Tale of the Nine Tailed (구미호뎐, Gumihodyeon) is a 2020 Korean drama starring Lee Dong-wook, Jo Bo-ah and Kim Bum. It aired between October 7 and December 3 2020 on tvN.
Lee Yeon is a 1600+ years old nine-tailed fox. Due to his advanced age and considerable power, he used to serve as the guardian spirit of the Baekdudaegan mountain range, but abdicated his position after the tragic death of his human lover. He now lives in Seoul, working as a bounty hunter for the gods (represented by grumpy underworld deity Taluipa) and waiting for his love to be born once again. A chance meeting brings him face-to-face with Nam Ji-ah, a television producer with an interest in the supernatural and her own quest: to find her missing parents, who disappeared under extremely suspicious circumstances 20 years earlier. Oh, and she looks just like Yeon's lost love.
Complicating matters is Lee Rang, Lee Yeon's murderous younger half-brother, who comes to Seoul to stir trouble and take some long-planned-for revenge on his hated older brother. And he might be in league with another threat from Lee Yeon's past...
The series can be watched on Viki
with English subtitles.
Tale of the Nine Tailed contains examples of:
- Actor Allusion: Yeon complains about a TV show portraying Grim Reapers inaccurately, saying that “[he] knows Grim Reapers well”. Lee Dong-wook famously played a Grim Reaper in Guardian: The Lonely and Great God.
- Agent Peacock: Yeon is very vain about his good looks and a terrifyingly effective fighter.
- Aloof Big Brother: Yeon to Rang, oh so much.
- Always Save the Girl: Yeon froze the river of the dead in order to delay Ah-eum’s passage into the afterlife. He then waited 600 years for her to reincarnate, and is now intent on saving Ji-ah and seeing her live a long life, to the exclusion of pretty much everything else. At one point he threatens to destroy the world if she is harmed.
- Ambiguously Bi: Yeon doesn't seem to mind when it is suggested that Ah-eum could be reincarnated as a man.
- And Now You Must Marry Me: Part of the Imoogi’s plan for Ji-ah.
- Asian Fox Spirit: The show revolves around the Korean variation, the gumiho.
- Asshole Victim:
- Whatever Rang does to them, it’s hard to feel bad for the baseball players who were torturing the dog.
- Soo-oh's abusive stepfather gets his soul eaten, courtesy of Rang's intervention. He is not missed.
- Attack Reflector: How the Mirror of the Moon works. Used by the Imoogi on Taluipa, resulting in her being Taken for Granite.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Some poor schmuck encounters Rang near a wishing fountain and tells him he wishes his parents will stop objecting to his marriage. Rang rolls with it and makes sure they will never object to anything ever again.
- Become a Real Boy: Yeon wishes to become human. He eventually does (maybe), introducing him to the joys of such things as astigmatism and root canals.
- Blind Seer: The fortune teller at Folk Village. He's not really blind, nor is he a fortune teller.
- Borrowed Catchphrase: “What are you most afraid of?”
- Celestial Bureaucracy: The Afterlife Immigration Office.
- Compelling Voice: One of the Imoogi's main powers, first demonstrated when he makes 132 random people kill themselves just to make a point to Yeon. He later uses it to turn Shin-joo and the Snail Bride into Manchurian Agents and to send Yoo-ri to kill Rang.
- Cradling Your Kill: Yeon with Ah-eum, coupled with Manly Tears.
- Creepy Children Singing: When the Spirit of Darkness is about to get somebody, they hear an Ironic Nursery Tune creepily sung in the background.
- Dating Catwoman: Shin-joo and Yoo-ri.
- Deader than Dead: Jumping into the Samdo River renders one dead without being able to reincarnate.
- Demonic Possession: what the Imoogi did to Ah-eum’s father and to Ah-eum and later Ji-ah, and what he plans to do to Yeon.
- Determinator:
- Ji-ah’s initial drive is to find out what happened to her parents, and she is willing to go to some truly insane lengths to achieve this.
- Yeon braves The Hell of the Mountain of Knives, which is about as much fun as it sounds, just to get back into the world in time to save Ji-ah.
- Dying as Yourself: Ah-eum. Later, the Imoogi-possessed Yeon begs Rang to kill him while there is still something of him left.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Lee Rang may be an out-of-control psycho who delights in murder and mayhem, but he will not stand for animal cruelty.
- Fighting from the Inside: Ah-eum while possessed by the Imoogi. She manages to hold her own long enough to force Yeon into killing her. Ji-ah also puts up a decent fight.
- For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: Many of the costumed “creatures” in the Folk Village are actual mythical beings who find it easier than trying to lie low among humans.
- Friendless Background: Ji-ah and Yeon bond over this.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Lee Rang’s mother was a human while his father was a gumiho.
- Heel–Face Turn: Lee Rang, after he and Yeon make up.
- Henpecked Husband: Hyun Eui-ong. Taluipa actually kidnapped him and forced him to marry her. Played for comedy, mostly.
