Letter #143: What Comes After Love

Good morning, Erin.

…I just watched the latest YouTube video from Ju-mi, the lawyer from Heart Signal 4, during which she gets ready to go out and buy a new Christmas tree—and she must have spent at least 20 minutes putting on makeup. Like, not that we watch the whole thing, but we see enough of it to guess how long it would have taken. And…gosh, that’s a lot of effort. For going to buy a Christmas tree. 

I mean, look, she can put on as much or as little makeup as she wants for whatever reasons she wants—and I’m not going to poo-poo the outcome, because she looked great—I’m just saying…I was surprised, is all. It’s not the kind of effort I would have made just to run to the store.

Though, to be fair, Ju-mi has way more self-respect than I do.

Plus, I guess you never know when you’re going to run into someone special, so best to be prepared. Unless being a bit of a mess is part of the charm that wins over that special someone, of course. 

Which, golly gosh, just so happens to be a great segue for getting into the topic of today’s letter, What Comes After Love?, which starts with our heroine frantically trying to gather up all the things that have accidentally spilled out of her overstuffed suitcase in front of the train station exit—catching the eye of the handsome boy who rushes over to help.

But, with a title like that, will it be smooth sailing for our protagonists? Will it be tumult after failure—or the slow realization that love is only the start of the journey? 

Fortunately for you, I have all the answers—and now so do you! Well, unless you’ve already watched this series, then you will have already had the answers. Or maybe you’ve read the novel it’s adapted from. Or you’ve just looked at the poster and deduced the entire plot. Y’know, that’s probably exactly what happened. I don’t know why that wasn’t the first thing I thought of. It seems so obvious, now that I’ve said it. 

Still—do you mind if I share some thoughts?

1. In point of fact, our heroine (Hong) did not look at all a mess in her opening frazzle. Because she’s played by Lee Se-young, so, of course, she looked extremely pretty. Just a bit panicked. And, yes, she probably did have her face all done up. I yield to my betters. 

2. As Hong’s flight from Korea reaches Japan, the stewardess makes all the requisite announcements about buckling up and the weather and all that—but, importantly, she also makes these announcements in Japanese…including correctly employing the honorific -sama when addressing the “ladies and gentlemen” on the flight. (See? It’s not hard, Gyeongseong Creature.)

3. I think Lee Se-young is a great actress with a ton of talent…and she was wasted in this. She’s very good at doing what’s there on the page, but there isn’t much on the page for her to do. She’s unsurprisingly charming when the script needs her to be happy, she sobs from the core of her being when the script needs her to release her pent-up sorrow—but she also spends A LOT of the show in this cold, stoic funk that the script thinks is how best to represent a person trying to make the best of a situation she knows is never going to give her what she truly wants. Perhaps it’s a totally realistic portrayal, but, as I’ve mentioned in the past, being stoic or deadpan is more complicated than simply not showing emotions—in terms of acting. You have to be able to not show emotion while simultaneously showing the audience the emotions you’re suppressing. There are certainly moments when you will be robotic, and those moments can be very powerful. But the risk of monotony is quite high, and whatever direction Lee Se-young was given regarding this was just not good enough—whether because she was told to act like this or because they could not get her to adequately adjust her performance (or, worst of all, they let her make this acting choice). It wasn’t anywhere near as bad as Kim Yoo-jung’s total miscast in My Demon, but there’s a similar sense of “but but but you have her at your disposal!” to it, in my mind. So, that was disappointing. 

3A. Of course, to me, the whole production was a little…lower budget than I’d think would attract someone of her calibre. (That said, I might have a higher opinion of her than Korea does, so take that assessment with a grain of salt.) But, whether that’s true or not, I can totally see why she might have been attracted to the production: she’d have to do most of it in Japanese. 

