Moving (2023) Review: Superpowers as Family Burden

Is Moving worth watching?

Yes. Moving is one of the best superhero series made anywhere in recent years, because it cares far more about parents and children than about powers. Its superpowered action is strong, but what lingers is the family drama beneath it: people who have spent their lives hiding what they are so their kids never have to fight. The reservation is structure, since a long middle run of flashbacks takes the story away from its teenage leads for many episodes, which some viewers will find testing.

What is Moving about?

Three high school students in Seoul have inherited unusual abilities from their parents. One can float and is learning to fly, another heals at startling speed, and a third is far stronger than he should be. Their parents, former agents with powers of their own, have retreated into ordinary lives, running a restaurant or a small shop and keeping their children’s gifts hidden. The state, meanwhile, has not forgotten them, and the teenagers are being quietly watched.

Moving is a South Korean series in Korean, adapted by Kang Full from his own webtoon. Ryu Seung-ryong, Han Hyo-joo and Zo In-sung play members of the parents’ generation, while Lee Jung-ha and Go Youn-jung lead the younger cast. This review covers the first and so far only season: 20 episodes, which bring its main storyline to a full resolution.

A superhero story told through parents

The series’ boldest move is to set up its teenage leads and then turn back to explain where they came from. The middle episodes reveal the parents’ pasts in the intelligence services, the missions that shaped them and the relationships that pushed them out of that world. It is here that Moving earns its reputation.

Ryu Seung-ryong gives the standout performance as a man whose power makes him nearly unkillable, and he plays that as a curse as much as a gift. His story is one of the most affecting stretches in recent Korean television, rough and funny and painfully sad. Han Hyo-joo and Zo In-sung bring a quieter ache to their own chapters, both portraying people who chose normal life at a steep cost.

Teenage chemistry that grounds the spectacle

The present-day school scenes are lighter but just as carefully drawn. Lee Jung-ha plays a boy embarrassed by an ability he cannot yet control, and his early attempts to stay on the ground have a clumsy, comic sweetness. Go Youn-jung, as a classmate with secrets of her own, gives the romance a sharp, direct energy, and the pair’s awkward friendship becomes the show’s emotional anchor once the danger starts to close in.

Director Park In-je handles the action with welcome variety. Flight is filmed with real vertigo, fights are brutal and physical, and the regenerating characters are used for sequences that are genuinely hard to watch. The visual effects are occasionally uneven, but the staging and the stakes rarely are.

Where the structure asks for patience

Twenty episodes is a lot, and the series spends a sizeable part of them in the past. The detour is rewarding, yet it breaks momentum just as the present-day plot builds; viewers invested in the school storyline may feel the story has stalled. The final stretch also leans on long, extended battle sequences that grow repetitive, and some of the government and villain material is thinly written compared with the family arcs.

Who should watch Moving?

It is a strong fit for viewers who liked superhero stories when they felt personal, and for anyone who enjoys Korean family melodrama with an action edge. It carries adult ratings for good reason: the violence is bloody and sometimes gruesome, and several episodes deal with loss and trauma directly. Set aside time; many episodes run close to an hour. It streams on Disney+ in most regions.

If you enjoy it, three good follow-ups:

• The Uncanny Counter, another Korean series about people with unusual abilities, pitched lighter and more comic.
• Weak Hero Class 1, for tough, grounded fight scenes built around teenagers under pressure.
• My Name, a darker action thriller about a young woman shaped by a parent’s secret life.

The verdict

Moving is a superhero epic with the heart of a family saga, and its willingness to pause the action for long, patient chapters about the parents is exactly what makes it special. The pacing will test some viewers and the final battles run long, but the performances, especially Ryu Seung-ryong’s, make it one of the defining Korean series of 2023.

Rating: 4.5/5