This New Anime on Netflix Asks “What If You Woke Up in a Perfect Body?”

(SPOT.ph) If you can change just a part of your body to make it look better, which would it be? What if you had the chance to completely and immediately transform into the most gorgeous human being on Earth, would you go for it? You might be thinking something along the lines of #SanaAll, and it’s exactly that type of chance and physical overhaul that Lookism is all about. This popular webtoon is getting an anime adaptation on Netflix so we took the chance to gather everything we know about it so far. We gathered some available information about this upcoming series so far and discovered some interesting bits along the way.

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Everything You Need to Know About Lookism

The Cast

The Netflix series has a large roster of voice artists that will join the ranks of those who will bring the show to life. Some of them are Han Shin, Shim Kyu-hyuk, Kim Ok Kyung, Ryu Seung-gone, Jeong Jae-heon, Eugene Ko, Nam Doh-hyeong, Hwang Chang-yung, Sa Moon-young, and Jang Mi.

Synopsis

Lookism follows the story of Park Hyungseok (English name Daniel Park), who is a constant victim of bullying because of how he looks: fat, weak, and ugly, based on the usual social conventions. Because of this, he decides to transfer to another school, where, by some unexplainable twist of fate, he conveniently transforms into a tall, strong, and handsome man. To make things even more complicated, he still sees his former body on the floor whenever he looks in the mirror, where a complete set of abs greet him as part of the pretty boy package. You can call it a perk or a curse, but he can also switch between the two entirely different bodies by waking up the “inactive” (or sleeping) one.

To reconcile his two personas, he decided to use the pretty one during the day and only wakes his original body at night. Having both types of bodies, Hyungseok experiences different types of discriminatory acts based on other people’s looks–he gets the special treatment when he uses his handsome body but gets the cruel one when he uses his original body. Then there’s also the question of how exactly this magic is happening.

Overall Theme

Lookism literally translates from Korean as “looks supremacy,” referring to the discriminatory treatment people get when their appearances don’t live up to the standards of the society they belong to. Conversely, this sometimes refers to the type of preferential treatment that other people give to people with good looks.

Using this line of thought, Lookism aims to challenge this “norm” by presenting the society with someone with a good personality versus the same person with a “better” appearance but with the same disposition and temperament. Some say that it also has the makings of a BL series, but we’ve yet to confirm if it’s true.

The Manhwa

Published under the same title, Lookism is a webtoon illustrated and written by Park Tae-joon. The pilot chapter was published in November 2014 and new chapters have been released weekly since then. Daewon and Book is the publisher of the manhwa under the drama genre. For the record, it’s still ongoing with its latest chapter (406) released on September 24 as of this writing.

Studio Mir (a South Korean animation studio) adapted the manhwa and created an animated series that works to faithfully recreate the OG as much as possible. This is the same show that will be released on November 4 courtesy of Netflix, as the entertainment company announced during their virtual TUDUM event on September 25. Further updates have yet to be released, so stay tuned!

Where to Stream

As of this writing, only Netflix has announced that it will stream the anime counterpart of the ongoing manhwa series. Youtube and other similar platforms are currently streaming the live-action version from Tencent (a Chinese multimedia company). This series has 38 episodes. Some of the stars you can see in this version are Dino Lee, Wang Zuan, Wayne Zhang, and Lomon.

Trailer

Curious about the visuals and the storytelling approach? Check out the trailer below and see if it looks promising at first glance.

That’s it for this series! If you think this is not your cup of tea, you can always explore other series and movies that may suit your fancy and watch to your heart's content.