- Heroic Sacrifice:
- Lee Yeon takes the Imoogi-half in Ji-ah into his body and drags himself and the other Imoogi half into the Samdo River, ensuring the Imoogi will not be able to come back by sacrificing his own chance to reincernate.
- ...And then Lee Rang gives his life to the afterlife judge in return for him bringing Yeon back anyway.
- History Repeats: What Yeon is desperately trying to prevent with the events surrounding Ah-eum’s death and the Imoogi.
- I Always Wanted to Say That: After telling Rang in his recorded farewell message that the message will self-destruct in ten seconds, Yeon admits that he's kidding and just always wanted to say that.
- Ignore the Fanservice: Yoo-ri attempts to toy around with Shin-joo by stripping down and offering him to “have some fun”. Instead, he comments on her scars, throwing her off-balance with his compassion.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Yeon's raison d'être is to make sure the reincarnated Ah-eum lives a long, happy life, whether it includes him or not.
- I Will Wait for You: Yeon promises Ah-eum on the shores of the Samdo River that he will wait until she reincarnates. 600 years later, he’s still waiting.
- Jerkass Gods: Not quite jerkass as extremely stern and unbending, even when it’s clearly not justified. A particularly egregious example is the Underworld of Children, where dead children are sent to cleanse their karma from the sin of breaking their parents’ hearts by dying.
- The Lad-ette: Ji-ah is a mild case. She likes alcohol, hot foods and horror films, and often dresses in a rather masculine style. Yeon says that while his first love Ah-eum resembled a delicate lotus flower, Ji-ah is more like mugwort.
- Lethal Chef: Yeon bravely attempts to cook Ji-ah a romantic breakfast. After burning two pots and filling the kitchen and his hair with bits of dried fish, he gives up and calls Shin-joo to do the hard work.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: How the Spirit of Darkness' trap works for Ji-ah, showing her a happy world where her parents never disappeared. She manages to break free by reminding herself that even in the real world, she is not alone.
- The Man in the Mirror Talks Back: Ji-ah has a brief chat with the Imoogi in this fashion.
- Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Aggressive, sexual and impulsive Yoo-ri versus sensitive, nurturing, House Husband-type Shin-joo.
- Men Can't Keep House: Yeon, although it probably has to do less with being a man and more with being a god. Averted with Shin-joo, who spent centuries functioning as Yeon’s personal servant and can keep house very well indeed.
- Mystical Plague: One of the Imoogi's many charming qualities is his association with plague, which he unleashes on Seoul late in the series.
- Nature Spirit: Yeon used to be a mountain god, which also included dominion over forests. He's become very accustomed to the comforts of city life, but is still recognized by forests and holds some power over them.
- No Badass to His Valet: Shin-joo fusses over injured Yeon as if he was a sick child and embarrasses him in front of Ji-ah with stories on how helpless he is without Shin-joo's help (he's probably not wrong).
- No Party Like a Donner Party: Revealed to be the fate of the dead fisherman whose head is found near Eohwa Island.
- Oh, Crap!: A joint one for the Imoogi and the Spirit of Darkness when they realize that: a. Yeon is really not as beaten as he looks and b. he now knows what the Imoogi's human form looks like.
- Our Zombies Are Different: “Hungry ghosts”, the undead remains of people who starved to death. They’re quite quick, always hungry and can’t be permanently killed. Also, their bites contain deadly venom.
- Out-of-Character Alert:
- Young Ji-ah realizes the thing impersonating as her mother is not her real mother when she asks it for a walnut cookie and it agrees, despite Ji-ah's nut allergy that her doctor mother is very unlikely to forget.
- Taluipa asks Yeon what does he think of her. When he answers with a list of her godly attributes, she immediately knows it’s not him; the real Yeon would have just insulted her.
- Paranormal Investigation: Ji-ah’s line of work. She’s the producer of a popular TV show investigating urban myths and legends.
- Parental Abandonment:
- Lee Rang’s mother abandoned him to an almost-certain death in the Forest of the Starving.
- Ji-ah’s parents disappeared when she was nine years old.
- Soo-oh's mother apparently ran away and left him in the custody of her violent boyfriend.
- Pet the Dog:
- Literally when Yoo-ri rescues an abused puppy and brings it to Shin-joo’s clinic for treatment.
- Rang has a strange almost-literal moment of this when he discovers that Soo-oh, the child who has been following him around, is the reincarnation of his dead puppy from centuries ago. He grumbles about it, but buys the kid some cake and refrains from hurting him. Later, he straight out adopts him.
- Yeon slips the two little ghost girls a jar of Slime on their way to the Underworld, even though it’s against regulations.
- Psychopathic Manchild: Lee Rang. Yeon says that he has been going through puberty since the Joseon era.
- Psychopomp: Taluipa, the goddess of the boundary between the living world and the afterlife, the King of the Underworld’s sister and Yeon’s sort-of boss. Assisted by her husband Hyun Eui-ong, the gatekeeper of the Underworld.
- Rapid Aging: The Imoogi ages from baby to child to a young man in a matter of weeks.
- Reincarnation Romance: It’s not a fantasy K-drama without one. In addition to the main couple's romance, Ji-ah's boss turns out to be the reincarnated husband of the Snail Bride.
