denryion

This wasn’t great. The acting was stiff and the leads had very little chemistry. Their relationship was very formal all the way through - no fluff or sweet moments to be found. The plot and script were soap opera level overdramatic.

The way the relationship was portrayed, it very much was sexual harassment and assault from both sides. The employee kisses the boss while he’s drunk and passed out. The boss breaks all kinds of boundaries, showing up at the employee’s house, giving him his personal number and asking him to go for a meal, wrapping his arms around him while teaching him baseball, and more. There’s a scene where the employee says to “wait” as the boss is going in for their first kiss, and the boss does not stop at all and kisses him anyways. The employee also tells the boss that he wants to be careful about their relationship at work, and the boss responds by pinning him to the wall, pinning his arm against the wall when the employee tries to push him away, and kissing him anyways. The justification is that he “can’t help it” and “this is him trying”. All the way until the end of the show, the employee still calls the boss “Director”, and not in a fun jokey kind of way. There’s very much a power dynamic that never dissipates.

Also, after the boss rejects the employee and the employee starts avoiding him, the boss starts power tripping. He abuses his power to try to force meetings and grabs the employee’s wrist to the point of pain to force a conversation. He grabs and drags the employee violently several times during the series. When he’s upset, he gets angry and violent, yelling and hitting things. If that’s the way you act when the person you like isn’t doing what you want, then they’re much better off without you.

I’m not sure why this is rated 18+. There are a few kissing scenes, but it’s lips only (not even going down to the neck). Their shoulders and backs block their mouths in a lot of shots. No sex scenes or makeout scenes. It’s not abnormally violent or profane either.

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This wasn’t great. The acting was stiff and the leads had very little chemistry. Their relationship was very formal all the way through - no fluff or sweet moments to be found. The plot and script were soap opera level overdramatic.

The way the relationship was portrayed, it very much was sexual harassment and assault from both sides. The employee kisses the boss while he’s drunk and passed out. The boss breaks all kinds of boundaries, showing up at the employee’s house, giving him his personal number and asking him to go for a meal, wrapping his arms around him while teaching him baseball, and more. There’s a scene where the employee says to “wait” as the boss is going in for their first kiss, and the boss does not stop at all and kisses him anyways. The employee also tells the boss that he wants to be careful about their relationship at work, and the boss responds by pinning him to the wall, pinning his arm against the wall when the employee tries to push him away, and kissing him anyways. The justification is that he “can’t help it” and “this is him trying”. All the way until the end of the show, the employee still calls the boss “Director”, and not in a fun jokey kind of way. There’s very much a power dynamic that never dissipates.

Also, after the boss rejects the employee and the employee starts avoiding him, the boss starts power tripping. He abuses his power to try to force meetings and grabs the employee’s wrist to the point of pain to force a conversation. He grabs and drags the employee violently several times during the series. When he’s upset, he gets angry and violent, yelling and hitting things. If that’s the way you act when the person you like isn’t doing what you want, then they’re much better off without you.

I’m not sure why this is rated 18+. There are a few kissing scenes, but it’s lips only (not even going down to the neck). Their shoulders and backs block their mouths in a lot of shots. No sex scenes or makeout scenes. It’s not abnormally violent or profane either.

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This was an okay time filler. 60 episodes ranging from 1-2 minutes each. The vertical format sucks. Even if they wanted to do it as shorts, it would be a much better viewing experience in landscape. The shorts thing is just a cash grab though, because they want you to pay to unlock individual episodes or buy a monthly subscription. Also the Shortime app regularly freezes up or the quality degrades, so that doesn’t help the viewing experience.

This was really, really cheesy. The story, the script, and the acting all included. The bully character especially was so obnoxiously stereotypically evil, and the acting was really over the top exaggerated. He of course had a “he’s not that evil, he’s just abused” redemption arc.

