Study Group (2025) 스터디그룹
Directed by Lee Jang-hoon, starring Hwang Min-hyun as Yoon Ga-min and Han Ji-eun as Lee Han-kyung.
Watched 15 - 25 February 2025 — 10 episodes (VIKI PASS)
*Great show with a likeable main cast, a lot of action and a good upbeat music score (rap-based). I especially like the Back Packer theme song, performed by ZEROBASEONE members Seok Matthew and Park Gun-wook.
*I love our male lead Hwang Min-hyun as Yoon Ga-min, a first year student at Yusung Technical High School. He looks like a nerd, with the dark-rimmed glasses, loves studying despite his bad grades, but the thing he excels in is fighting. When he fights, he instantly becomes some sort of superhero. At school he forms a study group with the ultimate goal of entering university.
* I love the fights. Even though some of them are really violent, they are greatly choreographed. And because Yoon Ga-min has superpowers, the fights are not very realistic, more like a superhero battle.
*What a great surprise that Yoon Ga-min's mother is good at fighting too but I'd wished they had shown her backstory and why she had become such a great fighter.
*The plot is a bit thin. The main focus is on the friendship of the different study group members and their teacher (Han Ji-eun as Lee Han-kyung, seen her before in Be Melodramatic) and how they stand united against the school bullies/villains. It makes for feel-good and heartwarming moments.
*While the last two episodes were still very entertaining and the villainous characters continued to make my blood boil, I feel that the series loses a bit of steam towards the end and becomes too predictable. But even though you know our study group members will pick themselves up after being beaten violently, it still feels good that our underdog heroes eventually beat the crap out of the bad guys.
*Glad they didn't make this a 16-episode series, it probably would have been more of the same. But as it is now, it was just bad-ass fun and I think I'd gladly watch it again and then maybe skip some of the fight scenes.
*Will definitely check out more of Hwang Min-hyun's work. I like him and he's perfectly cast here as our superhero.
*"I will create opportunities even in hellish situations."
