Review: ‘Flowering Heart,’ Season 1

Make up! Change!

Flowering Heart, directed by Lee Woo-Jin. Written by Lee Woo-Jin, Kim Hyoung-Kyo, et al. Starring Nancy Kim, Jacqueline Youn, and Dami Lee. ICONIX Entertainment (). 26 episodes of 11 minutes (approx. ). Not rated.

What we have before us is a magical girl title from South Korea. Being a magical-girl franchise from outside Japan, this arguably falls into the same category as such other non-Japanese titles as Winx Club, LoliRock, or Star vs. the Forces of Evil. But, of course, you’ve likely seen plenty of South Korean animation already, as both America and Japan outsource a lot of animation to that country.

Ari with tears in her eyes
Our heroine.

As of the time of writing, this series has two seasons, but as far as I have been able to determine, only the first is available in English. I originally found it on Amazon Prime, which hosts the English dub, but you can also watch for free on the show’s official YouTube channel.

Now here’s the confusing part: There is a dub of the whole season available, as well as a Korean version. But there are also at least a few episodes that have been left in the original Korean but subtitled in English. However, they haven’t been set aside in their own playlist, and their descriptions are entirely in Korean. Here’s the first episode with subtitles. After that … good luck. I’ve been struggling to figure out where the rest of the subs are; at least the second episode is there, and some later ones too, so possibly the whole subtitled series is buried in there someplace.

Continue reading “Review: ‘Flowering Heart,’ Season 1”