kruppe92

Sooo good

The first half of this show up until ep 12 or something was a solid 9/10. It was light-hearted, funny, well acted. Sure some scenes were cheesy as hell but it was great fun. Then the mystery plot started. It wasn't bad and I was invested in it since it affected our characters and the comedy, which is the show's true strength still existed, albeit muted due to the gravity of the murder investigation plot.

Once the killer was revealed, which was so predictable, because there was literally no other character who it could have been, things went downhill really fast. It was as if the show was written by completely different person, nothing made sense, it was suddenly so full of illogical plotholes. I didnt understand how our FL could see his blackscreen once he was revealed, but not before when she kept touching his bum at multiple junctures. The fact that she can now hear sounds during that blackscreen is also a convenient new development. Why do they see the blackscreen because of the sunglasses? Its supposed to be darker, not completely black, especially when he was out there attacking people in the streets where there was street lights. If the logic is that the FL can see whatever the person whose bum she's touching sees, then logically she should have been able to see through the sunglasses as well.

Why was the killer killing people? It seems like he said he wanted revenge initially, but then he liked the act itself. That sounds like a cop out because there wasnt much motive for him to go from never having killed for 40 or so years of his life but suddenly he can read minds and he felt like he needed to go on a killing spree. Whatever happened to his young son?

Honestly the last few episodes were so bad that I couldnt even find any motivation to watch ep 16, but it was something I had to do, to finish. I docked 2 points from my earlier rating and lament the fall of what was prob one of my most enjoyed show so far.

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Something feels off

I would like to start off by acknowledging how all the actors acted their parts so well in this drama. But something feels off about the plot.

I can't take the show too seriously. The bullies seem aggressive, but only because the victims are freaking doormats. We later learn about the greater bully, Ha Rin who psychs you out by manipulating and playing with power. Her motivations are:
1. Force everyone to play the pyramid game where she emerges as the very top of the structure.
2. Make her childhood friend turned foe the permanent victim.

What is insane is the way she wields power to set all the things in motion to play the pyramid game like getting adopted conveniently by the Baeks to deciding who joins her class in school to influencing literally everything she can in her power with whose help idk, definitely the principal because of her chairman grandma, but outside, how? She has dirt on her "father", knows her "mother" is a doormat to the grandma, and holds favor in the eyes of her "grandma", but none of them seem to be actively helping her other than ignoring the things she does but how does she get them done to be begin with is not shown. And this is kind of important because she is just an adopted freaking highschooler. Why do all these girls participate in the pyramid game barring the elite few? Do they all not care that one of them will be victimized by being a participant and a bystander? This kinda feels dumb considering the show shows how some of the girls are manipulative and strategic but most of these girls just look dumber than rocks for going with Ha Rin's games. It takes Su Ji for these girls to understand how democracy works.
The whole motivation for Ha Rin to play the game also feels very weak and is mysterious to us until the very last episode where the reveal falls very flat. I guess psychopaths dont need strong motivations. The first victim and her brother don't really need to be interwoven into the plot, and the brother being a genius coder is also not super necessary since he really didnt do any high level tech stuff: just installed a camera and uploaded the videos to social media; these things dont really need a genius in this day and age.

All in all, the show seems to present the story as a high stake, psychological game, but honestly feels like teenage shit that could be solved by just by the girls using brains and communication. There is power and corruption but the victims had plenty of proof to bring them down easily. There are a lot of similar shows that showcases bullying in high school like The Glory, Weak Hero, etc, but they all felt more serious and believable or as in Study Group, presents itself like a live action comic.

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Unique BL, but not the best BL

The storyline was interesting in the beginning and then fell off the handle.

