Main Cast: Park Ji-Hoon, Choi Hyun-Wook, Hong Kyung

Summary

Weak Hero Class 1 is one of the newest South Korean action dramas following Yeon Si-Eun (played by Park Ji-Hoon), An Soo-Ho (played by Choi Hyun-Wook), and Oh Beom-Seok (played by Hong Kyung). Despite being physically weak, Si-Eun is the high school’s top student and an easy target for school bullies. Although Si-Eun seems frail and defenseless, he leverages his intellect and surroundings to protect himself during his battles inside and outside of school grounds. Being the complete opposite, Soo-Ho is a phenomenal fighter who sleeps during class after spending all night doing part-time jobs. Beom-Seok, the son of an assembly man, suddenly transfers to Si-Eun’s high school after experiencing intense bullying at his previous school.

While many of Si-Eun’s classmates are envious of his academic success, his top grades come at the price of having no friends. However, after witnessing a fellow classmate forcing Beom-Seok to sabotage Si-Eun during a mock exam, Soo-Ho quickly defends and befriends Si-Eun. The duo quickly becomes a trio after Beom-Seok attempts to right his wrong. However, as the trio dive deeper into the cause of Si-Eun’s sabotage, they accidentally stumble into a drug/gambling ring preying upon young students. Eventually, a great friendship slowly emerges between the three students as they attempt to survive school bullies, bring down the drug/gambling ring, and navigate the struggles of growing up.

However, their newfound friendship begins to experience a crisis after Beom-Seok’s prior school bullies reappear. Beom-Seok begins to question if Soo-Ho actually is his friend or sees him as an “underling” and begins to act differently around Soo-Ho and Si-Eun. Rather than eating and hanging out with Soo-Ho and Si-Eun, Beom-Seok begins spending more time with the same people who bullied Si-Eun and becomes increasingly upset with Soo-Ho.

Thoughts

Despite only being 8 episodes, Weak Hero Class 1 does a phenomenal job at highlighting the struggles associated with growing up. Each character has extremely different personalities and backgrounds, but they all struggle with the same thing: loneliness. However, they quickly begin to latch on to one another and grow stronger together as they overcome bullies and violence.

Although this is definitely a darker and heavier drama, I honestly thought that this had some of the most high-quality acting that I’ve seen. All three actors did a phenomenal job at executing their character’s struggles and expressions in each gesture and facial expression. Soo-Ho’s snarky yet easy-going personality really complimented Si-Eun’s brooding demeanor. The fighting scenes were also well filmed and only added to the suspense and tension between the 3 boys’ friendship.

More importantly, Weak Hero Class 1 did an outstanding job at developing the plot. Each episode followed the evolution of their close friendship to their rivalry as the drama delved deeper into each character’s backstory and their psychological trauma and scars. This drama made me smile and feel relief as the trio finally found friendship and happiness with one another and also made me anxious and sad as I watched them slowly grow more distant from one another.