3B. Yes, with so much of the story taking place in Japan or dealing with people who have come to Korea from Japan, Hong spends more time speaking Japanese than she does Korean—which is absolutely the kind of challenge that would excite an actor. And, amateur though I am, I thought Lee Se-young’s Japanese was great. She spoke quickly, confidently, naturally—to the point where I was shocked to find out that she doesn’t speak Japanese. I had assumed she was relatively fluent, but apparently she just started studying when she got the role and couldn’t really hold much of a conversation with her Japanese co-star. At least, that’s how she described it. If I had to guess, I’d say she was already at least a little familiar with the language, maybe had taken it in school, but…maybe she’s just that good at faking it. 

3C. Y’know, now that I’m thinking about it, Claudia Kim spoke a whole lot of Japanese as Lady Maeda in Gyeongseong Creature, and I never thought about whether she knew the language or was just faking it. Huh. That’s interesting. 

3D. …also, speaking of how to do highly controlled emotion properly: Claudia Kim’s Lady Maeda. 

3E. One last thing about Lee Se-young’s performance, though: she has to do an awful lot of running, since Hong’s morning routine is going for a run around a lake, and…she looks pretty okay while running! So, that’s one in the win column. 

4. Also: Lee Se-young (otherwise known as Zombie Girl from A Korean Odyssey) is the only actor I recognized. I thought I recognized a whole bunch of people, but…no. 

5. The story is divided into two time periods: the present, and the far-flung distant past…of 2019. I can’t even begin to imagine the research that must have gone into recreating that time period. But, from what I remember of that one anthropology class I took, they nailed it. 

5A. Also of note for our purposes in discussing the show: the 2019 stuff takes place in Japan while our protagonists (Hong, who is Korean, and Jungo, who is Japanese) are dating; meanwhile, the present day stuff takes place in Korea many years after they break up.

5B. Um…spoilers: they break up between 2019 and now. 

6. We don’t see a lot of cars during the Japan sections of the story, but there are an awful lot of Hyundais during the Korean sections. Which I am all for. 

7. At one point, in the middle of their snuggly dating period, Hong tells Jungo that he can feel safe sharing his feelings with her, half-playfully giving the example that he could tell her that he loves her. Now, I sat up straight in my seat when she said this—because, when she says this (in Japanese), she says, “Aishiteru.” Which is absolutely Japanese for “I love you”—but it IS NOT how you would let your girlfriend know you love her. That’s the term you’d say, like, twice in your life: at your wedding and when one of you is about to die. It’s a very, very, very intense version of the term. If I’m not mistaken, you’d say something like, “Suki da yo” or “Daisuki desu” (both of which technically mean “I reeeeally like you”—but understood to mean “I love you”). So…yeah, I was quite taken aback when I heard it.

7A. That said, when she says this, Jungo doesn’t seem thrown by it…and I’m not entirely sure why. I don’t know if it’s a matter of the Korean scriptwriter getting it wrong and none of the Japanese actors/staff wanting to correct it, or if the context of the scene would indicate that she’s knowingly using the term to playfully suggest that she’s open to talking about getting married (like, if I were a native speaker and not just a minor anime nerd). 

8. Hong and Jungo have pet names for each other that are said to be their names in the other’s language. So, Jungo is called “Yun-ho,” and Hong is called “Beni.” And Daryl sat on his couch, scratching his head about why this would be. In the first case, Jungo is made up of sounds that exist in Korean (“jeon” and “go”), and so I wonder why it would have to be changed to “Yun-ho;” and, in the second, Hong and beni don’t quite line up, because one means “deep” and the other means “crimson”—unless you think of Hong in Chinese, in which case it can mean “red” (and I know Chinese characters used to be used in Korean and are still used in Japanese, so…maybe that has something to do with it?). It’s supposed to be adorable, and maybe they make way more sense to native speakers in both languages, but poor ol’ American me spent waaaaay too much time trying to figure out how the names were derived to think it was at all cute that they were doing this. 

9. When Jungo confesses to Hong, he is in a light blue t-shirt, and she is in a pink windbreaker. So, that’s a nice bit of color symbolism. (Plus, Hong is used in Vietnamese to mean “pink.” Maybe that’s something? Or maybe not. Look, I just really want to understand the pet name thing.)

