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Bubbletea Reviews

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Bubbletea Reviews

Australia
The School Nurse Files korean drama review
Completed
The School Nurse Files
11 people found this review helpful
by Bubbletea Reviews
Sep 26, 2020
6 of 6 episodes seen
Completed 1
Overall 7.0
Story 6.5
Acting/Cast 8.0
Music 8.0
Rewatch Value 7.0
This review may contain spoilers

A bizarre series of events with eccentric main leads (or acid trip)

Nam Joo Hyuk's character does say in the drama that "if its not bad, its better to be weird than ordinary" and while thats a cliche quote which contains truth, it ideally represents what the director had envisioned but lack execution for this drama. To be fair I am still not sure how to judge this drama because although this drama is not that fast paced, there are a lot of skipped explanation and the plot was bizarre, therefore this drama I felt sacrifice much needed extra explanation over wackiness. Each episode forms as a short adventure in a high school which our main leads have to solve (well, mainly the nurse with Nam Joo Hyuk kind of tagging along), with the broader mystery of the school's history and the school nurse' real responsibility slowly being revealed, and how that ties in with the random series of unfortunate events thats happen to the students.

~Strengths~
Stylistic choices with this drama fit well with the strange-ness of the plot, the cute CGI effects was really well done, with the duo fighting squishy jellies (monsters?) looked like the highest quality animation live action I've seen. The plot, from what I can guess after 6 short episodes and without reading the book its based of on, feels like a monster catching story with the monsters as a reflection of emotional problems (however not 100% sure). There are many short and spotaneous and plain WTF moments, with a bit frentic energy like the anime Noragami. I also love the nurse's BB gun and little candy store like-sword, perfect representation of a comic book hero. Although the leads act well and the connection with "aura" is endearing yet not fully explained, I still don't understand their relationship, and with not much explained, don't exactly understand how they will fit in the story. The music was cute and really set my expectations for a wacky but cute drama, which delivered, however, this drama had a more serious and dark undertones too which I did not expect - "lighthearted" situations were confusing to intepret especially because they had serious implications that was just glossed over. At some point, I thought it was going to being a horror story, but even that I'm not 100% sure if it was meant to be.

~Weaknesses~
Maybe it was a stylistic choice to leave much of the plot hanging. Like why did the students steal the cushions? Whats the connection to the symptoms and the student's issues, how does everyone just accept the nurse can see things that doesnt exist, why does this school keep running after all of that - none is explained and that left me frustrated as the plot just moves on. The structure of this drama...doesnt follow traditional ones, and its left up to you to connect the dots after each ep. Some is explained later on (last ep) but even then I'm not sure if I should continue - being confused is ok, but they didnt leave enough clues for me to anticipate season 2. The ending was also adrupt and left the mystery hanging with many questions unanswered.

TLDR: Bizarre acid trip of a drama, watched for fighting cute squishy monsters but left a bit shocked at the somewhat dark implications, feeling lost about the tone and left confused about the plot. Unsure whether I will rewatch again.
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