Haha, having just completed this under-4-hour J-BL about an already cohabiting pair of... emotionally suppressed but *ahem*physically active young men, I find myself not quite sure how to put things into words. I mean, there's a whole boatload of undercurrent of things going on in here - from a power imbalanced relationship, unrequited love angst, lack of communication & misunderstanding issues, feelings of doubt & insecurity, emotional suppression & denial, obsessive-possessive dynamic, you name it, this show's got it. And when you throw in a sexual aspect into the mix as well, my word, it can get even more complicated.
So, I'm not quite sure how to couch this drama in a way that explains what it is, because, haha, it's a mix of lots of things. But... if I had to really say what my biggest overall impression of this show was, it's one big fat helping of unrequited love angst. On both sides. With neither of them quite realising it either, hoo boy, which essentially leads to the whole morass of issues surfacing, personality issues included. It's the main driver for the whole show, really.
The only issue I have is, this show doesn't have the character growth or relationship development/ progression I tend to really enjoy and look out for in my dramas because for almost the entirety of its duration it is focused on the boys' wrestling with their hidden and suppressed feelings & issues with each other. But, as someone who also loves her unrequited love angst fest, this drama delivered it for me in rather delicious fashion.
So despite my rather complicated thoughts over it, I have to say, I quite liked it, haha.
As someone who has not seen or read the original source material, I went into this blind so here are my thoughts as a completely fresh pair of eyes.
For one, I liked the world-building or the story setup. It's historical fantasy at work where amongst the ordinary plebs of this world there exists both a supernatural threat, and people born with supernatural powers that give them the ability to neutralise said supernatural threat. And of course in true Japanese feudal society fashion, supernatural powers vary in strength and potency, and are passed down by bloodline so one can imagine wielders of the best and most powerful abilities are like the aristrocracy of society. And into this fascinating setup is a story of a girl whose parentage is supposed to be one of the best but she is a dud. And this dud was sent to the household of a powerful captain simply because he had frightened off all previous prospective fiancees.
From a love story or romance perspective, I thought this movie did well. It was able to show us our main couple's individual personalities from the get-go, and how their relationship slowly grew as they got to know each other. It was sweet, it was cute and it felt organic. I liked it a lot.
The world-building bit is probably where my main gripe lies because there is a lot of aspects to it which the movie just grazes over so for those who are not familiar with the source material, we have to go with the flow a lot with regards to the supernatural bits. It doesn't make the movie incoherent, but it does leave the viewer with some secondary questions in mind. And I personally felt that it didn't help that the movie spent a lot of time on a particular fight sequence where military officers were just going at each other for minutes and minutes on end in hand-to-hand or sword combat, no powers at all to be seen so it wasn't even really exciting to me. If half of that screen time could have been spent more on supernatural exposition, that would have been a great deal more effective, I felt.
Anyway, I still enjoyed it, and as a romance junkie who always enjoys a good love story, this was a nice treat set in quite an interesting historical fantasy setting.
A supposed Chinese remake of 'Addicted: Heroin', I genuinely wondered why they decided on this, especially since it's still Mainland China. In any case, my curiosity over how they were planning to parse this story made me check this out.
The first half of the drama was, to me, the best part as we find our boys at different spectrums of society - one the son of a rich businessman, the other the son of a poor bit-job blue-collar-worker - but with one thing in common: they both come from broken & incomplete families. Rich Boy, in a fit of rebellion, transfers to Poor Boy's school and they rub up against each other in the wrong way when their hot-blooded personalities clash. Rich Boy soon discovers Poor Boy's family situation and, drawn by the little community that surrounds him, integrates himself into that place. It's found family trope in heavy action, and this trope stays the course throughout the entire drama.
My main gripe is really with the 2nd half where things, I felt, stagnated in terms of character development and relationship development. Rich Boy had, by far, a more solid and in-depth backstory and emotional baggage explored by the drama. Poor Boy was disproportionately short-changed by comparison and it didn't help either that his character was set-up to be stone-faced and sullen a lot of the time so it was hard to know what he was really thinking or feeling. Also, the boys' relationship didn't feel consistently portrayed to me. I got the feeling the drama was trying so hard not to overstep their boundaries that they were neither here nor there. There were places where I felt the drama tried too hard to be too ambiguous, it lost context; and there were places where it just felt like two boys being blokes and doing blokey things, no subtext whatsoever. It felt really weird to me - this uneven transition and skirting around the subject matter. I have to admit I didn't really like it how this show did it.
The 2nd half also went very much into slice-of-life mode with 3 plot arcs that, I felt, didn't really do much to add to the boys' overall narrative (character or relationship wise). By the end of the drama, they were still hot-tempered, erratic and volatile, still lacked proper communication with each other, blowing cold one minute and hot the next. And the ending was just... plain weird. It sort of ended nowhere, really.
In short, definitely a different beast of a remake. It has more found-family and slice-of-life feels. I don't do well with slice-of-life so this, coupled with the uneven character & relationship portrayals, was a bit of a struggle for me after a while.
One of those short-length series with a total run-time of about 3 hours 20 minutes, this little xianxia tells a story of a deity due to ascend to Heavenly Emperor status by going through 3 trial calamities, and a little flower fairy who is determined to accompany him in his trials.
Due to its short run-time, the pace of the romance and events in the trial lifetimes were necessarily rather fast, but I found it interesting how the drama was determined to flood the audience with many fan service scenes. It was as though the drama pressed the fast-forward button on everything but the minute it arrived at the couple in seduction or romance mode, that fast-forward button immediately paused and went into slow-motion, LOL. So, for viewers who love to have their fill of romantic scenes and atmosphere, this show will give you a real fix, kisses included.
