This review may contain spoilers
Totally overrated. I am shocked at the glowing reviews.
ABO Desire is one of the weakest BLs I've ever seen (out of many more than 100 titles so far). Those who gave it 10 stars: Were we watching the same show?
Although I don't like mpreg content whatsoever, in judging this series, I put aside all my reservations and feelings about it in order to give it a fair review. I am not familiar with the omegaverse, but I think it's an intriguing concept when it comes to having an alternate universe in which people are so strongly driven by their animalistic sexuality (pheromones, mating rituals, sexual selection and compatibility) to the degree where they have "rutting periods" and can't stop themselves from forcing themselves on others. It's interesting, but it gives me one overwhelming expectation: That the series will be very horny. Given the premise, I expect a lot of sex. The series doesn't deliver it at all. Nothing sexual is shown, even the kisses are really boring. How do you have a show about hypersexualized people, and even the kissing is passionless? I understand that there may be censorship issues, but then maybe China isn't the place to realize a series like this, or maybe they needed to find a better way to get around it. It just doesn't work. I've seen shows with steamier scenes that are basically Hallmark romance plots.
The irredeemable script: ABO Desire felt like it must have been created from some very weak source material. I have not read the source material, I'm just assuming it's bad because this entire series was like watching a terrrible fanfic. Most egregiously, the plot exposition was often handled by unrelated people simply telling us what is going on. The worst were the moments when totally random bystanders would give us the plot points: "Can you believe so and so did such and such? I heard that..." This is not how you write a story. You show it, you don't tell it. Less offensive, but still so disappointing were moments like Hua Yong explaining Shen Wen Lang's entire backstory like a footnote (and the backstory didn't even give us an easily understandable reason for why he hates omegas that much). Finally, we had this random narrator suddenly pop up out of nowhere in a late episode when (I guess) they really couldn't find another way to explain certain events. What? You can't just introduce a narrator randomly. You need to start and finish with one, or have one throughout or intermittently.
Unexplained inconsistencies: Let's think about the episode where Shen Wen Lang forces himself on Gao Tu, and neither of them recognize each other. Okay, maybe it's supposed to be pitch black in the room, and we have to just imagine that we can't see anything even though we can see everything. But these two have been close for what, like 10 years? They don't recognize each other's voices or anything, while being as intimate as possible? Shen Wen Lang doesn't recognize that same omega scent that he keeps telling Gao Tu to wash off? It's so incredible. Meanwhile, Sheng Shao You doesn't recognize Hua Yong in bed either, who is... his actual lover, with whom he lives.
The acting: With the exception of Li Pei En as Gao Tu, I didn't find any of these characters believable or relatable. All the other main characters seemed constantly bored. When something upsetting happened, no one looked upset. Their facial expressions never changed throughout the episodes, no matter what was going on. It was totally jarring. The worst offender was probably Qiu Ding Jie (Sheng Shao Yu), who may as well have been a mannequin. He had one crying scene which was his only actual acting moment in the whole show, that I can recall. If your loved one is injured, you should show grief. If someone has wronged you, you should show anger. If you're kissing someone you want, you should show desire! These characters mostly show nothing, and because I'm watching other shows at the same time where the actors actually do act, I could not stomach all the blank expressions throughout this series.
The main romance: While Hua Yong's scheming was kind of interesting, the love story fell flat. One moment they liked each other, the next they were together, somehow skipping the most exciting part of a romance (when two people who like each other finally get together) and then we just had to watch all their petty disagreements and reconciliations for the rest of the show (and a lot of cooking and eating, for some reason).
The side romance: From reading other reviews, I know that I'm definitely not the only person who was bored by the monotonous main romance and much more invested in the side romance. Gao Tu and Shen Wen Lang did not get enough screen time, and their story was nothing but an endless conflict. Why? It was repetitive; as soon as a possible solution arose, so did a new problem (such as Gao Tu's father's scheming at the very end of the series, something that probably should have been introduced earlier). I don't know why it needs to be explained, but a plot should introduce conflicts with the goal of having the satisfaction of conflict resolution. Gao Tu and Shen Wen Lang were never able to work through their issues, things that could have been quite easily settled if they'd just tried to talk about them. All we got for conflict resolution with these two was, at the very end, a mere suggestion that things could possibly be fixed in the future. Not to mention, we now know that they'd already lost years together and that Gao Tu had to endure the presumably torturous pregnancy that Shen Wen Lang could have helped him with, as first years of child rearing without his partner (and that Shen Wen Lang is a stranger to his own child). We never had the satisfaction of seeing them reconcile or understand each other. You don't build up all these obstacles over the course of 16 whole episodes just to have them still remaining by the end.
