Nan-do had a great character arc. He started out an extreme love pessimist—a calculating, emotional dry bed who secretly yearned for this mythical thing called a soulmate, a lover. It all stemmed from him losing his mother to an apparent suicide when he was a child and thus blaming her for leaving him and feeling unworthy of being loved, but that’s beside the point. The point is that through Holo’s one beta tester, So-yeon, he begins to experience feelings. He begins to believe in love.
It was an interesting dynamic to have Nan-do jealous of Holo, as So-yeon thinks she’s fallen for Holo. They were truly like two sides of the same coin. Nan-do gave Holo all the personality and attributes he wished he had himself. I liked how they juxtaposed the two with their looks as well. Holo was clean-cut, straight hair, light-colored clothes, while Nan-do was more serious, curly hair, always black or dark clothing.
This show, of course, tried to answer the same question as all the other shows and movies I sited at the top of this review: is a moral AI more human than the worst human? Should they have rights? Can they fall in love with a human? How much control should an AI have over your life?
There are no right answers. All I know is that some humans are monsters.
Like Chan-sung’s father. That man was a wonderful villain! From the very beginning with him phoning his son and Chan-sung just being completely terrified and nervous and hopeless against him—he was just sinister. When Myung-ryul made his grand entrance to the show, the power that he displayed… I gasped when the old man grasped his cane and Chan-sung whipped his head to the side, cowering in anticipation that he was going to beat him with it. Just brilliant physical performances and acting in general. It’s an example of showing and not telling the audience that this man is a hateful, spiteful, abusive father.
I’m a stickler for K-dramas giving in to tropes, especially if they’re not done well, but the reveal that So-yeon’s prosopagnosia was induced by her witnessing Myung-ryul murder Nan-do’s mother was a stroke of brilliance. It made perfect sense to me, how a little girl would be so traumatized, especially after Myung-rul clearly threatened her and told her to forget him.
Our main couple Nan-do and So-yeon are also childhood friends, a classic trope, but this colors So-yeon’s entrance into Holo’s life and by extension Nan-do’s life. Had she never been a childhood friend and baseline interacted with Holo’s primitive AI that Nan-do’s mother created (which was more like an AI chatbot), then Holo never would have chosen her on which to plant the Holo glasses out of a crowd. He essentially knew her and trusted her without realizing why.
The stakes got super high toward the end of the show. With a series of cyber “attacks” that Holo initiates to save So-yeon and Nan-do at various points, the cyber-crime cops suspect Nan-do of the attacks, figure out that he faked his death, pin the crimes on him, and then—with major strings being pulled with the police commissioner and probably the government—the evil Myung-ryul initiates a hostile takeover of Nan-do’s company and Holo himself. In the end, Myung-ryul tries to kill So-yeon and Nan-do. I felt the urgency, the tension, and it was awesome!
As a side-note, I respected that Yeo-jin (Nan-do’s stepsister) had a love-hate relationship with Chan-sung, a clear adversary in the show. But they made it work, and although it’s not explained or dwelled upon, they develop feelings for each other in the midst of this volatile crisis, with Chan-sung’s father being a total sadist. A mini Romeo & Juliet scenario.
I’ve been singing this show’s praises thus far, but I did have a few picky nicks: I didn’t like that Holo essentially got amnesia and Nan-do and So-yeon even revisited places he might remember to try to jog his memory into “recovering,” but it didn’t derail the show for me. The cop Jong-hak at one point seemed more intent on capturing Nan-do than actually prosecuting criminals, even agreeing to dismiss all evidence of Myung-ryul’s company’s wrongdoings in exchange for any and all cooperation against Nan-do. What? Then the show sort of does a 180 on the character and the cop is on Nan-do’s side. I was confused—is he a good cop or a bad cop? Where did his allegiances lie?
Lastly, the Holo glasses and Holo himself are destroyed. Holo effectively commits suicide to protect Nan-do and the company from the advanced tech being used for evil. (Myung-ryul ended up mass-producing the Holo glasses and selling them to the public like the second coming of the iPhone, then using the system to spy on the public and attempting to sell the tech to the government!) So the alternative product that premieres instead is… a Holo projection? It looks like the kind of hologram from Star Wars or Star Trek—a circular plate that projects the image of a person that isn’t there. I didn’t think this was necessarily amazing (or as amazing as a pair of glasses that give you access to a personal augmented reality AI), but whatever.
If you’re looking for a quick show with a big budget look, moral quandaries, and a proper romance, then look no further! This is a good one.
Did you see My Holo Love? Tell me your thoughts in the comments below!
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