MidnightReader

Good, but I enjoyed H2H more

My only complaint is that the series felt longer than it needed to be. In episode 8, I felt like we were getting a lot of filler and NC scenes just to expand the show out to 12 episodes, and by episode 10, I was watching at 2X speed so I wouldn't DNF it because I found my attention drifting.

Despite that, I liked the acting, except for JJ's, because it felt very stiff, but I've seen him in other things, and it's been fine, so it's probably because it was his first drama, or that's how they wanted him to act.

Didn't care about the singing. I rarely do unless music is the main focus of a character or plot, like Kim from Kinnporche, or ThamePo & Cutie Pie.

I love this kind of plot because it dives into something that many people experience, but don't really talk about. I have these kinds of dreams a few times out of the year, and it always leaves me feeling disoriented when they start happening in real life, and I think this show captured that feeling very well. I also like that in this series, it's an inherited gift.

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OMG please stop making vampire stories

If you are going to do a story centered around vampires, please take the time to build up the world. Logically would be nice.

The Lore is better than in My Golden Blood, which basically had no lore, but it's all over the place and felt like it was more to make sure everyone got their happy ending than to make actual sense.

First off, the vampire city was called Thaiwilight City, so already we were off to a great start (not). And for some reason in this city, they have a population problem, so no romance! Especially not the gay kind, because for some reason, the older vampires are homophobic even though that would help them with their problem. Couldn't they have come up with a form of birth control?

The vampires are literally humans that grow fangs to drink blood, and have a special city to themselves. You can kill them by breaking their neck. I'm still not convinced they actually live longer. Explain the passing of time, please, because if it does move more slowly, you did a piss poor job of showing it. In the vampire city, 100 years is 3 years in the human world, but when we are going back and forth between the worlds, it's like the passage of time is the same.

A human can become a vampire by either falling in love with a vampire and the vampire bites them, which will then turn that vampire into a human, or by a human who is dying being bitten by a vampire that loves them. A vampire can also become human by biting another vampire they are in love with on the full moon (does it have to be red?). So, for some reason, love is always involved, and it would have been interesting if this had been the reason for the "no love" rule instead of population control.

Why does Phum have a human counterpart? He is from the human world. He was once human before he was tricked into being a vampire, so he should be his own counterpart. I'm still confused on this point. The whole part about that counterpart having to be dead for them to go into their bodies is also very confusing. I mean, it takes the guilt away from them taking over their bodies, but why does it then make their bodies "vampire bodies"? It's an instantaneous process as well, which makes no sense if their bodies are changing at all. If they are "replacing" their human counterparts, you would think they would just be able to enter the human world once the counterpart died without taking over their actual bodies. I'm assuming it was done the way it was so that they all had a human life already set up for them, but it frustrated me throughout the whole show because they never explained how it works!

What was the recipe for the red wine? Nothing in your world makes sense, so don't tease me like this!

As far as comedies go, I did laugh a few times somewhere in the middle of the series, and I honestly don't think this series could have been good if it weren't a comedy. I feel weird saying that about a vampire show.

Frank and Lee have good chemistry. All the actors did a great job; I honestly don't know how some of them kept a straight face while saying some of their lines. I also have a new appreciation for Mod; his acting really stood out to me in this series.

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Waste of time

This is my first review on here, so I'm sorry if it's all over the place.

I watched this drama despite the poor rating because I like watching shows about time travel. Said time travel was pretty much the only thing I liked about it.

First off, the camera work was all over the place, giving us angles we didn't need, and the slow-motion shots (which I don't like in a good drama) were WAY too long.

The only thing I have to say about the actors and make-up is that Marc's eyes are bloodshot throughout pretty much the whole series, and it was very distracting.

The pacing of this show was okay at first, but by episode 7, I was watching it on 1.5 & sometimes 2x speed to get through it because I was interested to see how they would end it.

Soda's character is a silmball. He was already an asshole for hitting on someone else's boyfriend, but then he encouraged Bamee to treat Kiao like shit, and fired Kiao so he wouldn't be around Bamee.

The series could have also just been 10 episodes. We didn't need the drama of Bamee getting amnesia. In fact, the way he was acting during that time is something that would have driven me back to the past if I were Kiao.

Now to the biggest problem. WHAT THE F**K WAS THAT ENDING!? How was anyone working on this project okay with it? Did no alarm bells go off, or flags go up when they read the script? Why? It could have ended in several better and less creepy ways. Kiao could have just never returned to the past and lived his life the best he could. Everyone could have forgotten about each other, and they all live happily ever after in their separate lives. If Kiao needed to remember because it was a lesson than he could have moved on romantically to someone else! Why did we have to end this with a 40+ Kiao kissing Bamee who is under half his age!? You can't tell me that anyone is going to be happy about their relationship when they find out. Also, Kiao is so much older that there's a major power imbalance in the relationship, and unless something happens, Bamee is going to live a long time after Kiao dies. I just don't understand what they were thinking. Were they thinking?

