W

• Korean: 더블유
• Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W_(TV_series)
• Rating: 5/7 
• Posted: March 22, 2024

A unique premise that appeals to the ultimate male and female fantasy: to live out your life in a comic book just the way you want. Unfortunately, while the premise would have allowed for the perfect romantic comedy, the show went in a very different direction of being an action-thriller with supernatural and mild horror elements, and with barely enough sprinkles of romantic comedy here and there. As a result, while it is an extremely interesting and amazing show, it is not what I want to watch at 10pm.

The premise is very simple: the FMC lives in the “real” world while the MMC lives in the “W” world, which is a very popular and successful comic book whose author is the FMC's father. What happens when the FMC starts being able to enter the comic book world, and even falls in love with the MMC?

There are many themes that the show touches upon. The main and most obvious theme is determinism; if your world turns out to be an artificial construct, is everything that you've done and will do predetermined? If there is no free will, why bother? It is interesting for the MMC who eventually would learn of this truth by way of the FMC, and to see how he works through this crisis of belief not just once but twice. In many ways, this plotline parallels Persona 5 which deals with humanity's need for order and control but to the extreme of removing all sense of free will.

A secondary theme to the show is the ability and responsibility of playing God. The FMC's father has a very poor God complex that prevents him from understanding and believing that his own creations could be something more than just the illusions that he designates them so. Ultimately the father would experience character growth here, but it's funny to see how his own fictional characters can be more human than he is at first. Of course if you take a step back and take a look at reality, it is fair to reasonably expect that your fictional characters will always remain fictional. But does that give you the author the rights to wash your hands clean of whatever is done to them?

A minor theme that brings elements of romance and comedy to the show is about whether love can truly exist across the boundary of fiction? While the themes I have mentioned are the ones I like the most, the show ultimately went into the direction of action thriller once they introduced a real face to the main antagonists, and not only the MMC can cross into the real world, now the antagonists can as well. At this point, the series can no longer focus on the silly stuff of being a romantic comedy but must be serious to deal with implications of such superpowered villains. I really would have liked the show to take on a monster-of-the-week format where each episode deals with the low-stake hijinks and shenanigans from characters being able to cross into either world. I understand why every TV series needs to have a serious plot so that it can finally resolve and end the show in 16 episodes. Ultimately, I think the show makes use of its premise very well, but just not with the direction I had hoped for upon seeing it for the first time.