Pleochroism

Fluffy and cute with some of the same problems as other Japanese BL

I was intrigued by the plot initially, and really enjoyed the series at first. It’s a light-hearted drama that employs a magical plot device to create conflict, much like Cherry Magic, another fluffy, enjoyable Japanese BL.

Unfortunately, I found that it was plagued by a couple of the same issues I’ve had with other Japanese BLs in the past. First, the fact that the last couple of episodes seemed to drag on, going in will-they-or-won’t-they circles without progressing the relationship in any meaningful way. Kota agonizes over the same questions of what he actually wants from Naoya for several episodes, and in the end it still feels as though they’re more or less where they started.

Second, I can never understand the inclination to write one of the leads as this blushing virgin archetype who’s so angst-ridden over the idea of kissing the person they’ve fallen for. This drama showed a kiss between the leads in the first episode, so I was really hoping it would be different in that sense, but nope. The same annoying mess of, “oh my gosh, we’re dating! Does that mean *gasp!* kissing??!” Why is this so common in Japanese BL? Why can they never just kiss without it being a traumatic 3-episode arc? Lol

Anyway, I liked it. It was cute. It was fine. I’m glad it didn’t drag on as long as Kieta Hatsukoi at any rate. But it took me awhile to get to watching the last couple episodes, because I could feel that it was going in that familiar direction, and honestly I’m kind of over this style of writing in dramas.

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Too much and not enough.

Oh boy, this might end up being more of a long rant than a review. I’ve had a lot of thoughts over the run of the series, and most of them aren’t very favorable.

Some background: I started watching this drama without reading the source material first. I read the manhwa between epsiode 6 and epsiode 7 airing because I was really curious about what everyone was saying about changes made to the plot and characters. I really enjoyed the first 3 episodes, but hated episode 4, and for me that was where the problems started that tanked the whole series for me.

So I’ll start with the few things I did like.

I liked the overall production value of the series. It was clear that it had a decent budget, the sets - like the characters bedrooms - were well done, the cinematography was generally nice, and the animated title sequence was lovely. I wasn’t crazy about the way the drama was edited, but other than that, the production value was quite high.

I liked the casting of Heesu. I think that Ahn Ji Ho portrayed the character very well. I had some minor issues with acting from other characters, but overall the acting was better than average.

I liked Heesu’s noonas. They were funny and they all had a fun family dynamic.

I liked Ji Yu and Seung Won’s friendship. And I liked that Seung Won’s moms were kept in the adaptation, even if I also felt that their family story was underutilized.

As previously mentioned, I liked the first few episodes and had high hopes for the series as a whole up until it became clear that it wouldn’t be what I expected.

Now for the many things I didn’t like.

First of all, I felt like this drama was way too long for what they did with the extra time. A KBL drama with 10 45-minute episodes is a rarity, which was an exciting prospect at first. But the writers did not use that time well.

There were far too many extraneous subplots that had little substance to them.

I counted 7 side storylines:

Chan young and his tennis playing
Ji Yu secretly releasing music as “Summer”
Chan Young and Ji Yu’s relationship
Heesu’s sisters and their various relationship drama
Ho Sik and his knitter crush
“Carrot” and the counseling message board
The text blackmailer

Here’s the problem: almost all of these storylines were underdeveloped and unsatisfying as written on the show. Overall, the writing for the subplots on this series was inconsistent and poorly integrated into the main plot.

Either they were given outsized importance and then ended abruptly (the blackmailer and “carrot”). Or they were entirely composed of disjointed scenes seemingly randomly placed throughout the run of the series (Heesu’s sisters’ relationships, Ho Sik and his crush). Or they were completely written as plot devices to impel action from other characters but never given any intrinsic emotional resonance (“Summer”). Or they were simply written in a way that was cliche and simplistic, giving viewers no real reason to care (Ji Yu/Chan Young and the tennis plot).

There was just way too much going on and no reason that it had to be that way. If they had just expanded on a couple of these storylines instead of trying to do all of them, the pacing could have been much better and the project as a whole would have felt more successful. But instead they just kept throwing things at us without giving us any reason to care, which in turn made all of these scenes feel like draggy bits of filler instead of important pieces of the story.

So in the end, we get all of these unsatisfying threads of storylines pulling us in 7 different directions away from what should have been the main plot of the drama - Heesu and Seung Won’s developing attraction and relationship.

