Shadow Beauty

7.5/10 is my rating. This is a 2021 South Korean romantic drama with 13, 20 minute episodes.

Ae-Jin (Shim Dal-Gi) lives a double life as a bullied high school student who is constantly harassed as being "ugly" and a "goddess" social media influencer which she achieves through costumes, camera angles and photo editing. Her worst fear is that someone will discover her trickery and reveal her dual existence to all. This fear nearly comes to fruition when she receives a text with a picture of her posing in her costume and makeup unedited. A series of circumstances lead her to suspecting her only friend at school, Lee Jin-Sung (Yang Hong-Seok) of being the blackmailer. Lee Jin-Sung is an idol trainee who is literally too cool for school and he, on the other end of the spectrum, is also an outcast. He and Ae-Jin become friends as they were both frequently alone at school.

The premise of this was very interesting and that alone carries viewers through. All of the young actors do a great job of conveying their roles. Spoiler(s)** Often I am disappointed because the actor who plays the role of someone unattractive is not unattractive. Now I am on the opposite end, the actress who plays Ae-jin can be pretty with makeup and a flattering hair style but they do everything to have her look unattractive in never smiling, her body posture, and attitude. Which makes it really hard to buy that Jin-sung would fall in love with her. I got the whole he was an outcast because he was too cool sort of thing but, even if they were lunch friends, him falling for her when her personality did not even come through as that good, was a stretch. If she had been super smart, really nice, creative, or just really fun, I could have seen him falling for the beauty inside. But, she was a bit self focused and whiny so it was a stretch to believe he would have fallen for her. The more believable pairing would have been Ae-jin and the "lunatic detective", Kim Ho-In (Choi Bo-min), because they were alike on so many levels. Ho-in's girlfriend, Yang Ha-Neul (Heo Jung-hee) was such a bully to Ae-jin, even with her later redemptive actions, I could never see Ae-jin embracing friendship with her. And Ho-in even mentions how he hated seeing her bully other people and yet he still cannot live without her - that was a bit of a stretch too. The 12 short episodes flew by and it really felt like some of the issues could have been fixed with more episodes. They could have shown a side of Ae-jin we didn't see that would have made her more lovable. Maybe a fuller explanation of why Ho-in was bullying and an apology to Ae-jin. I really wanted to like this show more than I did because it was a great premise. I think it is worth watching for the unique premise, I would not re-watch it, but watching it once through was enjoyable enough. Hopefully a similar premise will arise in the future but there will be a better job with developing the characters and showing positive aspects of the relationships. Not a bad series, just not particularly good either. It's the show that might have been.