America Shocked, China Terrified, Japan in Tears
After watching Daegu-haeng, I came straight home and dove into the edit.
Hmm… a little cringey, but it'll pull aggro for sure.
If I was going to post a review at all, I wanted as many people as possible to see it. After racking my brain over how to make that happen, I stuck my own tear-streaked face on the thumbnail.
Looks are narrative logic.
One glance at that thumbnail and they'd have no choice but to click. I was sure of it. After all, the face plastered across it was the one the System itself had rated S+. Who on earth could resist that?
Keep it restrained. Don't overdo it.
I was mid-edit, cutting everything that didn't matter and keeping only the scenes that would hook people, when a realization hit me like lightning.
Wait. If I upload this… isn't that undisclosed sponsorship?
I'd completely forgotten. Neoguri and I were the same person. I'd spent so long living with Neoguri and Lee Yena as two separate identities that it hadn't clicked right away.
Still, slapping an ad disclosure on it feels wrong.
What had my original goal been? Building a channel that never ran ads. I wasn't about to break that vow over something this petty.
I made my decision.
Okay. Passing on this one.
I wouldn't upload the review.
Honestly, that was the only sane call. Me reviewing a movie I'd acted in? The second that got out, the pile-on would be inevitable.
Better not to start a controversy at all.
Neoguri was already ranked the most likable YouTuber in Korea, but if word got out that she'd reviewed a film she'd starred in, there was no telling what kind of backlash would hit.
Granted, it probably wouldn't get out…
As of now, exactly three people knew I was Neoguri. Me, Mom, and Dad.
That was the full list.
Mom and Dad weren't a concern. They were always on my side, and both of them knew how to keep their mouths shut.
The real problem was the chance that I'd unconsciously slip something into the video that screamed child actress Lee Yena.
Of course, that was unlikely. I never uploaded right after finishing an edit—I always checked everything first.
Still. You never know. You can't just ignore the internet ghouls.
The internet ghouls.
They went by plenty of nicknames, and they operated on the absurd logic of "I'm bored and you look like an easy target," digging through famous people's pasts and personal information. The number of people they'd dragged into the abyss was more than I could count on both hands.
Just the ones I've seen personally already top a hundred.
So the smart move was never to give them anything to grab onto in the first place.
And the rule I'd set for myself was a review channel that never did ads.
Just like that, Lee Yena gave up on uploading a Daegu-haeng review.
There was something Lee Yena had forgotten.
Unlike 2014, when she'd first started running the Neoguri channel, it was now mid-2016—and YouTubers had become a pretty established thing.
Plenty of people still didn't make videos, of course. But a huge number had at least heard of the platform.
On top of that, Neoguri had become so famous in Korea that virtually no one didn't know the name. As a result, far more people were using YouTube in this life's 2016 than in her previous life's version of the same year.
Naturally, the movie and anime review format that Neoguri—the spark of this whole YouTube boom—had pioneered became an inspiration to countless people. The result: everyone and their mother jumped into the review market.
But the more people piled in, the fiercer the competition got.
No YouTuber out there could match Lee Yena's A-rank editing and the delivery she'd pushed all the way to A-, so the market flooded with review channels operating at a far lower level than Neoguri.
Anyone stuck at C+ or below in both editing and talk vanished under the audience's indifference. Only the review YouTubers who could at least hit B- in both survived.
And among the channels that made it, one stood out above the rest. Its name: Reviewing Japanese Girl Hiroko Yui.
She ran her channel with cunning precision. She watched the audience numbers on every newly released film and only reviewed the ones that looked like they might crack ten million tickets.
The result was a fairly impressive fifty-percent hit rate on ten-million-viewer movies.
It was nowhere near Neoguri's perfect hundred percent, but most people treated Neoguri as an exception. After all, Neoguri was the reincarnation of the Delphic Oracle.
Thanks to that, Fox earned the nickname of the mortal world's greatest ten-million-movie detector—even with a fifty-percent hit rate.
Which raises an obvious question.
There are three ten-million movies a year at most. So does Fox only upload six videos a year?
No.
With a fifty-percent hit rate, the number of movie reviews Fox had posted was exactly double Lee Yena's: eight.
"Otaku culture is profitable, it is…!"
The owner of the Fox channel was Japanese.
Her real name: Hiroko Yui.
A Japanese girl with a serious interest in Korean culture.
"Today this one shall upload a movie review, it is…!"
