Episode Twenty Transcript - The Butterflies On The Concrete Podcast: What Got Me Through The Week?

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Hello and Welcome to this week’s episode of the Butterflies On The Concrete Podcast: What Got Me Through The Week? This week I actually want to talk about a few things! Two webtoons I’ve been reading lately, and also two dramas that I adore, the Korean drama, Doctor Slump, and the Japanese drama, Plus-sized Misadventures in Love!

So, recently I’ve started reading the webtoons My Secret Boyfriend and LMLY, and so I wanted to recommend them even though they aren’t new, they’re just new to me. I think both would be excellent source material for dramas in the future.

My Secret Boyfriend is about a young woman named Darcei, who flys to South Korea to start her dream career and also meet an online friend for the first time. The twist is that her secret boyfriend - this online friend of hers - is actually someone who’s famous that she ends up working with, but she doesn’t know at first that it’s him.  This webtoon caught my attention very quickly, and it’s ongoing so it hasn’t been completed yet, but so far it’s pretty solid.

LMLY is a really wholesome webtoon, the sort of story I would’ve loved reading when I was younger, but can still appreciate now. The premise is that two classmates - Leon and Sofia -  get assigned to a school project together, and it turns out that Leon has a crush on Sofia, but this is the first opportunity that they’ve had to actually interact with one another. Sofia’s friends keep pressuring her to get into a relationship, by setting her up on dates, and she isn’t happy about it so she asks Leon to be her fake boyfriend.

It’s a really sweet story so far, and it’s ongoing so hopefully more episodes will be released in the upcoming months, but what stands out to me the most about this webtoon is the artwork. I really love the artistic style of this webtoon. My favorite part of it is probably how the story is being told to us and the choices the artist is making when telling it.

I don’t think a story needs to be complex to be good. I actually think the most important thing in telling a story is that it’s communicated in a captivating way, whether the plot is complex or simple, because storytelling isn’t an easy thing regardless.

Now before I talk about the dramas I want to discuss today I’m going to read a quick disclaimer. While there are a lot of comedic elements in these two dramas, they sort of deal with some heavy subject matter as well, so I just wanted to add this in.

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Okay! So, Doctor Slump is one of my favorite dramas this year so far. The premise of the show is that two former classmates reconnect while both are at low points in their lives. It stars Park Shin-hye, who plays anesthesiologist Nam Ha-neul, and Park Hyung-sik, who plays plastic surgeon, Yeo Jeong-woo. Nam Ha-neul quits her job at a hospital after becoming depressed due to unfair working conditions, and Yeo Jeong-woo closes his practice after an unexpected incident happens causing him to lose everything he’s worked hard for overnight because of it.

I love Park Shin Hye’s acting. I’ve been a fan since You’re Beautiful, the drama Flower Boy Next Door used to be one of my favorite shows, and Heartstrings is also a show of hers that I’d love to suggest you watch as well. The dramas I enjoyed Park Hyung-sik in previously are What Happens to My Family?, High Society and Strong Woman Do Bong Soon.

This show deals with some heavy subject matter like I said, but it has a lot of comedic elements so such topics never once feel overwhelming for the viewer. These former classmates are actually former rivals - each trying to be at the top of their class - and so that makes this even more fun to watch, to see them reminisce about the past. The competition between them is very, very funny, and it creates some tension, but, as time goes on and they grow closer to one another, in part because he ends up unknowingly renting out the rooftop apartment in the building that she lives in with her family, we see their familiarity with one another become the strong foundation on which their relationship is built. In this show, Jeong-woo sees his once biggest rival essentially become his biggest supporter and defender.

I love this drama so much, and the reason for it is that as I watch them comfort each other in the show, I feel comforted. As I watch them overcome their struggles in the show, it makes me feel like I can overcome whatever I’m facing in my life, which makes this a rare gem of a drama because not every show can make a viewer feel that way.

It’s a very healing and uplifting drama. There’s a lot of not great, and negative stuff that happens, but the tone of it is uplifting in the midst of such things. It never feels overbearing in its heaviness. If it gets heavy, the writer finds a way to make it bearable, and makes it so that none of it is gratuitous, there’s always a reason why these things are happening, and you can trust that all of it is working towards this final uplifting message.

