Feardorcha

Right?

Look, I know you and I disagree on some content (for instance, I appreciate "The Untamed" for how the entire crew worked to give the CCP the proverbial middle finger while still working within the rules; reminds me of how my ancestors obeyed Jim Crow laws while also flaunting the rules) but I can also acknowledge how even situationally "progressive" material can be broadly "regressive".

That said, I give Japanese productions no cuts, no buts, no coconuts. Japan has been about that life for a long, long time. "Taboo" is a goddamned glitter pen in their world. Therefore, I will not and do not accept this nonsense of a series.

Even divorced from the suggestive Homosexuality, the supposed "philosophical underpinnings" are shallow and well-trodden and fairly boring, all said. I am annoyed in facets.

Ugh, the dubbing, always the dubbing! with Chinese BLs. Or, frankly, all Chinese shows.

I fell most-of-the-way in love with "L.O.R.D. Critical World" but the dubbing hurt my soul. Made even worse by the fact that they included BTS excerpts in the credits, and the actual voices of the actors were almost always so much better. Hell, "L.O.R.D. Critical World" is not a BL, but the dubbing actually makes it seem like an explicitly censored Homosexuals Loving Homosexuals work (there are a couple of lovely lady couples in it).

From a global perspective, we all really need China to just...stop, and pull it the fuck together.

On the lower lip thing? Yes, yes I do, on occasion. Catches me off guard.

Are you a shitposting troll or just a fucking idiot?

His didi just annoys the heck out of me.

Your view is hot garbage. You are precisely the type of person who contributes to underreporting by male victims of sexual assault. You're the type of twat whose beliefs led to Denim Day.

Hundreds of thousands of male inmates, of all shapes, sizes, and ages, are raped every day in prisons around the world; millions of women have been forcibly sodomized by date-rapists and strangers; and you're over here insisting they all had to be willing because you quite stupidly think the Human anus is impervious to forceful incursion.

You should be ashamed of your rank ignorance. And that's before even considering your pathetic level of media literacy, you absolute walnut.

Hear, hear! Harlequin Romance (non-Bodice Ripper Division) would be scoffing at this bullshite (and, hell, maybe the Bodice Ripper Division, too).

Well, damn it. I'm disappointed but that's my own fault for letting the series trick me into believing it might have the courage. Not sure what planet I was on, thinking GMMTV would NOT give a fixed ship a HEA. Silly me, I forgot for a second what business they're in.

I, too, did not care for this one. Once I realized what pathetic, tedious, shitty, over-trodden road it was going down, I got really depressed. Then really mad. It's been awhile since I was so irritated by a bait-and-switch.

Ugh. Just...ugh.

Well, at least they didn't Bury Your Gays onscreen at the end. Although I'm not sure if that makes me detest the series more or less. If you're going to kill him, go the whole nine and give us the rain-drenched funeral and close-ups of soft crying and swelling score of sadness. I've already sat through the rest of this meanderingly tedious pathos, after all, pay it off.

I think I might actually stand up and clap if Jack and Dean break up. Not just because their characters have so clearly reached the end of their shared road, but it would be rather exciting for a fixed ship in that stable to not get a HEA.

Extremely violent and exceedingly wet. A crackingly demented, unapologetic genre work that is a great deal of fun to watch. I keep hoping for a sequel but, alas.

I absolutely detested the lead protagonist. He was whiny, entitled, pervy, inconsiderate, and kind of lazy (he was also nosey, but, given that he was a cop, that was one of his better qualities). All of this is par for the course in Hero's Journey stories, except that, generally speaking, the purpose of those stories is for the Hero to grow, mature, and understand they need to change their ways. The only difference between Yoo Sang Hwan at the beginning and Yoo Sang Hwan at the end is that he added "cocky" to his laundry list of obnoxious personality traits.

That also made the "romance" between him and An Ui Jin aggravating. She was a stable character who understood herself and held fast to her clear, if unhealthily rigid, principles. Obviously, Yoo was supposed to win An's respect through his training and deeds, and she was supposed to loosen up, but the movie skimped so hard on that element of the Hero's Journey that it just seemed like An woke up stupid one day. The "romance" diminished An Ui Jin's character, rendering her silly and susceptible to the absolute lowest bar of "charm". She was gifted to the lead protagonist because the script said so, and not because he had done anything at all that would realistically woo a woman like An Ui Jin to consider him in a new light. Honestly, there was moment where I hoped she died because I would rather see her dead than in a relationship with Yoo.

There are other issues with the movie but as the relationship/partnership/romance between the two main leads was crucial to a lot of the storyline, I was most annoyed by it.

One thing I would've love to see was how the villain got his wardrobe. Was he mugging flamboyant people on the street or walking into retail stores and just stealing shite off the racks? Also, what was is actual objective? There is a scene where it seems like his big evil beef is with natural disasters, which was very funny.

Maybe watch it once if you have nothing else to do, or just want to waste some time while scrolling through your phone.

It annoyed me what they tried to do with her character. It's like they had a Harpy Ex-girlfriend Trope leftover from some retro BL and trotted it out for Manufactured Drama.

They had exactly two capable, sensible women on the show and made one a bitchy skank and zombiefied the other. Just ridiculous.

I actually said aloud "Stupid manly-man shite" right before she said that, lol. She was 100% correct about it all. There are zombies eating people and these dudes are going to get folks killed because they can't put their dicks...erm, egos aside and use their words.

And Prao was very good with words. She read each and every one of them for filth.

I swear, the Thai cinemedia industry absolutely hates women. The boys made some silly choices, yes, but the girls were legitimately (and, in one case, quite literally) too stupid to live. Which bled over to the effeminate members of the Cheerleader Group too (trying to cure zombieism with the power of loud friendship, good grief...).

