KDrama to Miss: Twenty-Five Twenty-One (2022)

Twenty-Five Twenty-One (2022)

Grade: C-

16 Episodes, about 75 min each

Viewing Platform: Netflix

Na Hee-do is an aspiring teenage fencer in the 1990s, with only one dream: to be the rival of talented, Olympic champion Ko Yu-rim. Hee-do convinces her famous news anchor mother to let her transfer to Yu-rim's school, and in the meantime, she meets an alumnus of that school, Baek Yi-jin – a young man who is down on his luck ever since his rich father's lawbreaking was discovered and the huge financial crisis hit South Korea. Will Yu-rim accept Hee-do as a worthy opponent? What happens when Yi-jin has to go live near the sea with his uncle because he isn't a college grad and can't find a job anywhere else? And what will Hee-do's aspiring ballerina daughter, looking back on her mother's adolescence, think of all this?

*This kdrama felt SO LONG and sad and drawn out! I don't like when a show decides to cover several years of time with its characters (not including the flashbacks). This is definitely a “coming of age” story with a heavy dose of nostalgia (a particular flavor of which I don't relate to as an American). It is also NOT a lovely, exciting romance, but rather a *spoiler alert* bittersweet, slow-death tale of an ill-fated first love. Seriously, I don't understand the drive to choose career over love in modern storytelling; it's so depressing and too much like real-life, when all I want to do is escape reality with my precious downtime. I understand that Yi-jin had MUCH fewer options because he wasn't able to continue his education, but it just wasn't romantic for him to pick his job over his girlfriend. Won't watch again.*