The romance was okay. The run time is short, so it wasn’t well developed. They were probably only together for a few weeks, plus there’s a one month time skip epilogue at the end. It didn’t feel like they were in a committed long-lasting relationship by the end. It just felt like they were beginning a relationship that they were both excited about, but may or may not work out long term. Also there were exclusively dead fish lip presses in this series, so that kind of killed the romance. And for some reason, Seon U is still calling Tae Hyeong “sunbae” by the end of the series. There was mutual care and protection in both directions though, which I give props for.

The good thing is that everything between the leads was consensual and there was no stalking / harassing involved. But Tae Hyeong does yell at Seon U a couple times, and also once drags him by the hand (and Seon U protests about this hurting), because he was “concerned”. I take issue with BLs that romanticize the idea of showcasing your worry, concern, or care in those types of ways. Also, the communication was non-existent. Even at the end, when Tae Hyeong wasn’t been coerced into silence, he doesn’t confide in Seon U about the coach’s abuse or the video threat or the fact that the coach and the bully are trying to make him fix or drop out of the match, and instead just breaks up with him, deeming it too dangerous.

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This isn’t a good drama by any means. Poor production quality, poor acting, poor writing, poor music, poor costume design…you name it. But if you don’t think about it too much and you’ve got nothing else to watch, it’s okay as a filler.

Each episode is 10 minutes long, but the first minute is the intro, the last two minutes are the outro, and sometimes they repeat the end of the last episode at the beginning of the next, so the actual content is much shorter.

The acting was truly, truly bad. There wasn’t a single place where I felt immersed in the characters. I always felt like I was watching actors. The fake crying was especially bad.

The leads lacked chemistry as well. While the kisses and NC scenes were technically steamier than most, the leads were so unconvincing that that they fell completely flat. It didn’t feel like they were into each other, it didn’t feel passionate, the facial expressions were bad, and maybe it was the camera work, but the stimulated thrusting was so awkward that it would have been better if they just hadn’t bothered. It didn’t help that they kept putting bad porn music over those scenes. And for some reason, they only focused on Narvi’s face and not Sasin’s for most of the scenes — maybe because Sasin’s face was even more stiff and awkward than Narvi’s. I did like that the characters were written to both be active participants in all NC and kissing scenes, though.

At the beginning, there were several boundary violations on Sasin’s part. He touches Narvi in his sleep, appears in the shower when Narvi is unaware, violates the “stay off the bed” rule, cuddles Narvi to help him sleep (invisibly, so Narvi doesn’t know) after Narvi explicitly says he doesn’t want to. He also tries to kiss Narvi, but at least he backs off when Narvi jerks away.

The writing was all over the place. Really cringy in some places, overly cheesy in others, and completely lost the plot in even other places.

There are a bunch of scenes where some “enemy from the past life” is trying to attack and kill Narvi and Sasin protects him. It’s never explained who this is or why they’re after Narvi. They’re never defeated and they never appear again after they serve their purpose of making Narvi trust and fall for Sasin.

There’s a scene where Narvi gets mad at Sasin and tells him to go away. But then he regrets it and tries to get him to come back. We can see that Sasin hears and sees all of Narvi’s attempts, but for whatever reason he doesn’t show himself to Narvi even when he’s begging and crying. He does creepily appear at night and touch his face and kiss his forehead though. What was the reason for that? There was no explanation given.

The ending also made zero sense. Sasin had appeared on Halloween because he made a deal to appear at a certain moon phase, and then disappeared when the moon moved out of that phase. Who did he make that deal with in the first place? And then Sasin appears again the next Halloween…as a human, reincarnated, but fully adult and with all his past life and ghost memories. What? There’s zero explanation given as to how that was possible.

Smaller issues: There was a scene where a character went to the bathroom and they put fart noises as background sounds. Gross. Sasin is a ghost but he can wear human clothes and eat human food and somehow can find winning lottery tickets. There are a bunch of shower scenes and no soap used in a single one.

From a costume design perspective, all the outfits were horrendous. The modern day ones especially were truly awful. They had Sasin change from his historical outfit to a modern day one and I think it would have fit with the whole ghost concept more if he had stuck to the historical one.

