Maggi64

Ooops, I did not finish that last line. I had meant to write: "It's such a bizarre feeling. But the neurologist also said I am lucky to still have all my memories prior to Dec/Jan/February and the first week of March."

I did not complete the line in the first message because typing is still hard for me. Thus, I shan't be writing anymore for now. Again, thank you for your understanding.

Thank you so much for your caring reply. And, yes, you are right that my memory loss from the past 3 months means I now I get to watch the good BL's from this period all over again as if they are new. For example, I gave "Unknown" a rating of 10, yet cannot recall a SINGLE thing about it. So I get to watch it all over again as if it were new.

The neurologist said that if I still cannot recall the past 3 months, then those memories are -- zap! -- dropped from my mind forever. The blood flow from my heart to the brain was severely low for 4 days, and that's why there is a black-out from the prior 3 months. So thank for your understanding.





It's such a bizarre feeling. But the neurologist alsosaid

Dang, my server won't allow that link, and when I went to kissasian directly and typed the title in the search line, nothing came up for Golden Slumber, 2010. Is it on youtube?

Thank you for reading my review! And yes, "Lost" truly is not worth watching -- unless you are simply curious to know the reasons it failed. Funny, but re-reading my own review also made me want to re-watch "My Mister" -- so thanks for drawing me back to this show.

Please forgive my lack of reply, but I have been unconscious in the Hospital in ICU for over a week with a blood infection to the heart. And when I achieved consciousness after a week, all my memories from Dec/Jan/Feb have vanished. I am not sure if those short term memories shall ever come back, but I still have my long term memories and recall watching all the older BL's. However, I need to rewatch "Unknown" because I've drawn an utter blank for that show as well as all others from the past 3 months. I shall try to catch up. In the meantime, let me thank you for your messages.

-- Maggi

Exactly. It had gotten so bad with Taiwan that when I heard this was from Taiwan I actually just expected it to be bad. You know, the way you just expect any BL from Thailand to be bad. But then I figured, well, Taiwan did "Stay by My Side" and that was cute. Not great the way the HIStory series was great, but at least cute. So I gave this a shot and -- lo and behold-- it's great!

I’m always impressed by hetero actors who aren't squeamish about a gay kiss and understand that a professional actor does whatever the role calls for. And the fact that we saw the kiss in ep 1 means this won’t be a case of watching an 8 ep show only to see a dead fish kiss in the end. These actors showed their physical chemistry bang-on in the very 1st ep! But it’s more than them being pros with kissing scenes, they are good actors period.

The guy playing Iwanaga is particularly good. He was terrific in that scene where Miyata fell asleep with his head on the table, and then he also laid his head on the table to simply gaze at Miyata while he slept. He gazed while making an expression that conveyed a mixed emotion of amusement, endearment, and love all at once. Perfect!

I agree 100% . I watched the sequel despite all its flaws because the chemistry was still there. And not just the chemistry between the leads, even the 2 side couples had great chemistry. It was like I just ignored the silly plot points and focused on the characters.

Thank you for the advice, because now I won't bother seeking out the novel. Also, thank you for your description of the changes from the novel to the live adaptation. It seems to be a case where a screenwriter read the novel and thought, "Humm, I should take these two characters, expand their romance, cut out all these other characters, add one or two other plot elements, and it would make a great BL." I think the screenwriter did a terrific job with the changes.

Now, Western screenwriters commonly take source material and make changes like this. We are totally used to seeing a screenwriter remove minor characters from a novel to give the main characters more air time -- especially if there are big stars in the movie who demand more air time. We are also used to seeing screenwriters changing minor plot elements, or even changing major elements, such as giving the movie a totally different ending than the novel. Asians film culture, however, seriously sticks to source material. The Japanese, in particular, are nearly religious in respecting source material. They adapt mangas word for word, panel by panel. They simply do not change a thing. Sometimes I am even annoyed because I think, what's the point of even doing a live adaptation if you're not going to let it breath a little and get creative? Why bother hiring a screenwriter if all your doing is replicating a manga word for word, panel by panel?