Which, for me, caused issues with that main relationship plot too. Because it dragged on and on with very little progress to the point that I was no longer feeling the chemistry between Heesu and Seung Won in the last few episodes. That chemistry only started to re-emerge at the very end of the series. Overall it didn’t feel like a “slow burn” to me. More like a sad fizzle.

In a “slow burn” I expect the romantic tension to build as the characters get to know each other. In episode 5, we got a good taste of what a good slow burn *could have* felt like. Heesu and Seung Won genuinely became closer and learned more about each other in ways that were unrelated to Heesu trying to hook Seung Won and Ji Yu up. They should have been consistently be having scenes like that where they share more about themselves and their lives. Ideally, they should be talking about their passions, goals and worries with each other. They should be shown taking care of each other in small ways and should be experiencing moments of intensity that show that they’re passionate about each other - whether those are heart fluttering moments or moments of pure frustration or anger.

I’m not saying that there was none of that in this drama, but it wasn’t at all consistent. Instead we got a collection of stilted scenes between them that were frequently cut off to switch gears to one of the many random, unsatisfying subplots.

I think the worst of these subplots were Chan Young and Ji Yu’s relationship, Chan Young’s tennis story, as Ji Yu’s “Summer” story.

The problem with the Chan Young/Ji Yu pairing is that it’s completely superficial. We don’t dive into what they like about each other and they aren’t shown having any meaningful conversations.

Chan Young is shown to be passionate about tennis despite his dad not wanting him to pursue it. But the problem is that we never actually hear him talk about it except in short scenes with coaches. It feels poorly integrated into the drama because despite the fact that Ji Yu is the only other important character who knows and supports what he’s doing, he doesn’t even have deep conversations with her about what drives his passion, what his goals are, or about the difficulties with his family. That kind of depth would bring so much more intrigue to the story and would also support the romantic development between him and Ji Yu.

Similarly, Ji Yu never talks at all about what’s driving her to make music. How did she get started singing and songwriting? How does she feel about it? When and why did she start her YouTube channel? What are her goals? We barely ever touch any of this. She goes to the audition in episode 8, but we aren’t really told anything about it. What is it for? Why does she want to do it? What is she hoping to accomplish? She doesn’t discuss these things with anyone, and again, Chan Young is seemingly the primary person in her life who knows and supports her, but they never talk about these things at all except through short texts.

That’s why these storylines feel so bland, superficial, and poorly integrated. Because we’re being told that these are the things these characters are passionate about, but the way it’s shown simply isn’t convincing.

And yet Chan Young’s dull tennis playing is treated as one of the main storylines of the show that appears in almost every episode. Ji Yu’s “Summer” storyline is also given inflated importance despite it feeling like a pure plot device that only exists to compel action from other characters.

Even worse is the way Chan Young’s character was written in general. He’s just *so selfish.* He admits that he knows nothing about his best friend of several years, but then blames Heesu for that? He publicly shames his friends for silly reasons (Heesu not telling him who he likes, Seung Won “liking” Ji Yu) but doesn’t even seem to care enough to ask questions about their lives. And then his reaction to Heesu’s confession is to run away, then blame Heesu for the fact that he ran away? And Heesu is forced into apologizing while Chan Young never apologized?? Infuriating.

They completely ruined his characterization from the manhwa. But frankly, you don’t even need to read the manhwa to see that he’s a bad friend in this series.

It was how his character behaved (and how the writers seemed to give him an inflated sense of importance despite never giving us a good reason to care about him) that brought his drama down from a mediocre 5.5 to an abysmal 3.5 for me.

I was also just generally unhappy with how many creative decisions seemed to be made with the goal of appeasing straight viewers. From the addition of the straight couple that didn’t exist in the manhwa, to the way Heesu and Chan Young’s friendship was changed, to the way that Heesu’s coming out was treated in general. It just didn’t connect for me, and I feel like that’s because I, as a queer person, was not the intended audience.

So yeah…I’ll leave it there. I kept watching this drama to the end because I still had hopes of it improving, but those hopes gradually shrunk from episodes 7 through 10. At this point I’m just glad it’s over and now I’m going to rewatch a decent KBL to cleanse my brain of this.

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Great concept, unfortunate execution.

I’ll be honest, I wanted to like this movie a lot more than I did.

I felt like by and large the emotions that the filmmakers wanted to get across didn’t come through for me. There was too much about the story that simply seemed improbable and I wasn’t able to immerse myself in the story because of this.

