"The Uncanny Counter": A Gay-Subtext "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" from Korea

 

The Uncanny Counter: "Noodle shop employees by day and demon hunters by night, the Counters use special abilities to chase down malevolent spirits that prey on humans."  Buffy the Vampire Slayer in Korea might be interesting, with demons derived from Buddhism rather than Christianity.  And it's a weekly series, which I actually prefer over dumping a whole season at once.  Plus one of the characters is bound to be gay.

Scene 1: Mom and Dad  (Gwon), drive their young son (Mun) through the dark suburban streets of Jungjin, Korea. They are planning to drop him off at his grandparents and go off by themselves, but when Mun paints them into his picture, they magically decide to stay with him.  Creepy powers, kid!

Cut to a rain-soaked young man, Detective Ga, standing on a building roof.  He calls Gwon: "Be careful!  Be sure you survive!  You have to!"  Then he jumps off the roof.

A truck crashes into the car.  The driver approaches., slowly, as Mun loses consciousness.

Scene 2:  Seven years later, the teenage Mun (Jo Byung-gyu, below) is trying to bathe his senile grandmother, who is combative and blames him for his parents' deaths: "You killed my daughter!  Why are you still alive?" Meanwhile Grandpa is making breakfast Personally, I would have Grandpa bathe ihs wife and Mun cook).  

Mun rushes to get dressed.  We see his  art awards, his superhero sketches.  He walks with a limp due to the accident.

Scene 3: On the way to the noodle shop Mun, Boy Friend, and Girl Friend (they don't get names) discuss they superhero characters for their video game or manga.  Mun insists that they stop to pick up a flier about a missing person. Maybe this will be important later?

Scene 4: The noodle shop is very famous, and packed, with a line around the block outside. It's run by people with super powers: when Young Man's kinfe breaks, Middle Aged Woman throws a new one across the room, and he catches it by the handle!. Meanwhile Young Woman carries four 50-liter jugs of water through the back alley.  Isn't the first rule of scriptwriting to identify your characters by name?. 

Young Woman has a vision of someone being killed, and rushes back into the noodle shop to announce that it's a Level 2, Maybe a Level 3.  They all leave their customers and jump into the  Mystery Machine.  Mun and his friends, who have been waiting in line, protest.

Mun and Boy Friend comment "She's pretty."  To identify themselves as heterosexual? 

Scene 5: The Demon Slayers  arrive at the demon-sighting location, put on red hoodies and black masks, and call the middle-aged Cheoi-jung, who is wearing a stupid-looking toupee.  He says he'll get there as fast as he can.

The Demon is a cute guy in a black hoodie.  They chase him over rooftops and fight him with Asian martial arts.  In the end, he gets away, Cheoi-jung is killed, and a ball of energy shoots off into the sky.  So far we've had four characters named, and three of them died immediately.

Scene 6:  Back at the noodle shop, Mun and his friends finally sit down to eat.  They gush annoyingly over how good the food is.  Even after they lealve, they continue to gush over the food.

Do we really need to spend five minutes of air hearing "it was so good!" over and over?  At least use a thesaurus!

The ball of energy zaps into Mun, who rises into the air, falls back down again, loses consciousness, and suddenly has the same bad toupee as Cheoi-jung!  

Scene 7: Mun goes home.  It's his birthday, so Grandpa made him a cake.  This is the first I'm hearing of it.  Neither of his friends mentioned that it was his birthday, or gave him presents.  Maybe that's the custom in Korea?

Scene 8: Mun washes his hair, but the bad toupee is still there.  He falls asleep and awakens in his bed on a vast, muddy lake.  An elderly woman introduces herself as Wi-Gen. And he wakes up.

Scene 9:  In the library the next day, Mun discusses the experience with Girl Friend.   She kids him that it was an erotic dream.  Suddenly he sees the bullies extorting money out of Boy Friend. -- he finally gets a name, Ung-min.  

Mun intervenes, with a lot of gay subtext buddy bonding rhetoric: "You're my friend!  I would die for you!"

Head Bully (Lee Hong-nae), who has red hair to make him more sinister, happens to be the Mayor's son.

Scene 10: Scary Sunglass Guy climbs out of his limousine feet first. Interesting -- it's usually a woman who gets out of a car feet first, so the audience can perv on her high-heel shoes. 

He bows at the shrine set up for the memory of Cheoi-jung (who died in Scene 5). Then he visits the Demon Slayers and announces that the mourning period is over, so it's time to get back to work: the Level Three Demon captured Cheoi-jung's soul, but Wi-Gen (whom Mun dreamed of) got out and latched onto the body of a "splendid guy." He was just walking around, not even in a coma.

A boy possessed by the soul of an elderly woman!  Sounds interesting!

They are shocked.  How can someone who is not in a coma become a Counter?  

Scary Sunglasses Guy asks Mo-Tak to mentor the boy, make something of him, so they can catch the Level Three Demon who ate Cheoi-jung's soul. So, which one is Mo-Tak?

Scene 11: A male and female detective are bickering at the scene of Cheoi-jung's "suicide." Wait-- the morning period is over and they're still investigating?  Don't you mourn for like six months?

. Everyone criticizes the woman: "What an attention whore!  We need to get her married off!"  So, in Korea married women can't be cops?   

Apparently the police are in bed with the demons, so all of the evidence has been removed and destroyed.

Scene 12: The Mayor and his assistant discuss Cheoi-jung's "suicide" while passing protesters: "Keep our city safe!" "The mayor is killing our children!"  Uh-oh, the mayor is in bed with the demons, too.

Scene 13: At school. Boy Friend is angry with Mun for standing up to the bullies.  Now he'll be beat up, or even killed, which would be bad because...well, you know how I feel.   Girl Friend agrees with him: now they'll both be killed.  

Scene 14: On the way home, Mun runs into the bullies, but they're more interested in taunting him and stealing his stuff than killing him.  Young Woman (is she Mo-Tak?) intervenes, beats up the bullies, and tells Mun "You'd better come with me."

She takes him to headquarters for pizza and an exposition dump: The Demon Slayers hunt down dead souls who have escaped from Hell   Mun thinks they're all crazy.

Aha! The Young Man is Mo-Tak (Yoo Jun-Sang, left).  He refuses to train someone so weak and wimpy.  

Middle-Aged Woman shows Mun how to visit the afterlife.  It looks different to evreyone, but for him, it's a vast muddy lake.  

More exposition dump: when bad people escape from the afterlife, they possess the body of a living person (Level 1), who gets superpowers.  The demon gradually takes over, and kills someone and eats their soul (Level 2).  The more souls they eat, the more powerful and evil they become, until they reach Level 3.   

I deduce that good people take over the living, too, and become Counters.

Scene 15: Back at headquarters, Mun says "thanks, but no thanks, the job is too dangerous, but I'll still come to your noodle shop."  They ask him to think it over.

Boy Friend calls: The bullies have kidnapped him, and Mun must meet them at the gym or they will kill him.  Rescuing your Boy Friend instead of a girl?  That's the definition of gay subtext!

Mun rushes to the gym.  They taunt him.  The end.

Beefcake:  No, although some of the cast looks good shirtless.

Other Sights: Nice exterior shots.

Gay Characters:  Gay subtext romance between Mun and Boy Friend.

Names:  Most of the major characters don't get named.  I figured some of them out using wikipedia, but others are a mystery.   The top photo, for instance, is Jung Won-chang, who plays Shin hyuk-woo. He's not Mun, Boy Friend, Head Bully, or Mo-Tak   

My Grade: B-.  Points off for the five minutes of "These noodles are so good!"  "They are good!" "They are so good!"