Trace of the Hand

Trace of the Hand

4/10

Trace of the Hand

Genre:                                 Episodes: 17                           Year: 2017

Romance

Comedy

Synopsis:

Kim Hong Shik is a shy, dorky collage student who returns to study after his mandatory military service. He gets a new phone which comes installed with ’T-Scope’- an app that lets him read other people’s text messages. Hong Shik uses the app in order to get closer to Park Min Young, a beautiful, popular girl in his class.

Cast:

Shin Jae Ha (Kim Hong Shik)

Hwa Young (Park Min Young)

Kwon Young Min (Park Soon Young)

Hyo Eun (Lee Soo Bin)

General Thoughts:

It’s kind of weird and kind of cool, but those two aspects somehow don’t really mesh together all that well. The series starts out as a cute little romance with a guy who looks to woo his lady love with the help of reading her text messages.

I adore awkward heroes

It’s creepy when you think about it, and surprisingly the drama actually goes down the ‘hey this is creepy’ road rather than just letting it slide because he’s the hero. But there’s no real cuteness in the drama which is a bit of a downer. I mean, I’m only really here to see Shin Jae Ha and Hwa Young be adorable together.

I can relate

And that did not happen. Like, I don’t really even want to list this as a rom-com, but it’s closer to that than anything else. This series is kind of weirdly genre-less. It’s not quite romantic enough to be a romance, it’s not quite comedic enough to be a comedy, it’s not quite mysterious enough to be a mystery, it’s not quite angsty enough to be a melodrama. Like what even are you? That being said, I will watch pretty much anything with Shin Jae Ha in it. He was what snagged me into watching this drama (and I had to search high and low into the deepest depths of the internet to find it with English subs that were available in my region), and in that sense I don’t regret it at all. Shin Jae Ha gives a great performance. It’s not spectacular as the character isn’t all that complex, but he’s able to quietly go from dorky, loveable hero to slightly jerky creep quite seamlessly. I like Hwa Young quite a lot as an actress (scandals aside) and think she’s pretty good. I’ve loved her in everything I’ve seen her in, but this series didn’t really give her a chance to shine. She’s just there to be a pretty face for the hero to go after.

That arm hover tho

As a character Min Young is pretty bland- she doesn’t really seem to have any preference for anything and just goes from one rich guy to the other. Her character gets a tiny bit of development at the end where she says (quite believably I’ll add) that she liked Hong Shik for his company and not his money, but it would have been nice to see her gradually fall for him the same way Hong Shik gradually fell into creepy territory.

Me: You need sleep!
Also Me: I bet I can finish this whole drama in one night!

The end would have been much more dramatic if you actually believed these two people liked each other at all, but I only felt like Hong Shik liked Min Young’s face, and Min Young liked Hong Shik for chasing after her. Be that as it may, the drama has enough in it to hold your attention, and it really is far from predictable. The episodes are short and sweet, rarely going over 8 minutes, so it’s not like it’s a huge time commitment. This series did seem better directed and better edited than a lot of other short series I’ve seen, and that helped keep the quality of the drama up even when the story wasn’t exactly five stars. It never felt like anyone who was a part of making the drama put in a half effort because it’s only a short series shown online, and it was easy to see that everyone on the production side was working pretty hard to keep it schmick and clean.

What Was Great:

A Little Different:

I love not knowing where a story is going, and I’ll admit that despite the story’s flaws, I enjoyed not knowing how everything would turn out. As fun as short, fluffy dramas are, they can all seem a bit the same- to the point where you know what’s going to happen before it plays out.

You'd think this is where we're headed. You'd be wrong.

This drama did not play out the way I was expecting. Which was awesome. I love being surprised (as long as it’s not done poorly). So while I didn't totally adore the way the drama concluded (where’s all my cute at?!), I give two thumbs up for breaking the mould. 

What Wasn’t:

Anti Hero:

Sooooo it broke the mould, but I didn’t really like where our hero ended up once he was out of the mould. There’s an art to making characters who do less than savoury things loveable, and that just did not happen here. As the drama went on I found myself liking Hong Shik less and less, and the way he was using he message-reading app was becoming super creepy.

When he not only reads all your texts but also has a stalker shrine of you

At first I wondered if it was just my take on the hero, but once he started blackmailing people for money I was pretty sure that the writers were going out of their way to make him seem like a bad dude. Which is fine if he had his redeeming qualities. But he didn’t. Blind and innocent love might have saved him, but that wasn’t really the case. By the end Hong Shik was viewing Min Young as a trophy to be won rather than a girl he liked, and that was only further enforced by his boredom after they started dating (and flirting with other girls on your phone while on a date- just ew). Because we’d spent so much of the series seeing things through Hong Shik’s eyes, it was hard to then reverse that. Min Young was nothing more than a girl he wanted to ‘win’ and Soon Young was the sliiiiiightly less creepy ex who had to be beaten. So once it became clear that Hong Shik wasn’t actually a nice guy, there wasn’t really anyone left in the show to like. This kind of reversal might have worked nicely if there was a lot of depth and story backing it up- but in a short series that rounds out to about 100 minutes, that just wasn’t likely to happen. And so it didn’t.

Recommend?

No, I wouldn’t really. It’s easy enough to get through if you really want to, but there are other short series I’d rate above this one.

Dear Shin Jae Ha, Please play a nice, loveable hero next time. From fangirls everywhere.