Flypsyde

lol. Thanks Sandee! You just made my day. :D I like being loved, believe or not, but a lot of people in comments here feel pretty much the opposite of you. haha Don't be sorry - that's not weird at all. *insert genuine smile*

Is it your belief that rape, stalking, murder, robbery, kidnapping, embezzlement, torture, etc.do not happen IRL? Is it your belief that anything that happens IRL should not be fair game for drama? And I don't mean fair game as long as those plot elements are accompanied by a Sunday School lesson on how they violate your moral values. I mean fair game as presented in any way the show makers choose.

If you are after "mature, healthy relationships" for you viewing boredom, I don't know what kind of dramas you're going to find anywhere to watch. Good drama stems from CONFLICT. If everyone is mature and healthy in everything they do, instead of acting like actual humans, your show is going to go nowhere.

Fujoshis, fantasies and yaoi are a huge part of BL. You're watching the wrong genre, silly.

I do watch porn when I'm in the mood. You don't?

Why would I go cry about it? I watched the whole thing and it didn't make enough of an impression one way or the other on me to bother reacting. YOU are the one above going on about ratings in this and other comments. You didn't answer: why do you watch BLs? I like the darker themes and plots. Much more interesting and sexy. Sex is a thing, you know?

Because, unfortunately, this show gets worse with each ep.

wth do you watch BLs? Aggressive sexual situations, yaoi tropes and stalking ARE BLs. That's why that show you won't say the name of, History 4: Close To You, is doing so great while this show gets worse with each episode. Go watch the Disney Channel.

Yeah, this is like, REALLY BAD Romance. lol Thank god for MaxTul chemistry or there would be nothing good about this thing. Yiwha and Cho are good too, and I liked the side couple Bae and Far, but everything else was atrocious. There is a BL cut of this in 13 eps on Youtube that focuses on only the KornKnock related plot lines but even that is pretty damn bad. By the time we got to the psycho kidnapping plot and the girl with superhuman strength I was fast forwarding through everything except MaxTul scenes that were one on one. I felt bad for them as actors having to perform the god-awful script.

The KornKnock prequel and sequel to this, the Together With Me and Together With Me Next Chapter series are infinitely better than this. You don't have to see this for those two shows to make sense, so consider skipping it altogether.

I just finished it and loved it. For me it started out laugh-out-loud funny and then got sweeter and sweeter and sweeter....until we all got to where we knew we were headed in the beginning. :D The first time I saw Kikuchi next to the lead in the classroom I fell in love with him. A little dorky, wiry maybe, but those beautiful big eyes and such a kind and sensitive aura around him. I was hoping he'd be the one but when the lead got rid of him so quickly I almost lost faith. Then at the beginning of the last ep I realized he was one of the five guys singing the 70s disco intro song with choreography and my hopes were renewed! Yeah, cute show.

I actually teared up at the end when the lead went running out of the house...very nice. :D

Commenting first time after watching Ep 1. Haven't read any comments or reviews.

I hesitated to watch this show. I think it's something to do with having discovered the world of BL and Asian gay cinema in general just about 18 months ago or so. I am still so overjoyed at having found all this rich gay-themed drama and comedy, and I am still enjoying just sucking the stories in and reveling in the gay themes of romance, love, sex, everything, etc. I'd rather get right into the plot of a BL or gay movie about characters IN those situations than into a story about the industry that MAKES many of the shows I watch. I'd still rather eat and enjoy the meal than go back in the kitchen and watch the chef and their assistants MAKE it.

I know this is not a documentary, lol, and that it will have its own characters and plot to tell a story ABOUT BLs, but that approach just doesn't interest me much at this point. Perhaps it will later. After watching this first episode and its hints of what's to come regarding the industry's treatment of its creative people, I don't think any of that is going to surprise me. I'm a SHINee fan and know all too well what horrors production companies can visit upon their laborers, at all levels. So this show's success will, for me, be all about HOW it tells its story and makes those revelations.

I'd love to see a big-budget, in-depth film about the dank underbelly of the K-Pop industry. Now THAT'S some deep, brutal shit to explore

First ep didn't knock my socks off or draw me in instantly so I may hold off on watching more until later, but I'm sure at some point I WILL watch it.

Just a personal observation and matter of taste I suppose, but the apparent main character/actor playing the director doesn't impress me one way or the other...he's kind of...blah. Hey, maybe that will be a plot point somehow, but I would guess it's more a matter of me not quickly connecting with an actor for whatever reason. The character isn't necessarily uninteresting but I don't sense any great on-screen charisma or audience chemistry from this dude.

