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dangermousieSo yes, I’ve continued with my watch of the Korean yumminess that is Tree of Heaven, a drama that once again proves that yes, it’s hotter when it’s your step-sibling. Joking aside, the whole stepsiblings in love thing doesn’t bother me, as not only are they step, they first meet when he is 20 and she is 18. But I do wonder why kdramas like doing these quasi-cest stories.
Ehhh, whatever. Who cares. I am totally in love with ToH. It seems to fit perfectly into my recent thing of ‘cheerful girl with excess of kindness who is hard-up saves messed-up gorgeous woobie’ I have going. I have to say, in her place, if someone was being so anti-social to me as her new ‘brother’, I’d soon smack him on the head and cease trying to be nice. But that’s probably why I won’t get a traumatized-to-the-point-of-muteness Korean superhottie to fall in love with me.
To recap the plot: Our heroine, Hana, meets her future OTP Yoon-Suh, when her mother remarries to his father. To call Yun-Suh antisocial would be insulting anti-social people. Yoon-Suh doesn’t talk (literally), doesn’t interact on any level, and has a tendency to wander out and lie in the snow, barefoot.
He is also brutally hot. Seriously. Most of my coherent thought during the first ep was taken by ‘OMG! He is bloody gorgeous!’ exclamations. In fact, the fact that people picked on him in school was hard to believe because I don’t know about Asian schools, but in an American school, someone this off-the-scale level of attractiveness would have girls swarming over him whatever his behavior issues. (I am also trying to figure out why at 18 and 20 they are still in last year of school, but whatever).
The newlywed parents go off for a trip, leaving Hana and Yoon-Sun with Hana’s evil aunt and Hana’s evil cousin Maya (the story takes place in Japan, as Hana is half-Japanese). The evil duo (I know our lovers are doomed, and I don’t even care, because all I want out of the story is for the evil duo to bite it) mistreat Hana but she does grow closer to Yoon-Suh, so I suppose it’s a trade-off. I still want to stab Auntie and Maya in the face. End of ep 1 recap summary.
I find the Hana-Yoon-Suh dynamic very interesting: she is someone who is brimming over with kindness and who believes in family, and family affection so strongly, precisely because her own father died when she was small. That is why her aunt and Maya’s vicious, petty cruelty (e.g. they tell her there is no supper because she came in late so she must have had it elsewhere) strikes her so hard emotionally (I find it interesting that the evil duo never bug Yoon-Suh. Probably because he is so off-kilter they are worried he’ll smash their head in).
And Yoon-Suh is clearly a traumatized person. He is not a surly adolescent but someone really messed up. I mean, he doesn’t talk! And the way he lashes out or ‘plays’ with Hana, is like some child pushing the boundaries: he is not cruel to her, even at first, but he has no social interaction and he just pushes her out of the way, or ignores her as he would any obstacle. And she keeps persisting.
It’s interesting, because I think he first begins to notice her as more than a nuisance (Lee Wan has an incredibly expressive face and eyes which is necessary as his character doesn’t talk), someone babbling at him in broken Korean, when he sees her mistreated by her Aunt. I think as long as he thought she was untouchable in her happy place, he couldn’t relate to her and felt as if ‘of course she can be kind, nothing bad happened to her.’ But when he saw she is kind not because she doesn’t know about sadness but because she is good, and when he saw someone who was nice to him mistreated, I think it broke through. It’s like a revelation that breaks through his shell: others have it hard too.
I love the bit where he shakes the branches on her outside so the snow would fall on her. That is the first interaction he made with her, that he initiated, and OMG! what an adorably 5 year old thing to do and he looks at her how she will receive it.
I really love the bit where Maya and Aunt were a bitch to her, and didn’t give her lunch, and so she left, and then Maya is pedaling to school and he steps out and basically takes her bike away from the evil beotch making her walk. AWESOME. And he rides up to Hana and gives her a pair of mittens. Awwwww. I cheered. He sorta is like a child or an animal or something. His kindness is like his disregard: very impulsive.
Just as I loved the scene earlier, where Aunt and Maya kicked Hana out of the room and she has nowhere to sleep so she wanders into a small room where Yoon-Suh is staying (she doesn’t know it’s his) and she sees a sketch-book, and of course, any hot messed-up boy has got to be an artist, so he sees his sketchbook is filled with sketches of his Mom. And then Yoon-Suh comes in, and he sees her looking and she is sort of crying (because she is so overwhelmed with everything) and she is repeating ‘Mom’ over and over and I think it’s once again, the moment of connection between them: she misses hers as much as he does his. So they sit like this, and then sometime later she wakes up and she is all alone, and she sees he’s sketched her sleeping (first person in his album since Mom) and then the camera pans and we see that he let her sleep in his room and is sleeping outside the door instead, covered in blanket, out in the cold. AWWWW.
