Beatrice

The intensity of childhood friendships is no less dramatic, complicated, painful, or joyful than romance. Shin and Saint's friendship is the most intense of them all, though it's nice to see the various other ones between the other groups of characters that all coalesce into a heartwarming of peace and friendship between the whole class. Their angst was well acted by the characters, though the reveal of what happened between them took way too long. They should have revealed it to the audience at least in the second episode because it just felt like it dragged the story down. It wouldn't have made the impact of Saint confessing he beat Shin to the point of him breaking his leg and losing his ability to play soccer to the whole class any less or lessen the pain of Shin's being so heartbroken by Saint's not understanding the thing he truly couldn't forgive Saint is for leaving him when things are hard instead of facing it with him. This series is based on kdrama School 2013 where the friendship of the male leads were also the heart of the story. I would say though that High School Frenemy leaves things a bit more open as to the possibilities of what these two friends could become in the future. Aside from their family, and other friends, they love each other the most in the world. They keeping making promises and oaths to each, and tell each other they love each other. The last time they do in the show in the rain and sharing an umbrella, hints to the possibility in the future of more. It's nice they don't have to deal with that on top of the other wild things they've been dealing with and just enjoy their friendship for now. It would be interesting to see how they would deal with trying dating other people once they are in college or something.

Though they have 16 episodes, which is longer than a lot of other Thai series, they didn't get enough time to address a bit more of the home life. Saint's dad is definitely an alcoholic, he's almost always drunk, but he's never abusive to Saint, though him owning money causes Saint to take beatings on behalf of his dad. It's implied that at the very least he settled things with the loans sharks when Saint met up with him outside the police station. It's weird that his alcoholism is never called out though. They saved that for Ken's dad instead. We don't get to see Peeta and her mom come to an understanding, just an off screen acknowledgement that Peeta finally doesn't have to go represent the Thai academic team any more once Peeta is sent to the hospital. Eve and Airy is another friendship that hints at possible romance. They are newer friends and it's pretty blatant from Airy's questions and approach to Eve that she does have a crush on Eve. The teachers also on their journey to learning how to understand and help their students along the way was nice too. It was pretty crazy that neither Mr. Sung or Ms. Jan stepped in after Saint pushed Shin into the mountain of desks that fell on him and he was actually knocked out for a minute and Shin called Mr. Sung for help. Saint wasn't faking it, he was really out, which should be concerning because it's different than all the other times he takes hits and are fine. All lot of the beatings look very realistically brutal, but it kinda breaks the realism that most of the time no one ends up in the hospital after them, like when Saint got kidnapped, beaten, and left outside where Shin finds him.