Ultimately I also think the story would have had more impact of it were simpler. Did the murder plot even need to exist? What was the point of the gangster characters? I would have enjoyed it much more if it stuck to the main plot: men involved in baby trafficking and a desperate mother trying to find a good home for her child. Between the emotional weight of a woman trying to get by in a world that has always cut her down, the legal ramifications of the baby selling scheme, and the moral dilemma of the two male leads, there’s enough conflict to carry the movie without the extra melodrama. That would have allowed the audience to connect more with the characters rather than being pulled in several directions by unnecessary fluff.

With any film or drama that tackles a major social issue and a stigmatized group of people, I also hope that the issue will really feel fleshed out - like time is devoted to sharing many perspectives of the different characters, their backstories, and how their lives have influenced their feelings and beliefs. We got a little bit of that in this movie, but it felt somewhat superficial to me. I got tired of characters saying things to the effect of, “what kind of woman would throw her baby away?” In reality, there are MANY reasons why struggling mothers will abandon their babies, but we barely even brushed the surface of the issue in this narrative. More time could have and should have been devoted to exploring the central issue at the heart of the film instead of just judgmentally asking “why” a million times while providing few answers or explanations.

I was also troubled by some of the simplistic caricatures of people in the film. Like the cold female cop who becomes warmer at the very end because she’s suddenly tasked with taking care of a baby. That felt very strange and forced to me (not to mention regressive in terms of the view it seems to present on childless women). Overall, the ending was just too “clean” and unlikely.

Now, overall I thought the acting was great. The cast did a great job with some unfortunately weak material. But in the end I was just left wanting more emotional depth and fewer superfluous plot points.

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I completely adored everything about this series except for the final episode

You have to know, first and foremost, that this drama is unique in that it is a truly emotionally complex Thai BL drama about something other than coming out. I love a good coming out story, but they’re done so frequently in this genre that it’s refreshing to see a series like this where that isn’t the point.

The story revolves around a relationship built on a somewhat shaky foundation coming apart as the cracks in that foundation are exposed. As Teh and Oh-aew grow up and discover themselves, they struggle to adapt their relationship to their changing personal identities. For most of the series, this is a story that is masterfully crafted.

Just like in ITSAY, the acting is superb, the cinematography is breathtaking, and the dialogue feels authentic. Nothing super cheesy, melodramatic, or reliant on harmful tropes or stereotypes about gay relationships. In terms of artistic quality and authenticity, it’s probably the best Asian drama series I’ve ever seen. For most of the series, I liked it even more than ITSAY.

The problem for me came at the end of the series. Quite simply, it felt rushed. Like the writers just knew that Teh and Oh-aew needed to be together in the end at all costs, so they cut corners to make it happen. And I’m doing so, they made me really dislike Teh because they created a situation where he basically repeated all of his bad behavior from ITSAY and was rewarded for it.

[SPOILERS]
He basically did everything wrong again: 1) leading a woman on while he was clearly in love with Oh-Aew. 2) Destroying his relationship with Oh-Aew and then trying (and failing) to use some grand gesture to repair the damage when all Oh-aew ever really wanted from him was communication and respect. 3) Ultimately convincing Oh-aew that he was committed to their relationship despite never truly taking accountability for the hurt he caused.

The series ended and I was left feeling like I still couldn’t trust Teh. And I think that could have been different if they hadn’t sped through basically two years of their lives just to force them to get back together in the end. In fact, I would have absolutely loved to see a third series that was completely devoted to them really mending their relationship and Teh taking the time to address the toxic behavior he continues to exhibit.

The last episode didn’t match the tone of the rest of the series for me, which was frustrating, because it was so brilliant otherwise!

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I never expected a drama like this to come out of Korea

What can I even say? This was just superb. it’s not really a BL in the conventional sense - and I don’t say that to disparage BL because I do love a good BL - this is just a bit different.

This drama delves into all the beauty and messiness of a young gay man’s life and relationships in a way I haven’t seen in a BL before. It doesn’t feel like anything is done for the purposes of “fan service” or like the intention is to make sure a couple is together at the end of the series at all costs. To me, those are hallmarks of even really excellent BL - the main couple supersede the story itself. Their romantic relationship is the most important thing. This drama isn’t like that. It’s definitely more of a character study than a romance.

I was impressed by the previews for this series so I’ve been looking forward to it for weeks, but it exceeded my expectations. I could probably nitpick some bits of the story or characters that could have been more fleshed out…but ultimately I was incredibly satisfied with it in every way.

Excellent acting, writing, cinematography, directing, characterization - just everything.

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