A Korean series I reluctantly decided to see because I read there was an outbreak of zombies in the story, became the first series I've seen five episodes straight with no episodes but still didn't give up seeing it. My sis recommended it to me and I tend to take her recommendations seriously as she doesn't see movies that often.
Has this happened to you before? Seeing up to five episodes with no subtitles for another language series. Well, I bet anyone would have been able to see this series through to the end especially fellow kdrama lovers. That's because the storyline doesn't actually need much dialogue as every character seem to be busy running hard.
"Newtopia" is an 8 episode comedy thriller Korean series released in 2025 starring Park Jeong-min (the recent trending actor who featured in Hwasa's Mv) and Kim Jisoo (a member of blackpink and known for her lead role in the series "Snowdrop"). The series is one you'd say it's a little glimpse of how chaotic a zombie invasion would look like but with some comedy.
The storyline is about Jae-yoon, a soldier who have to face zombie outbreak during his military service and his girlfriend, Young-joo in an attempt to reunite with him after their breakup, navigates through the zombie-ridden city of Seoul. Both fight through against the zombies to reunite with each other but the chaos seem to be unending.
How did the zombie outbreak start? The series portray that the first set were foreigners as a plane crash let loose some zombies. Would the couple reunite? Yes, they will but it didn't make things look like it is over still. The story may be seem like a regular kind for those who enjoy watching series like this as this one is lighter.
The genres says it's mainly a comedy series, maybe it's because I didn't get to hear most of the words said but I had little laughs watching this. Maybe the other reason would be I get scared a bit watching stories like this, where I'd be so tensed up praying hard that nothing bad happens to the main characters as they fight.
So the genres "thriller", "horror" kinda fits more than "comedy" and it does have lots of gory scenes that almost put me off from seeing the series. The series is another confirmation that I'm not a fan of horror genres. I remember watching an episode with my little cousins, they were scared but didn't move an inch to stop seeing it.
For the characters, I think I expected too much from the actor Park Jeong-min who played the role of the soldier. Of course, he kinda showed why people were saying so much about him after the Mv feature but the only difference I saw was his face card for the role, he's not as handsome as other actors but you'd enjoy looking at him.
It's the first series with Kim Jisoo that I got to finish unlike when I attempted to see "Snowdrop". Well, I made the mistake of reading too much about the series first and that discouraged me after an episode. But she is definitely not bad for a character, I think I enjoyed her creatively strong scenes in this series more than I did with others.
There were some memorable characters who gave emotional scenes like the one who sacrificed himself to the zombies to save his friends, and the few others who were immune to the zombie bites but later gave in to the thirst after saving their friends to some extent. And there is also the annoying scenes of bad guys.
In that chaos, some bad guys are killing people, it was satisfying to see them get eaten by the zombies when they attempted to kill Young-joo. Of course, there was the highlight scene where the couple reunited but we knew deep down it wasn't ending there or soon because they have to leave that city if they want to be safely in love lol.
The series was good enough and I would only recommend to those who enjoyed "All of us are dead" and "Train to Busan". Although the tension was less on this series, it's still a good watch considering I didn't need subtitle. I'll rate it 6.5/10
Images are from Imdb.