The trial lifetimes and relationship progression is decent considering the show's length but I personally wasn't particularly sold on the way they developed it - I felt it was too perfunctory and I didn't feel I was given sufficient time to get emotionally invested in their situation or their romance.
Still, the calamitous trial lifetimes provide interesting stories & twists without getting too bogged down into heavy melodramatic territory so this might be a good watch for those wanting a short, quick but interesting xianxia story about 3 trial lifetimes with a happy ending.
Criminally underappreciated here on MDL, the only reason I happened to come across this hidden gem of a show was because I found out that it had an over '8' (8.6 at this point in time) average rating on Douban, which, to be honest, is a darn amazing rating for any drama on that place, what more a short little low budget passion project like this one. And after watching it, I can understand why.
It's a bittersweet but ingeniously woven tale of a pair of lovers separated across space and time. Now just as you're thinking 'that's nothing particularly unique', well, think again because this space-time separation has an intriguing twist - it's in reverse order. Like two parallel strings of beads running in opposite directions to each other, each bead on the string momentarily brush against the other in a brief kiss before having to move on on its inexorable journey down the line, but each brush and each kiss builds in itself its own little story of star-crossed love and loss.
Standing at 14 episodes, each just under 30 minutes, this production might be short but it is carefully and intricately done. The first episode starts off with our modern day history professor publishing a historical account about a femme fatale empress known as the Demon Empress, only to find himself time-travelling back into that ancient time via a jade pendant. He witnesses the final day of this empress only to realise that perhaps what he thought he knew as historical facts, he might have seriously been mistaken. And thus begins his series of meetings in time with this empress, in reverse timeline order.
Seriously, this drama needs to be seen to really appreciate the writing of this story and the level of detail the production team took pains to embed and craft so that it all coherently links together despite going backwards. Particular kudos also goes to the actress playing the female lead, the Demon Empress, for her beautifully nuanced and heartwrenching performance. Although it is a star-crossed love story, it's also primarily her journey and her story.
It's a lovely but bittersweet story, which is quite innovatively told, and quite wonderfully crafted.
PS: This is one show where, after finishing, a rewatch is in order to be able to appreciate the earlier episode build-up and craftsmanship of the story. Also, if one watches it backwards, one also gets the chance to see the timeline from the other main lead's perspective, it's really quite ingenious.
'Quirky oddball teacher-student romance with morbid themes' is my best concise summary of 'Falling High School Girl and Irresponsible Teacher'.
There is really nothing like the Japanese when it comes to being able to mesh together such a weird cocktail of themes to produce something quite ingeniously sublime at times. This drama uses depressing and rather morbid themes such as attempted suicide, depression, loneliness and alienation as a foundation upon which an unconventional teacher-student romance gets built. Something as controversial as a teacher-student romance is not easy to handle but this show does it with a skillful use of black comedy paired with poignant, heartwarming moments that can turn on each other in surprising and unexpected quickness.
Our main pair is one bizarre but rather adorable couple. It's quite interesting how any predatory vibes that could easily seep into this teacher-student trope frequently gets smartly erased through the male teacher's often silly, bordering on clownery antics. He's a lot more than what he seems under that careless attitude and the actor who portrays him does it with a flair and charm that is quite astonishingly endearing. It's hard to dislike him despite all his heavy flirtation as there are often small little vulnerable moments which he lets slip once in a while that makes one's heart sometimes ache for him.
Our female lead has a lot of growing to do here and it's quite a heartwarming thing to see her slowly come out of her withdrawn and gloomy self into a more open, warm and empathic person. Her sharp, honest and sometimes merciless tongue (and attitude) is also a perfect foil to our male lead's mad character. She grounds him like a steady anchor, and he is the string of the kite that lets her fly into the sky.
This is certainly an unconventional quirky show with some dark topics but I thought it balanced all the various weird and conflicting themes well. I would have liked to have a bit more of an insight into our male lead (he's such a fascinatingly complicated character) but I guess this is really the female lead's story.
Hi FRIENDS I think there is no tagging facility in MDL to alert multiple commenters .. so I decided to JUST post…
As someone who has just finished the drama and loved it to bits myself, I totally understand where you're coming from. I was going to write up a whole analysis on Li Xun and Zhu Yun, and their relationship but man, you did it for Li Xun for me. Thank you. Great analysis.
Once upon a time, there was a King. Although he was gifted with incredible talent and strength, the world was not kind to him and waged war against him. Aloof, domineering and undeterred, he would always sail into battle without bowing down his head to his enemies. Battle-scarred and war-torn, he would stand victorious on the peak despite being buffeted by harsh and bitter winds. It was always lonely at the top but he thought he would be fine. Because he thought that this was the price he had to pay to stand at the top and rule.
But then one day he came upon a city, and in that city lived a Princess. This princess had always been protected and sheltered in her palace, and never knew the harsh realities of the world. But she was a kind princess who loved her people. When the King first met the Princess, he despised her. He thought her warmth and kindness a weakness that would not let her survive in a cruel world outside, but he soon found out that he was wrong. He soon found out that every time she smiled at him, he somehow received greater courage to keep on fighting. He soon found out that every time she stood beside him, fighting battles were no longer the bitter chore as it once was. He wanted to establish a kingdom for his Princess, a place where she could blossom and bloom, while he would protect her with his sword and with his shield.
