Hello and welcome to another dazzling video! In our earlier videos, we discussed The Boys presents: Diabolical; now, we will examine and critique the seventh episode, “John & Sun-Hee.” More information about the earlier episodes is available right here on our channel.
“Diabolical” on Amazon Prime is a sardonic dive into the world of “The Boys.” It is a raucous cartoon binge made for adults that is violent, amusing, hilarious, and can occasionally make you gulp back tears. It does not offer much to the main series’ plot beyond enjoyment and never overwhelms you with profundity or resonance. It is also undeniably entertaining.
The lighter, more optimistic “Diabolical” serves as a counterbalance to the darker, more pessimistic parent series written by eminent designers and universe enthusiasts. The story’s humor, unpredictability, gore, and fun are all enhanced by the numerous animation techniques and approaches.
Check out The Boys Presents: Diabolical season 1 episode 7 to find out what is in store.
John & Sun-Hee [Episode 7]
![John & Sun-Hee [Episode 7]](https://marvelousvideos.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/John-Sun-Hee-Episode-7.jpg)
Amazon Prime’s The Boys has been so popular over the previous two seasons of action-adventure lunacy that the brand is now headed back into the sketched realm – but this time around animation, instead of comics. The Boys Presents: Diabolical is based on the Dynamite Entertainment Comic Book Series, ‘The Boys’ written by Garth Ennis and illustrated by Darick Robertson.
It is made up of eight episodes, each running from ten to thirteen minutes, seven of which are situated in the TV universe and one in the comic book universe, all of which tell solo stories about Compound-V, ranging from cosmetic trials to Homelander’s first assignment. The animation influences in The Boys Presents: Diabolical are as varied as its strange assortment of abilities.
The anthology is a great place to start; you don’t have to be familiar with “The Boys” to enjoy its offshoot. With “John and Sun-Hee,” a Korean horror drama-styled piece, where the drama was much stronger than the horror, that roots body horror with a compassionate look at an aging couple, Andy Samberg writes, and Steve In Chang Ahn directs the most poignant episode of the lot. Get ready and put on your sad face for this one, as an old bloke puts his life on the line to save his wife from an incurable disease. “John and Sun-Hee” is one of the three animated shorts from The Boys TV series that are considered canonical.
The plot of the episode is short, crisp, and simple, but the execution of the entire episode will render you speechless and leave you questioning life. It starts when John ((voiced by Randall Duk Kim) learns that his wife Sun-Hee (voiced by Yuh-Jung Youn) has just a couple of days at most to live due to a pancreatic cancer diagnosis.
The doctor informs him, “I’m afraid it won’t be long now. A couple of days at most. I’m sorry.” That leaves John distraught, heartbroken, and defeated. He spends all night drinking, crying, and wracking his brain to come up with something that would help him save the love of his life. His half-eaten ramen getting cold shows how deflated he is.
Before heading to work the next day at the Vought International, where John serves as a janitor, he goes to a pawn shop to purchase a taser pistol out of severe desperation by trading it for his wedding ring. By deceiving and tasing a guard at the reception, John takes away his badge in order to steal a serum of Compound-V from the Vought International to treat his wife, Sun-Hee.
After stealing and bringing the vial to his wife, Sun-Hee recovers when John injects some of it into her body. John runs to call the nurse when she starts getting seizures and expresses pain. As soon as he steps out, the guards from Vought International surround him with guns and freak out to see Compound-V being utilized on Sun-Hee. They cuff John, and one of the guards asks another to kill Sun-Hee by saying, “Pancreatic cancer. Make it look natural,” which shows how demented and dark those people are.
Just when they try to kill Sun-Hee by suffocating her with a pillow, her powers emerge, and so do her glowing, magical tentacles belching from her cancer. Her powerful tentacles messed up the guards from Vought International, and John and Sun-Hee managed to flee from the hospital. Sun-Hee did not do any of it on purpose, and right when her guilt was about to consume her, John composed her by saying, “It’s okay. They were trying to kill us first.”
