First Impression: Yumi’s Cells (tvN, 2021)

Synopsis:

Kim Yu-mi (Kim Go-eun) was an ordinary office worker in the finance department. She had a junior in the office Chae Woo-ki (Choi Min-ho) who was nice to her and asked her some ambiguous questions that led her to wonder if Woo-ki actually liked her. Yu-mi’s cells inside her had their own roles to play, for instance rational cell would be responsible for her logical function when working, emotional cell would be responsible for her emotions and most active between 1-3am at night. There was also hunger cell that would get larger if it was not fed in time, which usually led Yu-mi to unable to concentrate on other tasks. Yu-mi last had a romance relationship 3 years ago, which the break-up caused her love cell to be swept away by her tear flood and ended up in coma for these 3 years. There was also the detective cell that helped Yu-mi to deduce if Woo-ki liked her or not, and fashion cell to help Yu-mi prepared her dressing style for dates.

Yu-mi thought that Woo-ki liked her, but there was another female colleague Ruby (Lee Yu-bi) who kept interfering when Yu-mi tried to set up a date with Woo-ki. Once, Yu-mi managed to get a chance to attend the flower festival with Woo-ki alone, but was dismayed to learn that Woo-ki only wanted to matchmake her with his friend Ku Woong (Ahn Bo-hyun), a game developer. Woo-ki also confessed that he liked someone else who was a man. Upset with Woo-ki’s confession, Yu-mi cried so badly that her emotion display system broke down, causing her cells to use “fake responses” to help Yu-mi tide over her first meeting with Ku Woong. Ku Woong fell in love with Yu-mi at first sight, but his mind went blank, causing him to do stupid things. To make things worse, his humor cell decided to take control of Ku Woong, resulting in Ku Woong to keep telling lame jokes to Yu-mi.

Comments:

I feel that Yu-mi’s cells is quite a refreshing drama as we get to know about the life of Yu-mi’s and her internal processes. Personally, I really like animations, so I am much fascinated by the incorporation of animations of Yu-mi’s cells in their world, a concept similar to Inside Out. However, Yu-mi’s cells is different from Inside Out as it is a combination of drama and animation, and that the cells carries out different roles more than just emotions. I was rather amused at the design of the world of Yu-mi’s cells, where they were systems for the cells to output Yu-mi’s various types of responses. There was even a jail to contain Yu-mi’s cells should they caused Yu-mi to engage in excessive activities such as fashion cell being locked up when it caused Yu-mi to spend 3-month’s salary to buy things for her overseas trip that cost only 50,000 KWR. In addition to Yu-mi’s cells, we also get to see a glimpse of Ku Woong’s. The first meeting between Yu-mi and Ku Woong was hilarious, which made me curious how their cells would work together to make their romance worked. I hope that Ruby and Ku Woong’s coworker Seo Sae-I (Park Ji-hyun), who obviously had a crush on Ku Woong, will not be doing too much of the typical bad deeds to interfere with Yu-mi’s and Ku Woong’s relationship as it probably make the show less interesting to watch.