jpny01

Good, but some wasted potential

This is a different kind of BL, with complex characters that aren't caricatures or archetypes like most BL characters. Even the "villain" isn't a villain.

The acting is superb, although a bit uneven, with Kris & Porsche playing Dome and Vee with a searing intensity in a forbidden love storyline, Boom & Jump a bit one-note but cute as Saen and Aii, and Tae & Suar in the middle as Fah and Thorn.

The cinematography and art design are the best I've seen in a BL, including I Told Sunset about You - it was stunning enough to carry me through the weaker parts of the story.

Which brings me to to the biggest problem with the series, which is the writing and pacing. The story is too ambitious for 12 episodes and too much was attempted. Unfortunately, the expedient chosen to get through it was time jumps. The jumps totally deflated the most exciting couple, Dome and Vee, and their story just died and I lost interest in it. They skipped over all the key scenes, like Dome & Vee's respective denouments with Pan, parting for Saen & Aii, etc.

The final drama between the main couple was insufficiently set up, and while the emotion and charactization was complex, realistic, and well-executed, Thorn made too many decisions that didn't make very much sense for his character - there were things he did that are understandable in the moment, but not in the long term, like the communications breakdown with Fah.

And the finale was a huge disappointment - an entire episode where nothing happened wasted on what could have been much-needed development for the secondary couples. In the end, the total lack of passion between the characters undermined any sense I had that anyone was in love - they all interacted like friends, with pecks on the cheek going where a love scene belonged. Considering how dark and mature the themes of the series were, the junior-high level of the romance (and that's being generous) made the whole series fall flat for me. Dome & Vee's final scene is a LOL product placement - it was mouth-hanging-open shocking to see such an electric couple ending in such a pathetic way.

I'm not saying there needed to be sweat-soaked love sex scenes - Vee & Dome had scenes were they weren't even touching that could burn a house down (before they became wet cardboard). But at no point did any of the other two couples, or Vee & Dome after the first time jump, feel like romantic pairs. Fah & Thorn feel like their roles were written for brothers, not lovers, and Saen & Aii's romance was primary school from beginning to end, with Aii never ceasing to act like he was afraid of getting cooties from Saen. If you replaced them with 8-year olds, the story would work just the same.

I still gave it a high rating, but there's no excuse for this not being a 10 with all the superlative ingredients it had.

Story: 7 - High points for complex characterizations, but poor marks for continuity and failure to bring stories to convinving conclusions and jumping over resolutions with lazy and enervating time-jumps.

Acting: 9 - Of all the actors, the only ones that I long to see again are Kris & Porsche, preferably together. The others were decent, and would probably outshine most run-of-the-mill BL actors, but suffered in comparison to that superb pair.

Music: 7 - nothing special but did it's job.

Rewatch: 5 - I would rewatch Vee & Dome, but that's about it.

Overall: 8.5 This is higher than the suggested score, but there's no rating for "production values", and this was an 11/10. I would have rated it a 9.5 or 10 up until the first time jump, which led to a huge dropoff for the series - this was a very unfortunate decision.

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Had Potential

Overall, this was a disappointment, given its initial promise. It had many things going for it, but in the end the writing, or lack thereof, reduces this to a mediocrity.

Tae's Phap was a really original and different character, and he and Singto were a good odd couple. This doesn't follow the standard seme-uke formula - their personalities are what are opposites, not their appearances and sexual positions. Their appearances are of course opposites, but that's a reflection of their personalities, not the masculine-feminine polarity we usually get.

The story is actually funny at first, with a fairly clever cockroach cam in the first episode, but the humor is unforunately dumped later on for the usual unnecessary implausible miscommunication-based melodrama.

it feels like this was a 10-episode story that was dragged out to 12, forcing Maze to cease his development in Ep 9 and backtrack, which just made him seem like an asshole and ruined the audience's desire to see them together. At the beginning, Maze has real reason to be furious with Phap and frustrated with him. When he returns to that state in Ep 9, it's just depressing and made me not care anymore.

Even the ending, when Phap returns, there's apparently a plan, but what it was I have no idea - have Phap act like Maze for no apparent reason?

Phap isn't really given much backstory, which I suppose isn't critical as he's a care-free artist - but Maze really needed one. We do get his central motivation and the reason why in the very last part of the last episode, but as there was no build up to it, it was too late to have any meaning.

