Tamal Kundu
Based on the Manhwa series written and illustrated by Park Tae-joon, ‘Lookism’ is a South Korean animated series. The plot revolves around Park Hyung-seok, a short and overweight teenager who constantly gets bullied for his appearance by his peers. After his mother witnesses this, she decides to send him to Jaewon High School. On what is supposed to be his first day there, Hyung-seok wakes up to discover that he is in the body of a tall, handsome, and athletic young man. He soon finds out that his old body is lying beside him, sound asleep. It takes some time for him to figure it all out, but he realizes that when his first body is asleep, the second one is awake, and vice versa.
Hyung-seok decides to attend his new high school in the second body while working at a mini-mart in his first body. As he does so, he witnesses people’s extreme reactions to his two vastly different appearances. Here is everything you need to know about the ending of ‘Lookism’ season 1. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Lookism Recap
The series begins by depicting how horrible Hyung-seok’s situation is at his old school. He suffers name-calling and vicious beating almost every day. To cope with this treatment, Hyung-seok has resorted to behaving submissively, hoping that this would stop the bullying. Predictably, it doesn’t, making the matter only worse. He reaches a tipping point when his mother sees him being bullied and comes to his defense.
Hyung-seok’s mother has raised him on her own, and they are pretty impoverished. Despite knowing that she can’t really afford it but wanting her son to have a happy school life, Hyung-seok’s mother enrolls him at Jaewon High, where only the fashion design program is available for him because of his poor grades.
As the new school is quite far from his home and his mother can’t move because of her work, Hyung-seok begins staying in a slum alone. When he goes to see the school for the first time, he gets beaten after unintentionally creeping out a girl by trying to be a different person.
Late that night, the body switching happens. Hyung-seok tries to wake up his first body, which leads to his second body falling asleep and him waking up as his old self. It doesn’t take Hyung-seok long to figure out the entire process. All his life, he has been horribly bullied because of his appearance. In his mind, this is the perfect opportunity for him to shed the shackles of his past and move forward.
On his first day at the new school, something unprecedented happens. As he walks in, everyone around him openly stares at him. If one part of the student body admires him, the other feels intimidated. Jin-seong, the boy that beat Hyung-seok’s first body the previous day, feels jealous because he thinks Mi-jin, the girl he likes, is attracted to the new student like the rest of the girls in the class. Jin-seong picks a fight with Hyung-seok, and despite being a boxer, is defeated.
This brings Hyung-seok unwarranted attention from other fighters of the school, including Basco, the leader of a gang called Burn Knuckle. An architecture student, Basco styles himself as a Robin Hood for bullies and their victims. He takes an immediate disliking to Hyung-seok in his second body because of multiple misunderstandings. They even fight at one point, and Hyung-seok emerges victorious. Ultimately, all the misunderstandings are cleared, and the two become friends.
Hyung-seok also develops friendship with Hong Jae-yeol, a mysterious rich boy who gives Hyung-seok several bags full of clothes and accessories after realizing some of the other boys have figured out Hyung-seok’s financial condition and are planning to mock him for it. Hyung-seok also becomes friends with Jin-seong after the latter stops picking fights with people for
Mi-jin. But most importantly, Hyung-seok grows close to Park Ji-ho and Pyeon Deok-hwa, two victims of severe bullying at the new school.
As mentioned above, Hyung-seok was forced to enroll in the fashion design department because of his poor grade. His real passion is singing. Meanwhile, Deok-hwa is a promising young rapper from the vocal dance class. But because of his weight, he is overlooked by a music producer in favor of his less talented classmate. In the season finale, Hyung-seok and Deok-hwa overcome their respective issues and deliver a competition-winning performance at the school festival. The music producer mentioned above approaches Hyung-seok with a deal, but when he refuses to offer it to Deok-hwa because of the same reservations as before, even after admitting that the young rapper is talented, Hyung-seok resolutely declines.
Lookism Ending: Who Else Can Switch Bodies Like Park Hyung-seok?
The first season of ‘Lookism’ offers no explanation about the origin of Hyung-seok’s second body and how he can shift his consciousness between the two bodies while sleeping. However, at the end of the season, we know that Choi Su-Jeong can do the same. Choi Su-Jeong first meets Hyung-seok in his old body; unlike most people, she is actually kind to him. In contrast, she acts distant and cold toward Hyung-seok in his second body, though, as with Basco, much misunderstanding is involved there. It is heavily implied that she has also figured out Hyung-seok has two bodies.
Besides these two, Hong Jae-yeol can be another person with two bodies. But his generous actions can also stem from simple kindness or even attraction toward Hyung-seok.
In the original Manhwa, it seems that Su-Jeong and Hyung-seok are the only two people with two bodies. But there can be potentially others. For instance, DG, the K-pop star introduced toward the end of the season, probably had two bodies in the past. He had a different name at the time, James Lee, which he eventually discarded. It’s possible that he had two bodies during that period but ultimately decided to discard one permanently. DG also just might be the most powerful character in the ‘Lookism’ world.
How Does Park Hyung-seok get the power to switch bodies?
As previously mentioned, the animated show hasn’t revealed much on the matter, and it seems that the same thing can pretty much be said about the Manhwa. But there are quite a few possibilities.
Su-Jeong’s father, Choi Dong-soo, alternatively known as the Elite, is the CEO of the conglomerate HNH Group. Given that his daughter has a second body, it’s highly possible that he has something to do with their creation. Moreover, he brought the members of the Ten Geniuses together. The Ten Geniuses are a group of 10 people with genius-level expertise in various subjects. For instance, Su-Jeong is the business genius. It’s possible that the second bodies were created by combining the DNA of these 10 people.
It’s equally possible that the second bodies are what Hyung-seok and Su-Jeong can be at their prime. Those bodies are the perfect manifestation of their own selves. This theory seems to be supported by how increasingly Hyung-seok‘s first body has started to look similar to his second body in the Manhwa because of extensive training.
Yet another possibility is that Hyung-seok and Su-Jeong are the latest users of those bodies. There were others who used them in the past. In Hyung-seok’s case, previous users can be DG and even Dong-soo.
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