This article contains spoilers for Korean anime Lookism season 1, episode 8, “Wall”. It includes a discussion about the Lookism anime season 1 ending.
Adapted from the popular webtoon by Park Tae-joon, Lookism is a new Korean Netflix anime about social cruelty, superficiality, and ultimately kindness and understanding.
The show’s protagonist, Hyeong-Seok, is viciously bullied for his appearance and social status. After transferring to another school in the hopes of reinventing himself only to find his torment continuing, Hyeong-Seok is close to his limit and wishes himself dead.
When he wakes up, though, it’s in the body of a tall, handsome kid. Why? Well, for reasons that are mostly unexplained, Hyeong-Seok has manifested another vessel for his consciousness. He can switch between the two bodies but can only inhabit one while the other is sleeping. The show doesn’t spend too much time on the logistics of how all this works, and it also doesn’t offer up much of a justification for the body swap in the first place. However, it’s obvious throughout the series that the bodies are literal and both do exist; this isn’t a case of Hyeong-Seok psychologically projecting a perceived “rebirth”. It isn’t a dream.
However, it’s also not the point. Lookism is about how people shouldn’t be judged solely according to conventional beauty standards, and how much easier life is for those who look a certain way. Hyeong-Seok notices this immediately. Girls at school throw themselves at him. The boys respect and envy him. He even finds it easy to get a job at a convenience store, since the owner thinks that simply having him behind the counter will result in a huge uptick in female customers.
Lookism anime season 1 ending explained
Crucially, though, Hyeong-Seok isn’t selfish with his gift. He beats up and humiliates bullies so that they keep themselves to themselves. He befriends the quieter kids, some of whom are picked on as he was, and helps them to feel better about themselves. In doing so he not only has a net benefit on the student body overall, but he also continues to be rewarded himself. For instance, a quiet, rich kid at the school realizes he is poor and gifts him a full wardrobe of designer items for his birthday – the first time anyone other than his mother has given him a present.
Lookism does a pretty good job of making this relatively challenging for Hyeong-Seok, since the kids he’s trying to help have, like him, suffered a lifetime of abuse, and are rightly mistrustful of people who look like him. He’s eventually able to win them over with his kindness, though. One of the most essential relationships of this first season is between Hyeong-Seok and Duk-Hwa, an aspiring rapper who is brutally bullied for many of the same reasons as Hyeong-Seok was – he’s from a poor family, he’s short and piggish, and so on, and so forth.
Duk-Hwa has an outlet, though. He also has a little more resilience than Hyeong-Seok seemed to have in his original form, and he continues to express himself and his experiences through his songwriting. It quickly becomes obvious that he is talented, though nobody takes him seriously. Except, of course, Hyeong-Seong. In the Lookism anime ending, the two end up becoming a kind of double act, since Hyeong-Seong can also sing, and through Duk-Hwa he gains more confidence in that aspect of himself, too.
This all culminates in a finale where Hyeong-Seok and Duk-Hwa perform an original song at the school’s festival. But the real thematic payoff comes when a record label representative wants to give Hyeong-Seok his card but is refused since Hyeong-Seok doesn’t want to consider an offer that doesn’t include his friend Duk-Hwa. The pair do earn the attention of a famous musician, though, which, if a second season is commissioned, will likely form at least some of its plot.
You can stream Lookism season 1, episode 8 exclusively on Netflix. What did you think of the Lookism anime’s ending? Let us know in the comments.