10. Speaking of symbolism (...maybe?): as she arrives in Japan, Hong is reading Sky, Wind, and Stars, a collection of poems by Yoon Dong-yu, a poet who was arrested while in Japan for his support of the pro-independence movement during the occupation of Korea. Now, Yoon died while in custody, and there’s a memorial to him in Kyoto, so Hong being in Japan offers her a chance to visit the memorial and read off some lovely poetry and all that—but am I reading too much into her bringing this book with her to Japan? She does feel overwhelmed by the Japan-ness of, y’know, being in Japan, ultimately seeking the independence of Korea when her relationship with Jungo becomes too “oppressive” to her. Or maybe the content of the poems (which I’ve never read) thematically fit her character arc or something—totally possible. But…I dunno, I think I’m onto something. 

11. Speaking of the confession, though: the first thing we get after Jungo confesses to Hong is the two of them crashing through the door of his apartment so they can f***. Which I thought was very romantic. 

12. I kinda loved Hong’s little sister. For no particular reason, really. She’s not in the show much, and she does even less. She’s not particularly funny or bratty or ridiculous, which you’d think would be the case, given my apparent yen for those types. I dunno, I just really liked her. [shrug] 

13. …but I absolutely loved Kanna, Jungo’s ex-girlfriend. She wasn’t around much and, as such, was fairly one-note, but that one note of hers was all I needed: the confident girl who knows she’s never going to be “next one up.” The story treats her more as a plot point than a character, but, even so, I was quite keen on her. Possibly by virtue of her being one-dimensional—that is, because I liked her lone realized trait, and because she wasn’t around much, I ended up getting nothing but what I would have wanted from her character, rather than potentially getting things I liked and disliked. 

14. Check out how swish the inside of this food truck is!

It’s got overhead lights and wood paneling! It’s like the inside of a cozy restaurant—but it’s in a truck. THAT NO ONE CAN GO IN. It’s so…extra.

14A. …which isn’t out-of-date slang, because this was from 2019. So, really, I’m being appropriately hip, if you think about it. 

15. Subtitle Commentary #1: There is never a distinction made between when people speak Korean and when they speak Japanese. You know this is something that bugs me, and it becomes especially relevant during the climactic reveal of Hong and Jungo’s breakup scene when, just as she reaches her emotional breaking point, she switches over to yelling at Jungo in Korean instead of Japanese. Which is important because it’s the most impassioned part of her argument with him, wherein she tells him the most significant reason for the failure of their relationship—and he can’t understand what she’s saying. Which is only apparent if you notice the change in language (because Jungo doesn’t look any more confused than he has been the whole rest of the argument). Which…I mean, I think is important.

16. Speaking of the breakup argument…man, this show is not paced well. It’s not awful (and it’s nowhere near as bad as the internet comment sections would have you believe), but the story absolutely drags in places. And I think it’s down to being an adaptation of a novel—or, rather, the kind of novel it probably is. 

16A. First, hiding the truth about the breakup until the final third of the series means that the present day stuff with Hong and Jungo being mopey feels stagnant, since nothing about their meeting again in 2024 can progress without us knowing the details of their breakup. So, while it doesn’t feel like we’re treading water the whole time, it very much does feel like they’re trying to see how long they can dance around the subject before they absolutely have to explain it. Which is hard to tolerate after a couple of episodes. 

16B. I mean, there are only six episodes, but…still. Momentum is momentum. 

16C. Relatedly, there’s A LOT of voiceover narration of inner monologues. And, past a certain point—particularly as you start to notice how hard they’re avoiding the breakup reveal—it ceases to be a charming bit of insight and, instead, becomes a whole lot of navel gazing. Which is absolutely something that makes you take notice of the time. 