Also, the central conflict for both couples is the relationship between Maze an Nueng which is confusing. Maybe there's a subtitle problem, but their relationship seems pretty clear and it's incomprehensible how Phap and Tharn can misunderstand it - especially Phap, who had it explained to him.

One thing I will say - it's more or less revolutionary that all the characters are jealous over other men instead of the usual women thrown in for no apparent reason other than to add some unwelcome heteronormativity.

The time wasted on incomprehensible drama could have been invested in the secondary couple, which were so unfleshed-out that it was difficult to care about them, other than Yacht being so adorable. They are never really integrated into the story - they're more or less just nailed to it. And with no context, they're just two guys who show up and won't tell each other how they feel but like each other for reasons that aren't ever discussed.

It's not all bad - it tries a lot of new things, the characters are original and interesting (at least at first), and the first half of the series is very engaging and charming. Tae is the real standout, playing an impish and odd artist - we've really never seen anything like this before and it was very refreshing. It's a pity they derailed his character in Ep 9.

It's worth watching just for Tae, but I wouldn't go in with any great expectations.

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It's not good, but not the worst, either.

This is a tough one to review. I'll start with negatives and end on positives.

- There are too many characters. None of the story arcs get enough time to be developed, and many of them are just abandoned. This is very unsatisfying. If it had been 6 interns, it might have worked better.

- It might be my Western outlook (being sorry is not enough - accountability for one's actions means accepting the consequences, like being fired for framing other employees and bribery), but it's profoundly disturbing when characters are the most horrible people in the world for 11 episodes, then suddenly feel bad at the end and are totally forgiven and get pretty much everything as a reward. Even if you can accept that morally, it's exceptionally unsatisfying plot-wise. You want the good people who suffer to come out on top, not the horrible people who spent the whole series tearing everyone around them down - we're not talking slightly bad, we're talking seriously malicious.

- Since there are 8 male characters and only 2 horrible and evil female characters, it would have made more sense to make this a BL. You could have two of the 8 be straight and 6 paired off. Why would you not just have Kim & Copter get together? Or Tae & Tee? Or alternatively Tae & Bas? Only Tee has anything to do with a female character, in a rather pointless storyline that goes nowhere.

- I don't know if any BL writers have ever had a regular job, but the Thai management style according to dramas is horrible and counterproductive. That hotel would fail in weeks with that level of incompetent management. Bosses bully and arbitrarily punish people. It gets really old in this series.

Positives:

- Tae is a really good actor. In Ep 10 he has an opportunity to show what he can do, and it's first-rate. He's playing off a very good actress, which always helps, but I haven't cried that much in a long time, and he's powerful yet fairly subtle and restrained, given what's going on. It felt appropriate and real. He's the standout throughout the series. The acting in general is pretty good. Most of it is not terribly inspired, but none of it is embarassing - that's typical of Thai series, which thankfully almost never stray into overacting.

- The BL couple is really cute. Kay is adorable and Pleum is really, really attractive. They don't have much screen time and their relationship is insufficiently developed, but it's not bad for the time given it, and there's no mannequin kiss - it's one of the best we've gotten, and would have been a strong conclusion if they had been a focus of the story with better buildup.

All in all, I can't recommend it. You might skim through ep 1-9 for the BL couple and Tae, then watch ep 10 & 11, then don't watch ep 12 if you don't want to be upset.

Story: 3 - it's a mess, and whoever wrote it doesn't seem to have known where the story was going as it was being written.
Acting: 8.5 - It's really more like a 7, but Tae drags the average up with his 10 performance.
Music: 7 - not memorable and not in the way.
Rewatch: 3 - I'm shallow and I would probably rewatch Pleum's scenes, in many of which he's wearing a skimpy muscle shirt. He has a hot body and I'm shallow. He's handsome and charming, too.
Overal: 6.5 - The suggested score is 5.5, but that seems a little too harsh - there are some nice things in here.

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Entertaining and fun

You can't come into this expecting too much - it's silly and madcap. The humor is... Thai, so it's not for everyone (a bit too slapstick for my tastes).