But his enemies, who hated his strength and his power, were many and they sought to bring him down. They set a deadly trap for him. The King knew that he would be captured and sent his Princess away. He then rode out, faced his enemies, became heavily injured and was captured and imprisoned in a dungeon. But he was not defeated. He knew that he would one day rise up and break free, and then he would wreck deadly vengence on those who injured him and his. He was only biding his time...
... does this not sound a bit like a fairytale? This is the beginning of 'Lighter & Princess'.
I don't know about others but, for me, this was one beautiful story of a hardened King and his saviour Princess. And I don't know about others but while this King was indeed an incredible King, he was also a lonely and flawed King. And I don't know about others but, at the end of the day, it was the Princess who truly owned this fairytale. She was his light & anchor when he would have been swallowed up by the world. She was his inner conscience & his moral compass when he was in danger of being lost. She was his support & his strength whenever it was in danger of failing or growing weak. She was surprisingly fierce in her protectiveness, and while she could allow herself to bow down before others, she refused to allow her King to do the same - because he was hers. She was the true hero of this story but she was only able to shine because she had her King. Without him, she would be nothing; and without her, he would be the same. This is the heartbeat of 'Lighter & Princess'. Their tale is a tale of woe and love. And it is the tale of a love that had to be forged through fire & water before coming out golden. I absolutely loved it.
Two adult toddlers playing at love --> this is my overall impression of this (sad to say) rather shallow and bland drama about an over 40-year-old man grovelling his way to get a 30-year-old ingenue to like him.
I found that the characterisation here left much to be desired, with the female lead having a mentality of a toddler i.e. she had no thoughts or opinions of her own. She was influenced by everything she saw or heard, even random strangers in the park or in a cafe. And while she was supposed to have started off 'strong' by rescuing our male lead when he was apparently being beaten into a pulp by delinquent teenagers, she never again displayed any of that strength or conviction or backbone hereafter. She spent the rest of the drama in cowering timidity, second-third-fourth-guessing herself into knots and utterly relied on the male lead for any sense of direction or security. I personally found nothing attractive about her insipid character, and often wondered what the male lead saw in her.
As for the male lead, he was almost a fellow toddler himself. In front of the female lead, he was relatively calm and composed but when she was out of sight he collapsed into a mewling, insecure, anxious puddle of worries. He too hardly took charge of his life and depended on his two comedic wingmen for directions and advice. For an over 40-year-old man, he often acted like a teenage boy in the flush of puberty, hornyness included, it was sometimes hard to respect him as a mature man.
I really struggled to finish this one as I had no real interest or emotional investment in either of these characters or their romance. The only positive things I could think of were the rather tastefully executed bed scenes (there were several of them, can you believe?) and the initial sexual tension in the first episode when there was still some ambiguity from the initial setup.
This almost 3-hour movie is a follow-up sequel on the 'Bpoop Phaeh Saniwaat' or 'Love Destiny' Thai lakorn hit back in 2018, but except for some minor callbacks on the original series, it can mostly stand alone on its own as a separate movie and story.
Set in 1844 during the Rattanakosin Kingdom of Siam, this movie goes forward over 100 years after the events of the original series and features the reincarnations of our main couple under new guises. The male lead has some inkling of his reincarnated status via intermittent dreams, but our female lead is stubbornly oblivious, which makes for a rather funny and tempestuous courtship process. And right in the midst of this courtship dance is the Kingdom of Siam's tenuous and tense relationship with both the British and the then-French Cochinchina (now part of Vietnam).
Part of what made the original series so absorbing was the historical context surrounding & encompassing our main leads and their participation in some of those events, thereby creating a rather immersive setting for viewers. This movie also attempts to replicate this same charm by dropping little bits of historical nuggets of its time but, it being a movie-length show, there is necessarily less of the historical events on show. An iron steamship and gunpowder firearms played the biggest starring roles, LOL.
Still, this is a light-hearted historical romantic comedy movie, and there are more laughs and comedic moments than romance or history. For those seeking an easy & fun Thai historical rom-com with none of those soap opera elements the Thais love to inject to raise audience blood pressure, this movie is a worthy candidate to consider, and a fun sequel to what was a more substantial drama series.
Link to joshysub fansub of the movie:https://www.joshysub.com/post/my-beautiful-man-eternal
LMAO! Is that so? Thanks for letting me know, had no idea it was the same as the AI subbed version. No wonder key conversations were rather gobbledygook.
First impression musings... (A bit long but no spoilers, feel free to scroll past if you're not interested)
I've been waiting for the 3rd movie instalment of the 'Utsukushii Kare' franchise with a mix of trepidation and excitement because I've really enjoyed the flawed & complex character-driven 1st & 2nd seasons a lot. So, when I'd heard that finally some English subs were available for the movie, I looked forward to checking it out despite being half-worried the movie finale might not live up to their earlier content, and half-excited to check out how the whole franchise resolved itself.
Having seen the joshysub fansub version (thank you @AthenaThe StorierX for sharing the link, I'm also sharing it under this post to pay it forward xD), I find myself having a great deal of mixed feelings over it, LOL. For one, while the fansubs are largely coherent, I still found myself not quite understanding the full context of key dialogues and conversations in the movie. Which might have been less detrimental in a less character-driven & emotionally-driven show, but for this one I feel it's important in order to properly understand the true content of conversations as they are the only source of reveal about the inner thoughts of the characters and their hidden emotional touchpoints. So, as much as I appreciated this fansub, I felt that I wasn't able to really appreciate this movie properly because I had lost a lot of nuance and layers hidden within the conversations. Which is why I refuse to rate and review this movie until better subs are available.
