As a child, So Mun (Jo Byeong-kyu) lost his parents in a horrible car accident. With a disabled left leg as a reminder, So is now living with his grandparents and is a target of bullying and abuse at school. With his friends, Woong-min (Kim Eun-soo) and Ju-yeon (Lee Ji-won), So finds respite in making comics. Unbeknownst to So, the school bully, Shin Hyuk-woo (Jung Won-chang), protected by his father's status as mayor, has been torturing his friend, Woong-min. Angered at the injustice of this situation, So awakens into superhuman powers as a Counter.

So learns that Counters are people—usually in a coma, or somehow half in our world and half in the next world—who are chosen to combat evil spirits that possess humans. Humans so possessed tend to be violent, selfish, and venal, and the evil spirits just egg them on towards increased cruelty.

Along with other counters who work at the local noodle shop, So finds a purpose to his life and a way to protect the people around him. With the help of Chu Mae-ok (Yeom Hye-ran), the owner of Eonni's Noodles, Ga Mo-tak (Yoo Jun-sang), a former cop with amnesia, and Do Ha-na (Kim Se-jeong), So comes into his powers as the “uncanny” Counter. I particularly enjoyed that the series gave such a strong role to a character who is supposed to be understood as a middle-aged woman. Early on, I said, “If they kill Mrs. Chu, I'll stop watching." It was close, but I kept watching.

First, I have to offer not just a content warning, but a really big flashing siren and buzzer, because this series is not just violent. There is significant, brutal, fatal bullying, torture, beatings, and death throughout the series. Even before the evil spirits take over a person, some of the violence in here is straight-up torture porn against weaker people. Power abuse, murder, and the absolute corruption of teachers at school and police, who ought to protect the innocent, but actively look the other way, can make Uncanny Counter an enraging and upsetting watch.

The larger story comes in layers, as Shin Hyuk-woo's father is a corrupt mayor with designs on the Presidency. Under him is a criminal gang he is using to keep opponents and nosy Counters away from seeing what harmful activities he's participating in. Intertwined with that is the story of a corrupt builder who has stolen billions of won from regular people who invested in his never-to-be-built apartments.

Into this roiling cauldron of crime, corruption, exploitation, and straight-up brutality, we have the Counters, whose job it is to fight the evil spirits who escape hell and cause havoc.

I found it fascinating that all of the many terrible people in the story start terribly. When they are eventually taken over by evil spirits, they get worse, but most of them were violent long before the possession. So, sure, the evil spirits are bad…but there's an awful lot of bad that humans are doing to other humans. Like many of the paranormal crime K-dramas I've watched (I have watched quite a few), there is a distinct distrust in the institutions of police, government and educators visible here.

Violence aside, Uncanny Counter is a surprisingly funny and occasionally heart-warming series. It doesn't shy away from physical humor as So Mun struggles to be trained by Mo-tak and Do-ha. Above all else, this first season has a strong morality. So Mun, having been bullied repeatedly by Hyuk-woo Shin and his henchmen, not only comes back over and over to protect his friends, but also turns up to protect Hyuk-woo Shin himself from being hurt by the criminal gang that works for his father. So Mun shows that strength can be found in kindness, as well.

Counter to all of this, pun intended, are the Counters. While they also have problems—dealing with their own pasts and the limitations put on them by their afterlife partners—they become more than just a team. Because they have to work together without further support, it's up to the four Counters to solve the larger crimes, bring the evil spirits to the afterlife to be sent back to hell, and to deal with their own and each other's baggage. Together, they do all those things, sometimes even having a little fun doing it. The biggest strength of the series is in the acting. All of the Counter team seems to be having a great time with the story.

Season 1 adheres closely to the K-comic by Jang E, which is being released by Ize Press. The major difference is that the comic ends with the arrest of the corrupt builder. The live-action has quite a lot more to do before it ends at 16 episodes. The afterlife is different, as well; in the comic, there are Counters all over the world. In the live-action, our Counters work almost completely isolated from any others.

It's worth watching So Mun join, be trained by, then surpass and bring his Counter team to greater heights. For fans of paranormal mystery K-Dramas, Uncanny Counter offers a rich, if difficult, multi-layered story about the many ways that humans fail to care about one another and how it can be fixed.