16D. …but can work perfectly in a novel. Even if you’re stagnating a bit and veering into navel gazing, the internal narration in a novel can be beautiful, eloquent, and poetic. That is, the writing can itself be the excuse, not especially propelling the story but certainly provoking thought and emotion and acting as a lyrical meditation on a moment, a subject, a feeling. Not having read the source material, I obviously don’t know this is the case—and maybe it’s just as clunky and slow in the book. But I’d wager that’s at least nominally true…and, if true, would probably explain why the narration was kept. Perhaps unfortunately. 

16E. What’s funny is that I’m traditionally a huge fan of voiceover narration. (Like, one of my favorite anime series of all time is Scum’s Wish, and it’s 75% voiceover monologuing—probably fairly pretentiously, too. And I think the Monogatari series is incredible, despite mostly being thousands of pages of onanistic authorial nonsense. But Scum’s Wish uses it as a lovely meditation on all elements of the story, moving us through the emotional story that both underpins and comments upon the narrative; and the writing—literally the words, the sentence structure, the rhythm, the symphonic deluge of words—in Monogatari is just a joy to experience, no matter how useless to the storytelling it might be.) But What Comes After Love isn’t the only example of me not enjoying its inclusion in a series, recently. Whether that’s an indication that I’ve just hit a streak where it’s being used lazily or that I am somehow less patient with it, now…I dunno. But perhaps that is a grain of salt for you to take with my above assessment, seonbae. I leave that to you.

17. Subtitle Commentary #2: The subbers kept subtitles up for all spoken English, as well. Which, as you know, is a big plus, in my book. 

18. Subtitle Commentary #3: …but also the subbers absolutely f***ed up the grammar when subbing the spoken-English scenes, incorrectly writing “between Hong and me” as “between Hong and I”—despite the actor LITERALLY SAYING THE CORRECT SENTENCE IN ENGLISH. Like, his pronunciation’s very clear and everything, guys. And he’s referring to himself and Hong as THE OBJECTS OF THE SENTENCE. “Hong and I” would be used if they were the subject of the sentence (replaceable by we)—which they are not—and “Hong and me” would be used if they were the object of the sentence (replaceable by us), which they are, which is why he F***ING SAYS IT LIKE THAT. Like, when has anyone ever said “between we”? Does that sound right? Of course not! This is just embarrassing, guys. Come on.

19. The banner hanging behind Jungo at his book signing uses one of the photos we see taken of him in Episode 2, which is a nice detail.

20. …sorry, I just—between is a preposition! Sentence subjects (like we) cannot follow prepositional modifiers! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!

21. The lady who worked at the hotel and handed Jungo the bouquet of flowers had an incredible American accent. Kudos to her, whatever the reason.

22. I was all excited to compliment Hong’s song performance during the wedding scene—until I realized she was performing a song from the About Time soundtrack, and she’d brought up liking the wedding scene in that movie earlier in the episode. It’s supposed to be a cute nod, but I thought it was lame. The performance itself is good, but…meh.

22A. They do a near-flawless job of editing around Lee Se-young not knowing how to properly fake playing the guitar, though. They either won’t stay on her long enough to really see what her hands are doing, or they'll just have her hands out of frame or blocked by a guest in the crowd. But if your eyes are quick enough…

23. Ha! I have a note about my pen exploding as I was making a note. (“Sad face,” it says.)

24. In Episode 4, Hong visits a woman in Kyoto who knew her father (in the biblical sense) back when he was a student in Tokyo—a woman he almost married. She and Hong have a discussion about being in love with someone from another country, it’s all very plot-relevant, hip-hip-hurrah. BUT…Hong tells Jungo that her father gave her the woman’s address before she left so that she could visit (and meet a friendly face), if she wanted to. Now, one of the recurring points in the 2019 storyline is that Hong and her mother have a biiiiiiig fight over Hong being in Japan—because she never told the mom that she was moving there. So…she either left for Japan without telling the mom but definitely telling the dad (who also didn’t tell the mom)—OR—she left with the understanding that it was going to be a trip overseas but neglected to mention she'd be living there for the foreseeable future. I mention this because I thought it was the former, but the latter makes way more sense. And I’m a little embarrassed that I’m not sure which it is. 

