The Korean drama ‘Startup’ which was released from October 17 to December 4 2020 had a great effect on kdrama fans. I think it won’t be wrong saying that it successfully made everyone feel the so called ‘Second Lead Syndrome’!
Startup is a drama set up in Seoul where it shows the main character Seo Dalmi (Bae Suzy) who wants to set up a successful startup. There’s also Nam Dosan (Nam Joohyuk) a coder who accompanies Dalmi & owns a tech company. But for me & I’m sure for numerous other people the most interesting character was Han Jipeyong (Kim Seonho). This is the character that gave almost everyone the second lead syndrome & Seonho portrayed the character very well.
I started the review with the characters because some of the characters became so close to my heart & I could relate so much to them. You could already guess that my favourite character is Han Jipyeong but there are other characters which were pretty good including Dalmi’s father & grandmother.
The story started very well organized but I’m disappointed that the story was not carried forward in a nice way. The only reason I finished watching the drama was because of Han Jipyeong. This character was too good and I believe was not well treated in the plot. At the beginning of the drama especially on the 1st episode it felt like he was the main lead but at the end of the drama it felt that the character was not well explored. In any kdrama or movie that I watch I want to see how much each character develops as the plot unfolds but I was disappointed in Startup.
I think I said too much negatives about the drama so let me tell you what I liked from Startup. From the name we can guess it’s a business genre and it was. I really like the individual episode names as they were related to startup and I learnt some new terms like ‘Keyman’, ‘Aqhire’ etc.
Lastly I want to say that if you want to meet a sweet character like Han Jipyeong & also want to know and explore the world of business you can watch this drama but don’t have high expectations from it. Also I would definitely not recommend this if you don’t want to have the Second Lead Syndrome!