The Summer 2024 Anime Preview Guide

True Beauty

In middle school, otaku Lim Jugyeong was a target for bullies because of her ugliness. When her mom refused to get her plastic surgery, she took matters into her own hands: she studied up, watching hours of YouTube tutorials. Now, in high school, nobody knows her real face, and everyone treats her like a beauty. Everyone, that is, except for the new student Lee Suho, who gives her the cold shoulder at school but is kind to her at the bookstore, where she goes to buy manga with her face bare. What is this guy's deal?

True Beauty is based on Yaongyi's manhwa. The Korean-animated series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Wednesdays.

This episode is exhausting. I think that mostly comes down to two things: the choppy feel of the narrative progression and Jugyeong's voice and constant narration. The latter is at least a little more honestly come by in terms of the manhwa; in at least the first couple of volumes, the story very closely follows her thoughts as she attempts to change from a bullied "ugly" girl to a more conventionally pretty one. It's hard to blame her – Jugyeong's treatment at her first school is vile, escalating quickly from a relatively unnoticed shy loner to the target of two of the school's popular girls. You know the type: they aren't actually popular, but they're pretty and confident enough that everyone pretends to like them, and once they set their sights on Jugyeong, it's really all over for her. She's mocked and bullied online and off until she understandably loses it…and then she has to be the one to change schools because the popular girls never do.

If the story leaned into that more, well, it would probably be Keiko Suenobu's Life. But it would also help to ground the plot more than we get here, with a time skip as Jugyeong learns to use makeup during school vacation and then makes her debut at her new school with a brand-new face. Makeup, eyelid glue, carefully wavy hair, you name it – she's not going to be a victim because of her looks again. But now she has to worry about her new friends finding out about her true self, the "ugly" girl who's into heavy metal and horror comics…so naturally, one of the hottest boys at school, Suho Lee, figures it out.

I have to admit that I've never cared for stories where becoming a conventional beauty is the goal, whether that ends up being the point or not. True Beauty compounds this by not giving us anything of its heroine beyond her desire for prettiness. Does she wish she didn't have to do this? Why is it wrong for her to like what she likes and be beautiful? Or to like what she likes and look like herself? It seems like Suho doesn't care what she looks like, so things could very easily head in the direction of self-acceptance, something that volume four of the source webtoon seems to be heading towards, if I remember correctly. But what we've got here are nineteen minutes of Jugyeong breathily shrieking while the plot just bounds ahead without much depth. I like the art style and the catchy K-pop theme songs, but I think you'd probably be better off just reading the manhwa instead.

I don't follow Korean media much. The most I can tell you is that "Super Shy" by NewJeans is a banger. So, part of my problem with this episode may be that I'm not used to the storytelling style from this media landscape. I certainly had to adapt to the acting since this is the rare manhwa adaptation getting an international release with the original Korean performances rather than the Japanese dub. Maybe if I were more familiar with this show's origin, I wouldn't be so distracted by the breakneck editing, the rushed pace of dialogue, or the bizarre sound mixing that made segments of this premiere an assault on my senses.

Alas, I am not, so all I can say is that this premiere felt like a chaotic mess with only the skeleton of a story to prop it up. Our heroine, Jugyeong, is kind of a cipher who feels like she should be likable, considering how much she's mistreated at the start of the story, but is too flatly written to feel relatable. She's more like a trembling, orphaned puppy who's constantly getting splashed by rain puddles and kicked by psychopathic teenagers to garner sympathy for her audience. Her ascension to picture-perfect school goddess is equally unbelievable, with multiple scenes of everyone around her stopping to gawk, take pictures, and loudly talk about her awe-inspiring beauty. I recognize that these shows are mostly directed towards teenagers, who won't even blink at these exaggerated depictions, but do they also have to feel like they were written by teenagers, too?

The real killer is the aforementioned editing. This whole episode feels like it's on fast-forward, sprinting through every scene like its life depends on it. The soundtrack cuts in and out abruptly, throwing in random cartoon sound effects or stock music drops to make it feel even less coherent. The frequent shifts in visual style could have accentuated Jugyeong's underdeveloped double-life, but it's utilized so haphazardly that it prevents the episode from having any visual identity. At times, it feels closer to an ambitious fan animation than an official adaptation, and it all feeds into this weird disconnect that makes for an episode that's interminable despite being three minutes shorter than your average anime episode.