TheDireBriar

When 'Seme' means 'A Block Of Wood'

While Keito Kimura is cute and appealing as the slightly dorky, honest Satoshi Onoe, Yamanaka Jyutaro's Motoharu Kaburagi is D.O.A. He's meant to be the jaded pessimist seme to Satoshi's optimist uke, but he lacks any charm to make his sullen character palatable. This made it difficult to understand why Satoshi would want this downer of a guy who generally treats Satoshi like crap and communicating extremely mixed messages. When he isn't stonewalling, or just being grabby. Like, Satoshi, I would understand it if you were just horny for him, I have eyes, I can see why you'd want to jump his bones, but why are you in luuurrrve?

On the plus side, the show avoids the tropey mess of jealous suitors and disapproving parents by framing each episode around the current article the boys are working on. Granted, the show lacked the bite to really ask questions about the morality and ethics of journalism. Each 'scoop' has the real task of bringing the boys closer together...until there's a story that tears them apart. For the dumbest reasons. It was the crowning jewel in the annoying through-line that it's on Satoshi to discern the intent behind Motoharu's vague gestures and contradictory statements. At no time does the plot hint that it might be Motoharu's responsibility to do his own emotional labor, and to communicate. Not only is it Satoshi's job to figure out what Motoharu wants, it's also his job to BE the version of himself that Motoharu wants. I found this concerning.

I couldn't even watch the sex scene it was so uncomfortable. It reeked of two Actors Not Wanting To Be There and two characters I couldn't fathom the draw between.

Good news! There are no evil anti-queer women to speak of in this show, which was nice... except almost every single woman onscreen is being exploited in some way. So. Add that as background radiation.

While Candy Color Paradox never became actively offensive or rage inducing, it was still a discomforting viewing experience saved by one thing; Keito Kimura. He was doing his best to bring levity and brightness to a dead fish.

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Cozy Mystery in 1920's Japan featuring two Cutie Patooties.

This is a lovely, earnest and thoughtful show with a heart of gold. You could double feature any of these episodes with one of BBC's Poirot with David Suchet and they would vibe perfectly together. The criminal subject matter is handled lightly, with a lot of slice-of-life around it. There are some instances of blood onscreen, but no gore or excessive 'thriller' elements. The emphasis is on the humans involved, their emotions, their actions and, importantly, their lies.

Urabe Kanoko is a young woman who can hear when a person lies. This ability has made her an outcast in her rural home, so she leaves for the city where she crosses paths with Iwai Soma, a financially strapped, but highly observant Private Detective. The two partner up to solve cases, often in and around their little neighborhood populated by an ensemble cast of characters. The cases are interspersed with Soma helping Kanoko explore her ability; her feelings about it and herself, how it affects her relationships with other people, and the very nature and purpose of lies.

Unlike Poirot, Usotoki Rhetoric is more character driven. Both Kanoko and Soma are a joy to watch, with their perky chemistry underscored with a pensive melancholy that prevents the show from becoming saccharine. The ONLY reason I popped the writing score down to a 8 is that while the show explores Kanoko's issues in some depth, the series doesn't give us a lot of concrete on Soma. While I'm assuming that happens later in the manga, and is probably planned for a future season of the show, I wish we'd gotten at least one episode with something really substantive about him. It doesn't detract from the series in a major way, but it is worth noting. Also incumbent is a romantic relationship between the two, but there really is only the faintest inklings of partiality beginning. Mostly, you're watching these two get to know each other, and that's very pleasant indeed.

Matsumoto Honoka is absolutely adorable, and really grounds the show, while Suzuka Ouji keeps things airy and moving. They are charming together, with a comfortable, warm chemistry. It's been a long time since I liked two characters and their interactions quite so much, even though they are both far from being perfect. The ensemble cast are all quite fun as well, which include the family that owns the eatery next to the Detective Agency, a police man and his reporter sister, an elderly couple who run a food cart, and an exuberant wealthy young lady and her chauffeur. Shenanigans are minimum, and this is one of the few shows I've watched where people are actually generally pretty nice to each other.

The 1920's setting is wonderfully represented in costume and set dressing- and it is 1920's, and not just the vague understanding that it's 'Gatsby'. Special attention has been paid to the make-up which is actual 1920's make up, and not just modern smokey-eye glamor. There's a great interplay between the 'modern' and traditional represented visually in clothing and possessions while being echoed thematically in attitudes and superstitions.

This world feels cozy, but not limited; there are locations, even if most of the action takes place in Soma's cramped little office, or the labyrinthine streets of the town and temple. A constant flow of extras, and participation from random characters which don't broadly impact the plot also make the world feel larger than it is on film. This isn't like a lot of drama where no matter how many extras you see, only the same five characters speak and impact things.

