Yumi’s Cells: Your Guaranteed K-Drama Therapy

Unlike veterans, I’ve only started K dramas in 2020, the golden age when we were all in quarantine and had more time to explore Netflix.

If you haven’t tried it yet, or if you’re already addicted, here’s the reason why you should watch and why you can’t stop devouring them: K dramas have this irresistible balance of escapism and reality. Western TV is full of melodramatic plots meant to titillate and torture the characters and the audience. K dramas just make you laugh and cry over day-to-day stories full of cinematic scenes that make you crave fried chicken or noodles and kimchi.

Yumi’s Cells is a stellar example of that!

Yumi’s Cells tells the story of thirty-year-old Yumi and her Cells. The first episodes show us a regular office girl, so relatable in her day-to-day life, her habits, and her current crush at work. The cells are, well, the cutest things ever! They live inside Yumi’s head, representing her thoughts and feelings.

Before you say, “Inside Out,” there’s a major difference: desire.

Image: TVING, Yumi’s Cells First Teaser

The Cells: the cutest, insightful comedy

Yumi’s Cells is based on a wildly popular webtoon (Korean comics). In an interview after the webtoon finale, creator Lee Dong-geon said, “If, Inside Out personified emotions, Yumi’s Cells personified desires.”

While some Cells have specific domains like Shower Cell for skincare and Fashion Cell for Yumi’s outfits, Rational Cell just wants Yumi happy and secure. Hunger Cell has a huge and discerning appetite. Emotional Cell is, well, prone to sunset staring and alternately warranted and unwarranted dramatics.

These three pretty much fill Yumi’s head as she goes through her day. Rational Cell helps her work, Hunger Cell sends Yumi running to the snack vendors downstairs when it’s time to eat, and Emotional Cell makes us giggle at her outbursts, because, girl, Exactly!

The webtoon– and the drama– has a tongue-in-cheek, witty comedy. Every resident of the Cell Village is every thought and feeling we all go through.

For example, Anxiety Cell worries about Yumi looking like an idiot at work. Or Inner Feeling Cell in semi-permanent lockup, because when Rampage Cell is triggered and tears across town and blows Inner Feeling Cell’s enclosure open, Yumi delivers stinging clapbacks we usually withhold to keep the peace… or keep face.

And there’s Naughty Cell. It cracks me up to put her here side by side with Inner Peace Cell.

Originally tweeted by yumi’s cells 👋 (@astoragecell) on July 24, 2022.

You have to watch this drama to see their shenanigans. Yumi’s Cells is the first of its kind in Korea, combining live-action with 3D animation. And it’s such delicious fun because the webtoon and the faithful drama adaptation use the cells for absolutely clever delivery.

Like Yumi’s Tongue Cell and her boyfriend’s Tongue Cell meeting and dancing the tango. It’s cute and innocent but we all know what’s happening!

Don’t worry, it’s not just depicted in Cell Town. If you like sweet and steamy, Yumi’s Cells delivers on that, too.

Spoiler alert: Yumi’s Cells is famous for its liplocks. Click here to open this photo.

Yumi: Love and self-fulfillment

When today’s stories are saturated with gung-ho arrangements and manipulations and other larger-than-life convolutions, this K-drama is refreshing in its simplicity and unabashed sweetness about romance.

The uncertainties and assumptions, the hand-holding and the dates, the honeymoon period and settling down– they’re all here, and unlike in other K-dramas, they’re not ridiculously overblown. No acting like high-school prudes who can’t touch hands without getting awkward. Just sparks and really good kisses.

In the course of two seasons and 28 one-hour episodes, Yumi falls in love and shifts from her humdrum career as an accountant toward fulfilling her dream as a writer.

The journey during that love and self-fulfillment make you squirm in your chair and kick your ottoman, squealing if you’re like me.

I’m too immersed in the story because nothing detracts from it. The animation is Disney-Dreamworks standard. The cinematography is splendid. The writing is tight. A talented team who also helmed other acclaimed K-dramas is at the helm. Their love for the source material is obvious.

And since the source material happens to be genius, you get a show that’s just as smart and succinct in its key messages about self-love.

Yumi’s Prime Cell–her most powerful driving force– is Love Cell. She’s loving, brave, and generous– but only up to a certain point. The Cells are on Yumi’s side. They want her happy and they defend her when things–or people– compromise that happiness and peace.

When Yumi gets a boyfriend, Love Cell plants a pinata in the center of the town. Every time the cells get mad at Yumi’s boyfriend, they can throw bean bags at the pinata. No amount and size of beanbags even make a dent in the pinata.

Until one day, when a single beanbag caused by a small thing cracks it open, unfurling a banner that says, “Break up.”

Ultimately, Yumi makes us root for her right along with her cells as they help her navigate toward good decisions, with the grit and courage we should all aspire to.

Critically-acclaimed and multi-awarded actress Kim Go-Eun is perfectly cast as Yumi, who, like most of us on most days, defers cleaning for the weekend, runs out of brain power at work, overthinks a crush’s every gesture, and has to smile and bear irritations and disappointments.

Kim Go-Eun is amazing with her micro-expressions. Her eyes. And while we crack up at the Cells showing us Yumi’s thought process, it’s also mesmerizing to watch those thoughts flit across Kim’s face.

The rest of the cast is charming, small-town characters you also want to keep coming back to.

Detours are okay. Keep going.

For all its cuteness, comedy, and chic interior design, Yumi’s Cells shimmers with its genius in capturing the agonies of our early thirties, when we think we should be somewhere already, instead of being adrift, personally and professionally.

That’s how Yumi starts. Most of her twenties were spent in a relationship with a worthless guy. She tried to write at first but ends up in a job she didn’t even like much, choosing it for its financial stability.

There are episodes in both seasons that juxtapose her development. In Season 1, she needs a specific amount of courage for a critical change in her career. She tries to fill her jar of courage by “borrowing” spoons of it from other people’s assurances.

In Season 2, she simply draws encouragement from herself, seeing her younger self telling her she’s cool when she makes a pivotal decision.

Hesitantly at first and then with more tenacity, even running clear across a park and dodging ropes and Frisbees, Yumi pursues love and passion.

Every time, she’s wiser, more loyal, and more authentic to herself, although she had to fix her priorities along the way and skirt around gigantic potholes of self-doubt. Hashtag relate.

Yumi goes after what she wants, with her Cells’ stomping (Cheapskate Cell hates it when she quits her job) or gloating support (Naughty Cell pushes buttons and unbuttons buttons).

It’s such a heartening story of grit and triumph. There’s no age limit to success or starting over. It makes me look at my own life through a more positive lens. I love to think my cells are rooting for me, cheering me on.

Seriously such a genius concept on being kind to yourself and hyping yourself up. Every one of us needs to do that!

Watch Yumi’s Cells Season 1 and Season 2 on Rakuten Viki.

This article was originally published on whatsthespice.com : Read More