Yumi's Cells

September 17, 2021

Kim Yumi (Kim Go-eun) is a 31-year-old office worker whose emotional life is run by a congress of tiny cells inside her brain — Love, Hunger, Reason, Emotion, and others. The drama's innovative format — live-action and animation combined — is established.

September 17, 2021

Yumi develops feelings for a colleague Goo-woong (Ahn Bo-hyun). Her cells go into emergency session. The Mapo neighbourhood where they both live.

September 24, 2021

A date in the Hongdae café streets. The cells' chaos versus Yumi's careful exterior. The animation sequences are at their most inventive.

September 24, 2021

Early relationship complications, narrated from inside Yumi's brain with unusual psychological specificity.

October 1, 2021

The drama briefly adopts Goo-woong's perspective — his cells' response to Yumi. A structurally inventive episode.

October 1, 2021

Yumi's apartment in Mapo — where her cells live and argue — becomes the drama's most intimate space.

October 8, 2021

Work and romance colliding. The cells respond to professional stress with the same democratic chaos as personal.

October 8, 2021

The relationship at its most stable — and the drama preparing to destabilise it.

October 15, 2021

Their first serious conflict. The cells' emergency response is the drama's most technically ambitious animation sequence.

October 15, 2021

The reconciliation. Yumi and Goo-woong in the Hongdae café streets at night.

October 22, 2021

Park Jin-young enters as a new character — a writer who sees Yumi differently than Goo-woong does.

October 22, 2021

The drama's most explicit examination of what the Love Cell wants versus what Yumi actually needs.

October 29, 2021

Yumi must choose between the comfortable relationship she has and the uncertain one she might have.

October 29, 2021

The Season 1 finale. Kim Go-eun's performance — simultaneously internal and external, comedy and sincerity — is among the best in 2021 Korean drama. Season 2 followed in 2022.