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A romance takes place between a man (played by Jong-suk Lee) who exists within a webtoon known as "W," and a woman (played by Hyo-joo Han) who is in the real world. The woman's father is the webtoon artist who makes the protagonist's life a living hell, creating the murder of his parents by the hands of an unknown killer. But as the comic world comes to life and clashes with the real world, the people of both worlds are confronted with danger.
This is an interesting premise that has been done before. This K-drama has some vague similarities to films like "The Matrix" or "Last Action Hero", but it carves out its own identity and develops in unpredictable ways. In fact, it's virtually impossible to predict what's going to happen from one episode to the next. One reason for this is that it gradually adds layers and develops the "rule system" of this particular comic book world, which offers many intriguing turns of events and some wicked plot twists. The end of episode 1 feels like a climactic event, and there are many such events that throw you for a loop because they are things that would probably happen at the end of a film with a similar premise. This creates a sense of excitement that is sustained for most of the episodes, and that excitement is earned thru characters and scriptwriting instead of overblown or cartoonish action scenes.
Most fortunately, the storyline is presented organically and naturally. This show does make an admirable attempt to sufficiently close as many plot holes that it reasonably can, but it still feels a bit contrived in spots. This is especially true during the final few episodes, which have a slight sense of randomness to them. Prior to that, everything seemed very neat and tidy in terms of following the "rule system" of the worlds, but that seemed to come loose a bit down the stretch. And that would be my primary criticism of this show – it seemed like they didn't really know how to end it. It felt a bit anticlimactic. Personally, I would preferred a more traditional, higher octane finale.
In any case, all of the acting in this K-drama is very good. I've covered Hyo-joo Han a handful of times already in my reviews of "The Beauty Inside" and "Cold Eyes." But she expresses a very wide range of emotion in this, giving a nuanced and energetic performance. I was less familiar with the lead actor, but he did a solid job as well.
A few other random compliments are that I really enjoyed the theme tune, which is quite catchy. There is a splash of comic book imagery that I enjoyed. And there is also one particularly creepy special effect that is used on one character's face during the middle episodes.