But from what I've seen so far, I think I can say that this movie's tone & feel came across slightly different compared to their earlier 1st & 2nd seasons. I think it's because, compared to the earlier character-focused productions, this one had a larger proportion of plot elements and time spent on certain side characters which, although they were relevant, I personally felt that they took the pedal off the focus of our main characters' internal struggles with themselves and each other. This slight dilution really subtly changed the intensity & concentration which was so compellingly felt in seasons 1 & 2 and I felt that loss.
The movie was also almost solely focused on Hira's perspective, which is understandable considering that his deep-seated issues were the greatest stumbling block to the whole relationship development and therefore needed the greatest attention & resolution. But man, this is a story about 2 flawed boys and their dissonant yet complementary relationship! It takes two hands to clap so I felt a bit short-changed over how the movie slightly shunted Kiyoi to the side. Season 2 had such a great balance of their disparate perspectives which helped the audience get really emotionally invested in their issues and their growth but here, it's quite jarringly one-sided. I'm sad. I dunno, maybe I was expecting a bit too much considering how much I loved the first two seasons and their multifaceted perspectives.
Which isn't to say that this movie isn't good. Lack of a full understanding of the conversations aside (which led to a lack of full understanding of the characters' inner issues) and the lopsided focus on Hira aside, this movie was a lovely continuation and resolution of the rather bumpy & tumultous journey of these two interesting boys. There were yummy fanservice scenes and warm moments, and there was good progress both from a character growth perspective and from a relationship development perspective. It's a good finale for what has, to me, been an absolutely riveting & scintillating series. I just kinda wished it could have been that wee bit better, LMAO, but that's just me being greedy and me having a higher level of expectation than usual. Hopefully once better subs are out and I'm able to fully grasp the true content of the conversations, I might feel more satisfied. Crossing my fingers for this one!
A sweet, wholesome, wish-fulfilment fluffy modern romance about a secret high-school crush eventually being realised later in adulthood.
I believe that if one is looking for an idealistic youth romance with a wholesome, constantly supportive and devoted male lead, there's likely nothing else out there that could possibly outclass this one. Our male lead has almost no character flaws to speak of, and the only conflicts he struggles with are those of an external nature i.e. saddled with debt by virtue of having an irresponsible father, and of being 5 years older than the female lead. Neither of these are truly major impediments, really, and they at least give the male lead some extra dimensions to his character else he really could end up being too one-dimensional with his almost perfect personality.
The female lead is a sometimes feisty, sometimes timid character who can be somewhat spoilt & childish, somewhat naive, and somewhat sensible at times. In short, very much typical of a young, pampered girl of her time with a single-minded focus on her older unrequited crush. For me, her spoilt & childish bits were the unlikeable bits about her, and her life choices were all entirely male-lead-influenced which made her come across like a doormat a lot of the time because it came across as her not really having a life or independence outside of the male lead (another bit I didn't quite like). Her bickering relationship with her older brother was probably the only part of the show where I felt it was her most authentic and sparkling part of her character.
But I have to give this show (and the production team) credit. While the characters themselves and their relationship are a bit too airbrushed & idealistic to often be true, the team still managed to give them enough nuance and dimension so as to make them more fleshed out than just cardboard characters. There's enough of an authentic feel to the whole setup that gives this show a more believable heft, and to make the characters come across a bit more relatable to the audience. I can totally understand why a lot of people found it such a sweet, feel-good and engaging youth romance. I myself liked it well enough, but it would not have the same level of draw for me as a romance with more complex, multifaceted characters (because I love those the best).
This is an upbeat and fluffy show. Our main character is always styled in all sorts of bright, interesting & sometimes quirky designs, with the show also constantly featuring each fashion style as magazine cover page montages (viewers who like fashion or who tend to pay attention to fashion/ outfits, would love this aspect of the show), and she has the character to match too, being almost like a little firecracker with her quick-fire way of speaking, vocal exclamations & reactions, and intricate attention to detail. It is this last quality that eventually makes her shine as a proofreader and I like how the drama focuses on the different aspects of proofreading, giving viewers a bit of an insight (exaggerated at times) into this little-known department.
Romance isn't the main focus and very much pushed into the background here (which is a bit of a shame for romance-junkies like me) but Japanese shows are always good at building supporting character rapport with the audience and this is no exception with the proofreading department's members, as well as a particular editor (Mr Octopus) making memorable interactions with our main character.
All in all, a mix of fun, informative and a light-hearted watch. While it might not have much emotional engagement, I found it was still a good drama to pass time with.
Featuring an incredibly naive & honest female lead who found herself cheated out of a massive sum of money and had to rely on the cunning wiles of a genius swindler to extract herself out of the hole she dug (and keeps digging!) herself in, this show was just... too incredibly ridiculous to take seriously.
I know it's an old-school classic and I recognise that this show deliberately chose to heavily dramatise itself as its signature style but the whole thing sort of wore thin on me by the time the penultimate episode rolled around. The female lead is deliberately styled to be an excessively naive, silly, trusting single-cell amoeba because she's the perfect foil to showcase the male lead's own scheming brilliance in being able to dig her out of the incredibly massive holes she keeps nuclear-bombing herself into. Side characters were exaggerated caricatures fitted in here & there as convenient plot devices for added game complications. Some of the games were rather interesting but others weren't that impressive (especially the last one), and there's no character development or depth to speak of as this is not the show's main aim or concept.