Overall I am excited to see more of this, but even if we never do, this is a lovely show that I recommend if you want something gently atmospheric and sweet-spirited.

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I hate this with a burning passion and I need to rant about why.

The titular question refers to Lee Yeong Joon's (Park Seo Joon) confusion regarding his secretary giving notice after years. What is wrong with Secretary Kim Mi So (Park Min Young) that she can't see what an honor and privilege it is to be his 24-7 slave?

It isn't much of a question, actually. Kim Mi straight up tells LYJ that he's a narcissist and she's had no time to have her own life while working for him. So, since she is finally in a secure financial position, she's quitting. This is just the Sandra Bullock 2002 movie Two Weeks Notice, Korean style, right?

It ain't.

Don't be fooled by reviews calling this sweet and fluffy with 'a great plot'. This is a nonsensical, over dramatic, badly written garbage fire of abuse and misogyny. I was three episodes in when I started feeling physically ill that this barrage of red flags and crime are perceived as romantic.

The problems?

1. The SeKrit Backstory runs the premise off the road so they don't have to deal with the systemic misogyny.

2. Kim Mi So doesn't exist as a character, so neither can a romance exist. Also misogyny.


1. The SeKrit Backstory.

I don't think I've ever seen a plot reveal so totally invalidate the first half of the show the way this one did. Re-read that plot synopsis. That's how the series plays it initially; that LYJ doesn't know why KMS wants to leave, or why her leaving/dating other men upsets him. He spends the first few episodes confused and trying to win her heart in a plethora of cringe ways. LYJ treats KMS like shit and she's tired of it. Simple. LYJ has to fix his ways, right?

No. All that gets abandoned when they introduce TeH SeKrit Backstory. You see, Yeong Joon and Mi So have history; as children they were kidnapped and imprisoned by some Rando Lady! LYJ has scars from the cable ties she restrained him with, and he calls the kidnapper 'mom' in the flashbacks which seems to indicate there was some weird shit going on, which spawned his phobia around physical intimacy with women. The specter of molestation rears it head, but it's never really addressed. Nor is why Rando Lady kidnapped them, or why she later hangs herself in front of them.

Once she's dead, the kids escape and LYJ takes KMS home where she vows never to forget him, blah blah blah, she's five years old. Of course she forgets. It's all very stupid and artificial, designed to give them traumas to be plot obstacles.

Oh, you thought that was the end of the trauma? Nope. See, LYJ got kidnapped because his elder brother Lee Sung Yeong (Lee Tae Hwan) has been bullying him for years, and abandoned him alone to be hurt. In the aftermath of the kidnapping, LSY has a mental collapse in which he absorbs LYJ's experience as his own. So, LSY believes HE was the one kidnapped because of LYJ's actions and starts terrorizing LYJ.

And rather than, say, get their children any help, the parents just accept the delusion as truth and go on with their lives.

Yeah, you read that right. These revolting parents allow the child to invert his guilt. LSY takes over LYJ's room, he screams and physically attacks LYJ, and constantly brings it up to guilt him into things. The parents, rather than help the child with the complete identity crisis, allow him to continuously re-traumatize the actual kidnapped child. In fact, they make it LYJ's responsibility to uphold the narrative to stop LSY from acting out. At a certain point they just assume LYJ lost his memory of having been kidnapped so they gaslight him, perpetuating phenomenal levels of emotional and mental abuse.

I thought we'd see a Golden Child/Scapegoat dynamic to explain it, but no. The best I can come up with is Asian filial piety; that the appearance of normalcy is worth any sacrifice, including the mental well-being of your children. Both LYJ and LSY were abused in the name of pretending there weren't problems. The parents get weepy about it later, but don't ever fully own their culpability, nor does the narrative think they should. In my culture, this is unacceptable levels of cruelty. Your mileage may vary, I suppose.

Somehow these layered traumas morph LYJ into an arrogant, self-absorbed man who constantly boasts about his physical perfection, intellectual prowess, generosity, and wealth. It doesn't track. None of it is framed as compensation for a damaged ego. He truly believes it.

Anyway, they grow up separate and one day KMS gets a job at LYJ's company. So, of course, LYJ masterminds KMS into becoming his secretary, despite the fact that she is severely under qualified for it. Not only that, he immediately takes her to a foreign country where she doesn't speak the language- and then berates her for not knowing the language, the full scope of her job or the customs and culture. So, entrapment.

With a combination of isolation, constant criticism, and back-handed assistance, LYJ provokes KMS into becoming a perfect employee. Not just a secretary; she handles much of his personal life, including dressing and dining help, visits with his parents and assists him in romancing (and ditching) women. KMS has learned all his foibles to cater to his every whim. She's rightfully tired of it.

