Lee Seo-jin and Yoon Chan-young swap bodies in new teaser

by Jenzy

The first teaser for High School Return of a Gangster is out, letting us see body-swapped experiences of a middle-aged Lee Seo-jin (Behind Every Star) and a high-schooler Yoon Chan-young (Delivery Man) in action. It’s bromantic, action-packed, and about everything you’d expect to see from a 2024 drama with bullies and gangsters in its tagline.

The teaser opens on Kim Deuk-pal (Lee Seo-jin), a tattooed fighter next in line for the gangster throne of Chilsungpal, a real-life mafia group. He’s respected by his colleagues, but the same can’t be said for our other lead Song Yi-heon (Yoon Chan-young), who is relentlessly bullied by his classmates. By the hand of fate, when Chan-young attempts to take his life by jumping off an overpass and Deuk-pal tries to stop him, the two end up switching bodies.

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We cut to Deuk-pal in Yi-heon’s body as he goes to school for the first time, and while he’s excused away his odd new behavior with amnesia, his classmate Choi Se-kyung, played by Bong Jae-hyun (Twinkling Watermelon), is not in the least fooled. After cornering him, he asks him point blank, “You’re not Yi-heon are you?”

But while Deuk-pal has to deal with his classmates’ suspicions, Yi-heon isn’t having a great time either. Not only does he wake up in his same high-school body (so no one gets to inhabit Lee Seo-jin’s muscles in this show? What a SHAME), he also wakes up to an immediate fist to the face from Deuk-pal’s lackeys, who want to know what happened to their boss.

And as we might expect from a mafia man, high-school Deuk-pal wastes no time schooling some bullies on what real fighting looks like, narrating “If I don’t do anything, bad people will just get more power to do bad things.”

It’s a real fist-off, if that’s what you’d call a one-sided fight where Deuk-pal punches through all of his opponents. Once he brings the last bully down, who incredulously asks him if he’s some kind of gangster, he responds with a highly cool, “How did you know? I’m the second-in-command of Chilsungpal, Kim Deuk-pal.”

This drama has an interesting rollout strategy of screening the first two episodes in CGV theaters, and the rest on streaming platforms Wavve and Watcha. Directed by PD Lee Sung-taek, with screenplay adapted by Jung Da-hee, High School Return of a Gangster will be available to stream on May 29.