The OST also had this rap part that did not at all suit the scenes it was overlayed over, and completely killed the mood. You know it’s bad because I usually don’t even notice OSTs.

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Pretty disappointing, overall.

The show was really, really slow. Even watching on 2x speed, there was a lot of standing around in silence during conversations. On 1x speed, it literally felt like it was in slow motion some times. A whole lot of nothing happened in most episodes, and the whole plot is based on a trivial high school misunderstanding, and I think it could have been boiled down into four 30 minute episodes. As it was, it was just boring.

Also, the acting from whoever plays Achi was pretty bad. He always had this same wide smile on his face, even when it didn’t fit the mood. Ji would be upset or angry and Achi would just be standing there with that dumbass grin on his face. He was so tone deaf too, like smiling and telling Ji to eat and think later when Ji is upset about a patient with cancer, considering that his mom died of cancer. The acting was just really one-dimensional and not convincing, overall. I didn’t buy that Achi was in love with or even attracted to Ji whatsoever.

There was a lot of consent / boundary issues on Achi’s part. He non-consensually kisses Ji in episode 2 and rightfully gets punched in the face for it. Ji tells him to leave him alone and that he doesn’t want to see him again, so Achi decides to show up at his house, coerce his way in, and then proceeds to refuse to leave for the entire day AND night. During which period he make further physical moves on Ji, such as dropping a face mask on his face and picking it up with his mouth (Ji pushes him off and is upset about this), and touching his face in his sleep. He was constantly showing up uninvited and unannounced and refusing to leave. Achi could have appealed to Ji by being kind, being friendly, just using open communication, but instead he kept violating his boundaries and sexually harassing him. Even during the high school flashback scenes, there was a scene where he stalked Ji on his date with Pear.

There were two scenes that I think had good consent. One was when Achi kisses Ji in the present in bed. When Ji stops him, Achi respects it and doesn’t try again. The second was the high school flashback NC scene. They’re watching an erotic movie, and Ji tells Achi to turn it off. Achi respects it and does. Achi puts his hand on Ji’s and when Ji doesn’t move away, Achi asks Ji if he wants to try it. Ji says no and Achi removes his hand and backs away, until Ji himself grabs Achi and initiates things. When they’re getting undressed, Achi looks to Ji and waits for a nod of approval before removing his shorts.

I didn’t understand why Achi having a girlfriend was at all necessary. I couldn’t understand the timeline of their relationship either. When Achi meets Ji in Chiang Mai, he says he has a girlfriend and her shoe is in his car. But he non-consensually kisses Ji minutes later. And the girlfriend says in an interview that they’re broken up the next day. So did he break up with her after kissing Ji or were they already broken up? If they were already broken up, then why did he lie? And if they weren’t broken up, why was he still with her, when he came to Chiang Mai with the explicit intent of chasing after Ji again? And speaking of, what changed after 10 years that he suddenly decided to go after Ji again? And Achi never tells Ji that he and his girlfriend broke up, so is Ji going along this whole time thinking that Achi is cheating on his girlfriend, and he’s just okay with that? The girlfriend added nothing to the plot and just made me uncomfortable with the whole emotional and potentially physical cheating that was going on.

There were other inconsistencies as well. In the high school flashback scenes, Ji says he likes Pear, but then he immediately tells Achi that he has a pretty face, eyes, nose, and mouth (in a clearly non-platonic way). He then goes on the pursue Pear and continues to talk about liking her. But then when Achi finds Pear “cheating” on Ji, Ji says they were never together and were just friends. And then he and Achi have sex. So what?? Did he like her, did he not like her, what was their relationship and at what point did his feelings change?

And in the finale, they show that Achi was aware that he hurt Ji and he was aware that the reason Ji was hurt was because he disappeared without a word right after they had sex. So why in the beginning, when he met Ji in Chiang Mai, was he acting like he didn’t know what was wrong and why Ji was acting cold towards him?