That entire premise is never resolved. LYJ never comes to terms with the fact that he's been horrifically selfish and manipulative. The SeKrit Backstory becomes a giant, grotesque trauma float meant to excuse all of LYJ's behavior, and distract from the very real problems that exist between them that the show would have to take a good long look at their gender politics to resolve.

2. Kim Mi Who?

Kim Mi So is truly a farce of a character. I was astounded by how little she existed in a story ostensibly about her. She's the titular character, for fucks sake, but she's such a nonentity. Not one single thing in this whole damn plot was actually about her, her wants and needs.

For example; How was Mi So kidnapped? Did anyone notice? Her mother was dying somewhere and a five year old goes missing for a day or two and no one notices? Her experience of this massive plot point which takes up half the show is never revealed. The kidnapping is life-changing for LYJ. For KMS, it just seems to be a thing that happened to put her in LYJ's orbit. The only consequence is her fear of spiders. It is ornamental at best. You'd think she might share the fear of cable ties, but no.

KMS's entire character is written to loop back to LYJ in a really sick way that denies her a basic person-hood. We know nothing that happened to her in the intervening years which does not relate to Yeong Joon. Even the fact that she somehow has to be the one to pay off the debt accrued by her father's shitty life choices and her two older sister's educations, relates back to LYJ, because it's him she has to appease to keep her job.

This might be another culture barrier I can't see, but why is it KMS's responsibility to shore up the family finances instead the older sisters? Why don't the older sisters go 'hey, you supported us at a job that made you miserable, but now you can quit, and we'll support you while you find a career/path that will make you happy'? Well, because then something would NOT be about LYJ, and we can't have that. The sisters never have one conversation about their family situation. All of their exchanges are about LYJ and how awful he is. They, of course, later become obstacles to the relationship for extremely valid reasons the show refuses to acknowledge.

Mi So's only distinct thing you can point to her liking is the Morpheus books. And even that isn't about her. It's about her interacting with LSY to expose The SeKrit Backstory with LYJ.

So not only can she not have her own experiences and history, they didn't bother to give her an actual personality beyond competitive, determined and perky. But even those traits serve LYJ's story; she's not competitive or ambitious enough to say, take what she learned with LYJ and get a job elsewhere, only to become the perfect employee for him. She's determined—to get to the bottom of the kidnapping story, but not to quit, date other men and find her own life. She's perky because it seems like most Asian Drama heroines are for no other reason that it's a feminine virtue. She starts out being So Done with LYJ, but the first time he starts throwing money at her, she caves. Like, bitch?! Sure, you can't be bought with cold hard cash, but if you put a thin solicitous romantic skin on it and you're all in?

Her laundry list of very valid complaints about LYJ come to naught, and are then exacerbated with the 'romance' of harassment, bribery, stalking, love-bombing, intimidation and wealth flexing. It's not romantic. Romance is not guilting women into compliance with your trauma. At no point does LYJ recognize his power or his abuse of KMS. His romantic efforts are in service of keeping her in his employ and under his power, not for sincere affection.

KMS molded herself into the perfect secretary for LYJ, fully acknowledging that she'd sacrificed her identity to do so, and the plot isn't troubled by that in the slightest. If anything, there's an insidious, tacit kind of approval; She should be molding her whole life around a man who doesn't care about her or others. She should be happy with the crumbs he gives her all while espousing his own glory. She should continue to work for him, a complete subordinate in every single avenue of her life. That's what women should aspire to. She has no protection from him in the future, and that is an incredibly dangerous thing to encourage women to do in the name of romance.

The gender politics of this show are everything that South Korean women are protesting with the b4 movement, but you'll find nothing but the same sexist agenda aiming to promise women that love is service and access to our bodies.

What's Wrong With Secretary Kim? She woke the fuck up, and you put her back into a gilded female prison under the guise of True Love and It's Not His Fault, It's His Trauma.

Fuck. Off.

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Knock Knock- It's an underage actor and NOTHING ELSE.

What a weird, borderline inappropriate love-letter to a single performer this is.

I have never seen anything quite like it. From the first glimpse of Tar Atiwat Saengtien's juvenile knees I went 'uh-oh'. And it was downhill from there.

There really is no reason to watch 'I Will Knock You' except for Tar Atiwat Saengtien's performance of Noey Watphlu. It's a great performance, for the THEN SEVENTEEN YEAR OLD ACTOR. Which isn't necessarily bad, but ooof. Ooof. He's incredibly charming, bringing life to this passionate, impulsive, sentimental character. Don't mistake, Noey is not a well-written character. Noey's vintage style and earnest romantic heart are interesting, but the writing flinches from deeper examination of his troubled nature. Tar is carrying this on pure charisma.