Takeaways:
1. Love timeloop + medical drama
2. BL with a plot
3. Decent actors, some were better than others, especially the actors who played Rit, Sing, Jinta stood out. The leads were kinda stiff in emotional scenes and stared at each other creepily; wasnt the strongest chemistry, but wasnt the worst. Part of it could be because of the script. Some actors don't really have any real roles like the female doc, ex-gf of Tin's, the evil friend duo of Tol's or the mutual friend winggirl.
4. Plot.
I was going to give up on the series because it took me forever to finish ep 1. There was a lot of medical info dump and stiff acting from Tin (maybe because he was exhausted?) and repetitive time loop scenes, but I powered through. From ep 2 to 11, the story telling was quite compelling, albeit with a lot of loopholes. Like the convenient family friend/savior or tutor-student relationships , handing over the book to get Tol up to speed in ep 12, or change of rules wrt timeloop didnt make sense. The way Tin and Tol switched personalities was also questionable. Tin was not friendly towards Tol in the beginning because he thought he was responsible for drunk driving, but then did a whole 360 and started falling in love with Tol for no real reason because imo Tol was so unlikeable. When the POV switched to Tol, Tin was kinda emulating Tol's earlier behavior which feels so out of character for Tin, especially as a Doctor, where is his empathy when he decided to leave Tol at the hospital knowing how frantically he was searching and waiting for Tin for hours. The characters conveniently remember the past or forget it atleast in the later episodes its shown that Tin starts remembering Tol from the kiss. Anyway, the mystery was more of less solved by episode 4, the rest of the episodes was about romance and learning small new information about the characters/loop and getting out of it. Despite that the middle episodes were entertaining up until the POV change to Tol. While I don't hate the idea, the plot fell even flatter after that and there was a lot of scene repetition. Finale felt predictable more or less though I dont know why Tin has to be in a coma for an unknown length of time and how he suddenly wakes up to find Tol at the clocktower. I feel like I could go on and on about the problems I had with the plot.
5. Music was okay, nothing outstanding, not terrible.
6. Wish the cast had a slightly diverse wardrobe when they are outside the hospital/uni setting. Like Tol could have worn more casual clothes instead of his uni uniform. Thats a side-effect of a story set in time-loop, but I feel like this show had more scenes to work around to change wardrobe as opposed to shows like Reset (Chinese).

I think I'm being quite generous with my rating here. I would rate it 7-7.5 since there wasnt anything especially outstanding about it. But I love how the show has more plot than a typical BL, but also not quite well-written for it to be a Thriller and would love to see more such attempts from the BL industry. Despite the awkward romance, I feel like it had the right amount of romance and I enjoyed how there were good kisses but no explicit NC scenes and the narrative was mostly focused on developing and resolving the plot. In comparison to Manner of Death that I rated slightly higher at 8.5, I feel like while that had less romance, it was more gripping whodunit mystery that was more compelling until the very end.

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Average Series, don't see the HYPE

I can't see anything that particularly stood out, other than Kang Seo Joon. He was kind, loveable and genuine, I don't understand how or why he would fall for someone like Han Ji Woo who is almost his polar opposite. I would get the relationship if more time was spent establishing the connection, but due to the short run-time of the series, the characters were simply too complex to fall in love that quickly. I wanted more romance, I wanted more backstory for the leads. The narrative was needlessly confusing, not sure if its a direction choice or bad editing, but the screenplay looked disjointed at times and some characters or plot threads that appear random. Lots of Chekov's Gun but none be smoking. Nothing was developed- neither romance nor their backstory, definitely not any of the sub-plots, everything was half-baked. I heard there is another season, maybe that fills in some of the plot holes, but I am not vested in any of this to go watch it yet.

I might have have rated it higher if I went it blind without all the hype about 4 years ago, but its 2025 now and these days there are so many BLs with better fleshed out and unique plots, heck even Chinese BLs are back with a bang that I just couldn't get the appeal for this one.

For other KBL recs that uses the shorter run-time wisely (imo): The Eighth Sense, Love For Love's Sake, Our Dating Sim, Semantic Error.

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Boom, Boom, Boom

10 stars for Boom, 7 stars for Smart & rest of the cast. Boom's the best Thai BL actor I've seen. Smart's character was very one dimensional and not in a good way. I guess he did okay given the script he had to work with. Its just "unfortunate" that he was paired up with Boom, who had a better script and shone every frame, every scene, every goddamn second of this show. Plot was boring, direction & cinematography choice was not my favorite. I didnt feel the connection between the main leads, they just went from rivals to lovers within 1 episode. I don't get Jin's obsession with Kin in ep 1 nor Kin's reciprocation in ep 3 just because Jin keeps giving him rides and chocolate milk. Jin kept private videos of Kin and its too weird that Kin still falls for him soon after. A top actor like Kin has definitely seen more handsome, non-wooden, newbie/young/experienced/obsessive actors given his tenure in this industry, but nah, he still falls for Jin, whose personality is just to follow him around like a puppy, whose eyes we cant even see in some of the scenes. I just don't like to watch intimacy without depth. Please give Boom a better script & more main lead roles and hopefully with a better costar.

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Short and fun live action Cartoon

Things I liked:

- a drama that appeals to all ages despite being set in high school
- ML's emphasis on studying is so refreshing and honestly sets up a good precedence to most school based shows. There was also a fair bit of heartwarming and motivational quotes that aims to teach the viewers a good lesson about the importance of being motivated, studying in schools, friendship and loyalty despite violence being the main theme.
- light-hearted comedy with some mysterious tone
- excellent acting, there was no weak link, everyone played their roles perfectly
- some great background stories + redemption
- mind-blowing action choreography. The mysterious uncle and his forbidden techniques were things I was looking for during every episode. The action sequences were surreal in a good way
- perfect hip OST
- sets up nicely for another season, while giving a good resolution to this season without any cliffhangers

