denryion

I went into this with low expectations due to the poor reviews, but I ended up enjoying it more than expected. For the first 6 episodes, anyways. The last two episodes were a mess and really annoyed me.

My biggest issue was that Nawa was either too stupid or naive to understand Phraphai’s intentions, or he understood perfectly well and was playing dumb and refusing to establish proper boundaries for literally the entire series. Phraphai had feelings for Nawa and Nawa didn’t reciprocate, and that’s fine. But why was Nawa CONSTANTLY letting Phraphai touch him, pet his hair, and hold his hand? (And what’s with the hair petting? He’s not a damn dog.) Half the time, he was the one initiating the hand-holding. He’s not stupid — he understood that Phu was hitting on him right away.

Nawa takes off the necklace Phraphai gave him the morning after he and Phu officially get together. But if he understood that the significance of that necklace was non-platonic, why did he wear it for so long after he already had feelings for and was involved with Phu? There’s a scene where Phraphai says that he wants to care for and protect Nawa, and Nawa definitively catches on then if he didn’t before, because he makes a pointed comment about caring for Phraphai as a brother. But after that, during the same scene and for the rest of the series, why is there still hand-holding and hair petting going on? Even in the scene where he finally tells Phraphai that he and Phu are in a relationship, he’s STILL HOLDING HANDS WITH HIM. He’s still letting him touch his hair and hug him. He says that he’ll swim alone that night, so that means he must have understood the non-platonic significance of spending every full moon with Phraphai, but yet he’s been continuing to do it this entire time while involved with Phu. When Phraphai insists that he “protect” Nawa by driving him to and from work and having someone stay at his house every night, Nawa goes along with it for literal WEEKS. Why did those measures mean that Phu couldn’t come stay over? Why couldn’t they still act like a couple just because Phraphai was insisting on acting like a bodyguard? Why was Nawa so willing to sacrifice his relationship instead of just telling Phraphai the truth about him and Phu?

And when Phu finds out the truth by witnessing Nawa’s transformation, Phraphai lies and says he ran terrified and that humans can never love mermen. Not only does Nawa accept that as fact without even talking to Phu, he agrees to go live with Phraphai for “protection” BEFORE even hearing about Phu’s reaction. He spent the last 3 weeks ruining his relationship, finally stands up to Phraphai and tells him about his relationship and that he wants to be with Phu, only to immediately agree to move in with Phraphai and ruin his relationship again. He’s so quick to give up on his relationship without even talking to Phu. They’re holding hands again during this conversation by the way, because of course they are. And when Phraphai later says he wants Nawa by his side forever while he leads the merman, Nawa just agrees (while holding his hand). I know he knows Phraphai isn’t talking platonically at this point, so at what point is he going to shut him down?

The answer is never, because Phraphai proceeds to attempt to kill Phu, and when Nawa tries to sacrifice himself to save Phu with his merman blood, Phraphai chooses to sacrifice himself instead. During the sacrificial scene, Phraphai has Nawa tied up so he can’t interfere, and he kisses Nawa through the duct tape on his mouth. And Nawa allows it. And Nawa is more devastated about Phraphai than Phu, because he definitively cries much harder than when Phu was dying, and when he’s untied, he goes to Phraphai instead of Phu, who is also lying unconscious. He goes to Phraphai’s funeral while Phu is still unconscious instead of staying by his side. And when Phu wakes up, Nawa barely seems happy. He seems more upset about Phraphai’s death than happy about Phu being alive.

And why was Phraphai given a redemption arc? Man was manipulative as fuck. The whole time, he was lying to Nawa about “protecting” him and about there being humans out there hunting merman. His own father orchestrated the merman killings, and he continued the lie after finding out the truth. His only motive was to make Nawa hate humans and Phu so that he could have Nawa to himself. But at his funeral, he and his father were both being praised as martyrs. For what? The only good thing Phraphai did was sacrifice himself to save Phu, and he wouldn’t have had to do that if he didn’t try to kill Phu in the first place.

The last two episodes are all about that Phraphai arc, so that’s why they pissed me off so much. The plot in those two episodes was also weak. Like why does Nawa collapse because of not transforming when both Ping and Phraphai are fine? How does Nawa know that Phu fell in the water and needed to be saved exactly when and where it happened? Why did he kiss Phu underwater before pulling him up when he’s literally drowning? Why does someone have to die to get blood from a merman heart? Isn’t all blood from your heart anyways? Can’t you just extract some? Phu was about to die and about 12 hours must have passed while Nawa and Phraphai were monologuing about nonsense. The whole Phu-almost-dying arc ended up being mostly about Phraphai when he’s not even the main character. It totally took away from the Nawa-Phu romance. And why did they have to have 500 million flashback scenes? Plus after all that, we didn’t get any sweet moments with Nawa and Phu. The side couple (Phana and Ping) had a sweeter ending moment and kiss than the main couple did and that was disappointing.

Also, I was annoyed that Nawa wasn’t ultimately the one to tell Phu about mermen. He was about to, before he almost collapsed and Phraphai took him to the ocean to transform. So he ends up finding out by witnessing the transformation. I was kind of okay with that because Phu was about to tell him himself. But after that, it’s Phana who explains the whole merman history and lore to Phu, not Nawa. And after Phu finds out about the merman thing, he for some reason needs time to process and starts questioning the relationship. He ultimately comes to the conclusion that he still wants to be with Nawa no matter what, but I don’t understand what there was to question in the first place. It’s not like he was upset about the lying part, it was the merman part that he didn’t know how to handle.