I felt that Achi, Ji’s friend, and Ji’s brother all scheming together to reunite Ji and Achi behind Ji’s back was really messed up too, considering that the friend and brother knew how much Achi hurt Ji. They never should have disregarded his feelings and wishes and prioritized Achi’s instead.

The side couple with Achi’s brother and the random farmer guy was also really pointless. They weren’t shown enough to really develop their relationship, what was shown was boring and not convincingly romantic, and it felt disjointed from the rest of the show.

Also, a side note that could be written off as a cultural difference or extremely problematic depending on your perspective: I believe Ji's family's butchering business sells dog meat. It was translated as "pork" in the subtitles, but it was clear based on his mom asking how they could keep a dog as a pet when they sell "pork" at the shop.

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Rated 9 up until the final episode. The story is emotional and desperate and beautiful, but the ending is shit. They have feelings for each other, but Dong Hui leaves for Seoul despite originally planning to go to a local college because he has feelings for Ho Tae and is scared due to internalized homophobia. They never admit their feelings for each other. They’re apart for years. The ending sees Dong Hui returning, and they see each other again. We don’t see them speak, so who knows if they become friends or more this time around. Why would anything be different this time around if they were too afraid to admit their feelings the first time around? Disappointing.

Boundary crossing: Dong Hui asks Ho Tae to move aside but he blocks him in instead. Dong Hui grabs Ho Tae to prevent him from walking away.

Consent issues: Ho Tae asks Dong Hui for a kiss. He pins his wrists down and doesn’t allow him to move. Dong Hui does not respond with a yes or no. Ho Tae moves in for a kiss and it starts consensually. Dong Hui breaks the kiss, Ho Tae goes in for more, and Dong Hui has to forcibly push him off to get him to stop.

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Rated 9 up until the final episode. The story is emotional and desperate and beautiful, but the ending is shit. They have feelings for each other, but Dong Hui leaves for Seoul despite originally planning to go to a local college because he has feelings for Ho Tae and is scared due to internalized homophobia. They never admit their feelings for each other. They’re apart for years. The ending sees Dong Hui returning, and they see each other again. We don’t see them speak, so who knows if they become friends or more this time around. Why would anything be different this time around if they were too afraid to admit their feelings the first time around? Disappointing.

Boundary crossing: Dong Hui asks Ho Tae to move aside but he blocks him in instead. Dong Hui grabs Ho Tae to prevent him from walking away.

Consent issues: Ho Tae asks Dong Hui for a kiss. He pins his wrists down and doesn’t allow him to move. Dong Hui does not respond with a yes or no. Ho Tae moves in for a kiss and it starts consensually. Dong Hui breaks the kiss, Ho Tae goes in for more, and Dong Hui has to forcibly push him off to get him to stop.

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I liked the main couple. The side couples, not so much.

The main couple was great in that they were equals. They both took care of each other, they both pursued each other, they both took the lead. Neither shied away from or rejected affection for no reason. They were very cute together and I liked that the show ended with them engaged, and that we got to see a glimpse into their everyday HEA life.

There were a couple boundary-crossing scenes, and some sexual harassment, but no actual non-con / dub-con between the main couple. There were a few scenes where Xun An would get really close to Bai Lang while he was sleeping, maybe trying to kiss him? He backed off once when Bai Lang opened his eyes, and once when he turned his face. There was a lot of Xun An grabbing and touching Bai Lang, often to prevent him from walking away, even after Bai Lang repeatedly removed his hands and told him to stop touching him.

I wasn’t bothered by the patient-doctor relationship at first because Xun An was professional and their relationship was only being developed outside of the office. But at some point, he starts hitting on Bai Lang while he’s in the dentist chair, invading his personal space and getting up in his face, dismissing the nurse and working on him alone, all while Bai Lang had not yet signaled any interest on his part. It was textbook sexual harassment, objectively.

