definitely off about it. The biggest issue is probably that 10 episodes was both too long and too short for what they were doing. The story has too many moving parts to properly tell in the limited time, almost always requiring that characters walk into a scene and explain a ton of action that happened offscreen in a wildly unnatural way—and frequently enough that you’d be forgiven for thinking they were making a joke of it. But each (for lack of a better word) chapter of the story also doesn’t quite connect smoothly to the next, so they also occasionally have to paper over those gaps with time-killers, often by going back to the ol’ “hurry to one place to then hurry back to where they just were” chestnut from Part 1. 
 
1B. And did I mention no Jung So-min? Because there’s no Jung So-min, and that breaks my heart. 
 
2. …which is not to say that the caretaker girl from Sweet Home wasn’t great, because she absolutely was. It’s not easy to pull off what she did, playing both a new version of an established character and (eventually) the exact same version of the character that a different actress did…but she did it. She’s charming and energetic as the more youthful as the memory-wiped “Bu-yeon” version of herself, but she’s still got some of the mannerisms (and, at times, the cadence) of Part 1’s “Mu-deok” version of herself—and then, when she gets her memories back, she switches over (perhaps not as much as she should, but that almost doesn’t matter) to a pretty solid Mu-deok impression. And then yet another character when she comes under the control of the real Bu-yeon’s great-(etc etc etc)-grandmother. I don’t know that I’d say her performance needs to be taught in acting schools or anything like that, but she still nailed it. And, as she repeatedly reminds us, she’s pretty. Which always helps.
 
3. Speaking of the cast, though—this is something I totally missed in Part 1: Uk’s (formerly) bleachy-haired pal was the villain/antagonist kid from All of Us are Dead. Blew my frikkin’ mind when I found that out. He’s such an a**hole in that but a total sweetie in this. I mean, sure the characters have totally different haircuts—and you know I have trouble when people change their haircuts—but he’s just so ugly (like, as a person) in All of Us are Dead that I think it affected the way I literally saw him, so I’d never connect that the actor was the same. 
 
4. Everybody gets an updated look, in Part 2, to show the passage of time, but I give first prize to…to…um, Swordmaiden Girl (Bu-yeon’s sister, who loves Bleachy-Haired Pal), who looks fantastic. I mean, I think they just slightly adjusted the front of her hair, but it was enough to make an impact. I mean, I also liked her whole hardened-by-misfortune vibe (fleeting though it was), which I think changed her appearance in a way not dissimilar to the way being an a**hole in All of Us are Dead did to Bleachy-Haired Friend. Not to the point of making her unrecognizable, of course, but…still. Thumbs up. 
 
5. …which still didn’t qualify her for the #BestGirl Wars, which (this time) was waged between Part 1 incumbent Maidservant Kim, the ever-wonderful Excessive English Girl, and “new” face Bu-yeon. And the winner…is…wait, I didn’t actually write down an answer in my notes? That’s surprising. And it also means that I will have to decide on the fly. So, um, #BestGirl…is…is…I’m giving it to Bu-yeon. Because Maidservant Kim doesn’t get much room to shine like she did in Part 1 (though she’s still awesome), they gave Excessive English Girl hair extensions to show the passage of time (and I like her in a bob!), and Bu-yeon’s most of the reason this whole Part 2 thing doesn’t fall on its face. She’s great.
 
6. Excessive English Girl is still awesome, by the way. Though I am quite displeased that they killed her off. I was 100% sure we were going to get a Yul x So-i (that’s EEG) ending, even if she wasn’t fully redeemed by the end because of just how much treachery she was a part of. They’re just too interesting a pair for them not to have gotten together in some sense. She’s as intuitive and clever as he is, but she’s also a dark reflection of him because she’s committed so fully (and for so long) to nefarious methods for survival. For a season that focused on the balance between light and shadow, I thought they’d have gotten a more satisfying conclusion to their little arc. 
 
6A. I’m glad he was there for her death, though, and knew she’d died protecting him. And that he then went ham on the baddies for it. (Well, he tried to, at least.)
 
6B. Oh! And, when Yul comes to her rescue, here, he’s actually in the exact same outfit he wore when he saved her (with the umbrella) in Part 1. Which is great.
 
6C. And I liked that, in the little skip-ahead ending, he’s still got So-i on his mind, because one of the students he recruits as his first set of pupils is So-i’s assistant. 
 
6D. Yul’s still the best-written character in the series, by the way. Fully consistent throughout.
 
6E. But, yes, I wanted more EEG. In this. And everything. She’s one of my absolute favorites. I’m so happy she’s showing up everywhere, these days. 
 
7. Thank God I only watched Part 1 a couple of months ago. Everyone else had to wait soooo much longer than I did. And if it was killing me to wait…yikes.
 
