Seasons of Blossom : A Journey of Young Flowers Blossoming through Seasons

13 Dec, 2024

Youth. Those turbulent years of our lives. However, not all of the seasons are precious. Some are stuck in neverending summer and monsoon rain. For some, the cold winter never seems to end. Some others are walking under a lonely autumn sky. Will they finally reach spring and bloom, or will they wither before they even get the chance?

Seasons of Blossom is a story that'll always have a special place in my heart.

The story is divided into four seasons - Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. While the first season is a shoujo romcom, you are in for a surprise regrading the rest of the seasons. (I'll have to talk about second and fourth season separately because they are that special to me.) Even the first season is not your typical rom-com, thanks to the unusual characters and even unusual pairings.
Jaemin Lee and Bomi Yun both are dazzling characters who catch everyone's eye and everyone roots for them as a couple. However, things get complicated when Jinyeong Choi the indifferent gamer suddenly started dating her. Around the same time, Seonhui Kang, Bomi's best friend and Jaemin's childhood friend revealed that she had feelings for Jaemin. There’s also Gyuri Cho who had a hopeless one-sided crush on Jaemin.
In the beginning, Bomi doesn’t seem to have much character depth in terms of character in my eyes, she just seem like the nice girl who is also a model student, nothing more... But turns out she does have a story to tell. Jinyeong Choi has a strong personality. So much so that it attracted Jaemin and he started hanging around him wanting to be friends. Of course, Jinyeong couldn’t care less... But from this we catch a little glimpse of Jaemin's story - "I may not look like it, but I am a man with a story.", as he said.
The third season, Autumn, tells the story of Gaeul Jin, Somang's best friend. She had been bullied throughout middle and high school and had to drop out of school because of that. Things change when one days, she bumped into Subin Kang in college, who was known to be the reason she got bullied. However, Subin didn’t seem to have a clue about it and he barely even remembered Gaeul. As things slowly unfold, we get to know little by little that things aren’t always what they seem to be. Personally, I am not a fan of this season so I will not talk a lot about it, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good season. It’s also in this season we get to see Seonhui's love life finally blossoming.

What I love about the whole Seasons of Blossom series is how every character is given their importance and spotlight. No one is stuck in a certain role (the 'second lead', 'female lead', 'male lead' stuff, ugh.) or villainized (Talking about villains...there are a few, actually, but I am talking about villainizing characters over a single misdeed. Gyuri, for example, could easily be villainized). Jaemin could easily be part of a love triangle and be pushed aside at a point. Hamin could've been entirely forgotten after his arc was over. But no. In the end, all of the characters are interconnected to each other until the very end and beyond. They continue to help and even save each other in their own way. Just like in real life. No backstory is merely a 'plot device' in this webtoon. They are stories as they are, and they are always relevant.

In the end, Seasons of Blossom is stories of teenagers struggling and fighting to live their lives under different not-so-ideal circumstances, like flowers blooming enduring seasons (which is why each seasons are named 'Flower' e.g. Hamin's Flower). Everyone has a story to tell. It's a story about teenagers that's necessarily not centred around romance. (Yeah I know first season is all about romance but rest of the seasons are not.) This is what makes SoB truly special. The metaphors of seasons. Winter and Spring, Summer and Autumn. Rain, sky and flowers. These elements are sprinkled throughout the seasons and to this day whenever I encounter any of them I think of those characters. The end of the fourth season offers a special lore of the famous in-universe 'Red Duck' storybook which is just as inspiring as the rest of the story.