Too much worldbuilding, not enough time
Color Rush was a show that tried to do way more worldbuilding than was necessary for the short time frame they had. However, they did take an interesting soulmate AU idea and turn it into something a bit darker.The concept of the show revolves around certain people that are colorblind (called monos) that can only see in shades of gray and their "probes," which are certain people that can allow them to see color. However, monos have been convicted in crimes revolving around trying to meet and stay near their probe, as seeing colors doesn't last forever if you're not with them.
Taking the idea of colorblindness until meeting a soulmate and turning it on its head to create a much more dramatic version was a great idea that could have been executed a bit better. I think that the show tried to expand on the idea of monos and probes a bit too much, and it just ended up being too confusing and took away from the relationship between the main character. Still a fun little watch though.
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BLs and comedies....good try I guess!
Cute and cheesy university BL (where the leads aren't engineers?!). The overall plot was fairly uninteresting unfortunately, because the main characters spend so much time fighting over...nothing? PondPhuwin is a great pair though (and NeoLouis of course). I honestly only watched this because I'm still waiting for the new episodes of Never Let Me Go.Pi has had a crush on Nan for a long time but has never had the courage to say anything since he knows Nan is way out of his league. But after a ~makeover~ he finally gains the confidence to approach him. However, Mork is always with Nan, giving Pi no room to be alone with him. Pi continuously gets annoyed at Mork, who always seems to be in his way, until he realizes it's actually Mork who he has feelings for.
Mork and Pi would have been great together if Pi didn't spend the entire series convincing himself he only liked Nan and didn't have feelings for Mork. It took them FOREVER to be into each other. Why must the "cheesy romance" BLs never have much of the actual cheesy romance, and instead be so much fighting and arguing over things that never further the plot? The scenes where they were flirting/actually together were so fun and cute, but there are so few of these that it makes watching this one less fun.
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A cute and fun watch!
GMM finally lets gay people be happy? My School President was way better than I first expected it to be based on the plot synopsis. Tinn, the new school president (Gemini) who has been in love with Gun, the "rebel" (who isn't really a rebel) from the music club (Fourth) for years finally gets a chance to pursue him now that he's the president and in charge of all the school's clubs. Unfortunately, even once Gun likes Tinn back, it's revealed that one of the rules of the club is that the members can't date until after the big music competition, Hot Wave.It's fun, it's cute, and there's way too much singing. Luckily, the songs are recorded and not the typical playing guitar and singing in a different key that BLs love to do for some reason. The relationship development was unfortunately slow, but it was still cute and fun to watch. While the vast majority of the show is light-hearted, the more intense moments help with the pacing of it and keep the characters real.
I will be watching anything else with GeminiFourth in it.
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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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WAY better executed than I thought it would be!
Did not think I was gonna like this one honestly. I wasn't hopeful in the ability of a BL to pull off a universe travel sci-fi theme but man they kinda nailed this one.I was super happy that there wasn't a bunch of back and forth between the universes. When Puen (Jimmy) and Talay (Sea) wake up in the bodies of people in a different universe, they have to find a way back to their own. I was so worried that we were going to have to watch their old selves as well, but the show only focused on Puen and Talay and their journey home.
Very well done with the right amount of sci-fi elements that didn't take away from the story. No crazy world building that didn't make sense. Overall a fun and pleasant watch without much heartbreak.
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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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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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Simple, but cute
My Love Mix Up was super cute, light, and fun. Gemini and Fourth did a great job in these roles, and the side couple helped to round it out very well. No conflict was drawn out too long either. My only complaint is that it didn't feel like anything new, especially for Gemini and Fourth.It's said that if you write your crush's name on an eraser, the more you use it, the closer you'll get to them. Atom (Fourth) has a crush on Mudmee (Pahn), a girl in his class, but when he asks to borrow her eraser, he sees Kongthap's (Gemini) name written on it. As he's using the eraser, he ends up dropping it and Kongthap picks it up - leading him to believe that Atom has a crush on him. To prevent his friend's feelings from being exposed, Atom has to come up with another way to tell Kongthap that he doesn't like him, but the more time he spends with him the more he realizes he might like him after all.
This show was a very cute and simple high school romance. If you're a fan of Gemini and Fourth, you'd definitely like it. Mudmee and Half (Chokun) were also super cute and fun to watch! I do wish that Gemini and Fourth would branch out and play different types of roles though, as this show felt very similar to My School President (though less singing), especially in terms of the main characters. Overall though it was very cute and fun to watch.
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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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