“I Am Not A Robot” Episode 1 And 2 Review And Recap

Published Categorized as Kdrama Reviews
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“I Am Not A Robot” is a new romantic comedy starring Yoo Seung Hoo and Chae Soo Bin along with the talented Uhm Ki Joon.

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much of the drama.

I love Yoo Seung Hoo and the projects he picks, they always have a great story within them. I wanted to trust his choice but when I read the script plot-line, I was a bit disappointed.

Thankfully, it turned out to be better than I had expected it to be. So lets get right into “I Am Not A Robot” episode 1 and 2 review and recap.

It begins by showing the cute hot Kim Min Gyu, he sits in a room among doctors explaining that he is allergic to human.

At first the board doesn’t believe him, but once he takes off his jacket and touches one of the doctors, they exempt him from military service.

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I googled “Human allergy” and turns out it’s a real disease. If someone would’ve told me that, I would’ve laughed at them because it doesn’t really make sense.

The medical term for it is: Spontaneous Chronic Urticaria. Its an autoimmune disease that means you’re basically allergic to human contact. Sudden outbursts of hives through the body can be triggered by human touch. Here is the source so you can actually read more about a woman who’s allergic to human touch.

Enough research! This basically means that his allergy is real, but of course, it will be dramatized for the viewers.

Min Kyu leads a happy solo life, or he claims to be. He is always alone because he’s allergic to human and can’t touch them. Thus he holds parties for his vaccum, and builds a house of cards.

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I couldn’t help but feel for the poor cutie who craves human touch and interactions but has to restrain himself due to his allergy. Imagine how lonely he feels.

After a brief introduction to our main lead we move onto our main female lead. She’s one of those people who would camp outside to get their hands on limited edition of gaming figures.

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She has a nasty temper but is also nice, she calls out injustice when she sees it. She is your typical hereoine female lead.

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Turns out the figurine she fought so hard to get was supposed to go to Min Kyu. The two meet and exchange conversation. When he finds out that the figurine box has a smudge on it, he decides to not pay her the commission.

He’s delusional and bases the price of the figurine on the outerbox as well, he could’ve just wiped it off and moved on with his day, but he decides to make a big deal out of it. (weird!)

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The two get into a fight, Ji Ah waited all night for the store to open and wasn’t going to give up on her commission. She touches him as he runs away for his life using his car.

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It was a cute funny scene. I bet this was one of the biggest and longest human interactions he had to go through. He goes back home, gets inside a room filled with mirrors and stares at the scar this human called ‘President Jo’ gave him.

He calls his doctor. The doctor has been treating him for 15 years. Min Kyu pesters the doctor to look more into his disease, there is no cure for it, he must take a shot to lessen symptoms of allergy due to human interactions.

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The doctor hands him a watch that changes color and reads body temperature, it alerts him when there is something wrong with his body. If the device reads above 2000, the cutie Min Kyu goes into shock and dies.

I bet this device shall become vital to Min Kyu throughout the drama.

The writer is doing a good job explaining everything there is to the disease from the character’s perspective. Answering fans questions so that the plot could move on from character introduction to story development faster.

Meanwhile, there are two men trying to send a message to Min Kyu. When the Drone lands inside his house, he sees a USB, he opens it and is introduced to a humanoid robot playing squash.

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Hong Baek Gyun then introduces the AI robot, and tells Min Kyu that he’s the new owner according to a contract, he also demands the unpaid 50 million.

After a small research, Min Kyu finds out that the doctor was accused of plagiarism which we assume to be now the reason he became outcast and lost the public’s respect.

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Despite his worries and doubts, Min Kyu heads to the warehouse to see the robot. He’s introduced to someone who looks exactly like Jo Ji Ah, the humanoid robot named AJI 3.

At first, he’s terrified with the sudden contact with her, she reveals that she is indeed a robot. After touching her, and not suffering from an adverse serious reaction, he confirms she’s a robot.

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She shows him her insides, a battery and a bunch of cool tech stuff we all don’t understand.

Min Kyu sits down to discuss the robot with Doctor Baek Gyun.  Doctor Baek Gyun reveals that the humanoid robot has went through deep learning into emotional artificial intelligence, which basically means she can read human’s emotions by scanning their faces.

Seems like a nice idea. As an engineer myself, I know that developing such a robot is very difficult tast, its something that takes years of development and a lot of money, it might not even work out.

I was impressed by how undeterred Chae Soo Bin appeared to be while portraying the role of Aji3. I also noticed that she didn’t even blink once while the camera was on her, which I also found to be very impressive.

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Chae Soo Bin is a very good actress with a bright future ahead. The way she portrays both characters is convincing and entertaining so far. She had to put on metal gear for the robot scenes which I could only imagine to be time-consuming and difficult. Min Kyu asks the doctor to bring Aji3 to his house tomorrow for testing.

