Oh the bodyguard trope....
Am I gonna love a bodyguard plot? Of course. Every time.I thought this one did a good job of building the relationship before the romance even started. The cinematography reminded me a bit of ITSAY, with beautiful beach shots throughout the show. Pond and Phuwin do a fantastic job as Palm and Nueng, and their chemistry is great.
Biggest complaint with this show is the frustration you feel as a viewer from the back and forth of "you're better off without me!" between the two of them. Luckily, it was never too drawn out, but it was still a bit overdone. The way they wove the legend into the show was really well done, and I loved that they kept that until the end. I was expecting this one to be way sadder than it was, and I'm glad it wasn't! It was a great balance between conflict, tragedy, and relief/happiness that it made each episode worth waiting for.
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A bromance?
This could have been so much more than it was! It started off as a cute high school romance between the popular school president Taehyun and the quiet archery team member Dayeol. The circumstances under which they originally meet set them up to be enemies, but they quickly start to get along instead.Unfortunately, this one missed the mark a little bit. Every time their relationship should have taken off, something happened to stop them. And just when you think everything is going to work out, it still doesn't! It seemed like they were trying to get around the fact that this was a gay relationship by....not letting them have a real relationship. No kiss, no handholding, nothing! Just two bros with some tension and an unexplored relationship.
They're clearly gay so I won't call this queerbaiting, but it nearly was.
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So cute!!
A lot of Korean BLs fall into the unfortunate issue of not having enough time to develop their characters but Our Dating Sim found the perfect way to show characters who have grown and changed in just 8 15-min episodes. Plus, the main actors do a great job and have great chemistry. Super cute and fun show to watch.I'm a sucker for the "right person wrong time" trope, and seeing that play out in these characters was fantastic. You get to see the high school embarrassment of a (seemingly) one-sided love turn into a relationship years down the line in adulthood. Super well done and well paced without any unnecessary conflicts or that horrible second-to-last episode breakup trope. Biggest complaint is that it isn't long enough!
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Better than I expected!
I wasn't sure how this was gonna go with how short it is, but I was pleasantly surprised! They didn't try to do too much with the vampire lore and didn't try to overcomplicate things. Junho is a vampire who is going to die and needs to drink pure human blood (still not sure what this means but oh well) to turn into a human. To do so, he needs to make Minhyun, who has pure blood, fall in love with him. But of course, Junho falls in love too and isn't willing to risk Minhyun's life for his own.Most realistic part is Minhyun learning Junho is a vampire and immediately telling him to drink his blood. Honestly he's so real for that.
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Refreshing!!
This drama was nearly perfect. It was shot in such a beautiful way that felt really fresh and didn't feel like the typical over-produced kdrama.Jihyun, a college freshman, meets Jaewon by chance one night while working at his part-time job. The two continue to cross paths, and Jihyun joins the surfing club in order to get closer to Jaewon. As the two begin to spend more time together, their relationship grows as they navigate hardships.
The interactions between the characters in this felt so much more real than most kdramas. The conversations have awkward silences, they're nervous on first dates, etc. and it's super enjoyable to watch. I was super worried that this would end on a sad note, but was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this one, start to finish. There was a bit of a lull in the later episodes where you just want them to solve their problems and be happy, but it's never overly frustrating. The colors, the music, and the shots were all beautifully done. 100% worth the watch.
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Mediocre At Best
I was soooo looking forward to watching this because I've been wanting a good GL to watch and I had heard so much about it! Unfortunately, it was extremely mediocre. The entire plot was predictable, the characters were only sometimes likeable, and every conflict could have been resolved with a single conversation.This was not a queer story. Yes, it had queer women as the main characters, but this exact storyline could have been done as a straight or BL romance. I wished the writers and directors focused more on the relationship dynamic between the two women and less on silly arranged marriage plotlines.
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World's Most Incompetent Cops
Going into this, I was super excited for the murder/crime aspect of this show, especially as someone who really loves crime dramas. If you're going into this for that like I was, SKIP IT! This show is a romance that happens to have a crime happening in the background. The cops can't solve a case for shit, and spend all their time flirting instead.Jade (Joong) is the cop in charge of a new murder case when a new inspector Kamin (Dunk) arrives to help. The two of them investigate the murder of a college girl and the subsequent murders of the other students in her friend group. As murders continue to happen, Jade's brother Jay is also put at risk, as are the cops themselves. Even though the cops don't get along at first, they grow closer as they work on the case - and Jade's immediate attraction to Kamin is obvious to everyone.