She was an early adopter—a Japanese girl who'd fallen hard for Korean culture after watching Psy's Gangnam Style.
The year was 2016.
Korean culture still hadn't been fully embraced worldwide. In Japan, plenty of people still preferred their own domestic entertainment over anything Korean. Hiroko Yui was different.
She was certain Korean culture was about to spread its wings and take off.
"One must stake a claim early and suck every drop of sweetness dry, it is…!"
The moment she realized that, she opened a YouTube channel and became a YouTuber.
"The money… it is coming in…!"
Hiroko Yui was in her second year of middle school. Which is to say, she was permanently broke. But once she started her channel, rode Neoguri's coattails, and hit a million subscribers, everything changed.
The monthly income was beyond imagination. Within a year of starting, she was rich enough to flex a proper house in Tokyo.
"Ahh. Mother… this maiden has gone and flexed a house…!"
"Well. It's your money, so whatever. At least you bought a house and not something weird."
"So, Yui. What kind of videos do you even post on that channel of yours?"
At her dad's question, Hiroko Yui grinned.
"Keh heh. Movie and anime reviews, it is…!"
"Honey, why does she talk like that?"
"Haaah~ She got addicted to that speech pattern from some anime."
"That's gonna be rough later."
Hiroko Yui's father, Hiroko Takashi, nodded.
"I went through a phase like that myself…"
"Yours was worse."
"What…? What is that supposed to mean!"
"I said yours was worse."
"Mother… this maiden is most curious as to what transpired…!"
"When your dad was exactly your age, he walked around with bandages on his hands and an eyepatch over one eye. I was so embarrassed I couldn't even go out with him…"
"Father…"
"Y-yes, what is it, my daughter?"
"You had a past like that, and yet you have oppressed this one all this time…!"
"No… it wasn't as bad as your mom makes it sound."
"But the hand bandages and the eyepatch are established facts, are they not…!"
"Well, that's true…"
"Unforgivable…!"
Hiroko Yui lunged at her father. Watching the scene unfold, Kurosawa Natsuko headed for the kitchen to start dinner.
Because their YouTuber daughter's earnings defied imagination, Hiroko Yui's family had moved to Korea. It was a reasonable call—the main videos driving her channel's growth were movie reviews, and watching Korean films from Japan meant waiting a long time.
For the record, Yui had bought the house this time too.
"At this point, one qualifies as a filial daughter, does one not…!"
"I…"
"I…?"
"…concede."
"Keh heh. Then this maiden shall go edit, it is…!"
Having received the official Filial Daughter certification stamp from her father, Hiroko Yui finished her Daegu-haeng edit with a smile.
Opening-day audience: 870,000…! That is the highest figure of any Korean film in history, it is…!
Filled with absolute conviction, Hiroko Yui uploaded her Daegu-haeng review on day two of the film's release.
Watching the view count climb the second she hit upload, Hiroko Yui smiled.
"Keh heh… this shall clearly be a career-high video, it is…!"
But something felt off.
Neoguri hadn't uploaded a Daegu-haeng review.
"This does not make sense, it is…!"
Who was Neoguri? The one people praised as the reincarnation of the Delphic Oracle.
Of course she'd want to keep her title as the YouTuber with a perfect hundred-percent hit rate on ten-million movies.
And this time, Daegu-haeng was showing every sign of something massive—it had already posted the highest opening-day audience in Korean film history at 870,000.
This was guaranteed to hit ten million. No question.
While Hiroko Yui sat there in confusion, Lee Yena was watching Fox's Daegu-haeng review with a pleased little smile.
Not a bad review.
Overall it was a little over-the-top, but everything that needed to be covered was in there. A solid piece of work.
As an actress who'd been in the film, I couldn't help myself. I left a comment.
Neoguri's comment racked up likes in seconds, shot straight to the top of the comment section, and eventually landed in Hiroko Yui's field of vision.
"S-something terrifying is afoot, it is…!"
She'd been aiming for patriotic hype this whole time, and someone had just cooked up a title even more shamelessly patriotic than hers!
Was this person truly the reincarnation of the Delphic Oracle…?!
A moment later, Hiroko Yui took Neoguri's advice and changed the title.
To this.
For the thumbnail, she stuck in a shot of herself—already recognized in Korea as an honorary Korean.
The second the title changed, the view count exploded upward.
One day later.
Hiroko Yui's Daegu-haeng review had blown past five million views.