Ju Moon

I really wish I had liked this second season as much as the first one. The execution is just such a mess. The second season jumps about 30 years into the future, but the styling and makeup didn’t sell that time jump nearly as well as the script wanted them to. It expects us to believe there’s a huge gap in time, but it doesn’t give us enough visual cues to make that passage feel believable right away. Thirty years have gone by, but Siam Square looks exactly the same. I didn’t need the show to turn Bangkok into Blade Runner, but it definitely needed something to actually mark that difference.

The show also didn’t bother investing in a truly convincing aging process; instead, it chose to hide who the character was and just expected us to buy that he’d aged 30 years. I spent the first few episodes trying to figure out what on earth I was watching and who all these “new” characters were. Gelboys has always had a really strong visual identity, and it could have used that to highlight the generational gap and the consequences of the characters’ choices. Instead of wondering what happened to everyone, I was stuck playing a guessing game of “who is this character, and whose dad is whose.” It was genuinely exhausting, and at certain points, it completely derailed the story just so we could play that guessing game.

The only reason I didn’t drop the show entirely was because of the performances by PJ, Pide, Leon, and New. Just like in the first season, they’re the absolute highlight. The last two episodes were the best part for me. On the flip side, the adult versions just couldn’t match the same level of intimacy as the younger ones. Their acting felt stiff, and the few moments of affection between them came across as forced and inauthentic.