I have never watched a crime show with more incompetent cops. These guys did not solve ANYTHING!! Even up to the very end (no spoilers here) they basically didn't do anything themselves. They quite literally just spent their entire time flirting with each other. The romance fully took away from the actual plot of the show. If you don't care about the crime and just want to see Joong and Dunk flirt, go ahead and watch it. If you care about the crime aspect at all, there are much better crime dramas....
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Horror + Romance = Perfection
This show is a MASTERPIECE! I knew nothing about any of the actors going into this, and honestly didn't know much about the plot but BOY am I glad I decided to watch it. This is genuinely one of the best Thai shows I have ever seen.Khemjira (Namping) is living with a curse - at the age of 21, he will die. He's always been able to see ghosts, and they seem to be getting more malicious as he gets closer to 21. His best friend Jet decides to take Khem to see the shaman of the village he grew up in. This shaman Pharan (Keng) is reluctant to help Khem, especially because Khem coming to the village means he brought all kinds of bad energy and karma with him. Eventually, Pharan agrees to help, but the ghost behind this curse refuses to let go to events of the past, and is determined to kill Khemjira, even if it means taking down everyone else too.
I LOVED this show. The horror elements are SO good, and even though a lot of people wanted to watch for the romance between Pharan and Khem, I think the curse plotline was the highlight of this show (but the romance was INCREDIBLE too). I quite like a show where the romance is secondary to the main plot, and that's exactly what this show delivered. Plus, I'm a sucker for past lives, and the way this show tied in past life/soulmate elements with the horror elements was FANTASTIC! I genuinely cannot recommend this show enough. It has something for everyone, and manages to balance out the darker elements with fun happy moments. The side couple manages to stay just as interesting as the main couple, and adds a wonderful extra little flavor to the story. If you're considering this show at all, absolutely give it a shot.
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Dreams Change, Love Doesn't
When Life Gives You Tangerines is a masterpiece. They took incredible actors and mixed them with the most heart-wrenching story and beautiful cinematography to create one of the best dramas I have ever seen. Fair warning - I don't think you could watch this show without shedding tears. However, it is every bit worth the pain.Oh Ae-Sun (IU) is a young girl growing up on Jeju island in the mid 20th century, who is constantly follow around by Yang Gwan-Sik (Park Bogum). With big dreams of moving to Seoul, marrying a wealthy man, going to college, and becoming a poet, Ae-Sun has a hard road in front of her. Growing up with a single mom working long hours diving and a good-for-nothing step father makes those dreams seem even more out of reach. Gwan-Sik, hopelessly in love with Ae-Sun, will do everything he can to support her dreams - and when he finally figures out his feelings are reciprocated, he feels on top of the world. Ae-Sun and Gwan-Sik have a tough life ahead of them though, as everything and everyone seems to be standing in the way of their happiness.
This show is absolutely gorgeous. The way the story manages to tell the lives of these characters from the 1960s to the early 2000s and do so in a way that is never confusing is incredible. As you move through the show, you get glimpses of the past and the future, and you start to put together the picture of the couples life. The more you learn about them, their hardships, and their love, the more you fall in love with them. This show is truly about building these characters, and showing how their experiences early in the show influence their decisions later - a girl who could never follow her dreams growing up is determined to let her daughter try everything she wants; a father who went through the hardship of providing for his family at a young age wants his son to not bear the same burden. However, these are not perfect humans, and their choices as parents are not always the best. These ups and downs are what make the characters feel so real, and it truly draws you in to the story like no other drama. The turns the story takes are so realistic, and I loved the shifts in focus throughout the story to look more closely at their children as the story progressed. Overall a gorgeous drama that is ABSOLUTELY worth the watch (just have the tissues ready).
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Go Young's Tragic Autobiography
The best way to describe this show is snapshots of our main character Go Young's (Nam Yoonsu) life. We first meet him in college, where his queerness makes him a loner. This doesn't stop his pursuit of love, but not all romantic encounters are created equal. Go Young finds again and again that love requires not just the right person, but also the right circumstances. In his quest to figure out what love looks like and how to make relationships work, we see him continue to get his heart broken, both by his own faults and his partners'.I think what really sold me on this show was the way it was done. It felt like it was being told as if Go Young had written his own autobiography, where he emphasized what he found important and left out the details that seemed too mundane. We get glimpses into his life and his relationships, without ever getting to see his day-to-day life. What happens in an episode may be a few weeks or a year, depending on how important the events felt to Go Young himself. Each relationship he enters presents new challenges, and unable to navigate them, Go Young continues to feel tired and alone. I did not expect such depth of issues on queerness coming from a Kdrama, and it was done beautifully. The issues were never taken lightly or laughed at, and the relationships were portrayed in such a realistic way that it truly felt like this could be someone's autobiography. It was unfortunately sadder than I had anticipated, and the realism just emphasized the tragedy, but it was beautiful nonetheless.