Anyway, the boys in this are really good-looking (Ko is a 10/10 for me and Teng is pretty close behind), the rural setting is a refreshing change from wealthy urban engineering students, and the plot starts off strangely with shamans, potions, and ghosts, but then becomes a normal BL.

Some people seemed confused by the potion - the shaman is obviously a fraud, as he charges 10 baht which is $0.30 for a love potion, then hands them a small plastic bottle of water. You're never meant to think that there's any chance that it's real. If someone had the power to make people fall in love, he'd charge a lot more than that, right? He's be a billionaire. If you're not convinced, the boy the potion was for was already obviously smitten with the main character, and after he drinks it, he doesn't magically change - their relationship evolves the normal way, and Ko doesn't seem to give it much thought soon after it fails to work..

It's also kind of nice that nobody makes a big deal out of sex on a moral level, although they do treat it as sealing a commitment. The character Tak is apparently seriously hung - he's able to make a ghost moan like a banshee and a guy he schtups later on asks him if he's even human given how painful it was - I thought that was kind of funny - no "how could I have gotten drunk and slept with that guy I hate?" but "Damn that thing is big - I'm going to be sore for a week."

If casual sex after drinking bothers you a lot, maybe skip this. Or if cheating on your gf with a guy bothers you, also maybe skip this. Otherwise, just go into it expecting light entertainment and you'll enjoy it. It's not that long, so it's not like you have to spend 10 hours on it.

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Good, but a missed opportunity.

I really want to give this a 10, but I can't. The acting in this is better than any BL I can think of. All three performers deliver powerful performances, with Kaleb Ong as a standout. Enzo Santiago is as good as ever, and you might be surprised by Gio Emprese, who usually plays pathetic "comic" relief sexual predators, but here is wonderful as a deeply spiritual man put in a painful situation that he has to weather with grace and love.

The technical faults in this are inexcusable. The sound is terrible, the direction mediocre at best, tending towards melodrama in a story that that is already dramatic enough in content and in the strength of the acting.

The cinematography is also inexcusable. Half the shots feature people obscured by plants that are in the foreground, so it's not like the cinematographer could have missed them. If it was intentional, then I would ask, "Is this really what you want to do for a living?" There's a shot that occurs after Kaleb had been making me cry for 20 straight minutes that is so unintentionally funny that I burst out laughing. It involves a very critical moment in the series that represents a serious and spiritual moment, but it's a shot through Enzo's spread legs at a kneeling Kaleb - that's D/s sexual, which I suppose is appropriate for a gay boy and his gay angel. In gay angel porn.

The editing is also problemmatic, with scenes that would otherwise have been powerful dragged out so long that they're drained of energy and start to make you uncomfortable and feel sorry for Enzo, because they're almost all his. There's only one really long scene that had to be long, and it's doing a rosary, which the Catholics watching are already aware take forever, and the scene is really cute and funny.

If this had average BL acting, I wouldn't be writing this at all, because I would have dropped it half way through the first episode. But because the acting is a solid 10+, I feel comfortable recommending this, but just be prepared for a story that will make you cry, partly because you're moved by the story and the actors, and partly because your ears are bleeding due to the awful sound. It's worth it just for Kaleb - I'd watch anything he's in.

Warning: Do not watch the end credits scene, unless you want a beautiful story with a perfect ending reduced to a 1980s era sitcom. It's so bad and cringeworthy in every way (except how hot Enzo looked in it, but you can just google him) that I sat gaping at my screen and wondering if I really saw what I just saw. If you read the words "5 months after", you've gone too far, but there's still time to stop. It's up to you.

Outtakes begin at 32:40.

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Dismal

I had expected an improvement over One Day Pag-Ibig, but this worse in every regard. The same technical errors and problems are present, the acting is not improved, and the story is just derivative, moves in circles, and you will be astonished that they could end it the way they did after we slogged through this series.

One character does something that takes 2 years, and it's never discussed between the main characters. Maybe that would have been a scene we would have liked to have watched instead of an endless sequence of Sef trying to hug Andrei, who invariably pushes him away. Addicted/Heroin is outright copied in several spots, but without the charm and wit of that series.

The acting isn't terrible, at least not from the lead pair, but it's not exactly inspired, either. There's finally a kiss at one point, and it's painfully obviously fake. Come on.

