Like I said in my previous post, I signed up for a DramaFever membership. The membership started with a short free trial, so I figured I'd pick a short series and test out how well the app worked on my TV. Aftermath was ideal – not only did it have a small number of episodes, each episode was only 8-11 minutes long. I liked the premise, too.
The series follows Ahn Dae Yong, a high school student who accidentally falls off a building while trying to look calm and cool in front of a cute girl named Joo Hee Kyung. After he's released from the hospital, Dae Yong notices that his vision has somehow changed. To his eyes, a person who is about to die has white skin and red eyes. With the help of a man with similar abilities, he also learns that those who are about to commit murder have white skin and blue eyes.
Sadly, one of the things that attracted me to this show, its shortness, also turned out to be its biggest weakness. There wasn't enough time to explore Dae Yong's new powers, his budding romance with Hee Kyung, and his clashes with the series' sociopathic villain. During the first half of the series, there were times when I felt like chunks of footage must have been left out. For example, Dae Yong went from being a lone guy with special powers to meeting his mentor in the space of a few confusing seconds. I mean, yes, the guy had previously been shown watching Dae Yong from the car, but how did he introduce himself to Dae Yong? Did I miss something? I felt the same way when the villain was introduced (trying to avoid spoilers) – Dae Yong adjusted to this new development way faster than I did.
I couldn't decide whether I liked Dae Yong and Hee Kyung as a couple or not. It was weird watching Dae Yong do something so ordinary as fret over the possibility of getting a girlfriend when he'd so recently developed amazing powers. In some ways, I thought Hee Kyung was a more interesting character than Dae Yong, but there wasn't much time to explore her character in depth. I wanted to know more about her past history with the villain.
I had high hopes that the show was building up to something awesome, and then the ending turned out to be a letdown. I found it hard to believe that someone who had killed so many people for his own amusement just disappeared with barely a fuss.
This series had so much promise. The scenes when Dae Yong would spot someone who was about to die and spend a few moments desperately trying to figure out what he needed to do were great. I especially liked the beginning of the train scene. Unfortunately, I expected there to be more tense cat and mouse games between Dae Yong and the villain, and what I was given instead was lots of Dae Yong and his relationships with his best friend and Hee Kyung. The end result felt uneven and incomplete. I do think the series was worth watching, but it could have been so much better than it was.
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