You know, this rough kindness is more than she gets from ‘family.’
Hmmm, what else. I love that she chases away boys picking on him when he is catatonic in the snow. And I love that the next time they pick on him, he is totally unresponsive until they take away his cross, the one that belonged to his Mom and he goes berserk and Hana and him try to get to back and then look for it in the snow. I love that scene.
Snow is so prevalent in this drama (which is so beautifully shot). Hana says that snow makes her think of her Dad and she finds out snow makes Yoon-Suh think of his Mom. His Mom died on his birthday (how sucky) and he’s been traumatized like this ever since (since he was 10) and she said she’d come back when it snows, which is where his affinity for snow comes from.
So yeah, lots of snow. For plot reasons, not just because his black uniform (which he looks hot in) sets off a good contrast ;)
I love it when she finds out about the birthday/deathday thing. And she goes looking for him, and finds him at the airport fence (as the first time she met him), crying in the snow. And she calls him ‘oppa’ (in the brother sense, not bf sense) and tells him how sorry she is, and she hugs him from the back and yeah, yeah, I know it’s entirely manipulative, but when he turns and they look at each other with tears in their eyes, and they are wiping each other’s tears, and the awesome theme music plays in the background, I got a little sniffly. And there is intense staring and the leads have a lot of chemistry, and I think this is the final genuine moment of connection, after that everything would be easier, and yeah.
And she takes him out for dinner on her meager money, because he didn’t eat that day, and he won’t eat and she pesters him and tells him ‘Happy Birthday’ and he finally starts eating ;) And then emboldened by that victory, she is all ‘now smile for me’ but he won’t (and to be fair, his face is full of food so not the best moment). It looks like she only had $$$ for one bowl so she is skipping supper herself even though she didn’t eat as she went looking for him.
And then they get to the inn of evil at the end, and he is still not smiling, so she jumps up and shakes some branches and snow falls on him and she is all grinny and then…he smiles. And his whole face lights up. Wow. And then he shakes snow on her and they are just standing there, both grinning, and ep 1 ends…
Ehhh, whatever. Who cares. I am totally in love with ToH. It seems to fit perfectly into my recent thing of ‘cheerful girl with excess of kindness who is hard-up saves messed-up gorgeous woobie’ I have going. I have to say, in her place, if someone was being so anti-social to me as her new ‘brother’, I’d soon smack him on the head and cease trying to be nice. But that’s probably why I won’t get a traumatized-to-the-point-of-muteness Korean superhottie to fall in love with me.
To recap the plot: Our heroine, Hana, meets her future OTP Yoon-Suh, when her mother remarries to his father. To call Yun-Suh antisocial would be insulting anti-social people. Yoon-Suh doesn’t talk (literally), doesn’t interact on any level, and has a tendency to wander out and lie in the snow, barefoot.
He is also brutally hot. Seriously. Most of my coherent thought during the first ep was taken by ‘OMG! He is bloody gorgeous!’ exclamations. In fact, the fact that people picked on him in school was hard to believe because I don’t know about Asian schools, but in an American school, someone this off-the-scale level of attractiveness would have girls swarming over him whatever his behavior issues. (I am also trying to figure out why at 18 and 20 they are still in last year of school, but whatever).
The newlywed parents go off for a trip, leaving Hana and Yoon-Sun with Hana’s evil aunt and Hana’s evil cousin Maya (the story takes place in Japan, as Hana is half-Japanese). The evil duo (I know our lovers are doomed, and I don’t even care, because all I want out of the story is for the evil duo to bite it) mistreat Hana but she does grow closer to Yoon-Suh, so I suppose it’s a trade-off. I still want to stab Auntie and Maya in the face. End of ep 1 recap summary.
I find the Hana-Yoon-Suh dynamic very interesting: she is someone who is brimming over with kindness and who believes in family, and family affection so strongly, precisely because her own father died when she was small. That is why her aunt and Maya’s vicious, petty cruelty (e.g. they tell her there is no supper because she came in late so she must have had it elsewhere) strikes her so hard emotionally (I find it interesting that the evil duo never bug Yoon-Suh. Probably because he is so off-kilter they are worried he’ll smash their head in).
