The Hype around the new K-Drama “Squid Game”.

Since everyone is talking about the new Netflix series Squid Game, I would like to give my opinion about it.

What is Squid Game about?

A mysterious survival game promises a profit of 45.6 billion won. Seong Gi-Hun (Lee Jung-jae) can use it well, because his life is a downhill slide. He lives with his mother, suffers from gambling addiction and has hardly any money to provide financially for his daughter. That could all change when he meets a mysterious stranger in a train station.The stranger plays a small game with Gi-Hun in which he wins quick money. Participating in a bigger game with higher stakes lures him into the clutches of a secret organization.

Gi-Hun’s childhood friend, Cho Sang-Woo (Park Hae-soo), also signs up as a participant in the game. He is well educated and has always been the pride of the neighborhood – and now he is wanted by the police for stealing his clients’ money.

Gi-Hun and Sang-Woo are among a total of 456 poor, marginalized and desperate people who have been gathered on a secluded island and must master a total of six competitions modeled on children’s games – in the hope of using the prize money to lead a better life. However, most of them will not be alive at the end of the games.

Right from the first game – a variant of the children’s game Red Light, Green Light – the players learn in a shocking way what is really at stake here. If you lose, you pay with your life. The survivors of the first round must decide: Is it really worth it? Due to a wide variety of circumstances, most of them have reached a point in life where there is no other way out for them.

Summary by https://www.moviepilot.de/serie/squid-game

Is Squid Game worth it’s Hype?

Personally, I think Squid Game doesn’t quite live up to the hype. Don’t get me wrong, the series is produced on a high level and the soundtrack is really good.

However, the series started off extremely boring for my taste. The protagonist Gi-Hun is a total loser, in debt and addicted to gambling. Sure, you know this setting from other series, but do you have to make 2 episodes out of it in Squid Game? I think the 2nd episode just feels like a filler, just to have more episodes. With the first episode, at least there is a part of the first game.

But also the story of the policeman who tries to investigate the Squid Game later on. His story is also taken up at the beginning of the series. The story of the agent is also too long and boring for the series.Aside from the two stories that could be made shorter, likewise the end of the miniseries has increasingly lost my interest in Squid Game. The ending is stretched out way too long and could have been done by the third two of these without missing much.

The three negative aspects aside, Squid Game doesn’t have only negative sides. I still think the series is well done and it is definitely very exciting and interesting. However, I have to say that it doesn’t do it for me for the hype it currently has. There are quite a few better K-dramas and other series that may be much more worthy of the hype.Nonetheless, anyone who is interested in the series is welcome to watch it and see for themselves.

However, I just wanted to share how I see the series at the moment and that I don’t understand the hype around Squid Game.