madjellyfish

I don't usually write reviews for shows I haven't finished watching, but when I started writing a comment I realised it was getting waaay to long so a review it is instead. While only the first 7 episodes have come out, this won't really influence my review so it should be fine to post it now. Mostly no concrete spoilers but I'm still discussing plot so proceed with caution.


First things first, it's... entertaining? I want to say that it's at least fun to watch and by now it's pretty clear that the plot is just there as a stage and a pretext for putting the main characters in ridiculous situations to further their relationship, so I feel it's not fair to judge the show by what it's cleary not putting all that much focus on. It's still an easy watch, probably even more so for people who came for the actors or for the romance, so this isn't meant as a critique of the show as a whole.

But having come for the mystery (this is on me, I didn't realise it was a BL cause I didn't watch the trailer and I skipped the intro - and even romance dramas sometimes feature well thought out plot beside the romance so I thought I'd stick around and give it a try), I just have to vent a bit about how little they're trying with the police investigation!

• These kids are disappearing and getting picked off one by one while they're apparently being under police surveillance? Where was the officer responsible for the guy in the garage when he died? That was right out in the open, even the brother stumbled in at the end...
• Why are they so fixated on the killer being one of the kids to the point where they won't even consider other leads, like other friends or family (cough, sus doc) that could have been told about what's happening with the avengers?
• They have handwritten letters, why has no one even come up with the idea of comparing the kids' handwriting with those?!

There's plenty handwavy police action going on here and I try to take into consideration that that's simply cause the case isn't actually that important other than the fact that it's happening, but these few things really took me out of the story while watching. I'm not even talking about their superhuman healing powers and terrible wound care, I feel those are par of the course for this genre ;)

On to the positive, the acting is actually pretty solid, from some more so that others, but overall there isn't anyone who makes this hard to watch for me. The actor who plays jade does a really good job at portraying emotions believably and his acting feels overall quite natural, and the actress who plays chereen does a really good job with crying scenes. The inspector appears a little wooden at times but it gets better with each episode and it's easy to overlook once you get used to it. I like that the other police officers get actively involved (when the show remembers that there's police work to do) and all of them perform well in the limited roles that they have, so there's nothing to criticise here either.
But who really surprised me was the korean drug boss who gave what I might even call a standout performance (reminding me at times of lee dong shik from beyond evil or han jae ho from the merciless, neither of which are villains per say but who sure know how to act the part). I didn't check to see if the actor is korean but he sure gave a solid korean style villain performance in the rather short scene he had. Maybe I just wasn't expecting a side character to keep up with the main roles or even outplay them (given that this kind of drama doesn't really call for that sort of thing) but he did kind of steal the scene there ;)

All the rambling aside, if an entertaining romance with a police backdrop is all you're looking for, chances are you're going to enjoy this show. If you're looking for a well thought out mystery with police work that doesn't test your frustration tolerance, look elsewhere.
We're yet to see how the actual mystery part unfolds so I can't say much on that front, but they did put a lot of creativity and care in styling their murders (though definitely on the gory side and a little over the top at times) and they did genuinely manage to build up some suspence about what really happened between the college friends group. A little convoluted, sure, and allowed to play out with minimal police involvement (cause the cops are busy with other things, lol), but if the investigation isn't your focus you might actually enjoy the murder mystery part of this.