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Doki Doki Days is nearly at an end and Star and I are currently snowed in. Which means I have all the time in the world to go on this rant, however, for sanity’s sake–I will keep this short. While we have talked about all the great things going on in the anime world and good adaptions that have been popping up for romances. We always have a few bad ones. And this one I’m MAD about.

True Beauty. Beloved webtoon turned live-action and recently turned anime. I, along with many avid readers of the webtoon, was really excited about this show. The minute I saw the first art for the anime, I was beyond hyped. This webtoon was always one of my favorites, and to be honest one of my first. The storyline was something that was really dear to me…so even though I was excited for the anime version of it, I was naturally scared as well. I’ve seen many adaptions that are subpar–that are a bit disappointing or that don’t translate into anime as well. And my fear with True Beauty? WELL FOUNDED. This anime wasn’t just disappointing, it was downright bad. It makes me sad inside.

Now, there’s a pretty simple reason why I feel such contempt towards this adaption and I feel like Star summed it up pretty nicely — “it’s pretty much made for pre-teen Gen Z and their short attention span. It feels like a show for middle schoolers and high schoolers tops.” Which basically just means, this show takes a lot of thoughtful content and cuts it down 75% and only focuses on very specific points while changing other vital points in the story. For instance, the show throws in a beauty contest that Jugyeong ends up taking part in–a contest that was never part of the webtoon. The contest also puts a big emphasis on social media within the show, with Jungyeong posting more than just on her ‘instagram’ page and even doing dance challenges, lives, etc. This is all would normally be fine, but this almost feels…wrong compared to the webtoon. Jugyeong was always shy — even though she was beautiful and popular at school–she never really felt super confident at the beginning of the story. In fact, that’s something I think she really gained over time–but the anime made her seem pretty fearless and confident from the beginning. I don’t really see her waver that much so much as continue forward. It’s just an odd dynamic. I wanted to see her grow–to realize her own strengths and beauty over her lifetime like in the webtoon. It’s just weird.

I think that this, along with some other shortcuts the show makes, kind of makes the true meaning of the show–and in turn–the whole story, gets lost. Is it to embrace yourself? Great but what show hasn’t said that? There’s more to True Beauty than that and I’m not sure it’s very apparent in the short runtime of the show. It just turns into a basic story about unpopular girl becoming popular, beating out the mean girl and forming a love triangle. Which is definitely upsetting because it feels like this is an adaption that’s going to be forgotten. Why it was decided to jampack 12 shorter-than-normal episodes with a lot of content is completely beyond me. It didn’t give time to establish characters past surface level, to explore important themes, or do much else besides throw some tropes at you. I especially didn’t like the way the anime handled Sujin. They essentially boiled her down to be a mean girl without hinting at the nuances of why her behavior was such.

Overall, I really REALLY didn’t like this show. Every episode was so disappointing. I just…I can’t believe they did that. The only redeeming factor is that the ending song was practically an Avril Lavrigne song. Like seriously–listen to it and you can hear it. Anyway, thanks for listening to this rant and hope you tune back in tomorrow for some more lighthearted content to round out our final Doki Doki Day!

AishteLOVEru

xoxo

Luna