I walked into true beauty not expecting much, but right off the bat I was introduced to a colorful cast, big personalities, and an easy to follow and pleasant storyline. I began enjoying it a lot and it quickly rose to become one of my favorite kdramas. In the beginning what charmed me about true beauty is that it knew it was cliche and used that to its comedic advantage and didn't take itself too seriously which allowed me to enjoy the cliches. This ended up being its undoing later, but I'll get to that.

also one thing i'll (SPOILER) is that I try not to fall for the second lead/ship him with the female lead because they usually don't get the girl, but HAN SEO JUN. I seriously fell in love, he quickly became my favorite kdrama character EVER. And his chemistry with the female lead jugyoung (gayoung) was off the charts, seriously one of the best I've seen in kdramas period. It made watching true beauty ten times better for me :)

But alas the things that made true beauty charming didn't last. You see true beauty never had outstanding writing, but it was enjoyable and it made sense, plus the characters and ost made up for it, but about halfway through the show true beauty started to go downhill in the writing and production. The writing increasingly didn't make sense and had characters act weirdly, it even made characters I liked in the beginning dislikable for me : / an example is with the male lead suho who i adored episode 1-5, liked episode 6-7, felt okay with ep 8, and straight up disliked ep 9 to the end. It's even worse when you used to like the character or especially when he is the main character. (SPOILER) Just the way writers wrote him as possessive, and downplayed it as romantic did not sit right with me, the way the writers wrote him it seemed as if he was more focused or acted/thought that "jugyoung is mine" which I hate that mentality. Even if the writers didn't have him explicitly say it, his actions implied it. So sadly that ruined his character and the main ship for me : /

not to mention that this show is heavily promoted as a love triangle but it is not! it is very much centralized on suho and jugyoung, and the writers do not give seojun a real chance (like bringing in suho between every seojun jugyoung scene lol), but the most disappointing thing for me was that they did not include the seojun jugyoung relationship from the webtoon. also if the time skip was gonna happen and they kept seojun's feelings idk why they didn't go that route (honestly they were probably too scared to haha). but honestly its disappointing that they removed an entire relationship (and the only one) from the webtoon to the drama. :(

ok now onto the title 'true beauty'. what initially attracted me to the webtoon was the title and the concept of inner beauty and societal standards and what not. but in reality that is not the real focus of the drama. the drama focuses more on the love triangle, and at most points inner beauty is pushed to the beginning and the climax. i would've liked to see an actual journey and focus on the growth, but the show didn't let us see jugyoung's growth and instead wrote a rushed sudden confidence burst. (now i'm all for gained confidence), but the message wasn't there. for people who relate to jugyoung i don't think that it portrayed realistic growth or self-love. it is hard it is a process, it doesn't happen overnight, and most importantly it doesn't come from what others tell you (though compliments are nice) it comes from accepting yourself and forgiving yourself which is HARD. just writing this because the title indicates much larger of a focus than there actually is in the show, and there is no strong or impactful message on "true beauty".

lastly the writing. i mentioned earlier that in the beginning the show didn't take itself seriously in a charming way. later on that ended up biting it back because it started taking itself seriously in the worst way. the writing became cliche and it didn't make sense. they would create drama and drag it over four episodes only to leave the last two for a rushed ending. the show was doing so well with pacing that it really was remarkable how bad the pacing got.

the worst part about true beauty is that it started off so strong but started downward spiraling to a weak ending. if the ending and later half of the drama was better this would probably be one of my favorite kdramas ever.
though I do not regret the experience because through the first half of the drama I met many loveable characters, cried, laughed, and enjoyed myself :) i would suggest watching true beauty, just be prepared for a lotta frustration towards the end lol

ps: if you're like me and fell in love with han seojun (who wouldn't lol) then be prepared for heartbreak and frustration because tvn walked all over his character and gave him a mediocre but honestly unhappy ending (: lol not to be pessimistic though y'all have good taste ;)