There were a few things I didn’t really like about their relationship, as well. When Bai Lang tells Xun An that he likes him too after seeing him with his ex, I understand Xun An’s concern that Bai Lang is only reacting as a panic response to the ex. I get why he doesn’t believe that Bai Lang is sincere in his words. And I get his whole, “you push me away but call me back when you want me” thing. But he’s pretty much already decided to forgive Bai Lang and that he still wants him, because he goes to Bai Lang’s sister for her blessing the same night. Meanwhile he has Bai Lang chase after him. I didn’t really like that he was essentially playing mind games - he was acting upset when he wasn’t actually because he wanted Bai Lang to chase after him like he chased after Bai Lang.

Also, the whole ex situation really annoyed me. There’s ex-drama from episodes 6-8. There were so many flashbacks of the relationship and romantic moments with the ex, including a kiss scene. We didn’t need to see all that. Xun An is friendly to the ex, still remembers his favorite coffee, and Bai Lang gifting him meal at the beginning of the series was enough to trigger a flashback. It’s been 7 years, they were never officially together, the ex got married and had a kid, and they haven’t spoken since, but Xun An has never dated anyone since him. All that gave the ex too much weight and importance. That being said, Xun An definitively rejects the ex and pursues Bai Lang without any hesitation, so I had more of a problem with the show’s depiction of the ex relationship and not the character’s actions. But also, the ex kept popping up, even after everyone got closure and moved on in episode 8. He literally hugged Xun An on purpose so Bai Lang would see, and he had a weird pissing contest with Bai Lang about who knew Xun An better at the market even after Xun An definitively rejected him. But despite that, he ends up marrying Bai Lang’s sister. Like wtf? You’re going to have the ex marry into the family and be around forever?

And they randomly threw in an abuse situation in the last two episodes. Xun An’s dad is abusive and beats Xun An after finding out about his relationship with Bai Lang, and Xun An basically ghosted Bai Lang for 3 weeks as a result. The whole situation annoyed me. First of all, everything was brushed under the rug. Not a single character acknowledged the abuse, instead treating it like it was a normal thing that Xun An had to endure in order to gain his father’s approval. They act like familial approval is so important, when sometimes your family can be garbage and their approval isn’t necessary or worth it. Also, Xun An never truthfully explains why he went missing or apologizes to Bai Lang - he finds out from Xun An’s mother. Bai Lang tells Xun An never to keep things from him again and that they should shoulder the burden together going forward, but it never felt like Xun An truly committed or agreed to that statement.

The side couples: I hated them. All of them.

The Alex / RJ pairing was gross, I’m sorry. They literally look like parent / child, or young uncle / child, at the very least. RJ looks and acts like a teenager and Alex looks and acts like a grown man. There’s an age difference in appearance, behavior, and attitude, and there’s no way a relationship like that can ever exist without an inherent power dynamic. Alex thinks of and treats RJ as a child for the vast majority of the show. It’s like if an 18 year old high school senior hits on their teacher — yes, they’re technically an adult, but there’s a power dynamic (boss / employee + age difference) and even if they’re the one’s initiating, it’s your responsibility as the adult to shut down any sort of inappropriate relationship. So the fact that Alex started to see RJ in a different light all of a sudden was really gross to me. Everything between them was nonconsensual anyways (RJ kisses Alex non-consensually twice, and sexually harasses him twice by pinning him up against the wall and getting in his face while he was sleeping). They don’t definitively end up together, but it’s hinted that there’s something there. I’m glad for it, because it was gross enough already that I fast-forwarded through the majority of their scenes.

The Bai Lang’s sister / Xun An’s ex pairing was stupid too, because I wanted the ex to just go away and instead he married into the family. There was another random couple, a delivery guy and another dentist at Xun An’s office, and they served no purpose and would have been better off cut from the show altogether.

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Short, enjoyable watch. Watched the re-edited 6 episode version.

Sweet romance. No consent issues, boundary-crossing, or stalking/harassment.

They don’t get together until the very end of the final episode and they plan to keep it a secret. I’d be invested in a longer show where they deal with the public fall out. Also, they keep talking about Doha not getting along with his idol group members, but they never explain why and in the final episode they just say they made up with no further explanation. So not sure what the point of even including that conflict was.