I appreciate the way this show normalizes getting help for mental health issues and I think that it’s beautifully done. Jeong-woo has so many people abandon him, but Ha-neul and her family are there for him. She knows him as a person and knows that he would never do anything to intentionally harm someone else, and her faith in him, even though they haven’t seen each other for years, just shows how amazing their foundation is as they start this relationship together. She sees him in his worst state and she’s there for him without question, believing in him when no one else does, and he’s comforted that finally someone sees who he is when even the people who’d been with him for such a long time questioned his character. He had people he called his friends, and his family, and he was super popular and had a lot of fame, but they all abandoned him, whereas Ha-neul is there for him and stands up for him and tries to help him at his lowest moment. Likewise, he’s also there for her when she’s depressed. He gives her a listening ear, and tries to make her happy, and is always willing to be there to console her even though he has his own challenges he’s dealing with. There really aren’t loose ends in this show, it has a wonderful ending, and I enjoyed the relationship with the second lead couple as well.

I will say that Park Hyung-sik’s comedic acting is top tier, in that it’s sincere, but I noticed towards the end of the show that he also doesn’t seem concerned about preserving his celebrity image at all, and so he’s willing to do ridiculous or childish things if the plot calls for it, which makes him a better actor. Like he goes all in for a role, and this drama made me appreciate his acting more than I did previously. He’s hilarious, but he also can portray the serious aspects of his roles authentically as well. It’s really impressive.

And Park Shin-hye’s acting - which I’ve always appreciated - only continues to improve as time goes on. Her ability to express her emotions is at a whole other level now. She’s always been talented, but this show confirmed for me that she only gets better as an actress the more she matures as a person.

I want a season two of this show so badly. I would love to see more of all the characters - the first lead couple and the second lead couple - and how they face new challenges as they build their lives together with their partners now that they’ve overcome their initial struggles. Only time will tell if this will happen or not, but I’d love to see it if it did.

Oh! And I forgot to say Doctor Slump can be found on Netflix.

Next, I’d like to talk about the Japanese drama, Plus-sized Misadventures in Love! It’s a drama that I fell in love with almost immediately. It’s only eight episodes and I watched it on the Rakuten Viki app. The premise is sort of sad, and yet, this show is so full of positivity that it sort of overshadows most of that sadness by the end of it. The show is just so extremely good that I feel like I have to recommend it.

The premise of this show is that the female lead, Kouda Yumeko, played by Ueda Kanade, tries to take her own life, but then she wakes up with amnesia and transforms into a completely different person, mentally not physically. Before the incident, she essentially has depression, and low self-esteem. However, after the incident, she has forgotten all of her pain, and lives life as if it’s something precious. In fact, she doesn’t seem to understand why she would’ve attempted to take her own life at all, because this new version of her has much higher self-esteem, so much so that she can  only see her strengths, and she’s able to view herself as the lovely and wonderful person that she is who is absolutely worthy of love and all good things in this world. She can finally see herself in a positive light, which is something she wasn’t capable of doing before. For example, she works in the planning department for a candy company, and she used to never share her ideas, but now she shares them openly and they’re successful and she gets praised as a result.

Obviously, this is just a story. In real life, most people do not get second chances like this after they make such decisions. It’s best to never take such drastic steps to be begin with.  As someone who has struggled with depression in the past, while watching this show, I really empathized with the female lead, and I felt really grateful to be in therapy, because it’s been a difficult journey, but it’s allowed me to learn how to radically love and accept myself as I am, including my imperfections, my mistakes and my weaknesses, like how awkward I probably sound as I try to do this podcast right now. All of that is ultimately what it means to be human. And by loving and accepting myself, I can extend that same radical acceptance to other people in my life, appreciating them, and accepting them for who they are, and meeting them where they are instead of having unrealistic expectations.

As Yumeko navigates the world with amnesia, she embraces whatever challenges big and small that come into her life with a positive outlook - including getting lost on her way to work, and we also watch as she falls for someone that she finds hyperventilating at the park and offers a bottle of water to. It turns out to be the same man that she actually had pictures of in her phone, meaning she must’ve had a crush on him previously, but she initially worries that she used to be a stalker which is hilarious. The person in question is the male lead, Yuki Keisuke, who’s played by Kusakawa Takuya, who is a member of the Japanese band, Bullet Train.

I’m going to speak about episodes in a little more detail now, so there might be spoilers ahead.