- The Resenter: The Imoogi's main motivation. He's angry that Yeon got to become a mountain god while his own ascension failed and seeks to replace him. In the past, he ruined his only friend's life and caused him to commit suicide just because the friend "looked too happy".
- Sadistic Choice: Yeon is faced with the choice of saving either Rang or Ji-ah, who are trapped in separate nightmare worlds created by the Spirit of Darkness. He chooses Rang, correctly assuming that Ji-ah would be able to save herself.
- Single-Target Sexuality: Yeon spends much of his existence dedicated only to Ah-eum and hoping that one day she will reincarnate so that he will be by her side. Added to this is the fact that he doesn't seem to mind when it is suggested that Ah-eum could be reincarnated as a man.
- Shout-Out: Possibly to Twilight:
- Yeon decides that in order to protect Ji-ah, he will stand by her bedside all night and watch her sleeping. Unlike Bella Swan, she doesn’t play along and declares it creepy.
- The Imoogi can read people’s minds, except for Ji-ah’s.
- Slasher Smile: Rang likes to do this. Yeon also tends to smile when he threatens people, although in a calm, almost-amused manner that is somehow even more unnerving.
- Smug Super: Yeon has shades of this, especially when he’s trying to impress Ji-ah.
- Snakes Are Sinister: The Imoogi, naturally, being a serpent monster and also the Big Bad.
- Something Only They Would Say: When Yeon comes to rescue Rang from the nightmare world, Rang demands proof that it’s really him. Yeon responds with an embarrassing story about a time young Rang’s wet his pants, much to Rang’s chagrin.
- Soul Eating:
- The Imoogi drains the life force of a few unlucky babysitters to expediate his growth, after possibly doing the same to the islanders in order to return to physical form.
- The CEO adds centuries to his lifespan by consuming human souls stored in a Chinese lantern plant.
- Speaks Fluent Animal: Shin-joo, with the help of his necklace. It’s very helpful in his day job as a vet.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Yeon and Ah-eum, and very probably Ji-ah. Foxes aren’t supposed to be with humans in general, in addition to their particular tragic fate.
- Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Lee Yeon, in spades.
- Supernatural Gold Eyes: The gumihos flash those from time to time. Rang has only one golden eye, due to his status as a Half-Human Hybrid.
- The Television Talks Back: A variant happens when Ji-ah is watching the video of a hypnosis session she had as a child. The girl in the video suddenly turns to the camera and starts reading the signs in the room behind Ji-ah.
- Town with a Dark Secret: Eohwa Island. Probably more than one dark secret, at that.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Yeon is very intent on his mint chocolate chip ice cream.
- Ji-ah is also very fond of her father’s Gimbap.
- Koo Shin-joo and his fried chicken drumsticks.
- Trauma Conga Line: While it doesn’t really justify his general behavior, boy is Rang’s backstory a nasty one. Let’s see: persecuted by superstitious villagers for being half-gumiho, abandoned by his mother in a forest full of zombies, rescued by his older half-brother only to be seemingly abandoned again due to said brother’s complicated love life, his home burns down, his puppy dies in the fire, he is persecuted some more and when his brother finally shows up again, it turns out he’s under orders to kill Rang. No wonder he’s somewhat unhinged.
- Undead Child: Ji-ah gets in trouble with a bunch of ghosts in a funeral home that used to be a burial ground for children who died young. She and Yeon are able to help the spirits of two girls who died recently to move on; as for the rest, Yeon says there is nothing to be done, since their Unfinished Business happened so long ago it can’t be resolved anymore.
- Undying Loyalty: Shin-joo to Yeon; Yoo-ri to Rang. Seems to be a fox trait, as Yeon also mentions that a fox can only love once and for the rest of their life.
- Unflinching Walk: When coming to rescue Ji-ah on Eohwa Island, Yeon is attacked by her kidnapper, an evil knife-wielding shaman. Without stopping, he orders her to "return to dust" and continues walking as she is struck by lightning and reduced to ashes.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Yeon and the Magistrate, apparently, if by vitriolic you mean “engaging in prolonged, showy battles involving multiple Mooks and deadly weapons as a form of greeting”.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Rang is very fond of doing this. Yeon also has the ability but declines to use it, claiming it’s undignified. However, he does use it to switch places with Rang and deceive the CEO at one point.
- Weather Manipulation: One of Yeon’s powers as part of his role as a nature spirit. He can control wind, rain and occasionally, lightning.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Yeon pulls an extended one when he remains trapped for days in the nightmare created by the Spirit of Darkness. When she finally comes around to gloat, thinking that he is defeated and about to die, he makes sure that Ji-ah has escaped and then very quickly turns the tables on her.
- You Owe Me: Gumihos are supernaturally bound to repay debts, even for the most trivial things. The flipside is that if they did you a favor, they can demand pretty much anything in return.
- Your Days Are Numbered: Rang apparently has already exceeded his life expectancy as a half-gumiho. Without using ethically questionable methods, he doesn't have long.