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A Must-Watch!
I was super excited to see Bible work with Jes in this show, and BOY did they deliver!! This show was absolutely incredible and had me at the edge of my seat every episode. A thrilling, action-packed plotline was perfectly partnered with a slowly forming romance between the main leads, and side characters that could stand alone in their own series round it out beautifully. The only potential issue with this one was that the 18+ rating needs to be taken real seriously....both with the violence and explicit sex scenes.When Great (Bible) hits and kills a woman while driving, he suddenly finds himself with a strange ability: he is occasionally (and not of his own will) sent back in time 4 minutes to fix mistakes. After preventing the death of this woman, she still ends up in the hospital. Great, feeling bad about this, goes to visit her and meets Dr. Tyme (Jes). The two slowly get to know each other, but it seems their lives are more intertwined than they thought. Great's family's shady business seems to be willing to go to any lengths to continue their work, and Tyme seems to be somehow connected to all this. Meanwhile, Great's brother Korn (Bas) and his boyfriend Tonkla (Fuaiz) seem to be more involved in the inner workings of this shady family business, which is straining their relationship.
I can't begin to describe how incredible this show was. The plot twists were INCREDIBLE and had me sitting in shock at the end of the episodes. I can't possibly describe all the interesting plot points that happen without horrible spoilers, but it is truly an experience to watch it. I love when a plot doesn't only revolve around the romance, and this one definitely isn't focused on it, but uses the romance to enhance the plot. Again, the explicit scenes in this show were a bit much for me, but overall it was fantastic and I would highly recommend it.
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Needed a bit more courtroom and a little less romance
Idol I is a show that focuses on drawing the line between love and obsession, truth and conviction. I think the story surrounding those two themes is the most interesting part of the show: do fans love these idols, or are they obsessed with them; is heartbreak caused by lost love or a lost purpose; is convincing someone the same as the truth; and is there such thing as an objective truth? While I think this show took a little too much time on some of the romance and not enough time on the legal issues, I still really enjoyed this show.Maeng Sena is a defense attorney known for taking on high-profile, nearly unwinnable cases and winning; whether that's because she wants the fame and money or because she's invested in the truth is unclear. All that matters to her is having enough time and money to spend on Gold Boys, her favorite idol group. However, when superstar Do Raik of Gold Boys is charged with murdering one of his bandmates in a case with no other suspects, Sena is given the case. Maintaining her professionalism, Sena is determined to prove Raik's innocence - but she is quickly confronted with the reality of the idol that she has been watching on TV for so long. Still, Sena is determined to do her job properly, and not let personal feelings get in the way of catching the culprit.
For a drama that seems to be trying to tell the message of "fans should not treat idols like objects to obsess over," the fan x idol romance seemed to tell a different story. And yes, sure, her story is different because of how they met, but it did still feel somewhat contradictory until the end. Plus, frankly, I was WAY more interested in the murder case than the romance. I wish they had spent a little more time in the courtroom or being questioned by the prosecution. Plus, some of the details felt way too simple for Sena to figure out so late. Still, I enjoyed all the twists in the story and had a great time watching - just know that there is quite a lot of romance for a murder drama.
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Rivals to lovers with a twist!
Head 2 head was a show that really surprised me. After watching Sea and Keen in Only Boo, I wasn't quite sure how much to expect from them - it seemed like GMM was condemning another couple to a life of school uniforms and solidly mid romances. However, h2h was a lot more than that!J (Sea) and Jinn (Keen) have been rivals from the start, despite their parents being best friends. The two have competed since childhood, and show no signs of stopping now that they're both fashion design majors at the same college. However, when J gets hurt in an accident while racing Jinn, their parents force them to live together so Jinn can care for J and the two can learn to get along. Their relationship begins to change as J starts seeing visions of horrible things happening to Jinn and starts trying to prevent them - but not every tragedy can be prevented, no matter how hard J tries.