As for "Unknown" I am both surprised and pleased that an Asian screenwriter and director felt free to change source material.
Good for them! While I often get annoyed at Hollywood screenwriters for changing novels too much, Asians do it so rarely that I am actually impressed and pleased when I see it happening. Thus, I am even more impressed by this show now that I know the screenwriter took creative liberties from the novel and did such a wonderful job of doing so. From what I am hearing about this novel from people who've read it, it seems like the screenwriter has majorly improved upon the novel. Now, 90% of the time novels are better than the movie version. But there are exceptions when the movie version improves upon on the novel. In fact, a lot of the great classics are improvements on novels that were not very good and, in fact, considered by critics to be kind of cheap, trashy novels -- eg, The Godfather, The Exorcist, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, and Jaws. So it seems "Unknown" is part of a small, but established, tradition of a movie being a major improvement on a novel.

HILARIOUS SEX SCENE WITH "KILL THE PIG"

As I'd said in another comment, I'd only read 10 chapters before dropping it cuz the translation was so bad. But then I read this thread and based on someone's advise here, I skipped ahead to Chapter 61 and noted a sex scene. I had to laugh because bad translations make even sex scenes hilarious. So, ok, can someone tell me if the passage below means that Xiao Yuan is the top? Is Wei Qian yelling that it hurts because he's being entered and that's why he's saying, "Can you ***** lightly?" What do the asterisks mean? Is he saying "Can you f*ck me lightly?" If so, why use asterisks when they wrote the word "fuck" elsewhere?

It's killing me that the translator wrote "I fuck" instead of "Oh fuck." This person clearly does not know English. I am also confused about what, "Kill the pig!" means. I mean, really, what the hell is that? It cracked me up. This translation is nuts. The word "fart" just randomly shows up all the time. Did you guys notice that?

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"I fuck, it hurts!" Wei Qian couldn't help but yell out in a different tone, "Can you **** lightly? Kill the pig!"

I suspect some people read the description and see that it's about two "brothers" and give it a low rating without even watching it because they think it's incest. If they actually watched it then they'd see that the two boys are not related, and that it's not even a situation where one boy was adopted as an infant or toddler. Instead, he's adopted as a 12 year old. So it's a case of a teenager meeting a 12 year old, and that's not exactly a scenario of "incest" even if they did live in the same house and call each other "brother,"

I give you credit for stamina because I tried reading the English translation and it was so bad that I finally just gave up. It felt like a Google Auto-Translation. I got the sense that I was missing much of what the author had originally intended. Either that, or this simply was not a BL, because I saw no romance at all in the 10 chapters that I read. The boys were not ever even on the same page together. Instead, there were half a dozen other characters involved and the translation was so poor I could barely follow who they all were.

What's stunning is that this person has no problem publicly admitting that she has zero attention span and refuses to read anything more than a couple of lines. She boldly stated in replies to both you and to me that she refuses to read longer comments. Now, I would be ashamed to admit that I couldn't handle reading a lousy 2 paragraphs but here's someone not only admitting it, but doing so with a snotty, rude attitude about it. Christ, she acts as if reading a mere 2 paragraph comment were tantamount to reading freaking War & Peace.

Where did you find the novel? I could only find one English translation and it was so bad that I gave up after 20 pages. It felt like a Google auto-translation.

Yep, you nailed it. One cannot sink their teeth into something that's only 22 minutes long -- and that includes the intro and outro, so there's even less of the show. Incidentally, only the first episode was 27 minutes, the next 2 episodes were 22 minutes, so I assume the rest will also be 22 minutes or in that range.