25. Somewhat relatedly, Hong’s mother at one point says to her, “You’re not supposed to marry someone you love.” Noteworthy in that it’s entirely possible she believes herself not to be her husband’s true love (given that even his kids know about this woman from his student days)—and, perhaps, by virtue of this fact, him not to be her true love—but also in that it is a very (maybe even too-)pragmatic take on marriage. After all, a marriage does not require romantic love to be a good marriage. Obviously, some manner of spark or attraction is going to make having children a lot easier to do, but a level of transactional affection—of various kinds—is certainly enough for both functional and emotional marital companionship. It’s about partnership, in that sense, as marriage had been for hundreds and hundreds of years. Marrying for love, of course, is a relatively more recent development, and there’s a strong argument that it has not served mankind any better (potentially worse, actually) than previous drivers of marriage. 

25A. …my point being that I kind of liked that there’s a slight ambiguity to the mom’s purpose in saying this to Hong: reassuring her that there is good to be found in being “happy enough,” or perhaps trying to reassure herself that, since she’s in that exact situation, it’s actually fine as an option. 

25B. Though, since we’re on it…I think neither way of looking at marriage is more correct than the other. I think the “correct” answer is that it’s all right for two people to get married for whatever reason they deem fit, whether out of love or close companionship or simple practicality. I just want everyone on the same page (or at least in the same chapter) about what’s what. As I’ve said before, I’m pretty libertarian about these kinds of things—as long as everyone goes into the situation with his or her eyes open. 

25C. …but, since I know we’ve discussed “settling” before: I’m a marry-for-love kind of guy—not for any moral or philosophical reason, but because I know myself well enough to know I’d be miserable doing it without love.

25D. I mean, sure, I’m okay with doing a fake relationship, as we’ve discussed before—but that’s obviously an entirely different thing. Keeping up a mutually beneficial facade? That feels like I’m getting one over on people, and that’s kinda fun. In a similar vein, I can probably think of a couple of girls who’d fit the “hey, we’re close friends, and it’d be fun seeing you naked raising a kid with you” kind of marriage bill—but, even then, there’s still that spark of affection beyond simple companionship that would give me the impetus to do it. 

25E. Genuinely: I have a long, consistent history of being very bad at dealing with girls having crushes on me when I have no particular interest in them. Part of me thinks it’s flattering, sure, but it’s drowned out by the shouting match between the part that’s furious with boredom and the part that feels so awkward it just wants to hide under a blanket until the girl goes away. 

25F. …which seems like a good time to quote from my Heart Signal 4 letter: “I’ll be over in that corner of the room reading Rent-a-Girlfriend, if anyone needs help carrying groceries in.”

25G. How about you, seonbae? I still think it’s far too early for you to give serious consideration to “settling,” but where do you think you’d be able to fit on the possibility scale? Are you more interested in finding steady companionship or starting a family than building up from love? Or are you just looking for a guy who’s happy to pretend it’s a real marriage and let you in on his very good health insurance?

26. Jungo spends 2019 to 2024 writing a novel that is essentially a love-letter to Hong because he can’t get over her. Which amused me insofar as I’ve spent years and years trying to do basically the same thing. (Not for Hong, of course. And I’m now long-over the girl who served as the inspiration. But there’s a fun layer of irony about it that will be relevant in a bit, which is why I’m mentioning it.)

27. In Episode 4, Hong tells Jungo that “we are all made of stars,” because, fundamentally, all matter in the universe is composed of the same handful of elements. So, human beings are literally made of the same stuff as stars. But, more importantly, “We are All Made of Stars” is the lead single off Moby’s arguably best album, 2002’s 18. So, I can only assume that Hong heard this song playing in an obviously very trendy cafe and flagrantly stole that line to make herself seem poignant and clever. 