Meanwhile, the cute Min Kyu knows there is an important meeting going on in his company and decides to pay a visit to the headquarters. Of course, the entire company sirens go off, director Kim is coming and he wants to see no one around him.

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The company plans on selling Daeyang Shipbuilding’s RnD Team. The presenter explains to Min Kyu that the team who head the department (Santa Maria) has accomplished nothing.

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Knowing that they’re lying, he demands they push back the date of selling the department of.

The new hired lawyer Jo Jin Bae is obviously suffering while being under the fickle and demanding director Kim. He meets one of the old company’s employees, who explains that Director Kim and CEO Hwang Yoo Cheol are rival friends.

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Meanwhile, aspiring entrepreneur Ji Ah is checking on her heart-shaped lamps that should light up once a human touch them, two lamps are connected by wifi, if one lamp is touched, both lamps should light up. She plans on entering a competition with the lamps and mass-produced them.

Meanwhile, Santa maria team is happily celebrating the fact that director Kim liked their robot. One of the team members gets slightly drunk and stupidly walks into the room of the robot while its charging, Hoktal throws the beer can and some of the beer lands on the robot causing a problem.

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It was a disaster in the making. Thus, the script finally develops what will become the main reason why Ji Ah pretends to be a robot later on.

The team finds out that the robotic piece that got damaged needs a couple of days to arrive to South Korea.

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Ji Ah’s brother; who turns out to be one of Director’s Kim staff; finds out that his little sister borrowed money from their account to kick start her project.

Her brother is furious, she borrowed 10,000$. All that she has worked on so far proved to be garbage. He’s worried about her, while she whines explaining that she only wants him to cheer her on.

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If that was my sister, she’d be dead~ LOL!

I find Ji Ah’s character to be annoying and slightly immature. When it seems like a lot of her projects failed, she doesn’t mind borrowing 10,000$ for a project that isn’t even guaranteed to succeed out of her brother’s account.

This makes her a very irresponsible character. Its been a while since I’ve seen such a character in a kdrama. Most female heroines are rather responsible and less selfish.

Doctor Baek Gyun calls Min Kyu hoping to get 2 days extension. He soon finds out that the company is planning on selling his department to some foreigner of a big company in the UK.

Doctor Baek Gyun recalls his ex-girlfriend Ji ah, whom the robot’s face was molded after. He asks her to help him, he lures her in with 10,000$.

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I thought he didn’t have money and was scrapping the barrel. Didn’t his team explain that they don’t have enough money to pay rent? Where did he get the money (and in cash) from? On top of that, how on earth were they able to work on building such a massive project without money?

She ends up agreeing to his obscure plan, she visits his laboratory and gets introduced to his team. She finds out that her ex actually built a robot that resembles her… creepy!

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that would be my face as well if I saw a robot that looked like me!

I like how different Uhm Ki Joon appears to be with this role, after wowing audience with his chilling performance as one of the bad guys in the hit drama “defendant” he took on a different role, he rocks it nonetheless.

So they work hard on training Ji Ah to be the humanoid robot. While Min Kyu finds out that president Jo has stolen his neckless, which as we obviously know, means something very important to him.

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He decides to call her, he threatens to sue her if she doesn’t give the neckless back to him.

Meanwhile, the team equips Ji Ah with a listening device and lens that helps the team connect Ji Ah to Aji 3.

She gets delivered to his house, and answers the phone while he gets down to see the robot.

When they both hang up the phone after Kim Min Kyu threatens her. She opens her eyes to say hi to her new master who turns out to be the guy who scammed her for her commission.

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I honestly, and after watching how clumsy Ji Ah is in real life, have trouble believing that she can pull off the robot act around Min Kyu. Even after she had been instructed to do certain things she gives up the act when she sees his face.

It’ll be interesting to see how this change and if she’ll manage to fool him completely in the upcoming episodes.

Its very nice to see Yoo Seung Ho attempting to do something else. The drama is off to a cute start. Its funny, light, slightly serious at times (which is something every romantic comedy needs). The main characters are okay, I wouldn’t say they’re particularly very interesting but they’re promising.

I had expected to dislike the drama, but I was pleasantly surprised with it. Sadly, the drama premiered with low ratings for its 1st and 2nd episode.

I think that a lot of actors who took part in an MBC production this year got the short end of the stick. With the strike and everything surrounding it, the production staff had to push back the air date of “I am Not a Robot.”

It took over the timeslot previously occupied by “Hospital Ship” which was a hit. “Hospital Ship” went up against the highly anticipated “While you were asleep” and ended up with higher ratings throughout most of its air time.

MBC lost the momentum created by “Hospital Ship” to two new equally interesting dramas. I just hope that the ratings pick up next week.

So what did you guys think of the premiere?[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

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By Jass K.

Hi, I am Jass k. I discuss some of the hottest currently airing kdramas on this site in form of reviews an/or recaps, join me in the discussion~

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