Jeana's Unpopular Opinion: More Anti- Less Hero

As the title suggests, this is a UO = unpopular opinion. If I have unfortunately fired shots at your favourite drama/character, I apologize but I gotta tell it as I feel it is. If you disagree with something try to state your opinion in a civil manner. Enjoy! :D

Who doesn't love a good anti-hero? Those morally conflicted beautiful men that set our soul on fire are oh-so-lovable and so it's no surprise that drama writers try to create characters like these as much as possible. However, sometimes they forget that redemption is possibly the most crucial aspect of cases like these and if you mess that up, you turn an Anti-Hero into an Anti-Human. Here are five examples of such Anti-Humans:

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS!

5) Kang Ma Roo (Innocent Man)

Ah, look at how pretty he is, if only he had a personality as good as his looks. I'm not going to lie, I enjoyed Innocent Man fairly well. It was such a hot mess, that soon after the first few episodes I bid farewell to the mere idea of a good plot and continued watching to see just how ridiculous the show will dare to get. Kang Ma Roo (Song Joong Ki) is the classic bad boy and admittedly he had his likeable moments. Like me, anyone who has a soft spot for anti-heroes would be more than willing to give this guy the benefit of the doubt but when you see the show reach its end and you really think about it you realize, what a major asshat Kang Ma Roo really is. 

He wrecks a  woman's life because of his own selfish reasons and stays horribly unapologetic till the very end. Let's not even talk about how despite all his douchey ways, by the end of it all, the show still manages to portray him as a martyr in shining armour. Only in K-Dramas you can spend 15 entire episodes mentally torturing the heroine but at the very last moment do something heroic like take a bullet for her/get stabbed in her place/do some other equally tragic shit (which you conveniently always survive) and magically everything is forgiven. I mean, really? Physically saving someone does not for a second make up for the truckload of mental damage caused and I for one, am less inclined to buy that bullshit.

4) Ying Dong (Cruel Romance)

Even though Ying Dong (Qiao Kimi) was supposed to be Cruel Romance's untamed bad boy, he was really the classic definition of a selfish, childish brat instead who always created trouble for others. Like, he literally did not have a single redeeming quality and frankly, his existence was a waste for the show. At least, throughout the drama, he got rightfully taunted on his uselessness and he himself admitted he could only love himself. I literally wanted to punch him in the face every time he came on-screen. 

Throughout the show, he gave these fierce and supposedly badass looks to the camera where he pretended to be all that but he needed to just sit TF down because he wasn't much. He was a worse damsel in distress than our heroine and his butt constantly needed saving. It's a pity that at the end he still got almost everything he desired while even in the very last episode he created problems for everyone unfortunate enough to be associated with him. 

Here, I want to mention that the role and character in the drama alone are under discussion here, not the actor himself. May he rest in peace. I have nothing but love for him.

3) Sathit (Kleun Cheewit)

Oh God, Sathit (Mark Prin) was just so damn slap-able in this drama. He made me feel sheer violence and I think I spent the entirety of the show cussing him out. For a lawyer, he sure was good at breaking the law. He constantly got into corny fist fights, waved around revolvers like they're lollipops, sexually harassed and physically assaulted women and at the end of it all, still had the gall to act all self-righteous and holier than thou. Like bish, please.

I get that Sathit was supposed to be this brooding baddie but with his chubby cheeks and midget height all he managed to do was look nasty. Again, as an ordinary person, I could somewhat understand his reasons. When we lose someone, we are angry at the world and we want someone to take the blame but Sathit wasn't any other person. He was a lawyer; someone who knew that there are a million different reasons and circumstances behind apparent crimes and for him to go to such lengths to destroy an innocent woman's life and drag out his single-minded revenge was just plain ridiculous. 

And even though Jee (Sperbund Urassaya) made him work for it and grovel towards the end, I still felt that his atonement wasn't half as much as his sins. I was fully rooting for Jeerawat to dump his bratty ass and fly away but oh well, as much as I loved her she was a tad too forgiving for my taste.

2) Choi Soo Hyun (Madame Antoine)

Ladies and gentlemen, make way for Dramaland's second biggest jerk of all time: Doctor Choi Soo Hyun (Sung Joon). So our beloved (not so much) doctor here believes that love doesn't exist and in order to prove that, he conducts a series of experiments on women, makes them fall in love, makes them do crazy things in the name of love, brutally rejects them and when their affection turns into hatred for him, he has that "Aha" moment where he's like see, 'I told ya, love didn't exist or you wouldn't be feeling so mad right now.' Lucky for us, one of these poor women is our female lead.

So basically you have 15 episodes of this guy making this woman fall for him using all the dirty tricks in the book. And while she (someone who's been hurt before too) is there experiencing love again, opening her heart up, feeling happy and treasured, laughing for no reason, second-guessing her moves and being like a giddy high school girl who just got handed the world; this dirtbag here is calmly jotting down all her reactions in a notebook, clinically labeling them as results of various experiments and making a complete joke out of her. Then whenever she comes close to finding out about his sleazy ways, he lies and manipulates her into believing otherwise. Can you just imagine that for a second? Can you put yourself in her shoes?

Bet you're thinking but Jeana that doesn't sound that bad, you're being way too harsh. Yeah well, that's because the drama was awfully kind to him in my place. When our female lead finally gives him a taste of his own medicine, in less than 30 seconds flat he goes from being a relentless jerk to a wounded puppy and starts playing the victim with his "woe-is-me" BS. Unbelievably so, somehow you find yourself seeing the hurt woman apologize to the unethical joke of a psychologist instead. What? Come again? 

Writers need to realize that just because a man - bully *cough* bully -  comes with a full course of "sad past related sob-story" and a side of mommy issues, it does not automatically give him a free ticket to be a douche-bag to everyone in his vicinity. If you have your baggage, freaking carry it yourself instead of suffocating other people under it. I'm getting anxiety just thinking about the whole mess.

1)Kawee (Sawan Biang)

And now for the man you've all been waiting for. (Not). No.1 on our deplorable male lead's list is none other than Kawee (wongpuapan-theeradej)

He is a child of abuse and neglect (both of which aren't properly explored) and is fundamentally broken but has very little reason to be. A spoiled brat with daddy issues - basically every rich kid's life story nowadays. Even if I don't bring out the 'kids in Africa with worse lives' argument, it's still safe to say that Kawee had no right or reason to act out the way he did. He pretended to be tough but was weak to his core. Someone deprived of love, affection and angry at the world. All these things should've amounted to him being quite an interesting and complex character but instead, the show made him fall flat. Which is why, though I liked the potential he had, I hated what he ended up being.

A lot of people described the show with flowery words like 'a beautiful story of a man's broken road to redemption' except that road broke and came to a dead end far before it could ever reach its goal.

Kawee's actions were surely unforgivable and the only way he could've been saved was if he had the brutal wake-up call of self-actualization. If he developed a deep-rooted guilt and then travelled a slow journey towards being a somewhat better person; someone not fully redeemed but not the devil he was before either. Here, however, Kawee changed like the weather. He woke up one day and was all like 'Oh shit, time to be a saint now' and the next day we see him be the best person alive.

Like for heaven's sake, we're talking about an extremely damaged person with deep-rooted insecurities here. How the hell can a few sentimental speeches expressing regret and a few months of a**kissing possibly erase all the destruction he wreaked on an innocent woman's life? The answer is: It can't and It doesn't.

That's about it! We're all friends here guys. ^_^ Go easy on your keyboards a'ight?

Toodles~