It was originally going to be released in November, but after what happened in Seoul during the Halloween holidays, Netflix decided to postpone the release of ‘Lookism’ to join Studio Mir during the days of national mourning. Finally the South Korean anime has finished landing on the platform this week, with eight episodes that adapt the successful webtoon of Park Tae-joon.
Mirror Mirror
Although we like to think not, appearances matter, a lot. One of the people who know it best is Park Hyung-seok, a high school student who has been bullied his entire life for his obesity and physical appearance. Tired of the daily beatings, he finally manages to convince his mother to change schools and start a new life in Seoul.
Before starting classes, Hyung Seok receives a new body, tall, muscular and handsome with which he can exchange his consciousness. While living between these two bodies, the young man experiences firsthand how the world discriminates against the less attractive and favors the more graceful.
‘Lookism’ First of all, it’s a high school anime, with all its tropes and archetypes that explodes to the core. In itself, we have already seen the story that it tells us numerous times in other stories with magical “makeovers”, but the little bit of mystery with which the series plays with the change of bodies adds a very interesting extra.
Through Hyung Seok’s two lifetimes, we see firsthand how different his day-to-day life is depending on which body he’s in. In his original body he is a loser and the target of bullies and bullies, while in his “perfect” body he is able to take on them and even has the support of his teammates when defending himself.
Hyung Seok not only changes physically, but also his double life also allows him to reflect on his own personality and how he has behaved in the past towards his mother, with whom he often took it out on him to blame her for his problems.
His life as an attractive and successful young man allows him to experience the affection of others, but also makes him take the first steps to change the world around him and make the environment of the institute a little bit kinder to the other marginalized and bullied.
With all this… Well, yes, the plot of ‘Lookism’ does not offer us anything excessively new, but it is quite an addictive series with a very good pace that keeps you hooked during its eight episodes and that plays very well with the points of view of other characters.
Although the biggest change in Hyung Seok seems to be his physique, his interior does not fall short either and it’s very nice to see his emotional growth throughout this first season of ‘Lookism‘. Especially to see that not everything good happens only in his attractive body, and that there are people who are out of the ordinary and are interested in him and appreciate him in his real body.
Studio Mir He has us more accustomed to more lively anime with his work on ‘Avatar: The Legend of Korra’ and ‘The Witcher: The Wolf’s Nightmare’, so he has completely changed register for this series. ‘Lookism‘ is set in contemporary Seoul, and shows us the most glamorous side of the South Korean city, but also the precarious reality of many of its citizensespecially with the situation that Hyung Seok and his mother are living in.
The animation of ‘Lookism’ is more limited than other previous works of the studio, but they manage to find a good balance between his own style and that of the original webtoon, with a very soft and warm finish that leaves you with that very specific anime feeling slice of life.
The story of ‘looksim‘ works perfectly as a self-contained, self-contained season. Although it leaves you the elements together to open a continuation and It stings you with a hook at the last moment so that it leaves us wanting a second seasonHopefully it won’t take too long to arrive to be able to solve the mystery of this very special body swap.