Edgar Allan Poe in one of his anthologies says, "And so, being young and dipt in folly, I fell in love with melancholy." Knowledge of the soul boundlessly make s us gloomy if the pros of feelings fail to keep us cheerful and vigilant. Melancholy leads to doubt which in turn results in despair and ultimates cultivates wickedness.

"Melancholia (멜랑꼴리아)" is a journey of desolation, dejection and despondency with fruitful meanings and worthwhile outcomes but what's different? It's mathematics. Yes, the most hated subject in the world, haha. The drama uses a different approach to promote the mathematical perspective of life through the characters who are devotedly peruse mathematics.

The drama have more than a dozen of flaws, even to be called good. It's purely an average piece and can be easily skipped though I can't exactly say it's bad and deserve to be treated as a complete trash, and I have many reasonings for it as well.

Note: There is no paedophilia or cheating involving the leads of the drama. It's just stupid perceptions of some narrow-minded people who jumped into conclusions without watching the drama.

Based on 2 different time periods with a gap of 4 years, the story is almost equally divided into 2 parts; a past story of 2017 and a present narration of 2021. Ji Yoon Soo (Im Soo Jung) and her most favourite student Paik Seung Yoo (Lee Do Hyun) falls victim to a conspiracy of intentionally set up scandal that frames them of having unsound relationship. Owing to the constraints, both of them fail to prove their innocence and fall apart, just to find themselves in misery. 4 years past the tragedy, both of them cross paths and unite to bring to surface, the corruption, conspiracies and the big faces behind it, in the school, of the past and the present.

Yoon Soo, morally upright and endearing woman, is a highschool math teacher, who is aware of the art of steadfastly making someone fall in love with the subject. She's all the qualities to be a perfect teacher but her sense of righteousness gets her in trouble. Paik Seung Yoo, born genius and immensely attracted towards math, is a highschool student after dropping from MIT which he joined at very young age. After a tragic experience, he shows no interest in studies, tho he has all the capabilities to conquer.

Im Soo Jung is an amazing actress and a movie person, rarely opting for dramas and very selective in that regard. She must have seen some potential in this though the execution went shabby. Lee Do Hyun is definitely the best in acting, among the rising Korean actors and his performance was good as well. Other than the leads, there are in fact many familiar and good actors in the drama and I will refrain from mentioning them to keep it short. But special applause for Jin Kyung who played Noh Jung Ah, the Principal of Asung High though she's the main antagonist in here. She definitely created an impression with her character dynamics and we are aware of her acting skills.

Plot development.....umm..... It's inconsistent and unremarkable though it had scopes and rooms for improvement with the episodes; like given the basic plotline and the mixture of 4 genres (romance, highschool, slice of life and corruption reveal), it could have been a lot lot better to finally come forward as a decent melodrama but, alas! I wasn't really that bothered while watching the initial episodes with the slow pacing, but the later half consequences made me realize that that the speed was totally inaccurate to begin with.

As a story, it isn't actually a trash as some people will tell you, or even below average. I would say it's just ordinarily average and the ratings can lie somewhere around 6.5 bcs Well, talking about episodic progression, From ep1 to ep8, i.e exact till the first half, it's a fair watch and didn't feel like skipping or fast-forwarding. The show starts going downhill from the beginning of 2nd half with the repetition of some events and constant push & pull between the characters over one thing. To reach the ultimate goal, i.e. bringing forward the truth, they particularly start dragging from the 13th episode and that's clearly visible. Tbh, I started fast-forwarding from 9th ep at 1.5× and kept the same till the end.

The script could have been squeezed into 12 episodes or even 10 by increasing the pacing and removing all the dragging they did in the last 4 episodes. However, I must admit that the ending sequences in the last 2 episodes were good.

Kim Sang Hyub is a producer of extremely popular yet qualitatively mediocre dramas. His dramas blow up bcs of good-looking cast and the story he adopts are usually typical cheesy romcoms. But this was a different approach, i. e. not a romcom and cast ain't dominated by good-looking young mass. Moreover, the slice-of-life elements along with mathematical pov; all these things are not his forte and he couldn't even execute them experimentally, which is quite visible. The direction was poor, the pacing is unnecessarily slow for a corruption-reveal drama. The slow screenplay could have been manageable only if it were a warm pure romance genre but that's not the case.

Kim Ji Won is known for only one of her scripts, that's Doctor John, which was in fact a good drama. I haven't followed other 2 dramas of her so can't really tell about her skills though I can assure whatever she had to offer for Melancholia, that didn't work to a great extent. Can't cite the script a total failure but it surely had the potential to be a good and likable one-time watch. I have already talked about the plot development above, so let's move on.

OSTs are very good indeed. Park Se Jun is quite a talented composer with the experience of working in uncountable numbers of dramas and the 4 OSTs of this show are the proof. I loved all of them. 2 of them are in English and other 2 are in Korean.
"All I Need" by Jemma is a ballad of comfort. More than love, it depicts solace, relief and assurance. The vocals of one of my fav singers Sunwoojunga in the soulful and longing song "Darling" questions one's faith in love. "Lilly of the Valley" by Band Nah, a popular indie trio is actually a cover of the song with the same title by Daniel. It's simply a beautiful melody that expresses gratitude to the essence of love. "Let Me Know" by Cheeze is a melancholic call in true sense; it has the feels of an authentic Kdrama OST.

The most notable thing about the drama is mathematics. I am a bio major and wasn't that fond of mathematical practises but I, for sure, knew that it's an interesting subject and studying it can be enjoyed though not everyone can accomplish it with utter amusement. The writer has tried to connect mathematics with life, love and living in a beautiful way. Mathematics here is not just a mere subject of academia and profession, it's much more than the mystery of the universe and one's pleasurable experiences.

There is very short-lived romance or you may take it as almost little to no romance, but sure there is development of chemistry, there ie comfort and there is undisplayable emotions that constantly blooms despite all the odds they have to pass through. This is not romcom and you should skip it, if you're actually expecting some romance. Even so, this buildup is worth it, in my opinion.

Bullying in highschool, corruption in admission process, unfair and unequal treatment to students in the same school, illegal & phoney favors, creation of unnecessary competition among students, parents negligence to children as well as leading children towards wrong paths, etc. are the factors used in the drama. I love how the writer has put emphasis on the ways of nurturing a child and their future, both in home and school along with the mistakes in the process that can ruin them. It also addresses the ways in which children are wronged by adults.

In short, the drama had too much potential with a good plotline, good actors and good premisea but what ruined it are choppy script, poor character dynamics, shoddy plot development, superfluous pacing and expendable characters of no significance. But personally, it was watchable for reasons like: mathematical interpretations of life, resolute leads, acting of the major characters, up to par basic plotline and so on.

I don't believe in completely discrediting something for flaws in some parts of it. If something specific has convinced me, I should def be fair with mentioning them. On that note, Melancholia, overally, is not a bad drama though it has a lot of flaws which could have been easily avoided. The major reason to watch the show is the mathematical frame of reference and utilization of that outlook in the drama. I came here, as expected, for LDH and ISJ and several other actors whom I like, and yeah, I loved their performances even though the drama didn't interest me to a great extent. So on a final remark, you can either skip the drama entirely or watch it in leisure when you have nothing to watch.

P. S. All of these in my review are very personal. I loved the drama but I didn't; i would like to describe it like that. For me, this drama was actually very difficult to judge; it'a not really very bad and not very good as 2 different groups will claim but I guess 7.0 is fair enough considering all the aspects. I thought it's important to put a unbiased, fair and balanced review. Some might agree and disagree with both my contents and ratings but I'm okay with constructive arguments.