In summary, I found ABO Desire to be a frustrating watch whenever it wasn't completely boring.
Although I don't like mpreg content whatsoever, in judging this series, I put aside all my reservations and feelings about it in order to give it a fair review. I am not familiar with the omegaverse, but I think it's an intriguing concept when it comes to having an alternate universe in which people are so strongly driven by their animalistic sexuality (pheromones, mating rituals, sexual selection and compatibility) to the degree where they have "rutting periods" and can't stop themselves from forcing themselves on others. It's interesting, but it gives me one overwhelming expectation: That the series will be very horny. Given the premise, I expect a lot of sex. The series doesn't deliver it at all. Nothing sexual is shown, even the kisses are really boring. How do you have a show about hypersexualized people, and even the kissing is passionless? I understand that there may be censorship issues, but then maybe China isn't the place to realize a series like this, or maybe they needed to find a better way to get around it. It just doesn't work. I've seen shows with steamier scenes that are basically Hallmark romance plots.
The irredeemable script: ABO Desire felt like it must have been created from some very weak source material. I have not read the source material, I'm just assuming it's bad because this entire series was like watching a terrrible fanfic. Most egregiously, the plot exposition was often handled by unrelated people simply telling us what is going on. The worst were the moments when totally random bystanders would give us the plot points: "Can you believe so and so did such and such? I heard that..." This is not how you write a story. You show it, you don't tell it. Less offensive, but still so disappointing were moments like Hua Yong explaining Shen Wen Lang's entire backstory like a footnote (and the backstory didn't even give us an easily understandable reason for why he hates omegas that much). Finally, we had this random narrator suddenly pop up out of nowhere in a late episode when (I guess) they really couldn't find another way to explain certain events. What? You can't just introduce a narrator randomly. You need to start and finish with one, or have one throughout or intermittently.
Unexplained inconsistencies: Let's think about the episode where Shen Wen Lang forces himself on Gao Tu, and neither of them recognize each other. Okay, maybe it's supposed to be pitch black in the room, and we have to just imagine that we can't see anything even though we can see everything. But these two have been close for what, like 10 years? They don't recognize each other's voices or anything, while being as intimate as possible? Shen Wen Lang doesn't recognize that same omega scent that he keeps telling Gao Tu to wash off? It's so incredible. Meanwhile, Sheng Shao You doesn't recognize Hua Yong in bed either, who is... his actual lover, with whom he lives.
The acting: With the exception of Li Pei En as Gao Tu, I didn't find any of these characters believable or relatable. All the other main characters seemed constantly bored. When something upsetting happened, no one looked upset. Their facial expressions never changed throughout the episodes, no matter what was going on. It was totally jarring. The worst offender was probably Qiu Ding Jie (Sheng Shao Yu), who may as well have been a mannequin. He had one crying scene which was his only actual acting moment in the whole show, that I can recall. If your loved one is injured, you should show grief. If someone has wronged you, you should show anger. If you're kissing someone you want, you should show desire! These characters mostly show nothing, and because I'm watching other shows at the same time where the actors actually do act, I could not stomach all the blank expressions throughout this series.
The main romance: While Hua Yong's scheming was kind of interesting, the love story fell flat. One moment they liked each other, the next they were together, somehow skipping the most exciting part of a romance (when two people who like each other finally get together) and then we just had to watch all their petty disagreements and reconciliations for the rest of the show (and a lot of cooking and eating, for some reason).
The side romance: From reading other reviews, I know that I'm definitely not the only person who was bored by the monotonous main romance and much more invested in the side romance. Gao Tu and Shen Wen Lang did not get enough screen time, and their story was nothing but an endless conflict. Why? It was repetitive; as soon as a possible solution arose, so did a new problem (such as Gao Tu's father's scheming at the very end of the series, something that probably should have been introduced earlier). I don't know why it needs to be explained, but a plot should introduce conflicts with the goal of having the satisfaction of conflict resolution. Gao Tu and Shen Wen Lang were never able to work through their issues, things that could have been quite easily settled if they'd just tried to talk about them. All we got for conflict resolution with these two was, at the very end, a mere suggestion that things could possibly be fixed in the future. Not to mention, we now know that they'd already lost years together and that Gao Tu had to endure the presumably torturous pregnancy that Shen Wen Lang could have helped him with, as first years of child rearing without his partner (and that Shen Wen Lang is a stranger to his own child). We never had the satisfaction of seeing them reconcile or understand each other. You don't build up all these obstacles over the course of 16 whole episodes just to have them still remaining by the end.
In summary, I found ABO Desire to be a frustrating watch whenever it wasn't completely boring.
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