One day, as I spaced out during an online class bc I’m a grad student and adhd is a helluva thing, I decided to google this show. I had heard of it and so had my sister (“I think a magician kidnaps some kids, and it has no romance?”), so I decided that I wanted to watch watch it in the near future. Maybe it was Ji Chang Wook’s face, or my weakness for ‘magical dude who is mysterious and slightly hobo-like’ characters. Nearly one month later, I finally watched it.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way, I loved it. This show does a surprisingly good job of balancing dark story elements with an undying sense of hope. What this ends up doing is creating a story without an easy resolution, which is what I think has bothered some people about this show. There is no way that this show was every going to have a ‘and they lived happily ever after’ kind of ending, but I think it works for the material.

The truth is that this story really has three lead characters. Because it’s not a romance, we do away with the idea of second leads and one getting shafted in favor of another. I’ll consider Ah Yi, Ri Eul and Il Deung as three leads because despite not getting equal amounts of screen time, they’re the only characters whose pasts and psyches we get a proper glimpse into. I loved that Ri Eul comes into Ah Yi's life as an almost angelic figure who she believes will solve all her practical problems but then he’s kinda useless at that. He can’t give her the money she needs (except for that one time??? don't think about it too much), can’t give Ah Yi and her sister a better home to live in, make her an independent adult or bring her parents back. What he *does* bring is a chance for her to regain the youth and innocence she’s lost in the struggle of her difficult life. This works because it ensures that she seeks him out because she wants to feel that peace and carelessness he allows her and not because she’s dependent on him for her needs. In turn, he forgets his lonely existence for the duration of her visits and gets do what he seems to enjoy most: entertain and create a sense of wonder in others. Though she does doubt him at certain points (understandably so, things were looking pretty sus for a moment there) Ah Yi ultimately sticks by his side because as he says, he only needs one person to believe in his magic. This is very much a friendship and anyone who says otherwise is a weirdo.

The struggle of real world vs fantasy is present through the entire show. It’s sometimes unclear when watching whether something really happened or not. Some viewers may dislike this, but I ague that it serves to drive one of the ideas behind the show forward. Did it happen or not? Your mileage my vary, possibly depending on your stance on whether magic exists or not. A great example of this is the disappearance of the horrible boss. We first see it from Ah Yi’s perspective, Ri Eul flicks his cape and the creep is gone. Later, once the creep returns (everyone booed), he claims that Ri Eul flicked his cape and pushed him over the railing. Ah Yi, and by extent the viewer, wonders whether Ri Eul is simply an elaborate con artist. Surely, he didn’t *actually* disappear the creep, he’s got the scars to prove his fall! And yet, by the end of the story, Ah Yi pulls the same trick on Ri Eul to help him escape from the police, and he looks on proudly as he disappears before the bewildered eyes of several witnesses (the fact that Ah Yi wasn’t arrested as an accomplice or for obstruction of justice is a downright miracle). So, does magic exist? What actually happened with the creep? The ambiguity works to leave the decision up to the viewer, and I think it’s a good choice for this type of story. Who knows, maybe both things are true. Though, I won’t lie, the idea that magic exists and Ri Eul can wield it but he still decided to straight up shove the creep over the railing for assaulting a minor is hilarious and, honestly? I can’t really fault him for it . Maybe Ri Eul giving a damn was the true magic all along.

The only one element truly tips the scale on the “is magic real?” debate is that of Ri Eul's butterfly necklace. It glows and then unexplainable things happen, like fireworks going off out of nowhere or the park coming to life. Where did he get it? Where *did* he learn magic? Who knows, certainly not us. Maybe the people that read the manhwa know. But it doesn’t matter, because maybe it’s about believing that magic *could* be real. When Ah Yi accuses him of being lazy and disconnected from reality, unwilling do do the things that need to be done, Ri Eul lays out his thesis “You should do whatever it is you want to do just as much as the things you don't want to do.” The idea of not replacing responsibility with whimsy, but to have them in equal measure is a refreshing alternative to the YOLO style other similar stories have employed. It’s a sobering lesson viewers can more easily implement in their lives.