I'm shallow and soul-less, so I will confess that his long, dry, split-end hair is not a good look on him for me. Some men rock long hair and it can be beautiful and attractive on them. This actor is not one of those men. Maybe the fact that he needs specific grooming products to beautify his hair will be part of the story. :D

"one of the characters in the pair suddenly transmutes from a strong independent person into a Victorian girl." lol I so enjoy your writing, even when I disagree with you. :D

I felt that same pang of disappointment LC and MR made their "I'm not gay..." announcements. For the most part, to that point the show had been so inventive and and at least notably original in approach, so those two moments really surprised me. I hold out hope, I think just because I like the show overall so much, that that trope is simply a predictable part of both characters' coming-out process. I said in another comment that I went through the same lying-to-myself period in my own coming out journey.

Forgive me if I've asked, but have you watched Parts 1 & 2 of "Like Love?" I finished the second half last night for the second time. THAT is my favorite BL "series." The main couple's two characters are so unique and quirky and loveable, and their relationship so passionately loving and sweet-but leavened by a hilarious layer of bromantic insult/mockery-banter, that I fall in love with them more and more as the show progresses. They aren't predictably, conventionally pretty either.

Both parts, but especially the second, have HUGE problems of plot stupidity, confusion, bad writing/direction, editing and some atrociously bad acting from a couple of supporting players. BUT there are also some fine supporting performances, and most of the humor and angst works really, really well. In short, LL is one-of-a-kind. That central relationship is so strong and enjoyable to watch that it overcomes all of the former problems. If you watch it, you'll know what I mean about the problems.

Highly recommended! I will check out this new BL about the industry itself but I thought the info here indicated it wasn't airing yet. Guess I misread that.

Thanks for that 8.5! lol Who is "the blocked guy?" Did he get booted from commenting or you just blocked him? Yeah, I had all kinds of issues with TOATS but watched it all the way thru because I liked its big heart, as I've said. I found Mix's acting to be like his name..."mixed." He seemed to improve as we moved through the series but until near the end always fell back on the wrinkled-up, put-on prune face to indicate that he was really, like, super-really sad. :D Your mileage obviously varied and that is fine. :)

Don't know how long it will be up, but here is a link to a crystal-clear version of this Part 2:

https://myreadingmanga.info/like-love-2014-uncut-version/3/

OK, just watched part 2 for the second time after a year or so. This show is such a hap-hazard mess in so many ways I don't know where to begin, BUT...the two extremely unique, fascinating, funny, big-hearted characters at the center of it, and the actors who portray them, are such an intense delight to me that Parts 1 & 2 together remain my favorite BL. Their love for each other is palpable and real, and the bromantic edge and banter that expresses much of their affection is just wonderful and for me somehow grounds their relationship in what feels like the real world. I cried, I laughed a lot and I also rolled my eyes a lot at everything from terrible, absurd plotting and writing to some of the worst acting ever in a BL, thankfully not from the leads, who are perfection, but from some of the supporting actors (An's mom, I'm looking at YOU). Distracting as hell.

An's grandfather is one of my fave supporting BL characters of all time.
I hated Mai Mai's mom a lot of the time of course, but the actress who played her is phenomenal.
So many odd plot choices I don't know where to begin.
There are characters who are introduced and then they disappear and I wondered what that was all about, more than once.
But An and Mai's relationship is beautiful to me. I liked getting to see more of An letting Mai know more explicitly how much he loves him than in Part 1.

Mai Mai is the heart of these two movies and I adore him. No one ever mentions that he has a rockin' bod in my estimation. Great butt, as we clearly saw in Part 1 during the soft-core porn section when An flipped him over on his stomach. Glory be! More soft-core porn here and I like how it is just kind of thrown in with some carefully placed candles to block our view of the naughty bits as part of two rather lovely montage sections. Bad editing kind of ruined it for me when they were boinking in the SUV though...I have no idea how An was schtupping Mai while Mai clearly still had his pants on. lol

I hope there really is a Part 3 on its way, though I don't know how that could be, given the Chinese puritanical censors.

Again, it is the WAY in which these things are done, the style and esthetic being applied, that separates the powerful image from the mundane. I suppose there is NO story and NO visual metaphor that has not been utilized by this point in human history, so why bother watching or listening to anything at all? It's all been done. Been there, seen that. You seem eager to present a "yawn...above it all" personae here, which seems a little rich given that we are discussing a dramatic-comedic genre not generally thought of as being at the top of the list, prestige-wise. Why did you put "deep" in quotation marks? I didn't use that word.

Well, I was not referring to how many all-over characters in a BL are gay, but to how many shows start out with at least ONE of THE MAIN COUPLE openly gay. In contrast to what you said in the second half of your comment, I'm not a big fan of BLs in which almost everybody is gay. First of all, how realistic is that, unless the group being presented has already gathered as friends BECAUSE they are gay?

