“The things I have can’t be lost. Such as my dream, and my aspiration.”

Na Hee-do says, as she throws the flower to the sky and walks past something that the adults can worry about. Little does she know, that she will walk us through sixteen episodes and five years of growth, friendships, pursuing her dream, love, and memories of her unblemished transition from child to adult. I went into Twenty-Five Twenty-One practically blind, and did not expect them to take Hee-do and Yi-jin through so much of these photographed and diaried moments that, as adult Hee-do says, are brief but are what makes a long life shine. Last October I experienced My Mister, the only other work of television that has rent my heart in two full quaking pieces, and one that also highlighted the strength and purity of relationship that two people facing uncertain points in their lives could bring to one another. I had seen many Korean movies, so was very well familiar with how Korean screen work elevates human emotion, but more importantly, how with the nation’s cultural backdrop places an emphasis on the past, and remembering the sad events that have contributed to their present backbone. What I was not prepared for was first, unlike most of those movies, and second, unlike all of the previous Korean dramas I had seen and sampled, how realistic it handled the characters’ circumstances, interactions, and emotional moments. It seems to me, as it likely does by now to many others, that Korea manages to get at our emotional cores more fitfully, perfectly, than anyone else; and so My Mister not only brought me weeping for its characters’ sadnesses, but in its journey uplifted them, and through them, myself as the viewer who could only bear witness. As with My Mister, I came in a fan already of one of the main leads (IU), here with Kim Tae-ri. She is—to put it in as true a way as possible—breathtaking. The first few episodes alone were me trying to get over the fact that at age 31, she had played an 18-year-old, but as I couldn’t stop watching her smile so purely, laugh with her youth, and upend drinking fountains I fell completely into her character and as Hee-do grew older, I was only watching Hee-do, and sixteen episodes later, I am not watching Hee-do anymore. Her roles in Little Forest and The Handmaiden well displayed the lightness of the persona she brought to the scene. Imagine that but as light itself has a source, that source is Twenty-Five Twenty-One. While I have yet to see her completely in Mr. Sunshine, I have no doubt that just as Leonardo DiCaprio perhaps found his crystallization in The Wolf of Wall Street, Kim Tae-ri has done so here, in portraying a character in the best and sweetest spirit that she can be. Even if you have no idea who she is, that doesn’t matter; for like Baek Yi-jin, you too will be inspired, and find resolution to keep walking forward, in merely watching her. Having seen my good share of Japan’s shounen protagonists, who equip us with amazing dreams and work towards them in motivational (but hard to follow) arcs, as again the present day Hee-do says, progress takes place in steps, and witnessing Na Hee-do keep at attaque. touche. point. or without, because she loves fencing, and never gives up, gives me motivation like I have never felt before. Just as Baek Yi-jin tells Hee-do, in her presence he can stand on top of the world, he can do anything, after a number of episodes and during, I said aloud or thought to myself, I feel like I can do anything. I had been somebody who, for the past six years, have sought out in fiction those stories that I not only adore, but that can keep me going as stories, which has often been a tenuous mountain. For they are only stories, and when watching or reading these characters whom I love, I am not really living in the real world. I can go to bed at night thinking about how the episode or chapter ended, and have to wake up the next day facing real problems of my own. And I am going to have to do that tomorrow, besides which carrying a heart both empty and boundlessly inspired after Na Hee-do and Baek Yi-jin’s moments. But I feel like—for the first time, truly—I can do that for real. This Korean drama is transcendent. Not only did it take me through, unlike My Mister, five years practically in full, but even beyond its presiding song of love, the purest kind there is, in all its ways—but its most important theme, that of cherishing, remembering, and coming to where you are today because of moments in the past. These moments don’t go on forever. But they did happen, and you can cherish them in the moment, remember them later, and continue to live. Continue to love.

Now I have just the rest of my life ahead of me—and I feel like I can do it.