Overall, this series was a waste of my time and left me feeling disappointed. CREEPY ending with no satisfaction.

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Bored and Disappointed

I had no expectations going into this show. That being said, what the hell happened?

First off, the little things. The speed effects & CGI were bad, and the OST was way too loud at times. Also, was that last scene filmed in front of a green screen?

The first couple of episodes were alright, but by episode 5, I found myself doomscrolling while the show played in the background, and I started watching it at x2 speed just to get through it.

I lost count of the number of times I wanted to DNF this series, but I didn't because of Neo. Then they kill him unnecessarily. They could have saved him if they wanted to. Why was Mark trying to heal him while he was still impaled? If it was too late for healing once you pulled him off, turn him. And you can try to argue that they needed permission because they can't die afterward—bullshit. 1. I'm sure Tonkla would have chosen to live & 2. I'm sure taking their head off or piercing the heart, even without having "golden blood," would kill them. I thought about dropping the show after he was killed by Nakan (whom I was hoping to see him have a romance with), but at that point, there were only 3 episodes left, so I pushed through it.

The plot was also way too predictable. I should not have known that Thara was after Golden Bloods for her own personal gain, episode 1. That twist doesn't even get revealed until episode 10. Was anyone really surprised by this? Nakan wanting to take her down because she killed someone he loved was also not a surprise at all. The biggest surprise was that they actually killed Tonkla because he was the only good character in the whole show, and killing him off was just a stupid decision. They should have just gone with an enemies-to-lovers trope and at least tried to save their sinking ship a little instead of letting it capsize.

The world-building was very surface-level and made everything feel fake. The lore of vampires is never properly explained, but we have no idea what normal vampire abilities are because they are all treated as expendable. Not even the important ones are that impressive tbh. The Mortal Instruments did a better job building up its vampire world in its first book, and they are barely a part of it. To me, this was just lazy writing. Everything in the fantasy genre needs rules; this series took the pre-established rules we know and threw them out the window, and replaced them with nothing. That didn't make the vampires feel powerful and impossible to kill; it just left me as a viewer feeling like no one wanted to put any effort into building the world or writing it into the script, so they just gave us nothing.

I've liked Gawin's acting in the few things I've seen him in, but with this series, I didn't care for it. I believe that is largely down to the directions he was given and the script giving him very little to work with.

Besides Tonkla, because he was just a good self-sacrificing person, I didn't care about any of the characters, not even Dome, and I love AJ. I spent more time questioning Tong's IQ and common sense than I should have had to, and everyone else was just uninteresting. Mark was interesting as he slowly became more human, but not enough to draw any interest in me. I do wonder why Thara was so inhuman since she's drained multiple Golden Bloods. Wouldn't that have made her more human and feel some kind of guilt? Did something happen? Is it because of how old she is? How old is she really? Who was the first vampire, and how did it happen? These small things could have built the world up a little, but too little, too late.

NC scenes were probably the best part of the series, and I honestly only looked up from my phone if they were talking, but it wasn't enough to save the series. No matter how many they try to shove in there in the end. It felt like there was one or two in every episode after they "did it" for the first time.

Lastly, the sleeping beauty moment in the last episode? Please never do that again. Or if you are going to, make it make sense and don't half ass it.

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This series is a merry-go-round

First off, I didn't really pay attention to the music; it was nothing special.

When I say the series is a merry-go-round, I mean it. This plot goes in circles. We start out with our main character, Keen, facing a lot of personal turmoil and money problems because his father borrowed money from a loan shark, Than is used to solve those money problems. Immediately after that problem is solved, someone else has money problems with a different loan shark. How is this problem solved? With Than and everyone else at the gym fighting in a tournament. This happening twice already felt very repetitive, and I looked at episode summaries, and sure enough, it was going to happen again, so I dropped the show.

Do I think the show is bad? No. I've watched way worse. The thing is, I've finished those shows because they weren't as time-consuming as this one. If these episodes had been shorter, around 40-50 minutes, I probably would have continued. I was already watching it at 2X speed. But no, all but one of the episodes I watched was over an hour. One was almost an hour and a half long! That it too long to sit in an episode, even if I hadn't been bored with the plot.

I couldn't even get into the relationships because both of them just fell together with no real buildup. They weren't together, and then they were so fast that I had to pause and try to figure out where in the hell the attraction started because there was no tension and only a couple of "moments" that hinted at them liking each other. From the moment Keen and Than got together, it also got very physical, between them and the second couple's NC scenes. It became repetitive, and they became moments that I only half paid attention to. Than also pays off Keen's debt after barely knowing him for a few weeks, which felt very unrealistic. Ait and Win will probably have problems down the road because it seems like Ait was doing something shady for his "boss" (probably a loan shark if I had to guess), but I wasn't interested enough to continue the series just for that.