8. The cast is pretty much just the same people as in Part 1, but there were a couple of actors playing very minor (and new) characters who I recognized right away—and they were both at the start of Episode 1 as the alcohol-makers:

• the magistrate from 100 Days My Prince as the lead alcohol-maker

• the idiot older brother from Bad/Crazy as one of the other two alcohol-makers

 
9. Bu-yeon pulls this AMAZING face in Episode 3 when Uk discovers that she’s let people believe he knocked her up (as the reason she’s gone off and “married” him), and I desperately wanted to gif it—but the look is far too brief to work effectively as a gif. But I did try. 
 
9A. I did, however, make a gif from Part 1 of a sulky Mu-deok telling Uk that he’d have to get through her to take a nap. And it makes me very happy. 
 
10. I love Uk’s memorial graveyard for all the soul shifters he’s killed—because, of course, it is really all about Mu-deok. But, further, it’s about how she opens the doors to looking at the soul shifters not just as monsters or aberrations but as tragedies, people who fell to some greater weakness. And, as such, he sees them as worth memorializing. And I like that. (...and I hope it was a deliberate thing, rather than just something I’m reading into.)
 
11. Did I mention in my Part 1 letter that I really like the swords in this show? Because I really like the swords in this show. (I miss Uk’s sword, though. I like that he’s using Naksu’s sword, obviously, but the narrative significance of it doesn’t outweigh that I really liked those stupid glowy “constellations” on his family sword. Not that I don’t like the look of Naksu’s sword, of course. But…does it have stupid glowy “constellations” in its blade? No.)
 
12. I feel silly for taking this long to connect this, but the yin-yang jade from Part 1 being red and blue (rather than black and white) is because the yin-yang on the Korean flag is red and blue. 
 
12A. Also, fun fact: the old Joseon naval flag had “constellations” on it, as well. No yin-yang, in the traditional sense, but it definitely invokes the blue-red balance at its center (which seems to have been a staple of the country’s flags). It’s a little busy, but…it’s also a bit of a sensory overload, at first glance, and so comes across as a bit alien—which I’m sure it did its fair share of scaring the enemy. Which is practical, if nothing else. 
 
13. There’s a dance sequence in Episode 4 that features women moving about with big, flowy sleeves, and boy-howdy do I love big flowy sleeve dancing. I mean, I’ve seen a bunch of types of dancing over my life (my mom and sister love dance), and it’s not generally something that speaks to me—but you get a handful of ladies doing something that involves tossing their arms about to make vaguely ribbon-y stuff go up in the air, and I am rapt. So, yeah, I was very excited for this, when it started. I only wish it had gone on longer. Like, if they’d turned it into a Gene Kelly-esque 20-minute dance sequence in the middle of the episode, I wouldn’t even have complained about them wasting storytelling time.
 
14. I thought it was funny that no one seemed at all concerned that Bu-yeon wasn’t blind. One of the key plot elements of Part 1, and everyone acts like this is just fine. After getting scammed by that fake blind girl whose blood was manufactured to make it seem like she had special Jin family magic, they just accept that the girl who can see is Bu-yeon because her mom—who fully believed Excessive English Girl was the real daughter—says it’s her. (Actually, they may have addressed this with a throwaway line that I missed, but…if so, it’s a lot of weight to carry on a throwaway line.)
 
15. Speaking of Bu-yeon—or, rather, of Naksu as Bu-yeon and previously as Mu-deok: I thought it was amusing that the very worldly Mu-deok was so set on waiting for their wedding night to get intimate with Uk, back in Part 1, but the much more innocent Bu-yeon was ready to bang him on the side of the road a minute or two after he steals her away from the wedding. There’s plenty to say that explains the significance of Naksu’s having all her memories while being Mu-deok versus not having the burden of them as Bu-yeon, leaving her memory-wiped self with a much more youthful yen for experience while her world-weary self would want to keep her romance with Uk as pure as possible (as a means of separating it from the darkness of her life before him)...but it’s still funny. 
 
16. I mentioned before that the script uses A LOT of exposition to make up for not having the space to let story beats play out, and there are more than a few times when the actors fall victim to elements of the script, as well: there are times when the non-expository dialogue is asked to do a lot of work in getting something across to us, and the actors seem not to be able to—or, perhaps, inspired to—get the appropriate nuances across as they deliver their lines. It doesn’t make me love the show any less, but it’s only fair to point it out. 
 
16A. …that said, Jung So-min isn’t in this one, which does make me love it less. (Did I mention that she wasn’t in it? Because she’s not, and it breaks my heart.)
 
17. Uk is way more calculating, in Part 2, which, like Naksu’s sword, is a kind of memorializing of Mu-deok, who was the one always thinking chess moves ahead.
 