Episode Five of this show sort of demonstrates what I mentioned earlier about the benefits of radical acceptance. When the male lead, Keisuke, explains his past to Yumeko - that in exchange for his mom getting treatment for cancer, he became vice president even though his friend was up for that job and then it sparked rumors of him cheating with his friend’s wife. His friend’s wife is the president’s daughter, who he accompanies because her husband, who’s also his friend, ignored his requests to pay more attention to his wife and therefore neglected her. Yumeko listens to what he has to say, and stands by Keisuke’s side and helps him rebuild his relationship with his mom at the hospice she’s staying at, since he’d neglected his mom to focus on his work. Afterwards, and this for me is the best part - when Keisuke thanks Yumeko for always encouraging him and not judging him for his past, he starts to see her surrounded by sunlight - which is how she’s always viewed him since she first met him, particularly during the morning chats that they have in the park near their company.

Her love for herself ultimately allows her to encourage other people, which leads to those people reciprocating that encouragement to her in later episodes when she eventually regains her memories and reverts back to her depressed self, struggling to make sense of what’s happened to her. I made a note that one of her coworkers says to her that sincerity is her strength.

Though it isn’t a guarantee, oftentimes, if you’re supportive of others, they will be that way towards you as well, in return. If you accept others for who they are, they often accept you in return.

In Episode Eight, Yumeko and Keisuke confess their love to one another after she reads through her notebook where the version of her with amnesia wrote encouraging messages. She tears out the page of her notebook where her depressed self said terrible things, because she’s sick of thinking that way, then she runs to the rooftop and Keisuke is there hoping to see her after they’ve lost contact because she ignored him reaching out to her once she got her memories back. Also, in this episode, the friends she made while she had amnesia encouraged her to be more confident and to trust herself and her talent more when making pitches at work, and regarding her beauty as well.

We see Keisuke and Yumeko’s actual first meeting prior to the incident - when she was escaping her coworkers who bullied her, and he was on the roof stressed out. We find out that she overheard a conversation with Keisuke and another coworker where he said he had a certain type and that’s why she attempted suicide thinking that she could never be loved by him, but it was just a misunderstanding where he said whatever he could in that moment to get that person to leave him alone, placating him basically, so it wasn’t his true feelings.

As I watched this show, I felt like one of the messages could be that we often tell ourselves lies believing them to be truth, and in the process we devalue ourselves as unworthy of certain things, or unworthy of pursuing a certain life experience. Thoughts are just thoughts, not the truth, just words our brain produces, assumptions and perceptions we make as we move through the world that aren’t actually real. Keisuke loves Yumeko just as she is - even if she isn’t as bubbly as she was before, he accepts her and says that he wants to remain by her side.

By the end of the show, she has her love, and her friends, and is successful at work because she has accepted herself and chosen to love herself as she is instead of hating herself because of other peoples' judgmental words. It’s absolutely beautiful and I cried as she spoke about accepting herself.  In the show she says something like she ‘can’t be the version of herself that never cares about others’ opinions, but with the help of the people who love her, she’s been able to love herself and let go of her self-hate.’

And so, at the end of the day, it’s all about mindset and confidence. I think the show implies that you can have the life you want as long as you don’t put yourself in a box like Yumeko did. She was speaking so negatively about herself, not pitching ideas and not trying to obtain the life she wanted because she was so scared of being rejected. But when she got amnesia and loved herself fully,  she brightened the lives of so many, her coworker who was jealous of her ideas being chosen became a good friend, she spoke honestly to a designer when working on a candy idea and it lead to a good collaboration where her idea became a hit product, she helped Keisuke go from being sad and stressed to courageous and happy - able to overcome his problems and concerns. This show was so funny and also so heartfelt, it’s one of my favorites now.

I loved all of the actors. And I love how Keisuke gets jealous over the new employee on the planning team calling Yumeko by her first name, and her doing the same, and how when people say mean things about her he’s ready to shut them down and confront them about it, even getting a bit jealous when that new employee stands up for her when he wanted to do so first. So many aspects of this show are just handled so thoughtfully and wonderfully. Although the premise is quite sad, most of the show is hilarious, and that’s why I’m recommending it.

Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to this episode. If you’ve also read the webtoons I’ve mentioned, or watched Doctor Slump, or Plus-sized Misadventures in Love! please let me know your thoughts! The transcript and audio for this episode will be posted on our website, HyssopandEbony.com on our Blog & Transcripts page.

Until next time!