It's already known that I'm not too happy with Disney's ownership of Marvel and the Star Wars franchise. I still feel that Palpatine's (one of the franchise's most beloved evil characters) return in The Rise of Skywalker was nothing more than lame fanservice. I finally finished the Disney series (and I don't know if there's a second season) and I felt it was a very weird series. It felt like mixing X-Men with several other American materials. It's already known how ideas tend to be copied between East and West. Nothing's completely original these days and what matters more is how it's being executed.
The story of youngsters and their parents born with superpowers is interesting. However, it can be as ambitious and come out convoluted at the same time. There are many backstories that are slowly revealed along the way. The series first reminds me of taking clear inspiration from X-Men. What happens next is that it almost reminds me of Kamen Rider Agito. Agito is often considered by some as Toshiki Inoue's Magnum Opus while others downright hate it. I feel that Moving might enter into that category with how the story of mutant children with their mutant parents are.
This summary from Asian Wiki can help explain why I watched it though I confess I also watched it for Go Yoon Jung:
Kim Bong-Seok, Jang Hui-Soo and Lee Gang-Hoon attend the same high school. They look like ordinary students, but they have special abilities that they inherited from their parents. Kim Bong-Seok has the ability to fly. Jang Hui-Soo has excellent athletic abilities and she is able to rapidly recover from injuries, like being shot or stabbed. Lee Gang-Hoon has uncanny power and speed.
These three students try to hide their special abilities from other people, while their parents struggle to protect them from being used by other people.
The world isn't ready to receive mutants. Check. Do you have some government bigotry in the form of the National Intelligence Service? Check. Seeing Moon Sung Geun as a possible Expy for the likes of Dr. Bolivar Trask in X-Men can be a cool reference. I really got tempted to raise up the movie X-Men 2 when Colonel William Stryker was introduced. I also expected Sentinel Expys but alas there was none. Instead, there we simply have government agents trying to track down the mutant humans one way or another. No wonder the parents have their struggles to protect their children from being used by other people.
I'm glad that the show didn't go as far as to create a superhero team. Instead, it tried to focus on the struggles of the mutant families. We see mutant children trying to fit into a high school that fears them. We also see more spoilers along the way when we learn about their parents. I do feel the episode arrangements can be messy. Some episodes are purely backstories while others aren't. Maybe. I'm complaining that Yoon Jung isn't in every episode. Well, that's just plain lame since the backstories make one understand the struggles. Every flashback has interesting backstories such as the 1987 airplane terrorist case, 1992's Operation Seagull, incidents in Russia, and incidents in North Korea.
It's also interesting to feature North Korea again. Maybe, one can think of Crash Landing on You or the spy drama IRIS. I think bringing up North Korea can help raise awareness of the plights of its citizens. There are also defectors from North Korea shown. It was done in such a way without bringing up the Kim Dynasty's successive emperors namely Kim Il Sung (the founder), Kim Jong Il, and Kim Jong Un.
It can get very complicated. Maybe, you may want to give it a second rewatch. This would be my first exposure to writer Kang Pool's works. Interestigly, Kang Pool was more of a movie writer and it was his first time to deal with KDrama. Though Kang Pool himself was also the one who wrote the web comic. It's very interesting but it's so hard to talk about it without spoilers.
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