18. Speaking of this more calculating version of Uk…I have a MAJOR complaint about the portion of Episode 7 where Uk gets involved in saving Yul from his blood parasite: essentially, after Lady Jin turns down his request for help (since she’s the only one who can save Yul), Uk threatens to kill everyone if Yul dies, which makes everyone force Lady Jin to help, lest they kill her for getting them killed. But, once she agrees to help (lest she get killed), she tells Uk that she’ll only help if he sends Bu-yeon back to her. And I was screaming at the TV over this—because what in the f*** is she doing trying to negotiate with Uk, at this point? She’s already been checkmated: she either saves Yul or dies. She’s already said she’ll help…but reneging on this just defaults to the previous position, which is that Uk f***ing kills her (and everybody else—or everybody else kills her for going against them because they don’t want to get killed by Uk). She has no leverage. She had leverage before, when Uk originally went to ask her to help. She could have bargained then, but now the thing she’s getting out of this deal is her life in exchange for saving Yul’s. And yet Uk agrees to her terms—after he’s already won the negotiation. It bothered me to no end, this scene. (To say nothing of how they change location in between pieces of this interaction—but that’s a much larger discussion for another time.)
 
19. Okay, if you’ve made it this far, it’s time for my very personal revelation: I typically wear fun socks to work. I know, I know—I don’t seem the type. But I’ve got about 80 million pairs of fun designs, bright colors, and cartoon characters. And you’re the only one in the office who knows. 
 
19A. …okay, okay, that’s not the kind of thing you came here to see. I mean, it’s certainly more personal than letting you know I’ve started to enjoy different kinds of soap (What? It totally is. ‘Cus, originally, I just switched to socks with simple patterns, because they’re easier to pair up after being in the wash. But then it became about irreverence. Rarely does anyone have cause to see my socks, so wearing a fully unprofessional pair to the office is my very private way of sticking it to the man, as it were. Because, as much as I am all about rules and order, I am equally as much someone who hates being told what to do.), but it’s not really…juicy, is it? Well, fear not: there’s a 19B. And it’s the real deal.
 
19B. I’ve told you many times that I’ve been having a lot of fun with all the K-drama recommendations you’ve given me over the last…gosh, it’s been 14 months. Wow. But, yeah, I’ve said it dozens of times, and it’s the truth: I’ve been having a blast. I mean, sure, I was sort of falling off of my interest in anime (in that I mean I wasn’t as excited for new shows as I had been), so it was a fortuitous turn that you set me on this new and exciting entertainment path—but it’s more than that. Not to make this sound all dramatic (which is to say, this is all going to sound very dramatic, but I don’t want to make the details of it sound more important than they are), but I have spent a long time being…adrift. Rudderless and lost. Indifferent to, like, everything. Like my life ended many, many years ago—but I still have to fill time until it’s officially over. And I am so…so…tired. Of so many things. In so many ways. (I told you it was going to sound dramatic.) And then, almost offhandedly, you tell me to watch Hotel Del Luna. And…suddenly I felt this spark of excitement—something I hadn’t felt in I don’t know how long. A bright enough, hot enough spark that I couldn’t just keep it to myself. So I made notes and wrote you a letter. Because so much was bubbling up inside me, and I just…needed you to know. And then, as I moved on to the next recommendation and then the next and all the ones after, it felt less and less like a neat new distraction or pastime and more and more like a journey. Which sounds ridiculous, but—let’s be honest—I’m ridiculous. Writing 200 pages-worth of letters is ridiculous. Mailing a short novella to your home about a reality dating show is ridiculous. But I have felt moved to do it—when I have not felt moved to do anything in a very, very long time. And I have never once forgotten that this started with you. (Much as you may regret that, now.)
 
19C. So…bet you wish the sock thing had been the big reveal, now, huh?
 
20. I cannot believe what they did with the whole thing at the end about the king and the heads of the other families secretly wanting to be soul shifters so they could live forever. Like, where did that even come from? I mean, the king literally refuses to allow his suffering wife—who turned out to have been soul-shifted into the burned body of the villain from Part 1—to even entertain the idea of using soul shifting to get into a body that wasn’t constantly in pain, and yet we discover that he was secretly planning to do exactly that for himself (and maybe her, too) the whole time? Come on, man,
 
21. Speaking of: the king and queen both have good reasons for this villainous arc they’re both on (one has been body-swapped against her will into a painful husk, and the other is paranoid over his illness), but the writers don’t have space to get into it anywhere near as much as it deserves—and, more importantly, as much as it needs. 
 
22. The not-kiss that happens when Bu-yeon has to move an energy marble from her mouth to an unconscious Yul’s mouth was probably the hottest kiss in the whole series. And I’m not kidding.
 
23. …except yes I am, because I wrote that note about 20 minutes before the episode ended—and it ended with Bu-yeon and Uk having one of the HOTTEST kisses I’ve seen on screen, let alone in a K-drama. Like, I was impressed with the Nam Do-san/Little Sister kiss on Start-Up, but this? Blows it out of the water. Like, it is legit steamy. Wowza. 
 
And…yeah, that’ll do. 
 
This was great. I mean, it wasn’t, but it totally was. I love this series. And they end in such a way that they could totally do a Part 3, if they want to. And why shouldn’t they?
 
…well, apart from Jung So-min not being in it anymore. Which, I don’t think I’ve said, broke my heart. 
 
—Daryl