Things that could have been better:

- more episodes for a better fleshed out plot
- some character's backgrounds were not developed well, some were developed well but went nowhere. Some characters looked important with good background story that took a lot of screentime in an episode(s), but were completely absent from other episodes. Eg: the blonde thug had one of the most interesting character development, but he showed up too late, while Ji U's twin brother went missing for 90% of the season (understandably so) after the first episode. The main antagonist didnt play a significant part until much later and even then we hardly get to see what motivates him to act the way he does. There is also a bit of contradictory emotions I got when I see him: is he truly evil? did he kill the previous teacher? he confessed to hating his father, who seems much worse than him, so does that mean he is doing this to attain power to dethrone his more evil father? He showed glimpses of humanity when he spoke to his teachers (both former and current homeroom teacher) and I have a feeling he had plenty of chances to hurt Ms. Lee (he confessed it in the final episode) but didnt go through it. I would have loved to see him have more screentime so we can get a better sense of his character, alas maybe we see something in Season 2. The other character that bothered me was the dead teacher's son who mysteriously showed up to save Ms. Lee in the first episode and doesn't really have a huge screentime despite a good character build-up. Hopefully we see more of him in the next season too.
- Finale needed at least another 10 minutes to wrap nicely. Pacing was odd, it ended too abruptly. This was the first time the ML and antagonist fight seriously. I wished they fought a little bit throughout the show so the tension between them is more palpable and the fight in the climax becomes even more noteworthy.

Overall, I really enjoyed it and 100% recommend for those who enjoy comedy and action with wholesome characters. This is one of those shows that should have gotten hour long 16 episode season, alas, hopefully there is another season. For an action packed drama, the story had a lot of heart.

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Love is an Armor

These boys suffered a lot. They've loved, and lost and loved again.
I enjoyed it, episodes were short ranging from 17-32 mins. There are trigger warnings specifically rape (off-screen) & blackmail. But there is a payout at the end, thought I would have preferred a more violent justice for that mofo.

Things I didnt enjoy that docked the rating:

1. lackluster plot: nothing new here and for a short series, there were a lot of subplots and some were unresolved.
2. editing and other production issues that screams low budget.
3. slow pace. I didnt quite get a lot of backstory and character development from the 2 couples. They just "fell in love". For example: Pei Jia relatively warmed up to Su Yi on the set, but he somehow only realized it after the shoot ended. He also conveniently forgot Su Yi confessed he was terminally sick in one of his fan letters.
4. Poor kisses. Chinese BLs Achilles Heel basically. The one thing we can count on Thai BLs to deliver.
5. I didnt like the second couple, don't see how these two can be in love. The Director guy seems stressed and a doormat, the scriptwriter was more genuine and blunt. There were couple of instances were he made me question his love for Su Bai with the way he treated his love's brother. The Director sort of redeemed himself in the end, but he wasnt all that likeable.

Overall there is a lot to like, and some that could have been done better. Nevertheless the acting really stood out from the whole cast and I wish them all the success. I will definitely check out their future work!

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Cringefest

This drama was enjoyable in parts.

Positives:
1. A supportive, kind Captain, played by an excellent actor.
2. Funny if you ignore the second hand embarrassment you get from to the ridiculous storyline.
3. Second couple was adorable together.
4. Tang Yi's back story was interesting and tragic.

Negatives:
1. Lot of second hand embarrassment and cringe, specifically from the main character, Shao Fei.
2. Ridiculous plot in the first half that doesnt take itself seriously. There isnt really a plot: Shao Fei harasses Tang Yi for years based on a hunch because he can't let go of his past. And thats basically it.
3. Shao Fei is a policeman who acts like a 14 yo at best. None of his actions resembles anything an actual Police Officer would do, its really frustrating, but I moved on from hating him hoping this is a show that is an attempt at cringe comedy. On that note, none of the police officers on this show barring the Captain had 2 brain cells. The Mafia guys were slightly better.
4. But no, it wasn't a comedy. The show got serious on the second half and the characters just don't match the tone it set in the beginning of the story. But because I didnt take the show seriously, I couldnt give flying ducks on the emotional scenes either. I didnt feel bad when Shao Fei kept ending up in hospital because of his own stupidity, but I did feel slightly bad for Tang Yi and his biological father a little bit. That plot still stayed ridiculous, but atleast it wasnt cringe.
5. The story telling was inconsistent. The first half was slow burn workplace comedy, while the second half was drama, romance. Unfortunately, most of the comedy in the first half was character driven, instead of situational, so it was extra unbelievable for the characters to do a complete 360 and act seriously.
6. Poor romance build-up. I don't understand why Tang Yi likes Shao Fei other than the fact that he took a bullet for his sister. Shao Fei harassed him for years and seems childish, while Tang Yi is definitely smarter and a more serious type. I don't feel the chemistry at all.

