My Demon is a Korean Drama currently coming out on Netflix. Korean Dramas are always hit or miss for me. It is still difficult in this day and age for K-dramas to have a romantic story where the female lead is empowered, or at least not reduced to a helpless damsel in distress if she’s not outright mentally abused by the male lead.
In My Demon, an immortal demon, whose job is to grant a person’s wish for payment of their souls after ten years, loses his power-granting tattoo to a powerful young CEO who is being targeted for death.
I just started episode 3 of this series and so far it has some nice green flags:
- The female lead is a CEO, competent, empowered one, and does not suddenly lose agency when the male lead shows up.
- The male lead has magic powers, but they are limited when his tattoo transfers to her (for unknown reason) so he does not hold all the power in the relationship.
- The female lead is told that the tattoo has his powers and that he needs to be touching her to use them, thus avoiding infantalizing the female lead in that he would just hang around using her without her knowing why.
- Most of the major decisions regarding how the two of them interact are made by the female lead instead of the male lead simply forcing himself on her constantly.
- And though the male lead is a self-centered jerk, is not set up as a child the female lead needs to keep cleaning up after.
- I swear, Korean Dramas are what YA Fantasy would be without the gd age restrictions.
I remain hopeful for this series considering how many of the painful tropes it’s already countered, but I’m annoyed that it’s coming out slowly. Also, since it’s a K-drama, the fact that it’s only 16 episodes is unusual, but they’re not pussy-footing around the plot, and we know the story will be wrapped up at the end of those episodes.
So if this series interests you, like it does me, give it a shot. I’d love to hear what you think about it.
