Read the manhwa instead
We waited two long years for Heesu in Class 2 to air, and I, for one, was incredibly excited. I had read and loved the manhwa, and when the producers announced they were giving us a longer runtime, 45 minutes per episode, compared to the usual 25 minutes for Korean BL dramas. It felt like they truly cared about doing the story justice. When the air date was finally announced, fans cheered.
I eagerly sat down to watch Episode 1 and found it funny, charming, and entertaining, a promising start. The original manhwa tells the story of Heesu, a boy in Class 2 who offers love advice to his fellow students. At first, Heesu has a crush on his best friend Chayoung, but over time, he develops real feelings for his classmate Seungwon. Seungwon, who also harbors feelings for Heesu, struggles with how to confess.
But in the drama adaptation, Heesu has been reduced to a supporting character, running around headless and directionless, because the producers decided to make the straight couple, Chayoung and his girlfriend Jiyu, the leads. They are given most of the runtime, full backstories (Jiyu as a budding musician and Chayoung with his tennis career), while Heesu and Seungwon are left with almost nothing. Outside of their crushes, they have no meaningful development that the audience can connect to.
Needless to say i skipped all of the straight couple's scenes.
In the drama, Chayoung is portrayed as a selfish and terrible friend, to absorbed with his own life to give Heesu a second glance. Seungwon and Heesu only get together in the last five minutes of the show, while the straight couple starts dating four episodes in.
The original manhwa was about a gay boy navigating his first love. The producers took that, and straightwashed it. Heesu, the heart of the story, is pushed into the background, treated like filler for the straight couple, a couple that doesn't even exist in the source material.
This raises the question:
Why adapt a gay manhwa if you have no intention of telling a gay story?
There are millions of heterosexual manhwas you can adapt. Why take a beloved, beautifully written queer story and strip it of everything that made it special?
I have never once seen a straight manhwa adapted into a gay story. Yet, time and time again, queer stories are rewritten to be palatable to straight audiences. Heterosexual shows don't change to accommodate queer people. Why are queer stories expected to accommodate straight people in order to exist?
Why can’t we have something that's just ours?
This is queer erasure and homophobia at its finest.
I loved Heesu, both the manhwa and what little dignity the drama version tried to salvage. But drama Heesu was completely let down by this adaptation.
I genuinely hope these producers never touch a BL manhwa ever again.
Edit: People in the comments are purposefully missing the point. I keep seeing people say, “You guys are doing too much. What’s wrong with having a straight couple?” And the answer is: nothing is wrong with straight couples. That’s not the issue.
The issue is that this drama gave us two straight couples, when the original manhwa had two gay couples: Heesu and Seungwon, and Heesu’s junior and his guy (I can’t remember their names, but you know who I mean). To me it is THAT serious.
Because when you let these changes slide, when you say, “It’s fine, it’s just one couple”, you give studios permission to keep doing it. And they will. Again and again. They’ll keep adapting queer stories into safe, marketable ones, because the audience doesn’t push back.
If you don't care about queer representation, just say that. You have no right to tell queer people how to feel or react to blatant erasure.
Thank you, bye
I eagerly sat down to watch Episode 1 and found it funny, charming, and entertaining, a promising start. The original manhwa tells the story of Heesu, a boy in Class 2 who offers love advice to his fellow students. At first, Heesu has a crush on his best friend Chayoung, but over time, he develops real feelings for his classmate Seungwon. Seungwon, who also harbors feelings for Heesu, struggles with how to confess.
But in the drama adaptation, Heesu has been reduced to a supporting character, running around headless and directionless, because the producers decided to make the straight couple, Chayoung and his girlfriend Jiyu, the leads. They are given most of the runtime, full backstories (Jiyu as a budding musician and Chayoung with his tennis career), while Heesu and Seungwon are left with almost nothing. Outside of their crushes, they have no meaningful development that the audience can connect to.
Needless to say i skipped all of the straight couple's scenes.
In the drama, Chayoung is portrayed as a selfish and terrible friend, to absorbed with his own life to give Heesu a second glance. Seungwon and Heesu only get together in the last five minutes of the show, while the straight couple starts dating four episodes in.
The original manhwa was about a gay boy navigating his first love. The producers took that, and straightwashed it. Heesu, the heart of the story, is pushed into the background, treated like filler for the straight couple, a couple that doesn't even exist in the source material.
This raises the question:
Why adapt a gay manhwa if you have no intention of telling a gay story?
There are millions of heterosexual manhwas you can adapt. Why take a beloved, beautifully written queer story and strip it of everything that made it special?
I have never once seen a straight manhwa adapted into a gay story. Yet, time and time again, queer stories are rewritten to be palatable to straight audiences. Heterosexual shows don't change to accommodate queer people. Why are queer stories expected to accommodate straight people in order to exist?
Why can’t we have something that's just ours?
This is queer erasure and homophobia at its finest.
I loved Heesu, both the manhwa and what little dignity the drama version tried to salvage. But drama Heesu was completely let down by this adaptation.
I genuinely hope these producers never touch a BL manhwa ever again.
Edit: People in the comments are purposefully missing the point. I keep seeing people say, “You guys are doing too much. What’s wrong with having a straight couple?” And the answer is: nothing is wrong with straight couples. That’s not the issue.
The issue is that this drama gave us two straight couples, when the original manhwa had two gay couples: Heesu and Seungwon, and Heesu’s junior and his guy (I can’t remember their names, but you know who I mean). To me it is THAT serious.
Because when you let these changes slide, when you say, “It’s fine, it’s just one couple”, you give studios permission to keep doing it. And they will. Again and again. They’ll keep adapting queer stories into safe, marketable ones, because the audience doesn’t push back.
If you don't care about queer representation, just say that. You have no right to tell queer people how to feel or react to blatant erasure.
Thank you, bye
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