Honestly, except for the suave male lead and his rescue schemes, this show did not really hold any appeal to me as it had very little of the ingredients I look for & like in my shows, but for those looking for some dated but highly-stylised mind-game type shows, this is a decent one to consider.
A twenty-year-old young man, with his controlling mother in tow, goes ‘off grid’ and finds his deceased father’s long lost best friend living up in the mountains. And thus are the curtains opened and drawn back on a dialogue-rich, character-heavy play.
I likened the whole production to a play because it comes across very much like one where 3 characters, each standing at different points on the stage, interact with one another and, through the ebb-and-flow of such interactions, we get a front-row seat on each character’s world view & life philosophy from the point of where they stand.
The play takes us through quick openers & introductions to each character’s situation in life and where they stand in relation to one another. And through the dialogue, and through the way they dance around one another’s characters, the audience also gets an idea of their personalities, and their life experiences, which contribute to the shaping of their characters. It’s a beautiful dance, really. There are moments where the characters move wonderfully in sync to each other’s rhythm, there’s a fleeting meeting of minds, and a touching of souls, but there are also moments of conflict, tension and jarring disagreements. The whole thing builds up into one massive crescendo, only to end with all 3 characters still standing at the same points on the stage where they started, unchanged and yet changed in some small way, and then the curtains come down and the play closes.
I don’t know about others but I loved it. The dialogues are rich in insights but it is also the unspoken things, the things left unsaid that hang over the whole atmosphere like almost tangible clouds, that give the show such compelling viewing. This isn’t a wish-fulfilment type of show. It’s a showcase of the deep complexities of being human and of being different from each other.
I’ll be honest, I’d totally given up on Thai BLs with how shallow and superficial they’ve been making them these days, so this one came as a totally unexpected and pleasant surprise. Massive thankies to an MDL friend who persuaded me to give this one a try and accompanied me along the way. This show was like hard diamond cloaked in velvet satin.
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So, I'm not quite sure how to couch this drama in a way that explains what it is, because, haha, it's a mix of lots of things. But... if I had to really say what my biggest overall impression of this show was, it's one big fat helping of unrequited love angst. On both sides. With neither of them quite realising it either, hoo boy, which essentially leads to the whole morass of issues surfacing, personality issues included. It's the main driver for the whole show, really.
The only issue I have is, this show doesn't have the character growth or relationship development/ progression I tend to really enjoy and look out for in my dramas because for almost the entirety of its duration it is focused on the boys' wrestling with their hidden and suppressed feelings & issues with each other. But, as someone who also loves her unrequited love angst fest, this drama delivered it for me in rather delicious fashion.
So despite my rather complicated thoughts over it, I have to say, I quite liked it, haha.
For one, I liked the world-building or the story setup. It's historical fantasy at work where amongst the ordinary plebs of this world there exists both a supernatural threat, and people born with supernatural powers that give them the ability to neutralise said supernatural threat. And of course in true Japanese feudal society fashion, supernatural powers vary in strength and potency, and are passed down by bloodline so one can imagine wielders of the best and most powerful abilities are like the aristrocracy of society. And into this fascinating setup is a story of a girl whose parentage is supposed to be one of the best but she is a dud. And this dud was sent to the household of a powerful captain simply because he had frightened off all previous prospective fiancees.
From a love story or romance perspective, I thought this movie did well. It was able to show us our main couple's individual personalities from the get-go, and how their relationship slowly grew as they got to know each other. It was sweet, it was cute and it felt organic. I liked it a lot.
The world-building bit is probably where my main gripe lies because there is a lot of aspects to it which the movie just grazes over so for those who are not familiar with the source material, we have to go with the flow a lot with regards to the supernatural bits. It doesn't make the movie incoherent, but it does leave the viewer with some secondary questions in mind. And I personally felt that it didn't help that the movie spent a lot of time on a particular fight sequence where military officers were just going at each other for minutes and minutes on end in hand-to-hand or sword combat, no powers at all to be seen so it wasn't even really exciting to me. If half of that screen time could have been spent more on supernatural exposition, that would have been a great deal more effective, I felt.
Anyway, I still enjoyed it, and as a romance junkie who always enjoys a good love story, this was a nice treat set in quite an interesting historical fantasy setting.
The first half of the drama was, to me, the best part as we find our boys at different spectrums of society - one the son of a rich businessman, the other the son of a poor bit-job blue-collar-worker - but with one thing in common: they both come from broken & incomplete families. Rich Boy, in a fit of rebellion, transfers to Poor Boy's school and they rub up against each other in the wrong way when their hot-blooded personalities clash. Rich Boy soon discovers Poor Boy's family situation and, drawn by the little community that surrounds him, integrates himself into that place. It's found family trope in heavy action, and this trope stays the course throughout the entire drama.
My main gripe is really with the 2nd half where things, I felt, stagnated in terms of character development and relationship development. Rich Boy had, by far, a more solid and in-depth backstory and emotional baggage explored by the drama. Poor Boy was disproportionately short-changed by comparison and it didn't help either that his character was set-up to be stone-faced and sullen a lot of the time so it was hard to know what he was really thinking or feeling.
