Viral Hit
A review of season one
Viral Hit is a wonderful show no one watched about a Korean teenager who films himself getting into fights, and it proved to be thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish: twelve episodes of action, comedy, romance, and drama — well-balanced and fast-paced — non-stop conflict, character growth, a satisfying conclusion, and zero filler. It’s the type of show I look for every season, and it deserves to be better known.
Picture Classroom of the Elite — okay, look: I don’t have a problem with Classroom of the Elite. It’s fine, except when it tries to play chess. But it’s going to take some collateral damage today, because this is the analogy I landed on. Picture Classroom of the Elite, except instead of being told that the main character is an impossible genius who trivializes every challenge because of a plan he came up with offscreen that works perfectly every time, and because he trained really hard in his backstory and casually mastered every field of human endeavor from ornithology to badminton, and that he did all that despite not caring at all about any of it — right, instead of that, we’re shown that the main character is a relatable guy with relatable problems; that he comes up with actual plans that sort of make sense and never work perfectly; that he trains really hard to get a little bit better at just one thing; and that he did all that for relatable reasons, like pride and money and teenage Korean girls, which is why it means something when he comes out on top once in a while. It means something without trying to seem important. I wanted to see what Hobin would do next, I wanted him to succeed, I laughed when he screwed it up, and I was glad to see him try again.
Action, as I have said before, is about conflict; it is not necessarily violent. Violence without conflict is just spectacle: another pointless tournament arc. Well, there are no tournament arcs in Viral Hit: just an unrelenting series of conflicts, most of which happen to be violent. Although its violence is tempered with comedy and the overall tone is fairly light, watching it does feel somewhat like waiting to get punched in the face, and you won’t have to wait long. The plot moves fast: there are no beach episodes in Viral Hit either, and if there were, someone would have to wrestle an octopus. It really is non-stop conflict: in the span of an episode, Hobin will fight a bully, which attracts a bigger bully, and while he’s fighting the bigger bully, he forgets to buy his girlfriend a birthday present, and when he goes to apologize to her, he falls in the octopus tank at the Lotte World Aquarium, and — well, you see where this is going.
Notice how much gets done in a season of Viral Hit, because everything that happens is relevant to the plot. Notice how little gets done in a season of Wind Breaker, a superficially similar and much more popular show that doesn’t have a plot because it replaced it with tournament arcs. Wasn’t there an entire episode of that show where they decided to have a tournament, and then another entire episode where they walked to where the tournament would be held? Or did I dream that? I might have fallen asleep during one of its interminable mid-fight flashbacks to yet another tragic backstory. Since action is about conflict, it’s generally preferable to know who the characters are before they start punching each other, rather than finding out mid-punch. For example, you can do what Viral Hit does: establish the characters before the fight and allow them to learn and grow in unexpected ways after the fight. Notice also that one of these shows — the one no one watched — has a main character with a clearly defined goal who drives the story forward, and the other has a main character with a clearly defined hairstyle. Look, I tried to finish Wind Breaker — I just couldn’t be bothered. I will say, it gets better when you play the Viral Hit soundtrack over it.
Anyway, you don’t need to be a fan of combat sports to enjoy Viral Hit. You can enjoy Rocky without being a boxing fan. You can enjoy Keijo! without being a fan of that sport, although I don’t see why you wouldn’t be. Granted, Viral Hit is more about the fighting than either of those franchises, so let me say a few words about fight scenes.
What makes a good fight scene is not a mystery: Jackie Chan directed about a hundred of them. A good fight scene creates tension for the audience by conveying danger to the characters, and danger, meaning the risk of harm, depends on something more fundamental than choreography or cinematography: it depends on cause and effect. If Jackie Chan is in the Bronx, and he has to jump from one fire escape to another, what happens if he misses? He falls to the ground, he gets hurt, and the villain gets away with the suitcase full of diamonds or whatever. We hope Jackie Chan doesn’t fall off the fire escape because we understand cause and effect. Or maybe he does fall, but he lands on a flatbed truck full of stuffed animals: that’s fine; the man also did comedy.