Very chaste, which is probably to be expected. One lip press where one character is wide-eyed in shock (but I would consider it most likely consensual). One post-credits kiss with a tiny bit of mouth movement.

The problem was, you couldn’t convince me that these guys have any romantic feelings for each other whatsoever. They were very friend-coded in their facial expressions, body language, and tone. Doha was the one pursuing Jaeyeon, who was meant to be unsure about his feelings, but he played into that so well that even by the end I felt like he wasn’t really that into Doha. The post-credits scene where Doha tells Jaeyeon to call him and says he’s doesn’t want to be the one always calling first didn’t help with that. I think it would have been way more enjoyable if Jaeyeon was really into Doha the whole time too and there was a whole forbidden romance yearning / longing thing going on, but that wasn’t at all present.

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Too short to properly tell the story. Didn’t really explain how they met online, or how and why Wild Dog approached Flying Dagger. They fell in love so fast that it felt like it was just skipped over. When Flying Dagger found out Wild Dog’s identity, Wild Dog said he’d explain everything but they didn’t show that part. I wanted to hear the explanation because I didn’t understand the grand scheme or motivation. And the forgiveness was too quick as well, since we didn’t see that part. The ending was too quick. No proper wrap up to showcase their HEA. The villain was left alive so what’s to stop him from coming back? I felt each part of the plot was underdeveloped.

People talked a lot about the NC scenes, and while it’s certainly more explicit than your standard Korean BL, it’s nothing crazy. Shirtless, in bed, kisses with no tongue, torso up, cut away or fade to black for the actual sex part of things.

No consent or boundary issues between the leads though, which is a plus.

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This story is about pedophila and grooming, point blank. If you accept that the student is 17, then every action is grossly inappropriate and disgusting. Like commenting on how in shape a 17 year old is, sleeping in the same bed with him, touching his face and cuddling to comfort him, etc. So I told myself he was 18 to try to enjoy the rest of the story. To be honest, him being 17 wasn’t that important to the plot and there was no reason they couldn’t have just made him 18.

For the main couple:

There was a lot, a lot of non-con and crossed boundaries. The mob dude coerces the student to sleep in the same bed as him. He touches his face and cuddles him while he’s sleeping (to comfort him from a nightmare, is the justification). In the morning, he kisses the student non-consensually. He gets punched in the face for it, thankfully. But he also gets forgiven fairly easily and the student falls in love with him shortly after. There was also one scene where he gropes the student’s dick in his sleep (but this seems like a genuine muscle memory mistake where he thought he was waking up next to a sexual partner).

When they finally get together, the mob dude had said that he wasn’t interested, but the student keeps leaning in for a kiss anyways. He keeps going in again and again, even the mob dude keeps stopping him, before he finally kisses him. The mob dude is hesitant and partially pushing him away, but he keeps kissing anyways. And then the kiss turns consensual. When they finally reunite after the time skip, mob dude is drunk and on pills, half asleep and thinks he’s dreaming. But they proceed to kiss and have sex. Mob dude seemed to become aware at some point and was an active participant, but he was in no shape to consent.

It’s weird that the mob dude suddenly cared about the student’s age once he confessed. He didn’t care all this time that he was sleeping in the same bed with him or that one time he kissed him non-consensually. It was for show I think, to try to show the audience that he wasn’t a TOTAL pedophile. Except he went on to discard all his concerns and sleep with him, date him, promise to marry him, etc. etc.

Also, the mob dude changes the student’s house lock and makes himself a key without asking. He physically grabs the student to force his attention when he’s upset too.

What I did like: They were equals. Despite the age difference and power dynamics, in the relationship and in the bedroom, they were complete equals. The defied stereotypes by making the younger, inexperienced one the top, but it didn’t really matter what positions they took in the bedroom because they took turns taking the lead both in and out of the bedroom. Before the time skip, if you ignore the ages, they were very very cute together. Neither one of them was running away and dodging the other person’s affection like BLs typically do.