I had to constantly pause and do something else when I felt second hand embarrassment from the way these characters acted, which was constant. Took me a week to finish this when I was able to finish MODC within half a day.

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Strong start, weak end

First 6 episodes was easily a 9/10. Next 6 unfortunately was a 5/10.

First 6 epi:
+ establishes chemistry between the couples
+ shows character motivations
+ shows cute scenes with cuter plushies
+ warm and cozy like my favorite JBLs: Old Fashioned Cup-cake and Cherry Magic

Last 6 epi:
- random insecurities shows up with one of the leads. basically stunts character development
- the main characters don't even interact with each other in 2 full episodes
- Divorce era before even establishing a relationship
- whats the title of this show? 10 things... yeah they completely forgot about that
- after 5 episodes of gloominess they make up in the last 5 minutes of the last episode. needed more cohabitation scenes
- better kiss than KBL, but you won't notice because its over before you're done blinking

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BL? This is hard-core Romance

This was damn good. Initially I found myself getting bored because this felt like another young, shy, puppy type guy falling for a tall, cold, athletic hunky. But then, we see the athletic hunk making all the moves towards the introverted shy guy and his resistance, boy was that resistance so sexy, heated and intense. Which shows. In those kisses. Nothing more electrifying than those passionate kisses, THAI BLs please take notes, you don't need to see the couple having sex, just something simple like a kiss is magical if the chemistry is chemistrifying.

Simple plot, doesn't meander, excellent chemistry, KBL magic. Hoped for a longer series because the side couple was interesting as well but their story wasn't fleshed out. Alas, perhaps a spin-off is in works??

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Started strong, snail pased middle, rushed ending

Likes:
+ Mix was great in his role and the support characters were wonderful
+ Plot was extremely interesting and heartwarming at the start, I genuinely felt like I needed to see the next few epi asap
+ cinematography

Dislikes:
- Earth was weird; his acting imo was the weakest and he looked like a model and not a forest ranger.
- Slowburn romance, which I usually love but here it was non-sensical since they acknowledged their attraction under the blanket with finger action 80% before they confessed. Its a BL and BL is a sub-genre for romance, but here it was conveniently forgotten for most of the show.
- What was interesting about the plot was forgotten in the middle and instead we get repetitive scenes with villagers. Though there was some character growth for our protag, Mix so its not all bad. This part of the slice of life scenes could have had more variety and depth in story-telling.
- Dislike Mix's character's lie in the end. Was this supposed to be a melodrama?

A rich brat going to live out his life in the village/countryside is not an untold story. The novelty of the plot is why he goes there, so I wished the script focused more on that aspect. Nevertheless, I connected with the story emotionally.

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Complex and thus Confusing

For starters, I want to emphasize that I really appreciate BLs with sci-fi/fantasy plots like this one; we have come so far from uni rom-coms. That said the storytelling was needlessly confusing though some might think its a genius way to keep us engaged and gripping, but sadly when you understand the full picture you feel massively underwhelmed and disappointed. What we've known and who we've rooted for 90% of the show, we didn't know anything about anyone by the end. The lead characters I liked turned out to be unlikeable for what they did and the support characters I hated on in the beginning, well nothing changed about them. Acting was decent, good enough for a BL and despite the confusing plot, this was a solid 9 in my BL book for how refreshing it is.

But why did I rate it 7.5? For using "minor" character in NSFW scenes. For even having NSFW scenes for the sake of it. Build a relationship and show these scenes; if I wanted to watch porn I'd go to pornhub.

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Very slow Paced with some excellent acting

A lot of reviews here saying this is one of the best written thrillers, but I have to hard disagree. This is not a thriller, more of a character driven murder mystery. And it feels well-written but its not. The plot drags and there is simply not enough story to tell between its large cast and huge number of episodes. The reveals at the end of each episode feels gimmicky purely for the shock factor because it doesn't quite match the pace set at the beginning of the episode. The show is so slow and the characters talk a lot. The plot is simple but narrated in a convoluted way to look like a thriller. A big chunk of the mystery was solved before the halfway point of the show, the rest of the show dragged a lot and I frankly lost interest. The first half was a solid 9, even if it was draggy, the mystery was there that made me want to keep watching. The second half barring the last episode was too slow, maybe 6. All the main characters were single, I feel like this was one of those dramas that could have been benefitted by some romance (though this wont be necessary if the plot was gripping).

I think it wouldnt feel as boring if I watched it while it was airing, because there is a lot of repetitive dialogues and scenes and the acting is good that an hour just flies by. However, while binging the show feels very slow. Its also hard to skip scenes/FF so as to not miss any detail pertaining the case.

Biggest positives: Acting (by all, especially Shin Ha Kyun), OST and cinematography

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