Top Form has captured my heart. Everything from the OST to cinematography to the plot to the performances is high quality. I find myself getting lost in the world of each episode. The story of Akin and Jin is fresh. I saw someone complaining about them being a stereotypical ship, but I disagree. It's so different to me at least to see the younger one so actively and unapologetically pursing the older character. So far, the episodes have also had interesting commentary on the entertainment industry as a whole. Also I love how Akin and Jin seem to be foils of each other. Typically, you mostly see foils utilized in dramas as a way to separated the antagonist and protagonist but I l o v e to see literary foils utilized between love interests. I'm interested to see where this series continues to go. My main complaint is that the episodes should be longer.
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I think this series is struggling to find it's footing between campy moments of comedy and dramatic tension, but it swaps through them almost like whiplash making it jarring for me the viewer. There's some interesting stuff going on for example playing into the time old trope of utilizing vampirism as a metaphor for queer desire, but every time I feel myself getting sucked into the story, I get yanked back out again by moments that make me cringe (and a lot of these moments I can tell are not supposed to be interpreted as cringey or funny). I really wanted to like this series but it's falling flat for me, ever since the staggering amount of exposition in episode one. Gawin, who is a very talented actor, seems way too old to be playing an 18 year old first year university student, that sometimes takes me out of it too. His character is... a lot. Sometimes I find Tong genuinely endearing but most of the time, I find him childish and kinda cringe. Joss' performance is also falling flat for me this time around. It's hard to play a stoic character with little to no dialogue. Anyways, I'll give episode 4 a shot and see if I can fall in love with it. I'm still holding out hope given that Gawin is one of my favorites under GMMTV, but I am not sure it's going to win me over....
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