'Tale of the Nine-tailed' Episode 1: Lee Dong-wook as a fox who waits for his true love subverts stereotypes
'Tale of the Nine-tailed' Episode 1 introduces us to Lee Dong-wook as a nine-tailed fox Lee Yeon who broke the holiest rule among the fox spirits by falling in love with a human girl Ae Eum. Not only that, he decided to leave his post as the guard of a mountain range to ensure that his lover can be reborn after her death.
The belief that a fox can only fall in love once seems to be true even among fox spirits because Lee Yeon continues to wait for her. He arrives to save Ji-ah, as a little girl 21 years ago, who met with an accident while driving down a road at night in Yeou Gogae and later had to see monsters take over her parents' bodies.
After he slaughters the monsters, he also ensures that Ji-ah doesn't have any memory of the night and before he leaves, he asks the little girl if she is Ae Eum. He performs some kind of spell and learns that she isn't and leaves right after. Now, 21 years later, Ji-ah (Jo Bo-ah) has become a producer who works on a TV show that produces content regarding supernatural presence in the country.
So she tracks down anything that seems doubtfully like it has to do with something supernatural. She also hasn't forgotten what happened to her as a child entirely. From Lee Yeon's voice to even the familiarity that she feels when she sees him coincidentally at a wedding where Lee Yeon was hunting a fox who lived as a human and was about to get married.
Everything about him is suspicious and when she ends up connecting him to another incident, she ends up getting a good shot of him on tape.
She also ends up posting it at places that gain the public's attention and this leads to Ji-ah receiving unwanted attention herself. Turns out, Lee Yeon doesn't have that great a relationship with his brother Lee Rang (Kim Beom) and now, after having met her, Lee Rang gets extremely intrigued by how sharp she is despite being a human and how she catches him playing his own game.
This is when he appears to give a fake testimony about Lee Yeon. He decides to trap Lee Yeon in something else entirely and causes the death of passengers on the bus in the same route that Ji-ah lost her parents.
Ji-ah also ends up being on site right after an accident occurred and this ends up becoming the beginning of Ji-ah's life getting tangled with that of otherworldly beings. For starters, one of the high school students that Ji-ah saves is none other than Lee Rang in disguise, and when he gets some time alone with her at her home, he ends up trying to attack her.
What Lee Rang is not aware of is the fact that she just acted as bait to capture everything that he would end up doing on camera. Instead of a simple show, however, Ji-ah ends up capturing a fight between two foxes spirits on camera and despite Lee Yeon trying to wipe her memories, the recording helps her regain memory.
She uses the recording to test Lee Yeon and falls down from his penthouse, taunting him to catch her and get the recording if he can. The minute she confirms that he is not human, she injects Lee Yeon with something and right then the episode ends. What does Ji-ah plan to do with him and can she really handle what awaits her if she continued her acquaintance with him is something that we will see in the upcoming episodes.
However, what does make us slightly happy is the fact that we do not have to watch another lead female actor portray a fox who is manipulative or a fox at all for that matter. Sure, this show has other female foxes, but including all genders and making the lead male character a gumiho helps.
'Tale of the Nine-Tailed' will air on tvN on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 10.30 pm KST and can be streamed on Viki Global.