To prepare for this review, I watched some fight scenes from a popular action show, which, to avoid further controversy, I won’t name. In one scene, a pirate with three swords was in outer space or whatever, and he had to jump from one rock to another. Fine, so what happens if he misses? Does he fall in the ocean, or does he spin his swords around really fast and fly like a helicopter? I think at one point he actually was flying: can he do that all the time? If he does fall in the ocean, does he get hurt, or does he think back on how his friends are cheering him on, which gives him the courage to charge up a glowing yellow ball of energy that makes him immune to damage? There are no answers to these questions. You can practically see the hand of the animator at work: what happens next — in this unnamed anime — is whatever seemed coolest to him at the time. You can animate a jumping pirate and his glowing yellow ball as lavishly as you like, in sixty frames per second: it will not save your fight scene, which has no logic of cause and effect, so it can’t convey danger, so it can’t create tension.
In Viral Hit, every fight scene conveys danger: cause and effect are brutally clear. What happens if Hobin gets punched in the face? You don’t need to speculate: I haven’t seen this many hospital scenes since Neon Genesis Evangelion. Combat is grounded, with a clear sense of time and space, action and reaction. No one carries on a lengthy back-and-forth discussion with their opponent in the fraction of a second before a punch lands. No one changes direction in midair. At no point does anyone’s fist collide with their opponent’s fist to create a glowing yellow ball of energy that pushes them apart. Spare me the yellow balls! Did you see how Taehun rotated his foot on his back kick?
But make no mistake: Viral Hit is not a work of literary realism. It does not attempt to accurately depict the day-to-day lives of street-fighting Korean teenagers. You will be asked to suspend your disbelief. Don’t panic: this is a normal part of enjoying fiction.
Truthfully, Viral Hit is the type of show I look for every season. I don’t mean shows about Korean teenagers who film themselves getting into fights. And I don’t mean charmingly awkward coming-of-age sports action-comedies, although I do welcome new entries in the Rocky-meets-WataMote crossover genre. I have in mind the entire class of well-written low-budget genre fiction: fantasy adventures and death game thrillers and step-sibling romances alike — and you do need to go look for them, because you rarely hear about them, and what you hear about them is rarely good.
As I have said before, and as anyone can see for themselves, at the start of every season, the anime community, for remarkably superficial reasons, assigns certain shows to the must-watch trophy shelf and others to the guilty-pleasure dumpster. A well-animated fight scene in the trailer gives us a new anime of the decade at least twice a year, while the low-budget genre fiction sinks to very near the bottom of the dumpster. And if the content of the dumpster proves to be thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish, if the anime of the decade proves to be unwatchable by episode three, any merits of the former can be dismissed, any defects of the latter can be excused.
Sure, Viral Hit might be a decent little cartoon, a fun watch on a Wednesday night, but Solo Leveling is a timeless masterpiece — and, being a timeless masterpiece, it doesn’t need minor details like character development. It has video game mechanics! It has glowing yellow balls in sixty frames per second! Never mind pacing: just make sure it’s slavishly faithful to the source material. We’ll animate each panel of the web comic and play the clips one after another. Wasn’t there an episode where they interrupted a fight to the death to show three random women eating brunch? Or did I dream that?
Year after year, the trophy shelves are crowded with timeless masterpieces with a shelf life of twelve or thirteen weeks; revolutionary achievements for the medium that rarely go through the formality of actually being fun to watch. If it’s so good, then why isn’t it good? Do you like being served fish bones and coffee grounds on a silver platter? I’d rather eat real food out of a dumpster — well, no: I’d rather those weren’t my choices.
All art is dedicated to joy, said Schiller. Viral Hit may not be popular, and it may not be pretty. I think it was animated on a laptop, in a weekend, by an intern, in exchange for a gift certificate to Panda Express. I suspect it was sponsored by Korea’s powerful taekwondo lobby. And I’m certain no one will ever call it a timeless masterpiece or a revolutionary achievement for the medium. Nevertheless, it manages to achieve in any given scene what fish bones and coffee grounds and lavishly animated glowing yellow balls have failed to deliver in a double-length season: it’s really enjoyable to watch.
Originally posted on my Substack.