Also, the boys' relationship didn't feel consistently portrayed to me. I got the feeling the drama was trying so hard not to overstep their boundaries that they were neither here nor there. There were places where I felt the drama tried too hard to be too ambiguous, it lost context; and there were places where it just felt like two boys being blokes and doing blokey things, no subtext whatsoever. It felt really weird to me - this uneven transition and skirting around the subject matter. I have to admit I didn't really like it how this show did it.
The 2nd half also went very much into slice-of-life mode with 3 plot arcs that, I felt, didn't really do much to add to the boys' overall narrative (character or relationship wise). By the end of the drama, they were still hot-tempered, erratic and volatile, still lacked proper communication with each other, blowing cold one minute and hot the next. And the ending was just... plain weird. It sort of ended nowhere, really.
In short, definitely a different beast of a remake. It has more found-family and slice-of-life feels. I don't do well with slice-of-life so this, coupled with the uneven character & relationship portrayals, was a bit of a struggle for me after a while.
Due to its short run-time, the pace of the romance and events in the trial lifetimes were necessarily rather fast, but I found it interesting how the drama was determined to flood the audience with many fan service scenes. It was as though the drama pressed the fast-forward button on everything but the minute it arrived at the couple in seduction or romance mode, that fast-forward button immediately paused and went into slow-motion, LOL. So, for viewers who love to have their fill of romantic scenes and atmosphere, this show will give you a real fix, kisses included.
The trial lifetimes and relationship progression is decent considering the show's length but I personally wasn't particularly sold on the way they developed it - I felt it was too perfunctory and I didn't feel I was given sufficient time to get emotionally invested in their situation or their romance.
Still, the calamitous trial lifetimes provide interesting stories & twists without getting too bogged down into heavy melodramatic territory so this might be a good watch for those wanting a short, quick but interesting xianxia story about 3 trial lifetimes with a happy ending.
It's a bittersweet but ingeniously woven tale of a pair of lovers separated across space and time. Now just as you're thinking 'that's nothing particularly unique', well, think again because this space-time separation has an intriguing twist - it's in reverse order. Like two parallel strings of beads running in opposite directions to each other, each bead on the string momentarily brush against the other in a brief kiss before having to move on on its inexorable journey down the line, but each brush and each kiss builds in itself its own little story of star-crossed love and loss.
Standing at 14 episodes, each just under 30 minutes, this production might be short but it is carefully and intricately done. The first episode starts off with our modern day history professor publishing a historical account about a femme fatale empress known as the Demon Empress, only to find himself time-travelling back into that ancient time via a jade pendant. He witnesses the final day of this empress only to realise that perhaps what he thought he knew as historical facts, he might have seriously been mistaken. And thus begins his series of meetings in time with this empress, in reverse timeline order.
Seriously, this drama needs to be seen to really appreciate the writing of this story and the level of detail the production team took pains to embed and craft so that it all coherently links together despite going backwards. Particular kudos also goes to the actress playing the female lead, the Demon Empress, for her beautifully nuanced and heartwrenching performance. Although it is a star-crossed love story, it's also primarily her journey and her story.
It's a lovely but bittersweet story, which is quite innovatively told, and quite wonderfully crafted.
PS: This is one show where, after finishing, a rewatch is in order to be able to appreciate the earlier episode build-up and craftsmanship of the story.
Also, if one watches it backwards, one also gets the chance to see the timeline from the other main lead's perspective, it's really quite ingenious.
There is really nothing like the Japanese when it comes to being able to mesh together such a weird cocktail of themes to produce something quite ingeniously sublime at times. This drama uses depressing and rather morbid themes such as attempted suicide, depression, loneliness and alienation as a foundation upon which an unconventional teacher-student romance gets built. Something as controversial as a teacher-student romance is not easy to handle but this show does it with a skillful use of black comedy paired with poignant, heartwarming moments that can turn on each other in surprising and unexpected quickness.
Our main pair is one bizarre but rather adorable couple. It's quite interesting how any predatory vibes that could easily seep into this teacher-student trope frequently gets smartly erased through the male teacher's often silly, bordering on clownery antics. He's a lot more than what he seems under that careless attitude and the actor who portrays him does it with a flair and charm that is quite astonishingly endearing. It's hard to dislike him despite all his heavy flirtation as there are often small little vulnerable moments which he lets slip once in a while that makes one's heart sometimes ache for him.
Our female lead has a lot of growing to do here and it's quite a heartwarming thing to see her slowly come out of her withdrawn and gloomy self into a more open, warm and empathic person. Her sharp, honest and sometimes merciless tongue (and attitude) is also a perfect foil to our male lead's mad character. She grounds him like a steady anchor, and he is the string of the kite that lets her fly into the sky.
This is certainly an unconventional quirky show with some dark topics but I thought it balanced all the various weird and conflicting themes well. I would have liked to have a bit more of an insight into our male lead (he's such a fascinatingly complicated character) but I guess this is really the female lead's story.
But then one day he came upon a city, and in that city lived a Princess. This princess had always been protected and sheltered in her palace, and never knew the harsh realities of the world. But she was a kind princess who loved her people. When the King first met the Princess, he despised her. He thought her warmth and kindness a weakness that would not let her survive in a cruel world outside, but he soon found out that he was wrong. He soon found out that every time she smiled at him, he somehow received greater courage to keep on fighting. He soon found out that every time she stood beside him, fighting battles were no longer the bitter chore as it once was. He wanted to establish a kingdom for his Princess, a place where she could blossom and bloom, while he would protect her with his sword and with his shield.
