K-Drama 
A Frustrating Miss for Me
In all honesty, the popular guy falls for the socially awkward loner dynamic isn’t really my thing. But the idea that the loner secretly writes BL novels and that the popular guy is his unwitting protagonist genuinely intrigued me.
I thought this self-aware, meta twist could make a familiar setup feel fresh.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, the series doesn't make nearly enough of that concept.
I just couldn't connect with Hajime Suzuki as a character. I understand that his insecurity and difficulty believing someone like Serizawa could genuinely be interested in him are central to his character. And I don't expect someone who has struggled socially to suddenly become confident just because a popular guy likes him. But the constant overthinking and misunderstandings eventually wore me down.
What frustrated me most was the irony of his character. Here is someone who reads and writes BL, yet I kept wondering what he had actually been writing about all this time and where those stories came from, if he seemed to have so little awareness of his own romantic feelings. That question lingered for me, and I wish the series had done more with this aspect of his character.
Serizawa didn't help matters much either. So many misunderstandings could have been avoided with a little more honest communication. I don't mind misunderstandings in a rom-com when they reveal something meaningful about the characters or help their relationship develop, but here they often felt like a way to keep the two apart for longer rather than something that added much to their dynamic.
Eventually, I stopped feeling invested. I found myself skipping through episodes to see whether anything interesting would happen, and I eventually dropped the series after episode nine. I can't say whether the remaining episodes address any of these issues, but by that point, the cute moments were no longer enough to make up for my frustration.
Perhaps this was simply the wrong kind of comedy for me, but Popular Serizawa Acts Weird Around Me ended up being much more exhausting than enjoyable for me.
I thought this self-aware, meta twist could make a familiar setup feel fresh.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, the series doesn't make nearly enough of that concept.
I just couldn't connect with Hajime Suzuki as a character. I understand that his insecurity and difficulty believing someone like Serizawa could genuinely be interested in him are central to his character. And I don't expect someone who has struggled socially to suddenly become confident just because a popular guy likes him. But the constant overthinking and misunderstandings eventually wore me down.
What frustrated me most was the irony of his character. Here is someone who reads and writes BL, yet I kept wondering what he had actually been writing about all this time and where those stories came from, if he seemed to have so little awareness of his own romantic feelings. That question lingered for me, and I wish the series had done more with this aspect of his character.
Serizawa didn't help matters much either. So many misunderstandings could have been avoided with a little more honest communication. I don't mind misunderstandings in a rom-com when they reveal something meaningful about the characters or help their relationship develop, but here they often felt like a way to keep the two apart for longer rather than something that added much to their dynamic.
Eventually, I stopped feeling invested. I found myself skipping through episodes to see whether anything interesting would happen, and I eventually dropped the series after episode nine. I can't say whether the remaining episodes address any of these issues, but by that point, the cute moments were no longer enough to make up for my frustration.
Perhaps this was simply the wrong kind of comedy for me, but Popular Serizawa Acts Weird Around Me ended up being much more exhausting than enjoyable for me.
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