The Legend of the Blue Sea

• Korean: 푸른 바다의 전설
• Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_the_Blue_Sea
• Rating: 5/5 
• Posted: April 1, 2024

The year is 2024. I had just bought some sushi and wanted to watch something that thematically fits. I saw The Little Mermaid remake was available so I gave it a shot. And so wasted two hours of my life that I'm never getting back.

To reset my palate, and since I just recently came off the high of My Love from the Star, I decided to watch The Legend of the Blue Sea and see for myself what all the rage is about. 21 episodes later, this proved to be the second-best decision I've made in the year of 2024.

The Legend of the Blue Sea weaves together several themes that are told in two parallel love stories, one set in Joseon, another in modern Seoul. Unbeknownst to the participants, the Seoul characters (one of them being a mermaid) are more or less the reincarnations of their Joseon counterparts. While the Joseon story ended in tragedy, and the Seoul story is showing signs of a repeat, the FMC and MMC must work together to avoid what fate has in store for them.

In my first attempt to watch this show a few months ago (when I began my journey as a K drama connoisseur), I couldn't get past the first episode because I thought the pacing was very strange. Almost right away, the audience is introduced the parallel stories, and I, being either oblivious, non-observant, or suffering from a weird case of face blindness, did not realise the characters were reincarnations of each other. I powered through the first episode and was quickly rewarded with a very fun and engaging experience. By the way, there is a director's cut that adds more scenes to the first episodes to flesh out more the Joseon story; I thought these scenes really made the pacing feel better. If you have access to those episodes (Viki does), I highly recommend watching them.

The show is ultimately a fantasy because: 1. mermaids are not real; and 2. it is not possible for a mermaid to be so ridiculously good-looking. Following this premise, the main theme of the show is learning how to be human told through the perspective of a mermaid learning to love a human. The theme is extremely popular with K dramas because after all no matter how old or wise we are, we are still learning to become better humans, and for many of us, we are still learning to love. That is why this is one of my favourite themes to explore, and any show that can incorporate the theme seamlessly into the story is a plus in my books. Whereas My Roommate Is a Gumiho uses the premise of the MMC being a nine-tailed fox or I'm Not a Robot playing with the idea that an android-in-disguise is more human than the MMC, this show uses mermaids who gain legs when they come ashore, and regain fish tail whenever they get wet (by the way, does that mean they can never wash their face or take a shower?). When they get out of water, their heart starts to harden and unless their love is returned by the human that they're in love with, they can die from what is essentially a broken heart. While these tropes are very common in the romance genre, I thought them extremely well incorporated into this show.

Another theme of the show is the concept of fate and determinism. Asian TV shows love to explore the concepts of reincarnations and with it the idea that the reincarnated are often bound to do the same thing they did in past lifetime. This show adds one twist: the two reincarnations, the MMC in past Joseon and the MMC in modern Seoul, are able to communicate with each other in their brief dreams. The Seoul MMC didn't believe they are the same person at first. As a result, the Joseon MMC, having learnt about his death from the Seoul MMC's memories, spent the last remaining days making sure that the Seoul MMC will heed his warning about the fate repeating, especially about how the antagonists will try to hurt the protagonists again. I thought this a particularly powerful moment; knowing that death is coming and there's nothing to be done about it, the most meaningful thing he wanted to do was to leave a warning message for the future. It reminds me of nuclear waste warning messages, and humanity's general wish for future generations to not repeat their mistakes.