And Yoon-Suh is clearly a traumatized person. He is not a surly adolescent but someone really messed up. I mean, he doesn’t talk! And the way he lashes out or ‘plays’ with Hana, is like some child pushing the boundaries: he is not cruel to her, even at first, but he has no social interaction and he just pushes her out of the way, or ignores her as he would any obstacle. And she keeps persisting.
It’s interesting, because I think he first begins to notice her as more than a nuisance (Lee Wan has an incredibly expressive face and eyes which is necessary as his character doesn’t talk), someone babbling at him in broken Korean, when he sees her mistreated by her Aunt. I think as long as he thought she was untouchable in her happy place, he couldn’t relate to her and felt as if ‘of course she can be kind, nothing bad happened to her.’ But when he saw she is kind not because she doesn’t know about sadness but because she is good, and when he saw someone who was nice to him mistreated, I think it broke through. It’s like a revelation that breaks through his shell: others have it hard too.
I love the bit where he shakes the branches on her outside so the snow would fall on her. That is the first interaction he made with her, that he initiated, and OMG! what an adorably 5 year old thing to do and he looks at her how she will receive it.
I really love the bit where Maya and Aunt were a bitch to her, and didn’t give her lunch, and so she left, and then Maya is pedaling to school and he steps out and basically takes her bike away from the evil beotch making her walk. AWESOME. And he rides up to Hana and gives her a pair of mittens. Awwwww. I cheered. He sorta is like a child or an animal or something. His kindness is like his disregard: very impulsive.
Just as I loved the scene earlier, where Aunt and Maya kicked Hana out of the room and she has nowhere to sleep so she wanders into a small room where Yoon-Suh is staying (she doesn’t know it’s his) and she sees a sketch-book, and of course, any hot messed-up boy has got to be an artist, so he sees his sketchbook is filled with sketches of his Mom. And then Yoon-Suh comes in, and he sees her looking and she is sort of crying (because she is so overwhelmed with everything) and she is repeating ‘Mom’ over and over and I think it’s once again, the moment of connection between them: she misses hers as much as he does his. So they sit like this, and then sometime later she wakes up and she is all alone, and she sees he’s sketched her sleeping (first person in his album since Mom) and then the camera pans and we see that he let her sleep in his room and is sleeping outside the door instead, covered in blanket, out in the cold. AWWWW.
You know, this rough kindness is more than she gets from ‘family.’
Hmmm, what else. I love that she chases away boys picking on him when he is catatonic in the snow. And I love that the next time they pick on him, he is totally unresponsive until they take away his cross, the one that belonged to his Mom and he goes berserk and Hana and him try to get to back and then look for it in the snow. I love that scene.
Snow is so prevalent in this drama (which is so beautifully shot). Hana says that snow makes her think of her Dad and she finds out snow makes Yoon-Suh think of his Mom. His Mom died on his birthday (how sucky) and he’s been traumatized like this ever since (since he was 10) and she said she’d come back when it snows, which is where his affinity for snow comes from.
So yeah, lots of snow. For plot reasons, not just because his black uniform (which he looks hot in) sets off a good contrast ;)
I love it when she finds out about the birthday/deathday thing. And she goes looking for him, and finds him at the airport fence (as the first time she met him), crying in the snow. And she calls him ‘oppa’ (in the brother sense, not bf sense) and tells him how sorry she is, and she hugs him from the back and yeah, yeah, I know it’s entirely manipulative, but when he turns and they look at each other with tears in their eyes, and they are wiping each other’s tears, and the awesome theme music plays in the background, I got a little sniffly. And there is intense staring and the leads have a lot of chemistry, and I think this is the final genuine moment of connection, after that everything would be easier, and yeah.
And she takes him out for dinner on her meager money, because he didn’t eat that day, and he won’t eat and she pesters him and tells him ‘Happy Birthday’ and he finally starts eating ;) And then emboldened by that victory, she is all ‘now smile for me’ but he won’t (and to be fair, his face is full of food so not the best moment). It looks like she only had $$$ for one bowl so she is skipping supper herself even though she didn’t eat as she went looking for him.
And then they get to the inn of evil at the end, and he is still not smiling, so she jumps up and shakes some branches and snow falls on him and she is all grinny and then…he smiles. And his whole face lights up. Wow. And then he shakes snow on her and they are just standing there, both grinning, and ep 1 ends…
