Duty after School: Part 1 (2023)

A drama I came to watch with zero expectations

I love drama plots with zombies and aliens. But after reading the synopsis and seeing the cast I didn’t expected a lot from this drama. I thought that maybe this is another drama trying to ride the big wave of zombie drama success.

Maybe it is because I came with zero expectations but this drama is just too good. It didn’t had that amount of hype like All of us are dead but according to me this is better than All of us are dead . It is a bit different as it is an Alien invasion sort of a drama than to a zombie drama.

This drama felt more realistic to me than most of the other zombie/alien apocalypse dramas out there. It has quite a good amount of characters in it. Which could have gone wrong. But each character is unique and is given quite a fair screen time. This drama shows us all emotions of greed, fear, happy, grateful,sad, hopeful, kindness. The cast did an amazing job in portraying their characters well. And left us with an amazing first half of the drama. I binge watched the whole part in a single sitting. And will do so for the second part too.

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A realistic portrayal of teenagers in an apocalypse

I love that Duty After School has no specific main characters and it focuses on each students as a team. Some may find them annoying and dumb, but I love how they're realistic and relatable. They're still kids who are whiny, reckless and clueless about the sudden situation they got into. All they know is that they joined the military training to gain extra points for their college entrance exams. At first, they treated it like a camping with fun and games. They're even joking and mocking the soldiers instead of being scared. They don't have access to the internet and communication outside that adds to their ignorant behavior. Then they realize how serious the training is and the other students wanted to leave, but it took a dark turn when the real situation hit them and the rest of the students no longer have the choice to leave.

Before and during their training, I already love their class harmony and how real the characters feels like being immature and carefree teenagers. There's a lot of funny scenes that made me laugh and there's more intense scenes that made me hooked. After the first alien attack that they encountered, they are forced to face their new reality and grow too fast. There are times when they couldn't rely on the adults and have to be independent while working together. Despite everyone's differences from personality/mindset/ability and when conflict arises, they still keep hold onto their bond and trust each other. It's so heartwarming and admirable to watch all the students helping each other, growing closer and doing what they can despite being thrown into chaos. I became attached to these students who learned to be strong while gradually building their teamwork during the apocalypse.

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