But his enemies, who hated his strength and his power, were many and they sought to bring him down. They set a deadly trap for him. The King knew that he would be captured and sent his Princess away. He then rode out, faced his enemies, became heavily injured and was captured and imprisoned in a dungeon. But he was not defeated. He knew that he would one day rise up and break free, and then he would wreck deadly vengence on those who injured him and his. He was only biding his time...
... does this not sound a bit like a fairytale? This is the beginning of 'Lighter & Princess'.
I don't know about others but, for me, this was one beautiful story of a hardened King and his saviour Princess. And I don't know about others but while this King was indeed an incredible King, he was also a lonely and flawed King. And I don't know about others but, at the end of the day, it was the Princess who truly owned this fairytale. She was his light & anchor when he would have been swallowed up by the world. She was his inner conscience & his moral compass when he was in danger of being lost. She was his support & his strength whenever it was in danger of failing or growing weak. She was surprisingly fierce in her protectiveness, and while she could allow herself to bow down before others, she refused to allow her King to do the same - because he was hers. She was the true hero of this story but she was only able to shine because she had her King. Without him, she would be nothing; and without her, he would be the same. This is the heartbeat of 'Lighter & Princess'. Their tale is a tale of woe and love. And it is the tale of a love that had to be forged through fire & water before coming out golden. I absolutely loved it.
I found that the characterisation here left much to be desired, with the female lead having a mentality of a toddler i.e. she had no thoughts or opinions of her own. She was influenced by everything she saw or heard, even random strangers in the park or in a cafe. And while she was supposed to have started off 'strong' by rescuing our male lead when he was apparently being beaten into a pulp by delinquent teenagers, she never again displayed any of that strength or conviction or backbone hereafter. She spent the rest of the drama in cowering timidity, second-third-fourth-guessing herself into knots and utterly relied on the male lead for any sense of direction or security. I personally found nothing attractive about her insipid character, and often wondered what the male lead saw in her.
As for the male lead, he was almost a fellow toddler himself. In front of the female lead, he was relatively calm and composed but when she was out of sight he collapsed into a mewling, insecure, anxious puddle of worries. He too hardly took charge of his life and depended on his two comedic wingmen for directions and advice. For an over 40-year-old man, he often acted like a teenage boy in the flush of puberty, hornyness included, it was sometimes hard to respect him as a mature man.
I really struggled to finish this one as I had no real interest or emotional investment in either of these characters or their romance. The only positive things I could think of were the rather tastefully executed bed scenes (there were several of them, can you believe?) and the initial sexual tension in the first episode when there was still some ambiguity from the initial setup.
Set in 1844 during the Rattanakosin Kingdom of Siam, this movie goes forward over 100 years after the events of the original series and features the reincarnations of our main couple under new guises. The male lead has some inkling of his reincarnated status via intermittent dreams, but our female lead is stubbornly oblivious, which makes for a rather funny and tempestuous courtship process. And right in the midst of this courtship dance is the Kingdom of Siam's tenuous and tense relationship with both the British and the then-French Cochinchina (now part of Vietnam).
Part of what made the original series so absorbing was the historical context surrounding & encompassing our main leads and their participation in some of those events, thereby creating a rather immersive setting for viewers. This movie also attempts to replicate this same charm by dropping little bits of historical nuggets of its time but, it being a movie-length show, there is necessarily less of the historical events on show. An iron steamship and gunpowder firearms played the biggest starring roles, LOL.
Still, this is a light-hearted historical romantic comedy movie, and there are more laughs and comedic moments than romance or history. For those seeking an easy & fun Thai historical rom-com with none of those soap opera elements the Thais love to inject to raise audience blood pressure, this movie is a worthy candidate to consider, and a fun sequel to what was a more substantial drama series.
https://www.joshysub.com/post/my-beautiful-man-eternal
I've been waiting for the 3rd movie instalment of the 'Utsukushii Kare' franchise with a mix of trepidation and excitement because I've really enjoyed the flawed & complex character-driven 1st & 2nd seasons a lot. So, when I'd heard that finally some English subs were available for the movie, I looked forward to checking it out despite being half-worried the movie finale might not live up to their earlier content, and half-excited to check out how the whole franchise resolved itself.
Having seen the joshysub fansub version (thank you @AthenaThe StorierX for sharing the link, I'm also sharing it under this post to pay it forward xD), I find myself having a great deal of mixed feelings over it, LOL. For one, while the fansubs are largely coherent, I still found myself not quite understanding the full context of key dialogues and conversations in the movie. Which might have been less detrimental in a less character-driven & emotionally-driven show, but for this one I feel it's important in order to properly understand the true content of conversations as they are the only source of reveal about the inner thoughts of the characters and their hidden emotional touchpoints. So, as much as I appreciated this fansub, I felt that I wasn't able to really appreciate this movie properly because I had lost a lot of nuance and layers hidden within the conversations. Which is why I refuse to rate and review this movie until better subs are available.
But from what I've seen so far, I think I can say that this movie's tone & feel came across slightly different compared to their earlier 1st & 2nd seasons. I think it's because, compared to the earlier character-focused productions, this one had a larger proportion of plot elements and time spent on certain side characters which, although they were relevant, I personally felt that they took the pedal off the focus of our main characters' internal struggles with themselves and each other. This slight dilution really subtly changed the intensity & concentration which was so compellingly felt in seasons 1 & 2 and I felt that loss.