And he's beautiful. It cannot be understated how much the camera loves him. It's impossible to forget that, particularly because of the way they edited this strange show. Multiple times Noey would say something absolutely bonkers, they'd cut to Thi, he'd do a 'haaa?' face and some voice over and halfway through the voice over they'd cut back to Noey, who'd then have another line. Which is BIZARRE. I cannot stress to you how much I'm like 'THI DIDN'T SAY A FLIP FLAPPIN WORD, THIS IS NOT A CONVERSATION, IT IS A MONOLOGUE.'

Sure, each time I'd be like 'damn he's pretty tho'. But, it did not distract me from what a hot mess of NOTHING this show is. I am somewhat accustomed to uneven writing quality between male and female leads in romantic pairings. Generally speaking, in hetero shows the ML is adequately written, the female lead is underwritten. In BL, there's often a mediocre standard which both leads meet; serviceable, but not remarkable. Nothing could have prepared me for how inconsequential, bland and boring Thi was. If Noey is not well written, Bom Tanawat Uthaikitwanit's Thi is...unwritten. He's negative space. He might as well not exist. We know NOTHING about him, except he's awkward AF and tutors kids. And Bom has all the charisma of a damp sponge.

Considering Thi's lack of anything except setting up clumsy set pieces for Noey to react to, there's no reason for Noey to like him. You could make a drinking game our of the number of times Thi just straight up didn't have dialogue in scenes, yet the scenes persist, perpetuated by some ghastly BL necessity. He'd have voice over along the lines of 'omg this crazy kid' or 'if I don't do this he'll beat me up for sure!' but not actual lines, not actual participation in the scene, not actual agency. He's a complete non-entity. He flounders around, a collegiate do-gooder intimidated by a high school junior, his thoughts and feelings on the courtship ultimately unimportant and insignificant. In fact, nothing happens in this show that Noey does not instigate, and not always for readily apparent reasons. I can only assume that in making Bom a more fleshed out character you'd have to address the age and power differences between the two. Instead, they desperately avoid it at all costs. Which doesn't leave a lot to do.

It can't even go to the familiar well of kissing and sex scenes to bolster itself, since Tar is underage. Which I guess I appreciated, but it highlights an awareness on behalf of production that maybe the age difference is A Thing, making it all the weirder when they don't address The Thing. They also clearly don't want to talk about Tar's issues, either Bom or Tar's goals, or anything remotely sincere or serious.

So the script is a joke, Bom's performance is DOA, there's no chemistry, no intriguing side characters, so? They resort to showcasing the single asset they have; Tar Atiwat Saengtien.

So. Admire him. There's no other reason to watch.

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Paralyzingly dull and inane.

While some of the reviews have indicated that the second couple might be more interesting than Hill and Ter here, I don't give one flying crispy cthulhu. If these four episodes are a measure of the quality of the entire production, count my ass out, I cannot sit through another twelve.

The summary here and on Rakuten Viki says Ter is off to a distant university to help 'get over his past relationship', except, oops his crush is at the same university! The first episode opens with a spicy bit and a love confession which turns out to be a dream. Or a nightmare, considering Ter wakes up wailing about it. You'd probably assume that this is a memory of an ex, right? Right? That would be the sensible way to interpret that.

Leave your sense at the door. The screenwriter did.

Very quickly things become confusing as Ter denies there was anything going on between he and Hill. He's steadfast that Hill wanted his sister. Hill, on the other hand, heart-eyes at Ter any time he can see him. Once he knows Ter is on the same campus he stalks him and comes very close to peeing on him in front of the other boys interested in the pretty twink. Then Hill just out and says he wants to court him. Which sounds like there wasn't a relationship then, but might be now? Did they have a relationship? Didn't they? Why is Ter dubious of Hill's stated desire to date? I have no idea how to feel about their dumb romantic shenanigans consisting of forced car-rides and Hill making stink eyes at other boys. If Hill had broken Ter's heart that might be something, but Ter seems to think his affection was unrequited. Ter doesn't talk about his feelings all that much, and what he does say is repetitive or too vague to be useful.

What are the bulk of these episodes filled with then? Oh, I'm SO glad you asked. Not go to class, obviously. When he isn't having dead-end conversations with his roomie , you'll follow a vacantly smiling Ter roaming around campus and going to club activities, interacting with other students to the tune of goofy slapstick noises. Sometimes they'd even put the noise in even if an actor wasn't telegraphing a response, it was very weird. While some of the other characters are certainly more colorful, I feel like all of these people are too stupid to be in college. All of the interactions are farcical without apparently intending to be.

There are some potentially homophobic parents in there, but I lost track of which people were staring at which guy across the campus with judgement. That's when the narrative wasn't interrupting itself with high school flashbacks which do nothing to elucidate the exact situation with Ter and Hill.

It's boring, tedious, and juvenile. The characters are hollow ciphers who exist to be benign and pretty. If the show has nothing of authenticity or coherency to offer in the almost 4 hours I watched, I don't think it bodes well for the rest.

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