Me while watching episodes 1-4 of No Gain, No Love: “Man, I usually find Kim Young-dae’s acting distractingly dull but with this long-haired, glasses-wearing, casually-dressed character I can kind of forget my biases and accept him as his character instead of as… Kim Young-dae”
End of NGNL ep. 4: *makes him look like a normie k-drama lead*
Me: “BI–”

The showrunners are a bunch of COWARDS. Like, sure, the fact that they tried to pass him off as anything but good-looking with that get-up was laughable, but I can appreciate it when a k-drama male lead doesn’t look like very single other k-drama male lead.

So, anyone have any recs for shows (especially rom-coms) where the drama lets the atypical-looking male lead (read: not constantly k-drama levels of impeccably dressed and styled) stay atypical? None of this makeover nonsense, ugh. Let the men look just a liiiiiiittle bit schleppy for once. Even if it’s schleppy in a polished, k-drama way.

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    It’s funny because normally I would complain about women having to look picture-perfect but I actually think k-dramas give their female romantic leads more opportunity to look a bit messy/unconventional than their male romantic leads.

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    The Atypical Family. ML looks how he looks the whole time. It’s probably not what most people would call a rom com, but it’s definitely the first I thought of.

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    Convenience Store era Ji-uk was A Look for sure

    Atypical Family is what came to mind first too. I still haven’t finished Like Flowers in the Sand but the ML is a ssireum wrestler and it’s not a romcom so I don’t think they’d do any sort of makeover. And I can’t really recommend this one haha, because the writing is almost impressively all over the place, but for romcom’s there’s Frankly Speaking

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    _ Psychopath Diary (very good, but it’s a “com” without “rom”).
    _ 12 Nights (imo it’s not very good, but it’s interesting and different. It’s a… slice-of-life without comedy. Great OST).
    _ Shopping King Louis. Definitely rom-com. And I loved it.
    _ You raise me up (it’s not a very good drama but ML’s acting is great and he looks “ugly” most part of the time).
    _ And Atypical Family, as other beanies have told you. And it’s very good.

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    I also preferred convenience store Ji Uk to the “upgraded” version (but then I have a thing for guys with shaggy hair and glasses). In terms of shows that don’t glam up their male leads, Ruler of Your Own World is my personal favorite, and despite its age, one of my all-around top K-drama romances as well.

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    My Holo Love he looks pretty disheveled until the final ep

    Otherwise, definitely Atypical Family

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    Also, I definitely agree that he was more interesting before the makeover

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