High School – Love On

Don’t you just hate a bad ending?  I was enjoying High School – Love On and then something happened with the last episode.  It was almost as if a totally different person wrote episode 20.  The plot was fresh and original but the ending was old and tired.

The plot’s pretty simple – Shin Woo-Hyun accidentally falls off the school roof, but an angel (later known as Lee Seul-Bi) is there and saves him from death.  Thus begins a sweet high school romance.  However, this isn’t a usual teenage love.  How could it be when one person is human and the other is an angel?  And let’s not forget there are two other males in love with Seul-Bi – Woo-Hyun’s best friend, Hwang Sung-Yeol, and the senior angel.

Nam Woo-Hyun plays Shin Woo-Hyun a young man in his last year of high school.  He lives with his grandmother who owns a restaurant.  He seems like a happy guy although he yearns for his mother whom he last saw when he was six.  His father is a jerk who lives in the states and has no contact with Woo-Hyun.

Kim Sae-Ron is Lee Seul-Bi, an angel assigned to escort people who have died to wherever it is they are supposed to go.  She masquerades as a regular teenage girl while the senior angel tries to locate the death book she lost when she saved Woo-Hyun.  The rule is, she can’t go back to being an angel until she, once again, has the book.  She is sweet, naive, extremely intelligent, happy, and has learned about humans from watching dramas. Now that’s funny!

Lee Sung-Yeol plays Hwang Sung-Yeol, a bitter young man in Woo-Hyun’s class at school.  He’s angry because his parents divorced and he’s miserable living with his father and step-mother who also happens to be one of his teachers at school.  Handsome and brilliant, yet his “poor me” attitude makes him very unattractive.

There are lots of other characters, some good, some not so good.  Woo-Hyun’s grandmother is a darling older woman who is a hard worker and loves her grandson more than life itself.  Sung-Yeol’s father is a cop with a kind heart.  He loves his family and wants the best for them.  I wasn’t really thrilled with Sung-Yeol’s step-mother.  She sincerely tried to be a good step-mom but still had a major selfishness character flaw.  The senior angel is in love with Seul-Bi and wants her back in his world.  And the dude is majorly handsome.  There are some school bullies who stir up trouble and some nice friends who help make life easier.  High School – Love On has a pretty large cast playing many diverse people throughout the show.  It’s often difficult to keep straight all the different characters in a show if there’s a lot of them but for some reason it isn’t a problem with this one.  Each character is an individual you remember separately from the others which makes it easier to be involved in their lives.  The writer did a great job with that.

Maybe it’s just me but there are several startling similarities with the two leading men in this show and two other well-known and loved actors.  Take a close look, use a little imagination, and see if you don’t think Nam Woo-Hyun doesn’t remind you of Hyun Bin.  And Lee Sung-Yeol looks quite a bit like Lee Min-Ho.  The facial similarities are so noticeable that, at times, it was actually distracting… but a good distraction.

The soundtrack is one of the better ones out there.  Singer-songwriter Afternight Project has caused lots of excitement with his songs Your Waltz and For You.  Both are wonderful songs, worthy of being in the music folder of any Kdrama fan’s phone.  Go to YouTube and check out What My Heart Wants to Say, Too Good, and Chocolate Cherry Night.  I think you’ll really like them.  The two male leads, Nam Woo-Hyun and Lee Sung-Yeol, are both from the Kpop boy band Infinite. Their group performs on the soundtrack, as well.

The location scouts did a good job finding spots for the filming of the show.  There’s nothing that makes you go, “Wow,” but everything is consistent to a teenager’s life – school, home, a couple “hang out”/work places, and the grandma’s restaurant.

In case you were wondering, you and your sweetheart can actually own a lock and key necklace just like the one on this show.  I thought it was pretty cool so I went looking for one and found it online.  It’s called the High School – Love On Crazy Love Couple Necklace.  It’s SO pretty – the lock is silver with little “diamonds” on it and the gold key with a “diamond” on it fits right inside the lock when they’re not separate.  We don’t get an up-close, detailed look at the one on the show but the one you can purchase online is beautiful.  Unfortunately, it’s over $100 dollars!

If you can handle a “ho hum” last hour after watching an interesting 19 episodes then you’ll love High School – Love On.  If an “eh” ending after a very good 19 hours of entertainment would be a disappointing let-down that ruins the whole thing for you, then you might want to think twice before starting this Kdrama.

 

Score: 7.5

The Good:
Fresh plot idea
Personable characters
Writing
Wonderful soundtrack
Kim Sae-Ron’s darling acting

The Bad:
Boring last episode
Selfish step-mom
Hwang Sung-Yeol’s bitter attitude and actions