Source: Wikipedia
“Happiness doesn’t come alone. It always comes with hardships.”
There is no guidebook for dating, and there is no order for when and how things should happen in a relationship. Not everything goes as planned and just because things didn’t go right the last time, doesn’t mean that the next time, they’ll go well. This is the reality of life.
Yumi’s Cells brings to its viewers a relationship that's unlike any of the “fairytales” in the drama and. Without any picture-perfect characters with smooth easy lives that one can only daydream about, Yumi’s Cells succeeds in depicting life for what it is.
Introduction
Series Name - Yumi’s Cells
Directed By - Lee Sang-you
Genre - Psychological, Romance, Drama
Language - Korean
No. of Episodes - 14
Plot Synopsis
The name of the drama tells you all. ‘Yumi’s Cells’ is about Yumi and her cells. Yumi is a regular girl who leads a regular life. The drama is all about her love life and her everyday problems and how the different cells inside her body manage to keep her going, not the biological cells, but cells for various emotions and expressions. Inside her head is all chaotic with each cell trying to make the best decisions for Yumi.
We’ve seen and heard about how the cells inside the human body work, how different kinds of cells have all kinds of functions. ‘Yumi’s Cells’ is 50% animation and these cells are animated and are shown how they work inside her body. There's the love cell, hunger cell, anger cell, paranoia cell, etc. Yumi's thoughts, feelings, behaviors, decision-making process, and virtually everything there is about her character are shown through the cells.
Series Review
‘Yumi's Cells’ is a one-of-a-kind drama that takes an altogether different way of portraying human psychological behavior, their relationships, and their lives.
The drama is based on a Korean webtoon of the same name. Where other dramas often depict “fairytale” stories with picture-perfect characters that one can only day-dream about, this drama is a bit different in the way that it depicts life realistically that the viewers can actually say “Oh! That happened to me too” or “I've gone through that too”.
The drama is essentially a rom-com with some slice-of-life qualities, and everything that goes on may appear trivial, but these are the real-world relationship problems that every couple goes through in a relationship. The somewhat slow pace in the second half of the drama is nothing more than the steady development of a relationship, which is something we don't really see in Kdramas.
Relationships don’t necessarily start and end with a bang. They just happen on their own, with time. And this is the crux of the story, that it's okay, it happens. Even if a relationship ends, it's not the end of the world. As life moves on, you have to too.
The story carries another important message that not everybody is perfect. Every single person, including yourself, has many flaws, nobody is capable of always doing the “right” things. People make mistakes, realize that they’re wrong, feel guilty, try to fix the problem, and then finally, let it go. Not only our main couple, Yumi and Woong but also the many side characters and all the cells go through this process.
If you feel that some characters were flat and had lazy writing, then let me tell you that their characterization isn’t the important thing. We are seeing everything from the perspective of Yumi, how she sees them, what she thinks they feel. So, from the beginning, we’re not supposed to know all of their different sides. It's well-thought-out and consistent writing if you ask me.
The amount of second-hand embarrassment ‘Yumi’s Cells’ gives is absurd! It's adorable cringe, heavy, embarrassing, and realistic, all at the same time. The cast is amazing of course, but really, the show-stealers are the cells. The animation didn't bother me for even a second. It was actually quite fun watching cells with different attitudes of their own arguing with each other.
The ending was surely kinda sad but it being sad doesn’t mean that it was a bad ending. And it's not even the ending actually, there’s going to be more seasons of the show since the webtoon that it's based on is pretty lengthy and we'll go through 1 or 2 more breakups. It's just one chapter of Yumi’s life ending and another beginning.
The Bottom Line
Basically, the whole plot is about Yumi and Woong meeting each other, dating, forming a relationship, and most importantly, putting in efforts to maintain it. The intimate growth and story development are actually pretty light, and the cells, rather than the protagonists, play the key parts here. Therefore, it's a story about the cells told via human beings.
IMDb ratings - 8.5 on 10
Written By - Sanjana Chaudhary
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