Feardorcha

I also prefer the JBL version.

I also liked the series well enough and think it was worth a watch but, unlike the JBL, I won't be watching it again. I had high expectations for this Thai version of the story but it didn't really deliver.

Ham-fistedly predictable, excessively sentimental, and exhaustingly patriotic, "The Moon" is precisely the type of banal movie that Hollywood churned out every other production during its space-related disasters era of the late-90s/early-aughts. "The Moon" is well-acted (excepting every single non-Korean in the cast and especially the lot with speaking roles), fast and fun, and a decent way to pass a couple hours. It's not particularly good but neither is it unspeakably awful; it has its moments and it's entertaining enough. It's basically Korean "Armageddon" (1998), but slightly better, and just as with that movie, I might rewatch this one on a day I have nothing better to do.

I tried, truly I did. I gave this series every possible benefit of the doubt and all of my indulgence. Episode eight was hands-down the most annoying, frustrating, idiotic, laughable thing I've sat through since...well, I was going to say the second season of "Minato Shouji Coin Laundry" but no, that series is still the worst. But this one is definitely giving it a run for its money.

Dropped.

Sort of cute but generally flat and ultimately forgettable. Just overall meh.

I had absolutely no expectations that JiAhn behave like a seasoned mercenary; in fact, I would never have bought such nonsense if the story tried to sell it. What I did expect, however, is that JiAhn as a young adult would be at least as clever and brave as teen JiAhn, making up for what she lacked in combat prowess with tactical intelligence. I also expected that her Uncle, whom we are constantly told is a legend of strategic brilliance, would be practical enough to prepare her for this showdown, at least to the point where abject ignorance was not her Achilles' heel.

There is no reason whatsoever that JiAhn should be dealing with a new reality while avoiding eating a bullet; the only reason JiAhn doesn't understand anything about what's happening to her or know any of the players involved is because the script says so, not because it makes sense to the story or relates to character traits, trajectories, or motivations. It also doesn't help that the series fails at its basic premise: her Uncle doesn't actually "train" her for anything. After years of living under his care, she can't even throw a proper punch before she begins fight lessons out of spite.

Do I expect JiAhn to effortlessly kill grizzled assassins two to three times her size and with a couple more decades of experience? No (though kudos to MinHye, who did precisely that). Do I expect her to have wits enough to open that computer file? Yes! Every time JiAhn fails to make a smart choice because her Uncle failed to explain things is one more piece of evidence that the screenwriter was so enamoured with a specific plot progression that they forgot to tell a logical story.

Perhaps you should take your advice and pay closer attention. If you did, you might glean just how fundamentally idiotic the show is, and how it squanders its two main characters. JiAhn and JinMan are individually fascinating and the relationship between them is compelling; unfortunately, the plot undermines the story.

I don't hate the FL; I hate what the idiotic script reduced her to in service of a concept rather than a story.

The very concept of a sentient android is enough to keep me watching every week. I like the gestures the series makes toward the question of whether robotic cognition is equivalent in practice or value to Human self-awareness, or what we might call the 'soul', but I hope those allusions become somewhat more explicit in this second half.

It's a BL, so I'm not expecting a serious or deftly layered sociocultural or legal exploration (though wouldn't it be fun to see a Taiwanese drama mull over whether a machine is a man and, if so, man enough to be afforded rights such as marriage) but I'd be happy to see that dog symbolism either evolved or jettisoned completely. I understand the emotional parallels the story is drawing but the more we see of and understand Ever 9's functionality, the more ludicrous and laughable the juxtaposition. It can be downright uncomfortable when it follows the mains having a moment that suggests intense physical or outright sexual intimacy. I am 99% certain Yi Ping did not try or want to fuck his dog, and it's clear Yi Ping does not view Ever 9 as a pet, a possession, or a product. It'd be nice to see the dog imagery pegged more closely to his emotional and mental trajectory.

I am here to watch a BL. Not an office drama, not a navel-gazing rumination on work-life balance, not the tale of a man's (re)awakening. Good BLs can offer all that without losing focus on the romance; great BLs can blend story and romance seamlessly. This series, however, apparently cannot juggle more than one plot point at a time.

As a short character study, "Perfect Propose" has some merit. It simply fails as a BL.

This series is just making me yearn even more for a second season of "Old Fashion Cupcake". That story managed to balance the office, aging, low self-esteem, uncertainty, and romance quite well.

"Perfect Propose" is a decent slice-of-life about reclaiming your agency and refusing to drop dead at your desk but it's really lacking in the BL department. Shame, as the start was so promising. I don't dislike the series, it's just not what I signed-on for when I started watching a show purportedly about two men falling in love.

I mean, after that emotional wringer, you pretty much have to kill the man. What shenanigans are you trying to pull now, show?

Me too. The romance elements are just such a drag, I keep walking away from the series. If the show was just about the relationship between the MLs, I would've watched it in one sitting. If it weren't for Wi HaJoon, I might've dropped it already.

I was originally excited for this Thai version because I expected it to be less anemic in the passion department. The one thing Thai BLs do fairly consistently is acknowledge libidos exist and allow men to demonstrate physicality as a matter of course, rather than a one-off moment. Admittedly, it's a difficult line to walk in a story like "Cherry Magic", where the act of touching is the point, but somehow the Thai version feels even more devoid of passion than the Japanese version. And it weirdly became even less engaging once the leads got together and Karan learned about the mindreading. At one point I actually heard myself saying, "Please stop touching him".

