Kissable Lips

Would love more supernatural/fantasy bl dramas... just not this one

Summary: A huge letdown, and a genuinely confusing experience for me. There's very little entertainment value either way, it's not even a "so bad it's funny" type, it's just baffling and frustrating because of how much potential it could have had with its premise.


I was quite baffled by how many reviews on Viki were praising this drama for the chemistry and story and sad ending, when all of those points were huge negatives to me.

Fantasy/supernatural concepts, let alone vampires are super underutilized in BL dramas, so I definitely hope more get made... it's just that this one was a massive failure to spearhead that movement.
I'd usually chalk it up to the classic "low budget and definitely not enough episodes", but I don't even know if more episodes would save this one.

Effectively, this is an 80 minute long drama, give or take as some episodes are vastly shorter than others. 80 minutes isn't long of course, but 80 minutes is still a good 80 minutes, and yet this drama fails to tell a compelling story.
It feels like either scenes are to end, or scenes are lingering far too long for anything substantial to happen in them.

World-building simply does not happen, which is a HUGE letdown for a fantasy drama, especially one dealing with something as wrought with potential as vampires. But instead, nothing is ever explained or expanded on.
What it means to be pureblood, why our lead is a pureblood, how society sees vampires if they are well-known enough that the lead's brother knows of them but not our lead, etc. etc.
Again, I'd chalk this one up to not having enough runtime to be able to expand, but I also believe that just one single episode dedicated to even SLIGHTLY expanding on the vampires at all could have done at least SOMETHING for this paper-thin plot.

Side characters are tossed to the side, giving basically all of them absolutely zero agency in the story.
Multiple characters are never addressed by name until the last second, or not at all, so I didn't retain any of them.
Characters come to serve their role, and then just disappear. The lead's brother is there solely to point out to him that the vampire is a vampire, and then promptly disappears for the rest of the show despite being established to be breathing down his brother's neck in the first 2 episodes.
The vampire's... mother? guide? it is literally never explained who she is to him aside from just someone he goes to occasionally and knows that he's a vampire (or I suppose if it WAS explained, I did not retain that information) also promptly disappears as fast as the vampire's friend, despite how desperate she seemed to keep the vampire alive.
The vampire friend is supposed to be seen as antagonistic and maybe even a threat and yet he never actually DOES anything to warrant that, just wanders to and fro between the lead and the vampire lead.

The chemistry that I keep seeing people praising elsewhere between the leads is basically nonexistent to me. They meet, begin to work on a project together, and suddenly are soulmates. The timeline is seriously twisted, because it feels like it all happens over the course of a week or so; So how did we go from the leads' meeting for the first time for their project to one of the leads putting a ring on the other's finger?
I think the chemistry is good in a vacuum in the final few episodes, but in the context of the drama, completely falls apart because of the sheer /lack/ of chemistry in any of the earlier episodes.

To give the drama credit where credit is due, we get a very GOOD kiss scene, which are often hard to come by in BLs, and even potentially the insinuation of a sex scene, which is even harder to come by in BLs.
The actors play their roles as much as they can, but the dialogue is so cheesy at times and the scenes are directed so strangely that a lot of the time, I find it hard to take seriously. Emotion is either very stiff or overacted, but I'd say the acting is the least bad part of this drama.

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i have some spoilers

okay so i did like it
spoilerssss
though the ending was not really good.....like yk the guy just dies at the end because he didn't want to drink choi's blood for the fear of hurting him...but mannnn Choi coul have used something to make a tiny cut on his finger then he could have offered his blood to junho this way junho wouldn't actually harm him right...but no Choi didn't do that i mean if it were me i would have at least tried something....but still I didn't like the ending but it's not like it was not suitable...I'm giving this a 9 but not because of the ending but because I think that everything was a little fast paced....like it it was not so fast paced i definitely would've given it a 10..

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The actors did their best.

The pacing was terrible, I was lost so many times that I had to go back and re-watch a few episodes cause it always felt like I missed something?

This felt like one of those "plot what plot" fics but with nothing intriguing to keep you hooked. What remained of the plot was all over the place (I don't know who decided on them blue eyes cause yikes.)
The threw in characters I was supposed to pity but without enough background to pull at any emotions.

The actors though, they gave it their all. You could see they really tried their best to deliver.
Overall, so much potential, zero on execution.

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Just bad filmmaking

I wanted to like it. The premise is interesting enough, it's a BL with vampires, and it has decent photography. Unfortunately, the absolute lack of pacing, setup, or cohesive story dooms it to failure. It's a BL, but it almost wholesale skips the "falling in love" part. You get a few seconds of filming an awkward school project, a few seconds playing basketball, and now they are star-crossed lovers. What?? How did that happen?

The editing is sloppy and plot devices are established and then seemingly abandoned out of forgetfulness. For example, a big point is made about the ultra-protective older brother who monitors his sibling's every move after past tragedy. But right after he actually catches his brother seemingly moments from being killed by a vampire (his greatest fear), he gives up on all that protectiveness after the slightest bit of protest and we essentially never see the character again. Uhh? Completely implausible. Why even include this in the plot if it wasn't going anywhere?

We see the President character several times, but she has essentially no impact on the plot at any time, except for calling up other vamp. We see her harvesting blood from herself, but it's never shown being used. Why was she even in this show? It feels like a few crucial scenes with her were omitted.

It's a small thing, but I don't understand the "hideout" room... it seems like a bedroom, it has personal possessions, it's private, they sleep together in there, but it's also seemingly open to the public and people can just barge in whenever.

Also, why is a vampire spending decades enrolled at a university posing as a student? I can suspend a lot of disbelief, but surely after his 20th year or so as a freshman, somebody would notice that he hasn't graduated (or aged)? And he really sits through film history 101 every day for decades on end just in the hopes he can get an occasional bit of student blood? He must be the world's preeminent expert on Mappelthorpe by now.

TL;DR: It's a sloppy show that lacks soul or exposition where stuff just happens for no reason and not much makes any sense. I kept rewinding thinking my brain or the stream stuttered as it lurched from scene to scene without any connection, but it's just bad filmmaking.

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