28. One of the key elements of this story is the somewhat controversial idea that this former couple is really “meant to be.” Of course, when I say it is “controversial,” I mean it only insofar as it is notoriously seen as a negative point or failing of the K-dramas I’ve discussed with you. (See: Our Beloved Summer; Welcome to Samdal-ri; Dear Hyeri.) Because none of the previous instances of this conceit have managed to make me feel the “destiny” aspect of the protagonist couples or made me want the couple to get back together. Rather the opposite, actually—to the point where they seem almost designed more to bolster second lead syndrome than anything else. 

28A. Which is what makes What Comes After Love so surprising. 

28B. …in that it’s basically a wash, on that front: while they don’t at all succeed in making me feel like these two are cosmically connected in this life and beyond (or, really, like there’s any reason for them to get back together), the show definitely did everything it could to show Hong and Jungo A) were completely smitten with each other back in 2019 and B) living incomplete lives in the years after their breakup. I wasn’t ever bowled over by their romantic connection, but at least it seemed genuine—which I never got from previous shows that looked to do this kind of story, because they were often focused on cramming more intensity into fewer (and, as a result, came off seeming unnaturally quirky or twee) or on a cycle of sudden breakups and recouplings. We don’t get that with Hong and Jungo, though, their breakup feeling just as genuine as the rest of their relationship—which is great, in a sense, but also very, very mundane…which very much undercuts the specialness of their relationship (particularly when it’s indisputably one person’s fault that things fall apart (and for such run-of-the-mill reasons)). They were, for whatever else you could say, a normal couple—and, sometimes, couples don’t work out. So, y’know, at least I understood (both emotionally and intellectually) what they meant to each other in the past…even if I didn’t think it much justified a lot of what followed. So, as I say: a wash.

28C. Now, whether the story is ultimately about them getting back together or finally allowing themselves to finish mourning what once was, I won’t say. But, regardless, I think it’s fair to say it’s cohesive, if nothing else. 

28D. Now, what’s kind of ironic about all this, as I alluded to earlier, is that the love-letter novel I was working on was exactly this kind of story: a couple that seemed destined to be together, fell apart, and then gets drawn back together years later. And, had I not been writing this letter and reminiscing about all the times I’d seen this conceit not work to my satisfaction, I’d probably never have realized one of the big reasons I just can’t seem to get the story to work—even just as an outline. Amazing. The things I owe to you, Erin. 

29. And one last thing that would be a total spoiler to say, so I’ll keep it vague: the moment the finale wrapped up, I thought, “Wait—does he know…?” Because they absolutely do not show us this detail, and it’s pretty critical context for justifying the ending. So, I did not leave the show on a good note. It didn’t sway my overall opinion, but it certainly didn’t help. 

And that, my dear seonbae, is all I have to say about that. Eight pages. For six episodes. 

Now that’s bang for your buck! 

…

S-So, yeah, I thought What Comes After Love was a mediocre endeavor, though not without its charms. Lee Se-young is good but underutilized, the pacing is too slow but also full of most of the details you’d need for this kind of story to work, and…uh…oh! It doesn’t suddenly turn into a murder mystery thriller, which I know is one of the first things on your checklist. Still, I’d give it a pass, were I you—but it’s also only six episodes, so it’s not like you’d be wasting a lot of time if you wanted to see for yourself. 

Next, I think I might actually be able to get into something—brace yourself—that you actually recommended to me. Can you even imagine? Something you might actually want to hear about! I can’t promise it’ll be at the top of your list, but…even so, try not to faint when you see it. 

For now, though, I have to decide what I want to keep me company as I sleep, tonight: Season 2 of Alchemy of Souls, or the YouTube series where Trump, Obama, and Biden are buddies who have a gaming channel (it’s done with A.I. voices, and it’s both hilarious and charming). 

What’s that? Just read for a bit and then put on the white noise machine because that routine will be more likely to result in restful sleep? 

Oh, Erin. You know I don’t make good decisions. 

Anyway.

Hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving. 

More soon.

—Daryl