I wanted to like this, and I was expecting a lot more. At least some passion, instead of dreary BL by the numbers.

But there is no motive for improvement because the actors have large tiktok followings that will flock to see anything they're in. That provides me with zero motive to waste any more time on anything this production company drops on us. We're already 2/2 for the ship not sailing. Do I need it to be 3/3?

I want to say something positive, but I'm struggling to think of anything. The theme song is good, but after you've heard it 1,000 times it loses it's appeal. Allen has a beautiful everything and he and Ivo are both very cute. With proper coaching and direction, I think they have enough talent to be effective actors. That's about it.

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This is bad.

It's hard to imagine that someone would agree to finance this, so I can only conclude someone in the production had a rich relative.

The BL couple is cute, and you'll have an interest in them - especially the character Tokyo, who is extremely adorable. It isn't given enough screen time.

The main couple would have been OK with a better FL. I've been referring to the man as "bargain basement Zon" because he's like a washed out version of Tommy Sittichok in Why RU. The FL's acting is not great, but the writing for her character is so bad I'm not sure anyone could have pulled it off. Her interruption of her brother's relationship and her reasoning for doing it are so bizarre and out of character that it really slams the brakes on the show and almost everyone in the comments section wanted her to die horribly thereafter.

It's like BL writers have some irresistible compulsion to insert a toxic female into every single BL romance that exists, at exactly the same moment in the series. I'm becoming convinced there's only one BL writer, and she's either suffered brain damage that makes her write the same thing over and over, or she's being held at gunpoint by a homophobic madman. "I SAID MORE ACCIDENTAL KISSES! PUT IN AN EVIL GF! NEEDS MORE SCREECHING LADYBOYS!" In any case, whenever I'm watching a series, I need to take anti-anxiety medication before the 3rd to last ep, because I just know a misogynist stereotype will materialize to torpedo the ship.

Anyway, the other plot element that's this series' schtick is the old woman with Alzheimer's. Yes, Alzheimer's is super-funny, right? Let's pick a terrible disease that almost everyone has personally experienced within their families in a painful way. But surely they dealt with this sensitively, right? "I SAID BELITTLE PEOPLE WITH TERRIBLE AFFLICTIONS!" I kept hoping she was pretending to be senile in a plan to get all the ships sailing, but no.

The show is not 100% terrible. The production quality is reasonably good, and most of the acting is at least passable. If you're bored and it's Thursday, it might be worth it to watch this and ff through everything that's not Tokyo/Tam, because they are cute. And BB Zon is sexy and cute, too. Hopefully some of these people will get better roles in the future.

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Cute and Entertaining

I'm very confused by the reviews of this series. I'm not sure what is expected in terms of character development - these are all grown adults and don't need to go through puberty or come to terms with their sexuality like virtually ALL Thai dramas which are just variations on a theme. I thought all the characters were well-drawn. Oldest brother is a control-freak who tries to be cold like his father trained him but is actually a very loving person, even if he shows it by kidnapping people and locking them in his closet. Middle brother is kind of useless but sweet (e.g. when he soaks his hands in freezing water then dries them before placing them over his friend's forehead so he will be cool but not get wet, which is sweet but stupid). Etc. I think maybe because this isn't romantic in the standard way, e.g. they are a bit physically rough with each other, it didn't appeal to everyone. But if you're looking for a single-sitting watch that's funny, cute, sweet, with lots of attractive men, I'd recommend this. If you're looking for a Thai BL drama, maybe you won't like this.

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Beautiful short story

This is a fairly economically-written story in which more happens than in some longer series, and with an emotional authenticity often sorely lacking in BL.

The reactions of the three characters are very realistic and age-appropriate, experiencing heratbreak, longing, jealousy, love, and especially loyalty in non-pathological ways. Loyalty is an important theme in the story, prioritizing it over attraction, and making it a primary characteristic to be attracted to. Poon has a fight with his best friend in which he even punches him, but it doesn't break up their friendship because the best friend understands Poon's motivation and even values it. It's obviously wrong to hit someone, but nobody, especially a high school boy, has perfect self-control, and he apologizes and they discuss it like good and mature people.