There were some weaker points in the earlier episodes as well. There were often random montages (like swimming and making drinks) as well as flashback scenes of things that we just saw 5 minutes ago within the same episode. And there were too many extended periods of just staring and smiling at each other. The dialogue was often awkward. The background music was often reminiscent of bad porn music, and not just in the NC scenes. The sound mixing was off sometimes, with the music louder than the dialogue, and sometimes the foley background sounds didn’t match (for examples, the footsteps when Ping’s mother is walking were totally off). The leads were the weakest actors in the entire series. I’d say Ping and Than were the only ones that delivered convincing performances. The underwater scenes weren’t great. Even if you excuse the bad effects as budget restrictions, the costumes were also awful and the actors were doing a very bad job of not looking like they were holding their breath when they were supposed to be able to breathe underwater. And their swimming very much looked like what humans look like when they’re trying to awkwardly swim underwater without floating up. The first episode in particular was pretty weak, with a 4 minute drink making competition that added nothing of value and 25 seconds of staring during their first meeting.

But I enjoyed the romance in episodes 2-6. It was problematic in that Nawa explicitly rejected Phu multiple times, but Phu refused to stop pursuing him. I’m not excusing that as acceptable behavior, but of all the BLs I’ve seen with this problematic trope, I think this one executed it in the least disturbing way. Because Phu was never controlling, never violated Nawa’s boundaries (at least not in a way that was romanticized or excused as acceptable), and never violated his consent. Even when Nawa was going off with Phraphai on a daily basis and not explaining anything to Phu, Phu never stopped him. The one time he violated Nawa’s boundaries, by following him and Phraphai, Nawa calls him out for violating his privacy and Phu agrees to never do it again. And he sticks to that. The only physical interaction between Nawa and Phu that had questionable consent was their first kiss / sexual encounter, during which Phu was drunk. He was an active participant though, and had made his interest known in advance, which made the scene less disturbing to watch than other similar dub con scenes. Every other interaction was fully consensual. Even when they were deep into it, when Nawa stopped them and said he was tired and didn’t want to continue, Phu stopped and didn’t pressure him to keep going.

There was also good consent in the NC scene with Than and Yu. Although they were both drunk, when Yu stops Than from unbuckling his belt, Than immediately stops and they discuss what’s wrong. When Yu leaves the room to sleep elsewhere, Than tries to convince him to stay but doesn’t force him to. Consent as a whole was good. There were dub con drunk scenes, but I found them less disturbing (although not acceptable) because everyone was an active participant.

The NC scenes as a whole were also more explicit than you usually see. There were several scenes with stimulated blow jobs. But the camera work and editing weren’t the greatest in some scenes. And sometimes the facial expressions didn’t match what was actually going on. Like sometimes the actors’ faces were looking like they were mid-sex, but all that was happening was their partner kissing down their back, and their pants were still on. Also there was one scene where one of the side couples answers the phone mid-blowjob, and wtf? Who does that?

Also, everyone was an equal in all the couples! No dom / sub dynamics to be found, which I really, really appreciated. The one couple where there stereotypically would be dom / sub dynamics was Phana / Ping due to the boss / employee relationship, age difference, and size difference. But they were also equals, and Ping took the lead in and out of the bedroom just as much as Phana did.

The one thing I thought was lacking was casual physical intimacy. You could tell that every physical touch was explicitly scripted. So when it wasn’t scripted, things felt awkward. For example, the morning after they officially get together, they’re standing 5 feet apart and don’t touch each other aside from the scripted kisses, which were just pecks. It was oddly awkward and chaste considering they’d already had sex and were officially in a relationship. I also wanted Nawa to initiate and pursue Phu more as opposed to just accepting his affection, but I think he reciprocated more as the series went on. Also, I thought it was weird that Nawa called Phu “Khun” instead of “P” for the entire series.

For the side couples - I really liked Than / Yu. I wanted to see more of them and was disappointed we didn’t get a real conclusion on if their relationship worked out after they left the island. Than’s ride or die mentality when it came to Yu was cute. It had the same unhealthy “I’m going to chase you even if you say no” dynamic that Phu / Nawa had, but it similarly wasn’t controlling or violating of boundaries / consent. I liked the whole forbidden romance aspect of their relationship and would 100% be invested in a full series on them. The actors (particularly Than) were really good at conveying emotions in emotionally charged scenes.

I was less invested in Phana / Ping. Phana was a good boyfriend to his ex-girlfriend. He loved her and he worked hard to make things work with her, even when the relationship was unhappy. I appreciated that he had no interest in Ping while he was with his girlfriend. He was committed, fought for the relationship, and was a good guy. But his dedication to his ex meant that I didn’t really want to see him with anyone else. He was hung up on her for most of the series, and unsure if he actually felt something for Ping or was just lonely and looking for a rebound or replacement. Also, I didn’t like that the show made the girlfriend look like the bad guy when she didn’t do anything wrong other than end a failing relationship.