And this show tried very hard to make you detest Prao but, you know what—she was a stone-cold bitch but she wasn't wrong. As unpleasant as she was, she was more focused and clear-headed than 90% of the rest of those idiots. Her character makes zero sense in context but it was still nice to have at least one lady calling bullshite on proceedings and not getting herself or others munched to (un)death.

I felt bad for the PE Group. They seemed like they were doing just fine surviving the onset of the apocalypse before throwing in their lot with the stupid twats of the Core Group. Watching that lot bicker and snipe and get other people killed was infuriating. I kept waiting for Phu to shout "Bitches, zombies!" every time those numbskulls started squabbling over unimportant/irrelevant drama.

For a Thai production, it's mostly watchable. The gore is pretty good, there are a couple truly satisfying deaths, but it mostly just made me want to go rewatch "Duty After School"; maybe I was too harsh on that series.

As a movie, it's a bit of an incoherent mess with zero resolution. As a boy band's intro to an anticipated series of concept songs/albums, it might well work, but I couldn't say because I have no idea who this group is & had no clue that's what was happening until the K-pop Cinematic Universe music video jumpscared me at the credits.

There are engaging if well-trodden & tropey ideas in here but it's not actually a "movie"; it's a series of persona introductions & foundational worldbuilding to underpin a boy band's narrative-based debut. Still, I don't feel I wasted my time watching. It kept me interested, even if I did FFW here & there, & Jo Jae Yun gave a wonderfully affecting performance in his short appearance. That being said, I'm not interested enough to seek out the band's catalogue in order to explore further or have my questions answered. Did kind of make me wish I could reexperience "Interstellar 5555" again, though.

The violence is beautifully brutal, they didn't waste our time with a tedious romance, & Rain's villain is a sociopathic force of nature. No, season two doesn't have the heart, humour, or nuances of the first, & these idiots once again underestimate their opponent & save basically no one they promise to protect, but it did seem by the end they were finally learning a lesson about what is truly required to fight wealthy, omnipotent monsters (& it's more than the power of friendship).

If we get a season three, I hope it takes these characters to a darker place, & maybe gives the sweet simpletons a strategist & tactition to help them fight these wars. They weren't quite as infuriatingly borderline incompetent as last season but, still, they get laughably, predictably outmaneuvered when they really ought to anticipate better. Hong Min-Beom seems to have found his inner Subutai; I'd love to see him bringing his own resources to bear in full on the next über-equipped villain group to crop up.

All in all, an entertaining watch.

I watch this film at least three times a year; it is thrilling every single time.

I honestly would've preferred an ending where they both died in that shed, gunned down in a father-daughter embrace amidst the ruins of a beautiful but ultimately hopeless yearning for a future that was never possible, rather than the typical saccharine ending that we got (and all saw coming). However, I recognize this is meant to be a rather lightweight, feel-good comedy about parental devotion and the power of love, and for what it is, it does its job well enough.

That being said: whew, would I love to watch a movie about grief-stricken, sword-wielding, unstable, zombie-hunting badass Sin Yeon Hwa. While I was pleased that one asshat was essentially tag-teamed to death by two people who had a pretty righteous claim to vengeance, I was kind of hoping Yeon Hwa would spawn out of a tree and lop the bastard's head off. He was such a vile piece of garbage.

The fundamental problem with this series is that the central pairing is neither emotionally compelling nor narratively complex. The leads are simultaneously irritating and boring.

I don’t object to "toxic" ships; I object to poorly constructed ones.

"Toxic" ships like MingJoe, VegasPete, KhaiThird, KnockKorn, DayItt, TopMew, and so forth work because the characters and their conflicts are multifaceted and intentionally layered. Their flaws are blatantly written psychological architecture as opposed to audience members making ish up wholesale to justify their own projections onto their favoured cardboard cutouts. Truly quality characters are ones you can hate and love in equal measure, but even if you don't think a HEA is deserved, the HEA at least makes contextual sense within the story's universe.

"Love Alert" is not managing to construct any of that.

I can't bring myself to hate Jimmy because he's not hateable in any interesting way. He's a known fuckboi doing what fuckbois do. But, outside of him being a fuckboi, he has no other personality or characteristics. He's not a self-actualized manipulator like Ming, nor a sensually violent sociopath with demoralizing daddy issues like Vegas, nor a charmingly stunted idiot like Khai. Jimmy has no charisma, no wit, no danger, no vulnerability. He is not strategically cruel, seductively broken, or emotionally repressed. He is a libido with legs, and because he lacks true dimension, he doesn't generate compelling tension.

Meanwhile, Toh's entire obsession with Jimmy merely compounds the issue. Toh's central conflict is knowingly, agreeingly falling for a skunk and then repeatedly whinging about getting sprayed. Conflict only sustains engagement when it contains friction between desire and uncertainty. Toh is not uncertain; he knows exactly who Jimmy is, and yet keeps trying to build a reality in which what exists between them is authentic potential rather than just Toh being dickmatized by his first lay. Toh's milquetoast "conflict" is entirely self-inflicted and static, and it's frustrating to watch.

And all of that brings me to this question: why should Jimmy change for Toh?

What differentiates Toh from Jimmy's previous conquests? What makes Toh so singular that he destabilizes Jimmy's manwhore worldview? What does Toh offer that would make a fuckboi like Jimmy hang up his cock and settle down?

The script says "because". And that is just dramatically insufficient and wholly unsatisfying.

A toxic romance is, inherently, messy, problematic, and infuriating, but it must also be narratively charged and combustibly complex. Without that, even toxicity is eye-rollingly dull.