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Also, please don't blame this on Japan. I either enjoyed or outright adored other JBLs set in high schools, such as:
• Our Youth
• Eternal Yesterday
• Kimi to Nara Koi wo Shite Mite mo
• Takara-kun & Amagi-kun
• Depth of Field
• School Trip
• I Cannot Reach You
• My Beautiful Man (the high school episodes)
• Seven Days (2015)
• My Little Monster (not a BL)
• Our Secret Diary (not a BL)
• Contrast
• My Love Mix-Up!
You may have liked this series, and you could tolerate, maybe even liked the Suzuki character. Tastes are subjective, after all. Yet, trying to turn this into a: "Hey guys, he has low self-esteem, so try to understand and, besides, it's a Japanese BL thing," is an insult to those of us who grew up emotionally in the same boat, but weren't utterly oblivious, as well as the JBL industry as a whole. Firstly, we're supposed to believe the kid's intelligent enough to write an entire BL story, but such a bonehead as to miss the glaring signs of someone else being crazy about him? That's not low self-esteem, that's stupidity. It's one thing to believe one's unworthy of that love, but to continue to believe that the love/desire isn't there, at all, was nonsensical. Secondly, Japan makes incredible high school romances. This is the first high school JBL I've watched that I've rated below a 7.
Yes, the friend group was cute and one of the main leads was intriguing. The portrayal of high school life in Japan was interesting. Yet, from episode 6 through episode 10, I was intensely frustrated with it. By episode 11, I'd merely decided to complete the series because I can, periodically, get it into my head that I have to, because..., well, simply because. One of the character's persistent awkward obliviousness began to sour the whole series for me, and when it continued beyond the point when it was understandable, that pretty much put the final nail in the coffin for me. Then there were the dead fish kisses-- give me a break, nobody who wants to kiss another would ever kiss like that. If the actors aren't interested in those scenes, then leave them out and stop with this type of rubbish.
Actually, now that I wrote all that, I realize that this series wasn't my cup of tea, at all. Emotionally, it didn't reach me, except to frustrate me, and I certainly can't see myself rewatching it. Yes, I stuck it out, but I was annoyed for most of its runtime. Final rating down from a 7.5 to a 5.
Curiously, I really like the series Takara-kun & Amagi-kun and School Trip, which I periodically rewatch and they are somewhat similar to this series. Maybe it was the combination of these particular actors and the writing? Honestly, I don't know. Liking or disliking a thing is purely subjective.
There is rarely true love present when one person has all the power and another is bound by duty to never say no, but for the King and Hong Rim, there was love. In that instance, it's irrelevant that they're both men. Hong Rim happened to be a heterosexual, or maybe bisexual, who was given to another before he ever had a chance to learn what his sexual preferences were. Even if he would have been able to choose for himself, he was essentially forced to fulfill the needs of another physically and emotionally, and when he was presented with a taste of what his body-- not necessarily his heart-- craved, he was like a randy teenager acting on hormonal imperatives instead of good sense.
The complexities of sexuality plays a part in this story, but it's basically irrelevant, just as it was in the story of King Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot's love triangle that led to disaster for all 3, as well as the downfall of King Arthur's court.
My take away from the movie is that while Hong Rim was strongly physically attracted to the Queen No Guk, he was also deeply in love with King Gong Min . That love, though, was problematic, due to there being an ever-present lopsided power dynamic. Hong Rim had never been allowed a real choice in the relationship. Yes, he did choose to join the king as a companion, but that occurred while he was a little boy and the king was a teenager. There's no way Hong Rim would have been cognizant of what that meant and by the time the relationship had shifted to something sexual, he would have been the king's companion for years and lacked an opportunity to learn what his real sexual preferences were. Despite how much he loved the King, it turned out he was strongly physically attracted to the Queen. This isn't an unusual dynamic, in any type of relationship. Husbands and wives cheat on each other all the time. Even as they genuinely love their partners, they can be drawn to others purely on an animalistic level and end up ruining their lives because they mistake strong sexual attraction for emotional and personal compatibility and the people they often destroy their happy marriages for rarely end up being good life partners for them.
For Hong Rim and King Gong Min, things spiraled WAY out of control. The King was heartbroken, as a man, and enraged as a king, so he went cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, punishing them all, lying about the Queen's death and eventually participating in what was essentially a double murder-suicide. Hong Rim was also heartbroken and lied to the King that he'd never loved him, because that's the only thing he had left that would devastate the king-- that's the only real power he could exercise over the king. At the end, though, when the Queen was being dragged away and Hong Rim laid there dying, Hong Rim turned away from watching the Queen being taken away by the soldiers and he turned his eyes, lovingly, toward the King. Why was that? It's because the king was always his true love and once he learned that the Queen and the child she carried for him were still alive, he was finally able to let go of his anger and the last thing he wanted to see was the person he loved.
Love's complicated, man.
A series that's not for the faint of heart nor for those looking for a few quick thrills.
This series is an unexpected gem. I was not expecting the level of quality-- wonderful acting from all actors, beautiful cinematography, artistic direction and truly lovely score. I was locked in from episode 1 and remained fully engaged up to the final seconds of the series.
I was not expecting this series to be as well done and continued to be. Every episode was a taut tapestry of emotions. Some of the episodes almost choked me with their emotional intensity. I could feel my heart thumping and growing heavier as the episodes progressed.
Pond's portrayal of Wang was eye-opening. The man can ACT! I felt every single one of his emotions-- they either simmered beneath his seemingly placid surface or exploded out when he couldn't contain them any longer. His relationship with his mother was loving yet fraught (for good reasons), and I could always glimpse his longing for his father and desire for In. Pond needs to be given more serious dramas, as some of the BL scripts he's had to work with just aren't up to the level of his talent.
I read a lot of reviews of those who detested the mother character, but I really appreciated her, because I can see that she's modeled after Elizabeth Taylor's character in WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF and the actress portraying the mother did a stellar job of bringing the emotional roller-coaster of an alcoholic and narcissistic artist to life. Mam Kathaleeya McIntosh, who portrayed Sasiwimol , Wang's mother, had my jaw on the floor many times. Her acting was out of this world. She understood the character's selfish motivations so deeply that I couldn't hate her for her behavior, even though in many ways I wanted to shake her.
Life can sometimes be one big tangled web of complexities and this drama plowed right into the heart of those tangles. They didn't try to wrangle a contrived ending out of what were intensely complex relationships, because the truth is life doesn't always work out the way we desire. There are some who are brave of heart and others who are cowardly and when they meet on the battlefield of love, rarely do we end up with a warm and cuddly resolution.
In the end, the series was a beautiful sledgehammer to my heart.
BRAVO!!
Mrs. Zhou and Zhou Chu were already the least interesting part of the series. Yes, Mingxuan has personal reasons to settle scores with the both of them-- Mrs. Zhou was responsible for hurting Shen Mo and Zhou Chu was responsible for hurting An-An, but the writers deciding that Shen Mo needed to suffer, again, because that's what a damsel in distress does, is simply lazy writing. It's also boring, because we know, in the end, nothing is really going to happen to Shen Mo. The whole thing is a waste of time. They write the older Shen Mo as brave and strong, yet half an episode later, he needs to be rescued, again, by Mingxuan. Give me a break! 🙄