The movie was also almost solely focused on Hira's perspective, which is understandable considering that his deep-seated issues were the greatest stumbling block to the whole relationship development and therefore needed the greatest attention & resolution. But man, this is a story about 2 flawed boys and their dissonant yet complementary relationship! It takes two hands to clap so I felt a bit short-changed over how the movie slightly shunted Kiyoi to the side. Season 2 had such a great balance of their disparate perspectives which helped the audience get really emotionally invested in their issues and their growth but here, it's quite jarringly one-sided. I'm sad. I dunno, maybe I was expecting a bit too much considering how much I loved the first two seasons and their multifaceted perspectives.
Which isn't to say that this movie isn't good. Lack of a full understanding of the conversations aside (which led to a lack of full understanding of the characters' inner issues) and the lopsided focus on Hira aside, this movie was a lovely continuation and resolution of the rather bumpy & tumultous journey of these two interesting boys. There were yummy fanservice scenes and warm moments, and there was good progress both from a character growth perspective and from a relationship development perspective. It's a good finale for what has, to me, been an absolutely riveting & scintillating series. I just kinda wished it could have been that wee bit better, LMAO, but that's just me being greedy and me having a higher level of expectation than usual. Hopefully once better subs are out and I'm able to fully grasp the true content of the conversations, I might feel more satisfied. Crossing my fingers for this one!
I believe that if one is looking for an idealistic youth romance with a wholesome, constantly supportive and devoted male lead, there's likely nothing else out there that could possibly outclass this one. Our male lead has almost no character flaws to speak of, and the only conflicts he struggles with are those of an external nature i.e. saddled with debt by virtue of having an irresponsible father, and of being 5 years older than the female lead. Neither of these are truly major impediments, really, and they at least give the male lead some extra dimensions to his character else he really could end up being too one-dimensional with his almost perfect personality.
The female lead is a sometimes feisty, sometimes timid character who can be somewhat spoilt & childish, somewhat naive, and somewhat sensible at times. In short, very much typical of a young, pampered girl of her time with a single-minded focus on her older unrequited crush. For me, her spoilt & childish bits were the unlikeable bits about her, and her life choices were all entirely male-lead-influenced which made her come across like a doormat a lot of the time because it came across as her not really having a life or independence outside of the male lead (another bit I didn't quite like). Her bickering relationship with her older brother was probably the only part of the show where I felt it was her most authentic and sparkling part of her character.
But I have to give this show (and the production team) credit. While the characters themselves and their relationship are a bit too airbrushed & idealistic to often be true, the team still managed to give them enough nuance and dimension so as to make them more fleshed out than just cardboard characters. There's enough of an authentic feel to the whole setup that gives this show a more believable heft, and to make the characters come across a bit more relatable to the audience. I can totally understand why a lot of people found it such a sweet, feel-good and engaging youth romance. I myself liked it well enough, but it would not have the same level of draw for me as a romance with more complex, multifaceted characters (because I love those the best).
Romance isn't the main focus and very much pushed into the background here (which is a bit of a shame for romance-junkies like me) but Japanese shows are always good at building supporting character rapport with the audience and this is no exception with the proofreading department's members, as well as a particular editor (Mr Octopus) making memorable interactions with our main character.
All in all, a mix of fun, informative and a light-hearted watch. While it might not have much emotional engagement, I found it was still a good drama to pass time with.
I know it's an old-school classic and I recognise that this show deliberately chose to heavily dramatise itself as its signature style but the whole thing sort of wore thin on me by the time the penultimate episode rolled around. The female lead is deliberately styled to be an excessively naive, silly, trusting single-cell amoeba because she's the perfect foil to showcase the male lead's own scheming brilliance in being able to dig her out of the incredibly massive holes she keeps nuclear-bombing herself into. Side characters were exaggerated caricatures fitted in here & there as convenient plot devices for added game complications. Some of the games were rather interesting but others weren't that impressive (especially the last one), and there's no character development or depth to speak of as this is not the show's main aim or concept.
Honestly, except for the suave male lead and his rescue schemes, this show did not really hold any appeal to me as it had very little of the ingredients I look for & like in my shows, but for those looking for some dated but highly-stylised mind-game type shows, this is a decent one to consider.
I likened the whole production to a play because it comes across very much like one where 3 characters, each standing at different points on the stage, interact with one another and, through the ebb-and-flow of such interactions, we get a front-row seat on each character’s world view & life philosophy from the point of where they stand.
The play takes us through quick openers & introductions to each character’s situation in life and where they stand in relation to one another. And through the dialogue, and through the way they dance around one another’s characters, the audience also gets an idea of their personalities, and their life experiences, which contribute to the shaping of their characters. It’s a beautiful dance, really. There are moments where the characters move wonderfully in sync to each other’s rhythm, there’s a fleeting meeting of minds, and a touching of souls, but there are also moments of conflict, tension and jarring disagreements. The whole thing builds up into one massive crescendo, only to end with all 3 characters still standing at the same points on the stage where they started, unchanged and yet changed in some small way, and then the curtains come down and the play closes.
I don’t know about others but I loved it. The dialogues are rich in insights but it is also the unspoken things, the things left unsaid that hang over the whole atmosphere like almost tangible clouds, that give the show such compelling viewing. This isn’t a wish-fulfilment type of show. It’s a showcase of the deep complexities of being human and of being different from each other.
I’ll be honest, I’d totally given up on Thai BLs with how shallow and superficial they’ve been making them these days, so this one came as a totally unexpected and pleasant surprise. Massive thankies to an MDL friend who persuaded me to give this one a try and accompanied me along the way. This show was like hard diamond cloaked in velvet satin.