I've seen a lot of people relate this show to Bad Buddy, and truly I see the resemblance, though I loved the addition of visions of the future, the internal struggle of "do I love him because I love him now, or because I know in the future I will love him," and the need to change what the visions show. I thought it added a really nice layer of complexity to the show! The only downside of this show was the repetition in the beginning, where it feels like these boys are in the hospital more than they're at school. I felt like they could have instead developed some of the plot points of the future visions a bit more, but I still REALLY enjoyed this show. Not only did Sea and Keen do an INCREDIBLE job portraying these characters, but the other characters in the show were equally fun to watch. The second couple, played by Surf and Java, stole the show in some of the episodes. The relationship built on Java's character's idea of "I can't lose him, but I don't quite love him," was SO interesting. Frankly, I'd watch a whole series about their characters too. I didn't think any conflict was overly drawn out, which I appreciated, and I could see this becoming a comfort show for sure. The sweet relationship that slowly develops between rivals paired with the ups and downs of the side couple's relationship made for a perfectly balanced show. Definitely give this one a shot!
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Needed WAY more merman plot!
When I saw how well done the special effects were for this show, I was actually really excited to start watching it. I feel like there have been more and more supernatural/fantasy shows coming out recently, and I'm a big fan of it in general. Unfortunately, this one really missed the mark for me! It seemed like the whole merman plot wasn't even relevant for most of the show, with a (frankly, uninteresting) romance being way more important. The show wasn't bad - there was the right amount of romantic conflict for the length of the show, and there were some interesting plot points that came up at the very end. However, if you're expecting a merman-filled drama, somehow this one isn't it.When Phurit moves to an island to co-own a bar, he hears legends about the mermen that once lived there, and assumes these are fairytales. Little does he know, the cute bartender Nawa that he's been flirting with is secretly a merman. Nawa has been warned time and time again that humans and merman can't fall in love, but that doesn't seem to be stopping him.
This is basically a Romeo and Juliet style forbidden romance - and genuinely, you could have replaced "merman" with just about any other reason to forbid a relationship and the plot would have gone the same way. Random merman lore was thrown in on occasion, but somehow never seemed all that relevant. Also, mermen hunters were brought up and were barely even an issue! They TOTALLY could have made this show about a merman and a hunter, or at least have one of the major conflict be between Nawa and a hunter. Instead, every plot point revolves solely around the relationship: the hunters just mean Nawa needs to "be more careful" and not see Phurit....okay I guess? This was so close to being a really interesting show, but unfortunately missed the mark by making it way too romance focused for a show that should include way more magical elements.
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To love the one you hate, and hate the one you love
Kill to Love was AMAZING. I am so impressed with the writers ability to tell such a complex, engaging story in the time that they had with this show. The major conflict of loyalty vs love vs revenge, and the twisting of hate and love....all of it was incredible. The ONLY reason I gave this a 9.5/10 was I couldn't help but wonder how much better it could've been if they just had a few more episodes - a few sections in the last 1/3 of the show felt a bit too rushed, but I am still so amazed at everything this show managed to do.When an assassin infiltrates the palace in an attempt to kill the crown prince, the crown price's brother, sixth prince Xiao Shu He, is forced to help the assassin escape. In doing so, Shu He feels that this assassin is someone he might know. Suspiciously soon after, Shu He narrowly avoids an "assassination attempt" himself, thanks to a chance encounter with his long-lost childhood friend, Duan Zi Ang. Fully aware that Zi Ang attempted to kill his brother, and that he was behind this fake assassination attempt, Shu He brings his friend back to the palace to help him recover - and to keep an eye on him. As Zi Ang attempts to gain information to help in his assassination of the crown prince, Shu He attempts to gain information on Zi Ang - but as the two continue to spend time together, they can't help but develop feelings. Are these feelings real, or is it a tactic to get closer to the one they're trying to kill? With their home nations on the brink of war, how far are they willing to go to deceive one another?
All I can say is WATCH THIS! It's not heavy on cultivation like I thought it might be, but the politics of the two countries is INCREDIBLE. A sixth prince who wants nothing to do with politics; an assassin who is forced to follow orders; a crown prince becoming power hungry; an emperor hidden away in his palace; and a country on the brink of an all-out war....you can imagine that both the external pressures of war and the internal power struggles only enhance the relationship tension between Zi Ang and Shu He. And of course, I have to mention how much I enjoyed that this relationship wasn't censored! It was truly wonderful to watch, and kept me guessing about who was telling the truth, and who had other motives. ABSOLUTELY worth watching!!!
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