At first I wondered why Ri Eul was so soft with Ah Yi (helping her heal her inner child, taking a beating for her etc.) and so hard on Il Deung (showing him a terrifying vision of his future if he does not change his ways, Christmas Carol style) but as we learn the truth about his past it becomes obvious. Il Deung is a reflection of Ri Eul younger self almost to a T. Seen this way, it makes sense that he’s doing the magical equivalent of shaking someone by the shoulders and telling them to wake up. I thought he simply liked the Il Deung less, but scenes like the one after his vision in the field of yellow flowers, where he wakes to find that Ri Eul has draped his cape like a blanket around him, removed his glasses to help him sleep better and painted a field of yellow flowers around him make me think otherwise. Or when he wakes up after his first vision (a horrible spectacle of mundanity which could easily be set to Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall pt 2) to find himself standing on the edge of the stage of the abandoned theater, stopped only by Ri Eul’s grip on his arm (in a way it’s symbolic, Il Deung has unknowingly walked himself to the edge of a precipice and out of all the people around him, Ri Eul is the only one who sees what’s happening and does something to hold him back from falling). These scenes, coupled together with those where the magician teaches both children how to do magic, make it clear he likes them both. In the case of Ah Yi, he recognizes that she lives a difficult life and offers respite. In the case of Il Deung, he sees himself, close to buckling under the weight of expectations and jumping off a building as he did in his own youth, so he’s more stern in his attempts to avoid history repeating itself.

Let’s talk about mental illness! Korean dramas…don’t have the best track record with this subject. It seems like we’re past the point of outright demonization (every crime they try to pin on Ri Eul turns out to have been done by someone else) but we’re not quite at the point of integration into society at large (Ri Eul still lives in a creepy abandoned park that people largely avoid and as soon as things start going wrong, fingers get pointed at the local outcast). Still, the text itself gives Ri Eul a humane look, showing that he really is just a man who suffered deeply and has come out on the other side being kind and mostly stable. The show argues that society at large is at fault for driving a healthy and brilliant individual to their breaking point. The only points we see him really be thrown off kilter (not counting the flashback to his high school days), are when he fights the creepy boss (valid!), when he chokes Ha Na (yikes! Not cool even if she *was* provoking you!) and when he tells Ah Yi that his beloved Bella is on the brink of death (the only of these outbursts which speaks of sadness rather than anger, and Ah Yi even remarks on his reaction resembling that of a child losing a beloved pet). Maybe one could interpret this in the sense of the classic ‘he’s just a grown up child’, but I think it does Ri Eul's character a disservice. To consider him that way would be to dissolve him of blame and awareness and I think he is very much aware of his actions. We’re told he was a brilliant young man, and that’s not something that just goes away. I believe he’s a person who’s made a very conscious decision to live his life in a certain way, and finds that society affords him very few options to do so, which in turn has alienated him. He’s not a respected figure, but he’s a mostly tranquil one. If it were me, I probably would’ve had much less patience for teenagers snooping around my home the way everybody (but especially Ha Na and her little friend) were doing and would’ve snapped sooner. Overall, I’m glad that we’re trying to stray away from normalizing academic exhaustion, which brings me to my next point: adulthood, childhood and the permanence of wonder and beauty.

There's a lot of talk about growing and what it means to be an adult. Ah Yi desperately wants to be an adult, Ri Eul thinks she should stay a kid and not rush stages (while recognizing her struggles led to her growing up quickly, which is important), Il Deung is on a pointless road to adulthood. There's also an idea of society determining what an adult must be/look like/act, a notion that Ah Yi challenges by the end of the story. Because all the adults in her life, despite fitting better into traditional standards of what an adult should be, have failed her (absent parents, skeptical and unhelpful teachers, a horrible boss who attempts SA), Ri Eul becomes a safe adult in her life despite being someone who is considered a failure/outcast by societal standards. He gives her something warm to drink when she needs it, stops her boss’s assault, takes a beating by the creditors, teaches her a new skill, helps her heal her inner child and overall just listens to her (even when she’s just insulting him). Knowing that it is possible to be this kind of adult (again, she's severely lacking in role models) she's empowered to continue her journey into adulthood without letting go of wonder and whimsy despite her difficult circumstances.