It's a really beautiful story, wonderfully acted by very attractive boys and well filmed and edited. My only criticism is that there is too much flashback for such a short story. One is excusable as it's from the previous part, but there are others that are from the previous scene, which is tiresome and unnecessary. Also, Rachmaninoff needs royalties for the score, but it works well with the story.

I can highly recommend this - Mind Trio is batting 1,000 at this poiint.

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What a disappointment

I heard that the novel this is based on wasn't a BL. I can wholly believe that, because this wasn't really either. It was a very repetitive story with poorly supported and chemistry-free BL stapled to it clumsily.

The plot: Circular. Kidnap, rescue, kidnap, rescue, kidnap, rescue, rinse, repeat ad nauseum. Cartoonish villains keeps bludgeoning or kidnapping Jom or Yo because some guy wants to win an auction for a government contract against some unrelated woman. So why go after the two main characters? Why not go after the other bidder woman? It made no sense and was so dull. The breakup was ridiculous in motivation and even more ridiculous in execution. Why would anyone do all that preparation work just to unceremoniously dump someone. And can you guess what got them back together? (Hint: it was a kidnapping.)

Also, the US isn't on Mars - are you telling me they didn't visit each other for FIVE YEARS?

The romance was friends to lovers. In the comments section a lot of people claimed to like the "slow burn". More like "no burn". The chemistry between the two leads didn't exist. It wasn't weak, it was totally absent. It's a shame, because the actors weren't shy about love scenes. But let me ask you this: if you've been apart from your partner for 5 years, do you a) start by kissing them on the knee or b) rip of their clothes and ravage them? I'm sure you can guess which one they went with. They didn't need to make it all about sexual deprivation, but it needed a little heat - instead we got an 11-year old's idea of what adult love is.

Positives: I liked the absense of a seme-uke dynamic - that's almost certainly an artifact of the origin of the story as non-BL, where both characters are just men. Bonus points for the younger guy being the top. Poom's body is so perfect - the contrast between his cute boyish face and his athletic figure is very hot. The three brats are good, and the straight romance was much, much better than the BL - I hope they hire the other Poom for a BL because he was excellent.

I stuck with this for the two Pooms, but ended up feeling it was a total waste of my time.

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I wanted to love this so badly.

There is so much about this that's wonderful. The acting and cinematography are excellent.

That's a lot - and it's why I gave this a 7 instead of the 5.5 'suggested' rating. I like that this takes a more cinematic and sophistic approach to making a BL - this is not like a mainstream series where everyone is fantastically rich - the characters even take a train!

There is no way to escape comparison to I Told Sunset About You, which is another ambitious production about similar themes - I could watch that 100 times and was enthralled for every minute of it. The Yearbook was something to endure.

It's slow. I don't mind slow-pacing during scenes - in fact I prefer a scene that develops. The problem isn't the slowness of scenes, although they're really, really slow, it's the overall slowness of the plot and the reliance on flashbacks to fill time. I understand this is an expansion of a school project. It's not so much an expansion as an inflation. You will see the same scenes flashed back to many, many times - like a dozen or more - I'm not kidding. There are flashback scenes that have their own flashback scenes - I'm not joking, it happens many times.

Within scenes, the dialog is spoken in this unnatural slow and halting manner, with very long pauses and staring to the point that Bite Me seems rushed in comparison. Everyone moves very slowly, too. Like 90 year-olds. Heavily sedated 90-year olds. There's a scene were Nut takes a photo out of a drawer and sets it up on his desk. He opens the drawer so slowly I thought maybe he was afraid there was a bomb in it, then withdraws the photo really slowly, slowly places it on his desk, then writes a pointless letter that takes 5 minutes, and then he gives up and just calls Phob instead.

There is no point to this story. It's not about loss - there was an opportunity to delve into different types of loss and how you move on, but nope, just slow talking and flashbacks.

There is a scene where the main characters appear to have sex - offscreen, which is fine. But then the next day they behave exactly as they did before - there was no impact on their relationship, no discussion, it just disappeared and never happened again, and they resumed interacting like bro's. They even woke up fully-dressed and not even cuddling.

A little over halfway through, a character has to go somewhere for a few hours to take care of something life-changing. And the series comes to a screeching halt and there are three episodes that are almost entirely flashback. If you're expecting a fluffy ending, you're not getting one. It's not a sad ending, it's not really a happy ending, it just ends, as if the crew said "f@#$ it, this isn't going anywhere, let's just stop here." That sounds exaggerated, but you'll think I understated it if you watch this series.