I didn't care enough about the characters or the plot enough to continue the series. The show was missing a strong antagonist that our characters could work to overcome. Instead, we are thrown from one person causing a problem to another with no link between them, which made it feel like the plot had no clear direction or goal.

The actors overall did an alright job, I don't really have any complaints. They did what they could, given that the characters they were playing had no real depth.

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A tame version of Only Friends

This can be watched as a standalone series, but I will be comparing them!

Compared to OF, this series had very little kissing, almost no sex (and it didn't show nearly as much as OF), and basically no drug use. It had alcohol and half the amount of drama. It was like they were afraid to push the limits as they did in OF. The toxicity levels in OF broke the meter, while here it barely reached halfway. Everything was too safe.

That being said, I enjoyed OFDO more. Maybe it was the school setting that made the world feel bigger. Maybe it was that the overall chemistry between the actors was better. In OF, I only really liked FirstKhaotung & I really liked Mark as Nick, whereas in this series, even though I only liked the couple of RomeRaffy, I loved EarthMix's chemistry. Whatever it was, I got invested in the story faster than in OF.

I wasn't stressed at any point in the series(unlike in OF, where episodes 7 & 8 gave me SO much stress I couldn't be around people), and I honestly didn't care about Arnold & Tua (hate his name, it sounds like you're spitting) and cared very little about Jack & Dean. In episodes 7-8 & 11-12, I didn't even give Arnold & Tua half my attention because it was simply uninteresting. Jack and Dean (like Top and Mew) were the main focal point, but I found myself not caring if they got together or not, not because of what Dean did, but because Jack is a hothead who escalates situations using violence, and uses Raffy's feelings for him to hurt Dean, which hurts Raffy in the process. Jack, overall, was the most toxic character with nothing likable about him.

Dean rubbed me the wrong way with his interactions with Raffy. I'm assuming the reason they hate each other is because of Raffy's crush on Jack, which, okay, fair enough, but there were several times when Dean crossed the line and was straight up being nasty or rage baiting Raffy for no reason. So I didn't really like Dean either, but I don't think he deserves to end up with Jack.

I was 100% invested in Rome and Raffy's story. They honestly didn't get enough screen time, which left the scenes that would have caused me the most emotional pain to fall flat because as soon as the hurtful thing happened, they would jump to another couple. Their kiss scenes, though? I will admit to rewatching multiple times, especially the one in episode 2.

The main point of drama in this series was easily avoidable. If Dean and Arnold felt like they did nothing wrong, and they were single at the time, then they should have told the people they were pursuing the morning after. If it meant nothing, they wouldn't have felt guilty. Honestly, I don't even know how Dean remembered it, considering how much he drank that night. Dean didn't help matters any by going to Gameplay for a place to stay because he "had nowhere else to go". Excuse me, does Timmy not count as a friend? You can't tell me he would refuse to help if you had nowhere else to go. The only real drama that I felt was unavoidable was Raffy's feelings for Jack and Raffy & Dean being double cast as Romeo, which led to Dean and Arnold making couples content together. There were already massive amounts of jealousy going on there, and it naturally progressed with the story.

In Only Friends, Boston was the main reason behind the drama, and everything kind of spiraled out of control and became a chaotic mess because of how the characters reacted and retaliated. In this series, the drama felt more controlled and, in some cases, easily avoidable. Don't make the drama avoidable; it's not what we are here for. We are here for a toxic mess, and instead, we got characters toeing the line but never crossing it, while in Only Friends, Top and Boston didn't just cross the line, they obliterated it.

As for Tua's reaction, you know it's bad when Boston is the voice of reason. Like honey, sit down, you're not ready to handle the big leagues.

Like in OF, this series focused on the drama and didn't really care about building up character backstories or just dropping characters completely. This made it hard to care about the characters and what they are going through, and in some cases, even like them (like for me, Jack). Some things, like with Pete, just kind of resolved themselves in a lackluster way, and then we heard nothing about him after, and in both series, there are issues with at least one character's parent that are just never resolved; In OF, it was Ray, and in this one, it's Raffy. Honestly, for a character like Pete to be doing so much that SHOULD have caused drama, he felt more like a wall decoration with how involved he actually was.

Boston has changed a lot from the first series to this one. I expected him to be here to start drama, and his entrance made it feel that way, but he actually helped fix things this time around. I'm really glad that Nick found someone new, but I also can't help wanting him to have actually changed, and Nick sees that and gives him another chance. If anyone doesn't deserve one, though, it is Boston.

I like that we get a one-year time skip at the end to see how our characters are doing.

Was the guy at the end a hint at a possible season 3? We saw Mix at the end of OF, and he became the main character of OFDO, so I would like to think it's possible.

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