What I didn’t like:

The student was a good kid, smart with a bright future. He had goals, had been accepted into college to become a doctor. Instead he takes the fall for the mob dude and goes to jail for 4 years. During that time, mob dude was pretending he lost his memory. He doesn’t write, he doesn’t visit. Once the student is out, mob dude continues to pretend. The student opens a bakery basically dedicated to the mob dude and waits around, hoping he’ll come back, but in the end he doesn’t. It’s the student that finds and seeks him out.

The student gave up his entire life for this guy, who completely abandoned him. And he gets forgiven immediately. The student doesn’t even get upset. In fact, he’s okay with giving the mob dude MORE TIME to adjust. Like what? The justification was that he was “protecting” him from this family, but the family sent people after the student anyways, so what was the point? Another friend goes into the jail in order to protect the student. Why didn’t he do that? Why didn’t he take the fall himself? Like there was no excuse for disappearing for 4 years and not sending one secret letter or sign that you didn’t just let him give up his whole life for nothing.

The entire post-timeskip was the student pursuing the mob guy when it should have been the mob guy begging on his knees for being a garbage human being. Plus, the post-timeskip was way more focused on the second couple so I didn’t feel the main couple got a satisfying ending or proper happy times once they were re-united.

The second couple:

What an absolute toxic shitshow. Why exactly do people think they’re cute?

One guy is absolutely in love with their much older boss for the entire first half of the show. At one point he non-consensually kisses the other guy while drunk and pining over the boss, and gets bit on the lip for his troubles. Don’t worry though, because the turning point is when he was blackout drunk, in emotional turmoil, and in love with his boss, and the other guy has sex with him (read: rapes), takes his virginity, and fucks off for the next 4 years. This made idiot 1 realize he was actually in love with idiot 2 (read: his rapist) and not his boss.

So then idiot 1 proceeds to kidnap, tie up, coerce, and otherwise forcibly make idiot 2 like him again. And I mean that. He picks him up to move him where he want him to go. He shoves him in his car. He lies to him about being hurt and needing his help to get him to talk to him. He ties him to his bed to force a conversation. He grabs him and manhandles him and refuses to let him leave when he wants to. He has him followed and prevents him from hooking up. He tries to kiss and take off the other guy’s clothes while he’s loudly protesting both verbally and physically, and physically restrains him to prevent him from running away - quite literally trying to rape him, without even the excuse of either of them being drunk. He’s controlling as fuck, saying that the other guy is “his responsibility”. He’s the type of “caring” that really means “controlling”, “overbearing”, and “abusive”. The other guy is actively verbally and physically fighting for his own free-will, but his desires aren’t listened to whatsoever. But I guess he gives him his favorite foods and showers him with gifts, so he’s a good guy and we should ship them, right?

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Overall, decent. Lots of filler that could have been cut, though. Slow burn - they get together at the end of ep 8. The dream premise was interesting but fizzled out. Yu is in danger every other day for random reasons and then it’s suddenly completely safe after the finale. There’s no real reason or explanation or deeper mystery behind it revealed.

Mostly good consent. They immediately end things when someone pushes away or says they’re not ready. They ask if the partner is okay before proceeding, and say that stopping is okay if they’re not ready. Both couples are equals and take turns leading in the bedroom. The secondary couple both lead outside the bedroom too. For the main couple, Yu mainly takes the lead out of the bedroom, but not in a domineering way. For example, in the special episode, Ai expects and waits on Yu to propose instead of thinking about doing it himself. Both couples show reciprocal affection - no constant rejection and pushing the other person away and shying away for no reason.