The life-changing event is fairly dramatic, and it does result in a character signing a song for the other character (over the phone, all to flashbacks, including a flashback to someone else singing the same song - and with vocals, not just visual). No hug, no "I'm here for you", certainly nothing to indicate there's any romantic connection. The song isn't about loss or moving on, it's expression of unrelated feelings that he could have communicated 10 years prior but somehow never did, even though they had sex.

This is not a BL. It's a bromance. There is a kiss, once, miss-it-if-you-blink, and the main pair do seem to love each other, but it feels to me that it was a bromance with one kiss thrown in to make it a BL so they could market it to us and Mean's fan base. This feels like an attempt at a BL by straight guys who think m/m love is gross and so it's barely in here. This is the BL equivalent of interior "decor" that's all white walls, black leather furniture and a huge TV for video games and watching sports.

There is more time spent by straight characters discussing girls they like than there is of the main characters discussing their feelings for each other, which, incidentally, they do not do, ever, even once. They sing their feelings, which is nice (although twice it's over the phone), but we needed to see them interact like lovers. After high school, the main pair were rarely even in the same room together. Except in flashbacks.

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Story: 3. Superficial, lazy, manipulative, and designed to make sure the main characters interact as little as possible.

Acting: 9. The delivery of dialog was terrible, but that's not the actors' fault - they otherwise did an excellent job showing us what they feel, which makes the endless flashbacks mystifying. Why hire such good actors if you're not going to let them do the heavy lifing?

Music: 8.5. This was well-done. The original lyrics were good without being carried away, the singing was what you'd expect from non-professionals, although someone who's a better singer should have been cast for Phob. Anyway, one of the series' better qualities.

Rewatch value: 1. If you held a gun to my head, I would still not sit through this again. It's probably worth watching once, but there's nothing that would draw me back.

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Truly Awful

I usually try to be tolerant of low-budget productions, especially when they have heart. This doesn't.

The story is boring, the acting poor. The main character has no charm or charisma, and the main pair has no chemistry at all. In their kiss scene they somehow managed to look like they were sexually harassing each other.

There is one bar of music, and it's played over and over until you want to poke out your own eardrums.

The female characters are just excruciating. There's a woman on the staff of the resort that, and I hesitate to use words like this, behaves like a shameless slut in heat. Whenever she's in Migo's presence, her tongue is hangling out, she writhes all over the doorframes and walls, rapes him with her eyes, and is so completetly inappropriate that any guest with any self-respect would have left the resort immediately, and probably called a mental institution to come collect her. Or maybe a vet to put her down. Later, when the mains get together, she shoots them such OTT evil-eye, right there in public when she's at work and people are trying to eat, that you have to ask why someone doesn't punch her out. Or tie her in a sack and toss her in the well. It sounds like I'm exaggerating, but it's really impossible to overstate how revolting this character is.

There are series that frustrate me, disappoint me, or bore me. This one somehow managed to do all three and make me angry as well. This could possibly be the worst BL ever. There are BLs that are of lower-quality production, there are BLs that are naked cash-grabs, and there are BLs that are so bad that they're good - but this one is somehow aggressively awful in a way I don't think I've seen before.

It's a struggle to find nice things to say, but I feel I should. So: the main character, while unappealing in almost every way, looks surprisingly good shirtless. Also, Migo de Vera has a beautiful body and you see a LOT of it - including butt shots, a rarity in BL. That's all I can think of.

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Well, that happened.

I saw the uncut version on GagaOOLala.

I really wanted to like this - and at first I did. The selfie scene at the beginning is profoundly funny, and the OTT campy action early on is really entertaining. But then it just bogged down and became dull. For some reason, Asian BLs can't help themselves - they all have to revolve around women, in this case a pair of vampire hunters who serve as mannequin villains, who take up way too much screen time. They could have been completely eliminated from the story and the struggle centered on rival vampire clans. I presume there was a producer somewhere who read the script and said "too gay. Put in hot chicks" as if crowds of straight men are going to watch this.

