Nevertheless: What It Tells Us About Society & The K-Drama World

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pwoPASW6wo&t=13s&ab_channel=kawaiigurl1998

Hi Everyone! I’m sure a lot of you have watched Netflix’s Nevertheless so I wanted to share this short analysis I made where I talk about how Nevertheless deviates away from the perfect "match made in heaven" narrative and delves right into the sexual aspect of a college romance.

I know that there’s a lot of negative commotion regarding Nabi, Jae On and the “social message” that the drama sends out but I honestly thought all of it was justified given the context and circumstances of the characters. Besides, Jae On is really nowhere near a toxic male character especially when we've simped over male characters wayyyyy worse than him (I'm sure you know who I am talking about).

Compared to the Korean dramas that get pumped out on the daily, I think the creators of Nevertheless had a good combination of social and cinematic sensitivity to really bring out the story of two broken people. Overall, it was a good drama and definitely a drama worth watching because it breaks a lot of social and Kdrama norms.

It's very rare to see Korean dramas being broken down and analyzed because regardless of whether they are good or bad, what we consume and how we react to them really tells us a lot about the society we live in. So, I really hope we could change that by being more critical but understanding of different stories and characters.

Let me know in the comments if you agree or disagree with the points I made. Also, this is my first video essay so please be nice to me and feel free to give me some feedback :))

EDIT:

I'm just going to add this here because I don't think I went too into details in the video and some might not be interested in watching the video.

If we had to talk about more recent characters, creators have been really subtle and smart in romanticizing toxic attributes.

I loved Goblin but no one really questioned his character romancing a teenager because idk he creates chemistry with eye lock and minimal skin ship? or some other bs justification that he is magically young at heart (would we still be okay with this if someone else was playing the role?)

A bit more recent, Vincenzo Cassano, really enjoyed the drama. . . buuuut he is a mafia who has killed people. He gets heroized while Taecyeon and the lady who also kill people get villainized. Why? because Mr. Cassano does not hurt women, children and the elderly. cool.

There was also that second lead from Extraordinary You but I never finished it.

And there is nothing wrong with these characters, I get it, they’re works of fiction and people get to fantasize. But if we can enjoy these characters and play into their oddities, why can’t we justify Jae On’s character.

I can’t really pinpoint what Jae On has done to be labeled as a toxic male lead. It’s okay if people find Jae On a repulsive asshole but it seems that to most, his biggest flaw is that he wants sex without any attachments. (seriously, why can’t we have two characters who just want to fuck. why does everything need to be about love, family etc. don’t we already have enough of that? this is a 19+ college romance ffs)

He wanted to be f buddies, Nabi knew it, he got the consent, the boat sailed.

Nabi fell for him, she never told him, he never knew about it, not his fault, he just wanted to fuck.

Nabi has an outburst without ever telling him about her feelings, he is confused and rightfully so.

Mr Goody Two Shoes Deo Hyuk tells Jae On that Nabi regretted her time with Jae On and wanted to forget everything. (idk, thaaat seems like a red flag to me)

Yes, Nabi and Jae On said some things they shouldn’t have said to each other - but haven’t we all done that in the heat of the moment? Does that automatically make all of us toxic then? At most, I would call them imperfect characters.

So we are okay with 40-year-olds romancing a teenager, we’re okay with romanticizing killers but we can’t have a male character get confused, get misinformed by another jealous male character, make a wrong decision and realize that maybe he was wrong and genuinely wanted to help out the female character.

Can I even go further and say that (and this may be a bit too much to expect from some stupid drama ?; please don’t come after me) the creators left a small window open for a possibility where maybe Jae On wasn’t really that bad and Nabi was blinded by all the overthinking, insecurities, past experiences, lack of communication etc. If we go back to some of Nabi’s voiceovers, she was filling in Jae On’s thoughts for him; that’s totally unfair because we don’t know Jae On’s thought process; the fact that the creators never gave us access to Jae On’s perspective seems almost deliberate.

I'm not trying to change people's opinions about Jae On but aren't we tired of this narrative where the girl is always the victim and every time she gets hurt, it has to be the guy's fault. She went into the relationship knowing what she was getting, she expected something different and got hurt. That's it.