Live On is about a popular high school student (Jung Da Bin) who finds out someone is trying to reveal a secret about her past so she joins her school’s broadcasting club and gets the help of the perfectionist head of the club (Hwang Min Hyun) to find the culprit.
Jung Da Bin plays Baek Ho Rang. She is very popular and attracts lots of attention, particularly from her large social media following, but she has a cold personality. When someone starts secretly threatening to reveal secrets about her, she decides to investigate by joining the broadcasting club.
Hwang Min Hyun is Go Eun Taek. He is the leader of the broadcasting club and is smart and likes his life very ordered. His personality is also a bit cool which puts him at odds with Ho Rang when she joins the club.
Live On is a pretty straightforward high school drama with romance and a little mystery. I found it pretty basic and a bit slow, but at only 8 episodes, it was a quick watch.
The main plot centers around Ho Rang trying to find out who is threatening her with a secret from her past. That’s what gives us the mystery element as she works to solve it through joining the broadcasting club.
The drama then showcases a romance between her and the leader of the club, Eun Taek. We get to see the classic bickering between them at first followed by slowly warming up to each other. The relationship progresses nicely as they work through their issues. There are some really nice heart fluttering moments between the pair too.
We explore several other relationships involving romance between other students, friends turned enemies, and a bit of family issues. This allows for several subplots to take shape and add more to the story.
The drama also highlights some deeper issues involving school violence and its effects on students. I was glad to see this topic explored, though I do think its execution was a bit lacking. I think the 8 episode count prevented the story from going deeper with this in a way that would have been more meaningful.
SPOILERS BELOW
It’s halfway through the show before we learn for sure about Ho Rang being involved in school violence, but we don’t get the details at that point. It then takes a couple more episodes before we do find out she was a victim.
And because the show waited to give us a deeper look into Ho Rang’s feelings and trauma, many of her actions seemed unnecessary and confusing as to why she was trying so hard to keep the secret of her being a victim of bullying.
Thankfully, the final episodes do a good job of explaining her mindset and addressing some of the shame and fears that she had experienced and why it had caused her to hide what she had went through. I just wish it would have been executed a bit better so that we could have connected more strongly with Ho Rang and her pain earlier on. It was nice to see this topic addressed in such a way though. The ending was really great too with good closure.
END OF SPOILERS
Live On is a decent drama, but it just never fully engaged me. There is enough going on with the main romance, the mystery, and all of the other relationships to keep the plot moving along though. While it is a fairly standard high school drama, it can work for you if you just want something simple and fun with a decent story that wraps things up quite nicely.
My Rating: 6/10
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