Love Alarm came back this month, expecting success and high hopes from their first season. Season two of the fantasy romance drama was released with returning stars Kim So-hyun, Song Kang and Jung Ga-ram. It’s stunning videography and slow build on the characters caught the attention of many people.
Based on the webtoon by Chon Kye-young, the show is centered around the premise of the ‘Love Alarm’ app, which will ring if someone who likes you comes within a 10-metre range and has installed and turned on the app.
Stretched out to eight episodes through a love triangle, Love Alarm was a familiar, but fresh, easy-going and slickly produced confection that had the usual themes of a K-drama romance, but fewer characters and a bit less downtime. The first season focused on high school student Jojo (Kim So-hyun), an orphan who works two jobs and lives with her aunt and cousin, classmate Park Gul-mi (Go Min-si). We then are introduced to Hye-young (Jung Ga-ram) who has a crush on her, but model Sun-oh (Song Kang), his best friend also has feelings for this girl.
The show continued for years after high school, showing much more mature characters throughout the episodes. The series has a Black Mirror vibe, where artificial intelligence becomes an extension of a human being, rather than a utility. The plot itself is wisely middling on the subject, giving an on-the-fence narrative of technology making our decisions. These themes affect relationships, not only the ones including Jojo. The heart is no longer something with unplummetable depths and emotions; instead, it’s totally predictable, quantifiable, and mathematical. This leads a love triangle to appear attempting to answer questions from the previous season. Even after high school Sun-oh is still looking for answers while Jojo decides to date Hye-young, trying to convince him and herself that she truly loves him. Their connection can be seen well as Jojo seems to be content and truly cares for him. Things do seem to waver when she can’t ring his love alarm, making them both pretend not to care about it.
The show Itself had great acting and connections between certain characters. It’s pace was slow but for that reason the story builds nicely. The writers did this on purpose making the story also explore companionship. I do think there were some choices that could have improved or guaranteed for a third season. Looking into the chemistry of Sun-ho and Jojo, even after high school it was still noticeable on screen. They could have at least put more focus on that, instead of only just lightly touching on it. Side stories that were included didn’t have as much affect to the plot with how little they were shown. It seemed with the way this show was put together that it wasn’t a priority. Most only had a few minutes of run time, or put in at times that didn’t make sense. Even though there were some disappointments I did like Love Alarms message and ideas.
The series opens four years later, we see Sun-oh and Hye- young still bitter over the fight between jojo. Ever since their teenage days things have become tense for them, adulthood raising the tensions. This leads to Sun-ho and Hye-young drifting apart due to the given situation. In the first season we see the boys rely on each other almost like brothers. In reality the second season needs to continue answering the questions that were left for us. The main characters are very likable to their viewers, which makes this hard. The series purposely confuses the audience with plenty of mixed feelings coming from the storyline.
In the end Love Alarm had new ideas and themes apart from cliché shows, but also had room for improvement. It went into death of unanswered questions from the previous season, but also made confusing twists.
