uchiha

content warning: mentions of suicide.

i had almost no critiques for nour up until the halfway point. if you read my reviews, that is a goddamn miracle. the first episode was damn near perfect for a BL. the overall start was basically irrefutable. there was no cringe, no noticeable production blips, no nonsense in the script, no overall garbage, and the acting was compelling. then, it decrescendoed ??????

once prae was revealed to be one of the nour, the story got sort of convoluted. it was still easy to follow but something about her being a nour made all of the characters act badly, off, and or without intellect. nour are essentially vampires who have no known susceptibility except to chita's ability. immortals vs humans meant that police officers, detectives, the headquarters, and anyone else should have been conducting themselves in a manner that would protect human life. rather than what they all were doing which was subjecting their lives and civilian lives to potential spontaneous combustion or a blood leeching. there was not near enough caution or discernment on basically everyone's part which is absolute foolishness.

i deduct anywhere from three to five points from a rating as soon as AI use is made clear. there is an advisory before the start of the opening credits luckily. the AI use in this was "tasteful" and truly used to enhance the material but i will NEVER advocate for AI use in any capacity as long as it destroys the communities of black and indigenous people + depletes our water usage. so this was sitting at a seven rating until the midway point when the story picked up. everyone should be against AI use in creative spaces, at the very bare minimum.

when it comes to production, i questioned several things, to name some - the fake ass kissing sounds, for one. i do not know what is going on in the heads of the people who think inputting fake, out-of-place sounds will further immerse a storyline. the unrealistic bite mark placement on ken's friend who passed was a choice. the dialogue became more generic as the episodes progressed which is a first for my experience. boss would randomly start yelling his lines, at times, which was cringe as hell. the fight scenes between chita and james are also not believable. this became a subsequent watch, of mine, where lacerations and abrasions simply were not created after a character had been slashed or stabbed. the scene with the "police" moving in on ken, dr. ji, & chita because of james was probably the second most cringe thing to happen. the former scene james chose to yell for no reason then chita decided to stay in place to get shot. shooting chita might make sense if bullets had an effect on nours, so why were the police shooting him? one could inference that the weaker points of nour's bodies was not communicated to the collective which is a bad oversight. bringing in a human police lieutenant for three or so scenes was so silly and useless. something also tells me there was a crap ton of timeskips in this which bugs the hell out of me.

this section is mixed with the production decision related issues with acting issues that i observed. i am so disappointed with the acting since in the first few episodes it felt so believable. unfortunately, there was no development as it went on. ken stayed almost entirely stone-faced up until episode six or seven. chita's innocent / awkward act went on for too long once he and dr. ji began courting each other. rain and panin were sort of cute but the actors were both directed to act strangely. they were almost entirely unbothered by the events unfolding around them including multiple murders. ken and james had the same one sided conversation about ken choosing death four times, in different words, and ken always ended up crying; this got to be aggravating quick. ken and james relationship progression did not add up. they spent almost no personal time together to have ended up in love with each other. perhaps they did spend enough time together but it was off camera? viewers would not know that though. their first two kissing sessions were cement-solid in execution but the quality of their kissing went down with the story. if they did spend time together for it to make sense that they loved one another, then that is probably the fault of my undocumented archnemesis - timeskips.

boss' acting stayed the same or arguably worsened. tongtong was slightly better than his partner but not by enough. phoom's acting was a miss as was anton's; they should not have been cast in this. toey's acting was the best out of all the main leads. most of the rest of the support character's felt more compelling in their storytelling than the most filmed characters. i wish we got to see more of namnung's acting.

the last episode was a hot mess and i am not going to expend energy on typing all of the whys. ultimately, the last ten minutes was not a climax of satisfaction. a good storyline does not leave viewers questioning the questions that should have been answered in the plot. in all, i would not recommend watching this.