Korea's Lookism worth a look

Posted Dec. 11, 2022

By Jayden Starr 

Cub Reporter

A delayed series named Lookism, released on december eighth and written by Park Hyeong-Seok, is a korean anime in which expresses how others see and treat citizens who look and behave differently based on their bodies. 

In the beginning of this anime, we see a boy who is unfamiliar with his apparent body. The voice acting is great and the first person view switching to third person view was smooth and clear. Then we skip back a couple of weeks before and we see a boy who is a high schooler, who is getting treated as a pet by other classmates and called fat. The emotions expressed are outstanding and noticeable.

The next scene the boy (in which we automatically figure is the main character) is mad at his mother for being poor and complaining about how she’s never done anything for him, then the boy punches a hole in the wall. The smooth animated movements in the series always come off as well done. A couple episodes later the boy gets his wish to transfer to a different school but he has to live by himself. That’s when we see the scene we had seen in the first episode, but we have a better understanding of what had happened.

The detailed characteristics in each character in the series are neat and happen to make each character unique. The main character, who we know as Lee Tae Sung, is asleep on the floor as he’s appeared to be in a new body, a body in which is more handsome than the one he was constantly bullied in. The changes in the way the characters had acted towards the main character when he was “fat” and when he was “handsome” was remarkably quick and sudden. 

Throughout all the episodes we’re constantly reminded of how the characters in the series acted towards Lee Tae Sung and towards others, and how the characters experiencing the treatment felt, and how they reacted afterwards. Characters treated horribly for being poor or fat, or both, and others being treated fantastically for being rich or handsome, or both.