It is definitely BL, and it's not read-between-the-lines-of-bromance - it's explicitly BL. But it's not prominent. If you're planning to watch it for that, I would pass.

This was disappointing. Maybe it's worth watching the first 20 minutes or so for the campy fun, but after that there's not a lot of reward for your time. It needed to cut loose and go seriously OTT. It feels a little like that was the plan, and for some reason th brakes were hit. It's too bad this wasn't Japanese.

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Strangest BL I've ever seen. But not unwatchable.

This was better than the previous series the crew produced - it was insane, but entertaining. I'm not quite sure if it's supposed to be a comedy, or if it just ended up that way. I think it's a light-hearted horror/supernatural BL?

The acting is not great, but it's good enough for the concept, which is something new, for sure - but a bit repetitive.

They've really got to improve the editing. Considering the scenes were static, there shouldn't be obvious shifts to a different take. Also, if a guy is walking down a hill, you can just show if for a few seconds - you don't have to show him walking ALL the way down, although if that was supposed to be comical with the intense evil-sounding music playing in the background, it worked. In general the shots are too long, and it robs the action of its momentum.

For example, it is film "vocabulary" to have people under enchantment walk slowly. Usually in very old movies - nowadays even zombies are really fast. Another way that is often shown is by making the character's eyes turn red. But you don't have to do both. There is a LOT of people with red eyes walking slowly in this (and the contacts were making the poor short hot guy cry - that must have been painful). Why not have their eyes turn red and just walk normally?

The fairy using magic scene was way too long - we get it. about 5 seconds suffices to make the point.

Anyway, I did have fun watching it, but it won't be for everyone. You'll know if you like it or not in the first episode, so if you're in the mood for something insane, give it a shot.

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Not bad, but should have been better.

There are so many good elements to this story, but too many problemmatic ones were tossed in, and it dragged down the overall quality of the series.

The acting is good. Pak, playing the main character, Kaitoon, is very good and charming. Gun, who plays Valen, is also good - he's playing a surly good-for-nothing trying to be better, but you can connect with his awkwardness and inability to communicate affection in a competent adult manner, and you definitely feel his attraction to Kaitoon. The rest of the cast is good. The overall quality of the production is good, and the subtitles are great.

But - the central love triangle is not at all enjoyable. First, there is too huge a gap in Kaitoon's suitors' desirrability. Valen is obviously a good and giving person, but he's too immature to be Kaitoon's bf, and Non is more or less the textbook definition of a perfect bf. Being attracted to someone flawed happens, but Kaitoon is potrayed as too level and knowing what he wants and needs to chose Valen. Second, watching people sit sadly after being stood up is awful and really unpleasant to watch - and it makes the stand-upper really unappealing.

The secondary couple is not bad, and for once, there's actually a reasonable explanation for someone ghosting the other for his own good, but it's still an overused and not entirely convincing device. There is something that makes it look like they will have a love triangle too, but if you look up the ages of the actors, you'll see it's not possible. I hope. Because eww. Also, the secondaries are not integrated into the main story at all, so it's like a different series stapled to the main one for no apparent reason.

The pacing at times really bogs down and too much time is spent on unimportant things, or drains the life out of substantial elements.

There are some subtle touches, like Kaitoon refuses someone's attempt to wipe his lip and says he'll do it himself, which is leveraging a tired trope in a symbolic way - I liked that. They also made fun of product placement when Valen says to his sister, "you look beautiful today. What skincare product are you using?" which would normally lead to a placement, but she tells him to go away.

But all-in-all, the series needed more focus - there are too many plot ideas (and some are tropes) thrown in, like the BL photo which leads to screaming fujoshis. Was that necessary in any way? What did it do to drive the story forward? Thankfully we only had to endure fujoshis for half a minute. And I will say it's nice for there to be a total absence of the usual predatory and pathetic trans/effeminte gay characters screeching and pawing at every half-attractive man.

I also appreciate that they chopped the series into two so that the second part can be filmed after COVID rather than stapling together a miserable and infuriating ending like Top Secret in Love did.

I'm hoping the second half is more focused and stops torturing the most appealing person on the show. It just makes us sad, and serves no real purpose.

I would recommend this, but not strongly. If you're finding you don't like it after a couple of eps, you are probably never going to like it and should consider dropping it.

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