Maggi64

I think it's gonna happen now that Korea has seen how popular BL's are internationally. They are going to want to get in on the action, regardless of Korea still being pretty homophobic in general. I read somewhere that when Korea's first BL, "Where Your Eyes Linger" came out, people were shocked at what a huge hit it was. Then, suddenly, we started to see more and more K-BLs.

Well, the rule for time travel stories is that if you meet yourself in the past, you cannot change the future, otherwise you would not be the same person whom you already became. For instance, Jae Woo visits Ji Hoon's death memorial at the beginning of the show. If Jae Woo travels back in time and keeps Ji Hoon alive, then this would mean that the death memorial Jae Woo had visited never existed. Except we know that it DOES already exist in the present. So I fear this means that poor Ji Hoon is gonna have to die. Unless the show changes all the rules of time travel logic, which I do not think it will. But, hey, who knows. We'll find out next week!

The question of money and the phone etc definitely don't make sense. I also didn't buy that Ji Hoon would be so accepting of Jae Woo's bizarre, stalkerish behavior in the beginning. But the lack of a scar on his arm as an adult at the beginning actually makes sense. He would only have a scar there in the present if he'd been slashed as a 10 yr old child and then grown up with the scar on his arm. But his 10 yr old self was never slashed. To the contrary, he got the scar as an adult time traveler, so it'll be there when he returns to the future, but would not have been there before.

It's only things that happened to him at 10 that would last until the future -- eg, the writing under the desk that's still there, the pix he still has, and even his memory of an adult man yelling at him when he was 10 (who turned out to be himself). Remember how the adult Jae Woo says in that scene, "I was so scared that I forgot about this stranger yelling at me that day. Now I realize it was myself yelling at me." It's this crazy, confusing time loop, but makes sense. It's more the smaller details that are illogical, but not this larger one about the loop in time travelling.

I agree down the line. The Thai BL's waste the most time and do so with side couples and extraneous characters that add little to the story. It's almost as if they are desperate to fill up their 14 Ep, 45 min airtime with any filler they've got, because they have such huge budgets. Remember, the Thais use product placement to fund their BL's so they have big budgets. Well, I'd rather have a shorter BL with no product placement. Although I agree with you that sometimes it feels these K-BLs and J-BL's are too short and I'd appreciate more to the story at hand. Taiwan somehow manages to make longer ones w/o product placement (eg, the HIStory Series), so there must be a way, right? :)

I forgot to add that when 10 yr old Jae Woo gets his crush's pix, he lies in bed staring at it while smiling. I had crushes like this on older guys too when I was a kid. It's so cute!

Yep. However, I'd say that few of the K-BL's waste any time. Semantic Error, Where Your Eyes Linger, and Blueming were all under 2 hrs. They made every plot point meaningful, just as this show does. For instance, when Ji Hoon's friend took a polaroid of him in Ep 2, I knew it would come up later as something significant because 2-3 minutes were spent on that scene, and K-BL's wouldn't waste that much time unless the scene was gonna be relevant to the story. The J-BL's are also like that cuz most are short. Consider "Old Fashioned Cupcake." That was only 5 eps of 23 min each. "My Beautiful Man" was only 6 eps of 23 min each. Those shows did not waste a second.

Frankly, the only J-BL I know to waste an extraordinary amount of time was the 10 ep, "More Than Words." If you've seen it, then you know what I mean cuz you witnessed all the scenes of characters just having pointless, banal convos. Or scenes w/o any dialogue while they knocked in doors, slurped soup, smoked, flipped thru books, went jogging, etc.

Of course, the biggest culprits of wasting time are the Thai BL's. They are all 10-14 eps of 45 min each while most could be condensed to half that time.

But he carried him on his back in the episode before the kidnapper had injured his arm. That was episode 6. I went back to episode 5 to watch the stills after the credits and there were none with his arm injured. Those stills are for the end of ep 6. I feel like I am missing something here????

Thx. I need to watch that again cuz I did not notice him leaving JW's room to go back to his own room.

But the romance is not between the boy and the adult man. It's between the adult version of the boy and the other adult man. In short, both are adults when the romance occurs.

QUESTION:

Why did Jae Woo have 2 Polaroid pix of Ji Hoon in his desk when Ji Hoon's friend only gave 1 Polaroid pix to the 10 yr old version of Jae Woo?