There are elements I like about the Thai version, including seeing more of how Karan expressed his devotion while his feelings were still secret, but overall, it just falls flat for me. I haven't quite put my finger on why I find this series so dull.

I am also annoyed no end by the Pai/Rock subplot. One thing I truly appreciated about the Japaness version was the conventionally attractive female character wasn't paired with anyone, was intentionally and unapologetically single, and it wasn't treated like a personal or moral failing that needed to be "fixed". Ah well, it's still good to see Jan; I just adore her so.

Ok, show, sure, if you say so.

The story does rely heavily on plot convenience and smart characters behaving stupidly. It's an interesting concept that is failed by a senseless script, which is unfortunate because the action is fun and the cast is good, and some character elements actually work well if you ignore the idiocy of the plot happening around them.

No. The same excuses keep cropping up for the series' poor writing. After finishing the series, it became clear that the reason Young Adult Ji Ahn was such a regressive version of her younger self is because the plot required her to be dumber in order to force the plot forward in a specific way.

There is a lot of general nonsensical stupidity required by both Ji Ahn and her Uncle for this story to unfold the way it does. It's a real shame.

I already understand its relevance to the story; it isn't complicated. I simply do not care.

I am struggling to get through this one. It has plenty of the stuff I love in action dramas, such as graphic violence, Wi HaJoon, and...well, that alone would be plenty to keep me invested. But it also has one thing I really detest in action dramas: romance.

I do not care about the love triangle, I am bored to death by insipid romance and the otherwise pointless female characters taking up even one second of valuable screen time that could be devoted to the more interesting parts of the story. Usually, romance elements in non-romance Korean dramas are so incidental to the story that you can FFW through every irrelevant scene and avoid the subplot entirely. However, the love triangle in this series is actually significant to character development, relationships, and motivations. That doesn't, however, make it any less of a deadly dull slog to sit through, even in a noir-style drama where passive, waffling women and dynamic, dangerous femme fatales are a time-honoured trope.

There are other aspects I find compelling enough to keep watching but I may end up dropping this one purely because of that one aspect.

If that were the case, she would've just left.

Her decision to not open the file had nothing to do with whether she could handle the truth; we saw her handling unfortunate truths just fine throughout the series, even when those truths were unfolding in real-time. She didn't open the file because if she had, the plot would've stopped doing what the screenwriter wanted it to do.

The series is just poorly written. It requires both Jinman and Ji Ahn to do nonsensical things, that often don't align with their characters as shown or discussed, in order to force the concept forward rather than support advancing the story. It doesn't even manage to make the parallels of decision responsibility work because Jinman was a trained, consenting mercenary making informed choices he understood in a world he knew; Ji Ahn was making blind guesses while under fire as a whole new reality was unceremoniously foisted upon her—a position she should never have been in because someone as brilliant as her Uncle wouldn't have decided she was better off ignorant and practically defenseless if the script hadn't force him to be so dumb.

In a calm moment at home during the decade-long ceasefire:

Niece: "I want to know the truth."
Uncle: "I'm not going to tell you the truth."

In the heat of an armed conflict in which hundreds of bullets are fired at her and she doesn't know why and isn't equipped to handle it:

Uncle: "You can stay and potentially learn the truth, or you can leave and likely never learn the truth."

That is not a choice; that is coercion masquerading as a choice.

For the sake of argument, let's say that what he's trying to do is let her "make her own choices".

He, the Adult, withholds information from her, outright lies to her, ignores her questions, and doesn't equip her with any of the survival tools he himself possesses to survive in the world they inhabit (a world she doesn't realize they inhabit because, again, he refuses to tell her about it). She's fumbling through her life with asymmetrical information; actually, less than even that, because she is 100% ignorant of everything. She has no idea who her Uncle is, she isn't aware that she's living in a fortified house above a killer-for-hire shopping mall, she doesn't know how or why her parents died, she apparently doesn't remember being hunted down as a child after witnessing a dismembering, and she can only barely physically defend herself only because she was desperate to get out of an oppressive, alienating home.

Jinman has functionally deprived her of any meaningful choice by withholding truth and skillsets. Further, the withholding of that truth and those skills places her in direct mortal danger. Equipping her to be able to function, with full awareness, in their world is what would've given her actual agency; instead, he essentially infantilized her. Even the requirement for her to strike his face in order to move out is evidence that he never treated her as an "independent Adult"; he exercised control over her, he simply never bothered to explain to her why he exercised that control, or its purpose. Did he want her to ultimately be an independent, self-reliant Adult? Yes, absolutely. But he really fumbled it, for no other reason than that the script said so.

A guardian's fundamental job is to equip their ward with the skills and knowledge they'll need to forge their own path in the world. Jinman fundamentally failed at that task.

To speak directly to your analogy regarding swimming: I was literally thrown into a pool to learn how to swim. However, before I was tossed into the water, my guardian took the time to explain to me that Human bodies are capable of buoyancy. I hit that water with the knowledge that I could choose to sink, float, or swim; I didn't even once flail. That's more than what Jinman afforded his Niece.