I am more interested in shows that deal with the real world,or something closer to it, in which no more than ten percent of the population is gay, if that, and far fewer are out of the closet. I like when the main gay characters have straight friends whose romances are given a bit of screen time too. This sets the plot in a world to which I can relate, rather than to a magical land of rainbows and unicorns in which most people are gay and those who aren't are super-supportive of those who are. Where is the drama and conflict in that? I like seeing gay acceptance in a drama, but from everybody? Boring.

If BLs just become a celebration of gayness in all its splendor, then we're talking about a completely different genre. As I said in another comment, I don't really get people who claim to be BL fans but dislike a big part of what makes them BLs in the first place, many of whom then complain on social media and harass production companies to change the content, often succeeding in changing the shows. Why do these people watch in the first place? Novels on which these shows are based OFTEN feature homophobia, internalized and external, against which the main characters must struggle to achieve contentment and peace. So then the show-makers rip the conflict from the heart of the novel and/or clean it up to fit PC standards, and we're left with a sanitized, boring, milquetoast salute to all that is gay. It's kind of a reverse form of Chinese government censorship, which is extremely telling.

It looks to me on MDL that it has not started running yet. ???

Thank you! I had not heard of this one.

I didn't say there was anything wrong with acknowledging that both lead characters are gay in the beginning. It is just usually not as dramatically interesting to me when that is the case, but that's just me. It struck me though, that with the exception of Gameboys, I disliked every BL in your list. Ugh, I thought Karl and Vlad were the worst, along with the show they were in. Love Gameboys.

I'm slow: What is "CIWYW?"

Agree with everything you said, except I believe there are men who have not fully acknowledged to themselves that they are on the sexual spectrum until they meet a particular other man who sets off all the right bells and whistles. I wasn't one of those people, as I knew I was gay from about 4 years of age and stayed in the closet. But I've come to believe such men exist, however. I don't believe someone who is truly heterosexual is going to suddenly have feelings for another man out of the clear blue sky. I guess I sort of play along with, but don't really buy into, that element of a lot of BLs. I see that gayness as latent, something that was there all along, waiting to express itself.

A 7 at best for me. All that slow, bad, prune-face-of-sorrow acting. But I kept coming back. As I said, the show has a good heart.

It's so weird to me that you thought TOATS, which was nothing but tropes and cliches, was a great thing.

LC did indeed make the comment about watching MR masturbate. So you believe the image of that is the ONLY reason he is passionately attracted to MR? He was ALREADY attracted to MR when that happened. He had romantic/emotional feelings for MR before it got sexual. I don't get why you're trying to make LC into this horrid sex pervert, when what he did was watch over him and care for him as he went through the worst of the rape drug. AND HE DID NOT LAY ONE FINGER ON HIM. If he was this sex-freak you're portraying him as he would have spent the night fucking MR senseless. But he didn't do that.

I disagree that MR was "repulsed" by the infamous lick that so disturbs you. He was panicked by his own physical/emotional response to it. Re-watch the scene. There is a very important moment of desire and hesitation before MR snaps out of it and recoils from LC. He was turned on by it and THAT is what he reacted to.

As far as them being gay or not and the BL trope under discussion, how about waiting to see the rest of the show before deciding what has happened? Seemed to me that when the Fujoshi and LC were discussing the whole thing, when he did make that "I'm not gay" assertion, he also left it open to her that who knows? Maybe he could go for Manager XS...

Why didn't it bother you in TOATS that the MC didn't see himself as gay until he had been given the heart of a woman? He never indicated that he was attracted to men in general other than the Chief, that I recall. Seems to me you just don't like this show's tone and you're retroactively coming up with objections to support that dislike. That's fine. But if you liked TOATS and not this, well, you go for it. I'm on a different boat.

I agree about MR being made into the bottom. I wish they'd surprise us with a flip-flop on that issue further down the line. It was annoying when LC backed MR against the wall seductively and told him he'd dreamed of him telling him he loved him and that he was "even willing to be the O..." But again, were you this annoyed when the MC in TOATS was made out to be the "O" for the big, macho Chief? I guess I missed that in your comments.

I never said this series was perfect. In fact, I praised it in my first comment,
"warts and all." But I do like it very much. I even find the Fujoshi to be charming. Her interest in shipping gay men seems sincere and motivated by a romantic soul. She is kind and a good friend. I don't get a feeling she is "fetishizing" gay men. But people who are bothered by Fujoshis in BLs seriously need to move on. Fujoshis ARE BLs.