NEVERTHELESS

Let me tell you about my favorite kdrama.

As a K-drama fan, I have a list. Favourites by genre, favourites by trope, favourites by the specific mood I was in when I watched them. But for college settings, despite the countless ones I have watched… Nevertheless has never lost its spot.

It aired in 2021, JTBC. I’d seen Han So Hee (FL) in ‘The world of the married’… but it was the show that introduced me to Song Kang (ML).

On the surface, ‘Nevertheless’ is simple.

Art students in Seoul. A girl named Yoo Na-bi who’s been hurt before. A boy named Park Jae-eon who’s broken and very clear about one thing: “I don’t do relationships.”

They start something. Something without labels. Something they both pretend they can handle.

The thing about this drama, is that it doesn’t help you escape reality. It holds up a mirror. And what you see in that mirror is uncomfortable.

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YOO NA BI

When the show introduced her, she had walls.

Her last relationship ended badly… she had been humiliated, left with the particular kind of hurt that doesn’t just heal on its own but reshapes how you move through the world.

And then, by what seemed like a coincidence, she met Park Jae-eon.

There is a specific kind of danger that announces itself.

Not loudly. Just a feeling. Quiet and certain, the way your body sometimes knows something before your mind has finished forming the thought.

Yoo Na-bi knew.

The first time she saw Park Jae-on, something in her said it. But she kept showing up anyway. Kept letting the distance between them shrink.

And that was one part that made Nevertheless feel true in a way most romance stories don’t.

Na-bi was not a naive character. She was not a girl who didn’t see it coming. She saw it coming from the very first moment.

But, some feelings are bigger than your own good advice to yourself. Because knowing something is complicated doesn’t always mean you can erase the wanting.

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PARK JAE- EON

Before we get into his character, I must say. Man was seductive!! Even the whole school knew.

Now, one thing about Park Jae-on that the show held back just long enough to change everything, was that he saw her first.

Before Na-bi registered him as a threat to her peace, before the complications began, he had already seen her. At an exhibition, the same art exhibition that humiliated her and ended her relationship.

For me, that detail reframed him completely.

Jae-on was not just a man who was careless with someone who liked him. He was a man who liked someone and had absolutely no idea what to do with that. Zero idea.

He only understood situationships… and this showed up everywhere, even in his relationship with his ex, who refused to let go of something he never fully gave her in the first place. He genuinely didn’t understand why closeness needed a title before it counted as real.

And honestly? We are still living in that era. People who want all the warmth of something without the weight of defining it. Presence without permanence.

He was not performing detachment. He was genuinely lost inside it. Struggling with whether what he felt even counted as feeling.

Which didn’t excuse the push and pull. But somehow explained it.

There is a kind of person who feels deeply and handles it terribly. Not because they don’t care. Because caring is unfamiliar territory and they keep second-guessing whether what they feel is real enough to act on. Jae-on was that person.

He stayed. But not in a way that felt safe.

And Na-bi nearly lost it. While constantly trying to interpret him. Reading silences, second-guessing moments, doing the exhausting emotional labour of translating a person who hadn’t yet learned how to speak.

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BEAUTY AND TOXICITY

You know the kind of relationship that looks like a painting from the outside?

Na-bi and Jae-on were beautiful to watch.

The tension between them had a texture to it. Charged, slow, and full of meaning that neither of them was saying out loud. The show knew this and leaned into it. Every interaction between them was lit like something precious.

And underneath all of that, the push and pull.

They were not simply a case of one person being difficult and another being patient. They were two people who brought their own damage into the same space and then wondered why it kept catching fire.

Na-bi accused Jae-on of being closed off, of withholding, of never giving her anything certain to stand on. But she was not fully open herself.

And Jae-on withheld. Kept her at a distance that was just close enough to feel like proximity. Not abandoned, not chosen, just hovering somewhere in between. Their communication in one word? Messy.

That’s what happens when beauty and toxicity share the same space. They make each other harder to separate. When something looks good, when even the ache of it has a kind of electricity to it, you stop asking whether it’s good for you. You already know the answer. You just stop letting the answer be the point.

‘Nevertheless’ understood that the dynamic between Na-bi and Jae-on was not dysfunction for drama’s sake. It was a hyper-realistic portrait of what happens when two wounded people find each other without the tools to build something healthy.

And it went further to show us why.

Na-bi’s mother had messy relationships. Men who came and went. Na-bi was so neglected she had to physically distance herself just to breathe. Jae-on’s mother left when he was ten. So he learned early, people leave. Better to leave first. Better to collect than to keep.

Two people shaped by absence, finding each other.

As someone who lives and breathes hyper-realistic stories. Films, series, books. I have a special kind of love for ‘Nevertheless.’

Mostly because I didn’t expect it.

I picked it up because it had just dropped and I needed something to pass the time. I wasn’t looking to feel anything. And then my nerves were struck.

I can’t even begin to talk about every other thing about the show!

The OST. The art and aesthetics. The cinematography. The symbolism.

Art, aesthetics and symbolism.

Nevertheless was a beautiful show! Overall.

It had a different kind of cozy, quiet, and slow.

The art school setting wasn’t just background. It was atmosphere and meaning at the same time. Na-Bi’s feelings might’ve been all over the place, but she was a talented artist, and her art held significance throughout the show.

The campus felt lived in rather than staged. The outdoor spaces have this golden, heavy light that made everything look like a memory even while it was still happening.

Then the butterfly.

Na-Bi means butterfly in Korean.

And then, Jae-on. With a butterfly tattooed on his neck.

He had an obsessive love for these creatures that the show doesn’t over-explain.

A man who collects butterflies, drawn to a girl named butterfly.

The side characters

‘Nevertheless’ had some very interesting characters aside from the leads. Na-bi’s childhood friend who harbored a long time crush on her. He was everything Jae-on wasn’t. Then, the lovey dovey couple who lived for cuteness and vibes. The school student admins with their own quiet story. A lesbian couple, not just discovering but accepting their feelings.

And then another chaotic couple.

BIT NA AND GHYU HYUN

Bit-na was complicated. She was not on the same frequency as Gyu-hyun, at least not immediately, and she didn’t perform otherwise. And Gyu-hyun. When he felt like he was being played with, he didn’t swallow it.

Two people being honest about where they are, even when where they are is misaligned and uncomfortable. I really liked how the show gave us that story running alongside the Na-bi and Jae-eon storm. Not as a healthy relationship, just as another true thing happening inside the same world.

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Funny how ‘Nevertheless’ didn’t show me anything new.

The knowing and staying anyway, the feelings that arrive before you’re ready for them, the push and pull of two people who want each other and can’t quite figure out what to do with that. I already knew all of it. I think most of us do.

But, what it did was show me what I already knew in a way more realistic than I expected.

The show ended with a choice. The choice we are aware of but end up making anyway.

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Thank you for reading❤️