Well put. I also decided to just stop asking questions and roll with it. I am emotionally invested in the show despite its not only failing to explain the question of money, and Ji Hoon accepting psycho behavior from Jae Woo, but also its breaking a major rule of time travel plots. That is, to avoid having your present self meet your past self, because that creates a tricky time loop.

On the rare occasion that a time travel movie does let a character meet themselves in the past, it's for the express purpose of pointing out that such a loop in time had occurred. For instance, the film "12 Monkeys" did this when Bruce Will goes back in time to stop the apocalypse and sees his 12 year old self at the same airport where the apocalyptic germ had first been spread. Once Bruce sees his 12 year old self there, he knows he cannot change the future because if he could change the future, then he would not have become the adult Bruce Willis who is there right then to stop the spread of the germ on that day. He cannot change it, but only observe the time loop.

It remains to be seen if the show will illustrate that such a time loop makes it impossible to change the future. But regardless of what happens with this particular plot point, the show is still making the attraction between the two leads believable, so I am sticking around for that.

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GOTTA SUSPEND A LOT OF DISBELIEF, BUT SOMEHOW IT STILL WORKS

It requires a huge suspension of disbelief cuz so many details beyond the time travel defy logic. Yet somehow I am still emotionally invested in it. One thing that's really working for me is how 10 yr old Jae Woo is already totally gay and has a little boy crush on a man (that heart shaped box of heart shaped chocolates and then the necklace!) It's really cute, while at the same time it explains his adult character's deep grief over the loss of that man.

QUESTION on Ep 5

Why was Ji Hoon carrying Jae Woo on his back as if he were injured or drunk, when all that had happened prior to this was that Jae Woo was crying?

Yea, they definitely could have done this in half the time. But the Thai BL's are all overly long. I guess they have money to burn on production cuz their BL industry is so booming. Most of their BL's are 14 eps. This is only 8 eps, but still should've been only 4-5 eps and it would've worked nicely.

I agree that in real life there would have been a more active step toward making sex, or at least a kiss, happen. But I think it would've only been the boy, Wang, to initiate it. In fact, Wang did try to kiss In, but was rebuffed.

This made sense to me because (1) all that icky history between In and the mom, and (2) In is twice Wang's age. I knew a number of girls when I was in my teens and 20's who made advances at middle aged men and were rebuffed -- at least by the decent men, anyway. To be clear, I am not saying relationships with a 20-something age gap can't work; I'm saying that the older man would feel a tad like a "dirty old man" and, hence, he'd be hesitant to accept the advances of the younger person at first. It would be a big hurdle for a decent, thoughtful older man to jump. In the case of these 2 characters, In and Wang, I see no reason for In not to jump that hurdle and make it happen, and hope he does.

Otherwise, yes, I agree that the screenwriter (whose background is in playwriting), really went too far with the talky scenes, that narrate too much about the past rather than giving us action in the present. But there's finally some action in the present in ep 7 when mom comes home, so stay with it.

I actually agree with every word you said, but for some reason I keep watching. It's just like "More Than Words" which also drove me nuts with its pretentiousness, but I just kept watching. As you know, I drop most Thai BL's in 15 minutes because they feel like widgets manufactured off an assembly line. But I kept watching "180 Degrees" and "More Than Words," even when they got so talky as to drive me bonkers. I think it's because both had good actors. But this one is absolutely better directed than "More Than Words."

Mostly though, I am sticking with it because I believe that the boy, Wang, is in love with the man, In, and that In is likewise attracted to Wang, albeit conflicted about it. We can feel their romantic chemistry, which is a massive plus in a BL. I did not feel that at all in "More Than Words."

People told me that "Old Fashioned Cupcake" was #1 on Viki Rakuten and that's not free either. It's a paid subscription channel here and in Japan, so I thought the same could be known about Amazon shows. At any rate, sometimes we know if a show is trending or not.

FINAL SCENE OF EP 7

Gotta give it to Wang. He didn't merely expose the elephant in the room; he skinned that thing. Then he still kept going, and served its meat to mom for dinner. He made sure denial was no longer an option for her and it was great!

QUESTION

Does anyone know what kind of ratings this show is getting in Japan?

You're not alone; I also felt virtually no romantic chemistry between the leads. In fact, there is more romantic chemistry between the leads in most of the censored Chinese BL's than in this show. Chinese BL's not only have no kissing, but won't even call the couple "boyfriends." Nevertheless, Chinese directors get around the China Ban on BL's by creating a visceral sense that the guys are in love. That's something this show failed to do even with kissing scenes.