By the way, there’s some beautiful cinematography here and the production itself looks superb. The school is a statuesque old building, there’s beautiful nature shots such as the fantasy Il Deung has when he shares his AirPods with Ah Yi or later when he sees himself in a never ending field of yellow flowers. His drive through the city is an excellent contrast to it. The abandoned park (but especially the theater and Ri Eul's study) look super cool as well. This show does interesting things with the musical numbers, taking advantage of the musical medium’s natural inclination into fantasy to create some neat visuals (the first number with the kids flying about as though Ri Eul is controlling them but the teachers can’t see and them dancing on the side of the building (('In The Heights' movie, anybody?)), the one where Magician and Ah-yi’s shadows dance, the curse of the asphalt number and even Magician and Ah-yi’s final duet as they dance among lanterns in a mirrored room). I’ll give another shoutout to the shot of the yellow flowers painted on the stage when Il Deung wakes up because it looked so pretty that I gasped and because it exists outside of any fantasy sequence.

A final thought before I finish this absolute sprawl of a review (more like rant). I didn’t even know this was a musical until I actually started the show (I somehow missed this information on my initial googling) and let me know I was in for a TREAT. Still I know musicals aren’t everyone’s cup of tea and I can see why it would turn off some potential viewers. The fact that the music is non-diagetic only serves to add to the irreal fabric of the story, as we see fantastical sequences play out. It leaves viewers teetering between fantasy and reality, in the same way the use of magic does within the story and sometimes, magical sequences overlap with musical ones (such as the merry-go-round sequence). Are they really singing? Are they really flying? It doesn't really matter, just dwell in the fantastical ambiance and let the story take you where it wants to go. It's more enjoyable that way, as this is a show about fantasy and belief and not meant for poking holes into it. The songs are fine, nicely composed and performed if not particularly remarkable. If musicals aren't really your thing I still reccommend you refrain from skipping through them, as the visuals from the scenes are usually worth it.

Let’s talk about the ending. I see people calling this a sad ending and while I cried, I hesitate to call it anything other than a beautiful ending (bittersweet at worst). The Sound of Magic is one of those stories about people that help one another through a difficult time but who were never meant to stay in each other’s lives forever. Ri Eul is almost a plot device for Il Deung to veer from his seemingly predestined path and for Ah Yi to regain enough hope to keep living her life. He inspires them to in turn inspire others through their actions and beliefs. Il Deung tells his parents to piss off because he’s going to drop out of school and become a magician. Ah Yi continues her academic path all the way into university, though she continues to visit the abandoned park and sends letters to Ri Eul in a similar way that she did texts to her mother at the beginning of the story. Also she’s working as a part time magician for kid’s birthday parties and good on her for using those skills because, lest we forget, Ah Yi literally makes Ri Eul disappear with nothing but a tablecloth, a surprisingly chic hat and sheer power of will. I wonder how that conversation with the cops went. I also wonder if Il Deung was half as successful with his magic career.

In all seriousness though, the scene when Ah Yi makes Ri Eul disappear legitimately made me cry. It looks gorgeous, the snow inexplicably falling indoors as Ah Yi realizes how she can help her friend one last time, the proud look on Ri Eul's face as she utters the spell, the fact that it works because she believes in him and his magic, the fact that she believes because she’s let hope and wonder back into her life. Listen, this stuff gets to me. Did I want to see him again before the show ended? Sure! By this point of the story, he’s my poor little meow meow and I love him. Do I think it’s probably for the best that he didn’t? Yes. It would probably lessen the impact of his departure (which was epic and significant) to have him show up again and would take away from the mystery of his character (we’re left with a “so magic WAS real?) feeling. Ri Eul helped Ah Yi as much as he could and she helped him in turn (the scene that reveals the childhood connection broke me though I had seen it coming). Some people are only in your life for a short time (despite leaving a huge impact) and that’s okay. It’s beautiful that their relationship existed, and that it helped her during a difficult time, so it’s sad that it’s over. But the fact that his impact is still present in her life as she seeks to bring the same wonder to people’s lives that he brought into hers? Beautiful. Cycle of life, paying it forward, yadda yadda, cue me crying while I get dressed for work because I made the mistake of watching this two hours before my shift. It gets to me because the idea of maintaining childlike wonder in adulthood is one I personally try to embody in my life, so this felt affirming in a way. It also felt affirming as someone who’s struggled a fair amount with mental health (sometimes in academic settings), so like I already said, this stuff gets to me. Really, I want to take this show and hug it because it hurt me but in such a good way. In a “ughh, humanity has such potential for beauty” kind of way. Ri Eul's existence serves as a kind of remainder that hope and optimism are choices that one can make in life.

All in all, highly recommended!!!