As they try to run away in an ambulance, Sun-Hee keeps on saying, “I don’t think it’s okay,” and suddenly does not feel well as cancer leaves her body in the forest, where it consumes wildlife and grows. The cancer forms like a vacuum created in the heart of the forest, where wildlife gets sucked into. When Sun-Hee asks John what he did to her, he responds by saying, “It doesn’t matter. What matters is you’re better.” Sun-Hee denies it, and John says, “You’re alive. Look at you.”
Many agents from Vought International arrive to eradicate it, but they are all consumed by the cancer as well. John and Sun-Hee try to flee from there as John wants to go, but Sun-Hee urges that they must correct the situation as she feels guilty for spreading it to others in order to save herself. John feels like the cancer is gone, but Sun-Hee denies it as it lives in the forest and consumes innocent lives.
They have an argument about whether to stay and help or to flee and avoid. It will break your heart when John breaks down and says, “No. Not now. I just got you back.” They go back and try to save it when John witnesses that Sun-Hee has also gained her own abilities and powers and can take on the cancer of the forest, which subtly means the diseases of the world. She wishes John well, asking him to look for himself, never forget to eat on time, and never skip meals as she is no longer with him. Sun-Hee then goes off on her own to fight cancer.
A fading snapshot of a couple standing in front of a Pavillion appears in the initial minutes of “John and Sun-Hee.” But it is not just any Pavillion; it’s Gyeonghoeru Pavilion at Gyeongbokgung, Seoul’s royal palace, which was initially established in 1395.
Each episode takes place in the universe of The Boys and is stunningly horrific and darkly hilarious, precisely like the live-action series. The most moving of the lot is certainly “John and Sun-Hee,” which departs from the show’s comic tone. In this episode, while John is hell-bent on saving his loved one at all costs, Sun-Hee flounders in turning away from the harm caused by their decisions. It is made even more emotional by purposeful connections to Korean culture and language, heartbreaking voice acting performances, and vibrant musical composition.
Steve In Chang Ahn chose Gaenari to portray the older woman’s life. The repeating motif of gaenari, which is a yellow flower widely known as the Korean forsythia that blossoms in the spring and is the state flower of Seoul, is another nod to Korean culture in “John and Sun-Hee.” When a single petal from a dying plant falls beside a bedridden Sun-Hee, the flower first appears in the episode. The duo is engulfed by a shimmering, golden meadow of the same flower as she decides to leave John and confront the monster. The scene was a depiction of celebrating her life via reblossoming gaenari.
Each episode of The Boys Presents: Diabolical has a distinct look, with “John and Sun-Hee” having a much more muted palette and colors that have faded slightly. John and Sun-Hee’s vocals were also carefully considered. The voices of Youn and Kim were not the only sounds that reflected John and Sun-Hee’s emotions.
Hyesu Wiedmann wrote the episode’s soundtrack and wanted it to feel like it was following the couple’s emotional journey. Throughout the music, there is a single cello. The cello featured two ranges: a lower register that represented John’s voice and a higher register that represented Sun-Hee’s voice. Widemann wanted the two melody lines to reflect John and Sun-Hee’s thoughts that they could not articulate verbally.
What to Expect from the Episode
Not just the episode “John and Sun-Hee” of The Boys Presents: Diabolical most likely to bring tears to your eyes (which is strange since the person to write it also gave voice to “Jizz In My Pants”), but it also has the show’s most spectacular visual imagery. The Boys’ universe is provided a genuine Korean flavor by director Steve Ahn as well as Studio Animal, which is a dramatic contrast to the franchise’s usual aesthetic bombast.
Sun-Hee’s monster metamorphosis is reminiscent of the famous Akira, while the color scheme and the musical accompaniment are reminiscent of Studio Ghibli. It is difficult not to see influences from Japanese animation while viewing “John & Sun-Hee” (through misty eyes).