Two dubcon drunk scenes. For the secondary couple scene, one is extremely drunk. The drunk one is the one that initiates, they have a pre-established relationship, and the drunk one has initiated sex while sober before. But having drunk sex was not pre-negotiated. He passed out before anything could really happen though. For the main couple, I couldn’t tell if the scene was real or a dream. But the drunk one initiated. He had rejected sex while sober the night before. He had expressed an interest in sex while sober to his friends, but did not convey this to Yu. When he wakes up naked the next morning, he looks upset and asks if Yu did something to him. Yu says he got hot and took his own clothes off. So clearly it didn’t progress much further than the make out session we saw, if that makeout session was real and not a dream. Also one dubcon scene where Ai says he’s going to “punish” Yu. The scene wasn’t pre-negotiated, and Yu seemed hesitant and didn’t kiss back much at first, but eventually reciprocated. Ai should have pulled back to verbally check for consent before proceeding at that point.

The second couple was more compelling for me. I bought into their romance more and they had more chemistry. They were also better kissers. One of them was a playboy at the beginning of the series, but he’s 100% in on Ing once they get together. He dates one other person at the beginning, but he’s not really serious about him and there wasn’t much drama surrounding it. He proudly tells the ex that he and Ing are together later in the series.

The ex drama for the main couple annoyed me. In ep 3/4, Yu seems like he’s really not over his ex. I almost dropped the series at this point, especially after reading spoilers for the ex drama in ep 10. In ep 10 though, His ex is getting harassed and Yu offers to help her. The thing is, he offered, she didn’t ask. He offers to let her stay at his house. He doesn’t tell her he’s in a relationship. He doesn’t tell Ai that she’s staying over or why. This happens almost immediately after they finally get together and sleep together too. He brings her to dinner with Ai’s parents, and is super caring and attentive to her, putting food on per plate and talking to her, and practically ignoring Ai. Ai and Yu don’t sleep in the same room while the ex is there, even though they usually do. Yu stays home with Pan instead of going out with Ai and their friend group. There was no reason he couldn’t help his ex, respect her wishes to not tell Ai the details (just tell him she’s in danger and he’s helping), but also disclose his relationship status, interact with Ai as normal, and prioritize his feelings over Pan’s, while also caring about her safety. In the end, Yu never discloses their relationship. The ex finds out through the internet. She apologizes to Ai for not knowing, and Ai apologizes to Yu, saying he would have done the same, but Yu never apologizes for or even acknowledges his approach and absolute disrespect of their relationship. That being said, Yu does seem emotionally over his ex at this point, even before offering his help, and the drama starts and ends within the one episode.

There was a love rival for Ai as well, but it didn’t bother me much. Ai never reciprocated and unlike Yu, he did all the right things to shut it down and prevent misunderstandings with both Yu and the rival. To be honest, the rival was a good guy and he actually put Ai first, unlike Yu with his ex. I wouldn’t have been mad if the series was written for Ai / Wann instead of Ai / Yu. He also accepted no for an answer when rejected.

I thought this series was going to be steamier than it actually was, especially when they showed that he had an erection at the beginning. But it doesn't go past semi-clothed make out sessions and implied sex.

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Consent / domestic violence:
- Several instances of non-con touching framed as flirting or in a comedic light.
- Several dubcon/noncon kisses (both sober and drunk).
- One scene where one character shoves the other in the chest out of anger several times, even though he’d just been shot.
- One scene where one character gets angry, grabs a fistful of the other’s hair and forcefully kisses him.

Problematic things:
- Referring to one character as the “girlfriend”.
- Normalized corporal punishment from grandparents.

Kiss / sex scenes: no sex scenes, the farthest it went was shirtless making out in bed

Notable good points:
- Both characters took care of each other. It wasn’t one-sided, with one person in charge of protecting and taking care of the other person. Both characters took the lead in the bedroom, and when they got engaged, both characters got rings. I liked that they were equals.
- Final episode was just dedicated to them being happy together. Too many series wrap up too quickly and we don’t get to see them happy for long enough after all the angst.

Notable bad points:
- They live together, are in a relationship, and are presumably in love, but they don’t even sleep in the same bed.
- The couple earrings were weird, especially considering they were originally gifted to track and bug the other guy, but they kept wearing them even after everything was out in the open.
- Second couple got together in the final episode. I honestly didn’t want them to get together, considering one was hung up on his ex for years and only finally let him go in the final episode.

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