uchiha

well, another disappointment for the books. i was first drawn to the scene of mok foi foon handcuffing hui leok to in the alley then it was leo & kingston's real life chemistry that kept my excitement to watch this rumbling.

the production decisions and execution of this BL absolutely overshadowed what this cheap storyline could have been. so many things did not make sense and left me pausing in cringe. firstly, the AI usage in BL is an abomination. its use was brought to new heights when whoever decided that three separate trash AI animations were a good idea. the thing with AI is that it is often easy to differentiate from human work. was the opening credits not enough AI? why did viewers need to see those backwater cartoons? a more lackadaisical approach would always be more favorable over furthering the death of our planet.

i caught a cameraman twice, in aired episodes. the opening fighting scenes were not believable. at one point of the first fight with the leads a table was thrown at one of the goons and they just softly fell over. all of the wounds inflicted onto a character were never actually visually represented. so, hui being cut by a machete in the first episode never even happened, for example. uncle to's finger cut was obviously fake; the actor bent his finger backwards and the cut finger did not even look realistic either. the script dialogue in the first few episodes was of low quality; meaning generic AF. the microphone quality was a disgrace. every episode the audio captured sounded too low, too loud, in or out focus, or dubbed over. several of the episodes ended on something in between a conclusion and a cliffhanger which i have never seen before, like in episode four. at one point, foon PRETENDED to light a cigarette. for what? then he pretended to light it again some minutes later. when foon shot leok to point blank with a real bullet, they wanted to sell to the viewer that a LIGHTER could stop that. what? how about when foon came back to see if leok to was still alive. huh? that shot should have killed him and you would have been coming back to a corpse. who wrote that and do i need to say more? at this point of my watch career, it is like i need to treat BL like trashy television instead of professional work creatives should be proud of.

the acting in this was subpar. the intimacy was mediocre especially the kissing. i only felt butterflies once and that was during the beautiful morse code scene [i do not know morse code, hope it was correct]. hui coming upon foon's body was probably the best scene in this entire work. sing, leo & some of the older actors were the only compelling storytellers in this. leo and kingston have a more convincing romantic relationship in reality comparatively. their being in love was not sold to me at all. by the end, their feelings were more authentic feeling but otherwise, them loving each other did not have enough build up or logic. kingston needs to do more work as his partner delivered on the nuances of acting well for it being his first drama too.

to conclude, if you like low budget dribble soaked in low effort delivery with substance-less exchanges then this is for you.