I used to watch The Sopranos and Breaking Bad on cable and I had no problem waiting a week to see what happens next because those shows were 1 hour long. You got something from each episode when it aired. But you cannot get anything in a mere 22 minutes. Now, I was lucky to have not discovered the show until 3 episodes were already out so I watched all 3 in row (it took 1 hour), and thought, wow, this show is really good! Then I found out that they will only release 22 minutes next week, and that will feel like a tease. Maybe I'll wait until the whole show is finished before watching it. But now that I've already started I don't know if I can wait cuz I'm soooo curious about how the younger brother is going to make his move on the older brother, lol.

You just made a public testament to the fact that your attention span is too short to read a mere 2 paragraphs. So here, I'll give it to you in a shorter version: I asked why you felt compelled to make a personal insult about me having no life. I also asked you to restrict your comments to the show itself, instead of getting personal. This page is for comments about the SHOW, not about the personal lives of people who comment on the show.

Why are you making personal insults when I was talking about the show? Please restrict your comments to the show itself, because that's what this page is for. It's not for you to make personal insults about another person "not having anything better to do in life than binge watching."

Moreover, your insult has no basis because you don't know me and, therefore have no idea what my life is. But for your information, I am an English Professor and have plenty to do -- not that it's any of your business. But, hey, if you are going to get personal then that's my personal information. If I want a show to be 45 minutes a week instead of 22 minutes it's because one cannot get into plot and characters in a mere 22 minutes, and when it's a good show like "Unknown" it almost feels like a tease. Lastly, if I can take 45 minutes some evenings to watch a show it does not mean I "have nothing better to do in life than binge watching." Why would you draw such an insulting conclusion from my comment? Do you simply go negative as a reflex to any comment about a show?

Why are you telling me to drop the show when I clearly stated in my first sentence that the show was great? I love the show and that's why I'm annoyed that it's going to take so long to watch it. If I hated the show or thought it was only "ok" but not "great" I would not care if it took forever to finish. But when I think a show is great like "Unknown" is, I am anxious to know what happens next. For instance, I loved Blueming and that's why I was thrilled that they dropped it all at once. All the episodes together were only 2 hours in total, so watching the full show was like watching a movie after work. It clearly did well because they are doing a Blueming sequel. So I don't know why other BL's don't follow that pattern.

Also, I am not new to Taiwanese BL's. I watch them from every country -- Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Vietnam -- and I think it's absurd to drop all these shows in 20 minute segments. The K-BL's are even worse because some of them are only 15 minute segments. I understand breaking up a show over a couple of weeks to give it time to build a word of mouth following, but 15 and 20 minute segments a week make no sense -- especially when the segments are going to be stretched out over the course of 3 months with 12 episodes. It does not take 3 months to build word of mouth so I don't get why they take 12 weeks instead of just 6 weeks. I don't get what advantage the producers have in stretching it out for 3 months.

Now, there must be some advantage to it because marketing people must have advised the producers to stretch it out like this, but other than word of mouth, I don't get what the advantage is. Do you know? I am genuinely curious as to what advantage a marketing company would find doing this.

I assume you read the Chinese version. I could not make sense of the translation I saw. Truly, a google.translation does better than this person did. So I had no idea what was going on, but did notice that the 2 guys were almost never on the same page together. There were no sex scenes or kissing scenes. Zhe Yuan has an internal thought that he loves his older brother but that was the extent of it for 69 chapters. Is that how it was in the original? The translation was so bad that I could only skim the book, but I still could tell something as basic as whether or not two names appear on the same page, and these two guy's names did not. So I have no clue what the hell those 69 chapters were even about. What other plotline went on this novel?

The show's great, but the way they're dropping it sucks. Instead of putting out 12 eps of 22 minutes each, they should put out 6 eps of 45 minutes each. I've heard that dragging it out builds word of mouth for shows, but wouldn't 6 weeks be enough time to build word of mouth? This show is only 4.5 hours in total, yet it will take 3 months to finish. Think about that: it's going to take us 3 months to watch a mere 4.5 hours. That's just annoying.