youhadmeatzb1

ABO has been around for a long, long time. It is a category of fandom space I never dared to think we'd see a live version of. Pit Babe name dropped ABO but didn't really fulfill the elements of it and instead left a lot of people confused on if it was or wasn't ABO at all. And then the trailer for this series was released and it almost seemed too good to be true. A CBL about ABO? It had a lot of us holding our breaths because we all know how the CBL journey has been and well, it's never good to get TOO invested in anything that is dropping from that region.

But ABO Desire did the impossible and it did it in a way that was true to the ABO realm and didn't shy away from any of it's elements. This is an incredible first for any BL. I give so many props to NJ, the actors, and the production team for also standing behind this project so confidently and with so much heart.

The story is largely about Hua Yong and his obsession with Sheng Shao You and I honestly don't have a single complaint with this story line. I think Eliot and Qiu did an amazing job stepping into the skins of these characters and truly committing to bringing them to life. One of the things I loved the most was the way their power was their absolute duality. Hua pretending to be an Omega, but revealing he's Enigma. The way Shao You never lost the edge of his S Class Alpha, but how he glowed beautifully after being marked by Hua.

Truly the only real issue I had with this series is the second couple storyline which seemed to spin its wheels week after week and somehow never resolved itself in a satisfactory way by the finale. I feel like a true disservice has been done to the character Gao Tu, who was the bearer of so much pain that he was never able to actually vocalize. Peien is a masterclass in acting, because even though Gao Tu's lines throughout the series could fill a single sheet of paper, his expressive emoting filled the quiet spaces with so much heartache. It left us all rooting for all of that pain to be worth it in some sense, by Shen Wenlang apologizing, but in the end this was never realized.

In the same, Jiang Heng's acting was top class, but it's unfortunate that he was handed such a one dimensional character to portray. There was never character growth, it was just the same DENSE brain space for 16 episodes.

I think what truly needs to be acknowledged is that ABO Desire was never intended to be a perfect series and trust me, it wasn't perfect at all. But even though there were things that could've been better, things that we could've done without and things we could've done with more of -- ABO Desire still succeeded by being the first and the most iconic drop from China in a long time.

We can already see the way this has set the foundation for other BLs and I'm personally sat for any future projects that may drop in this lane. And while ABO Desire itself is done, I am also excited for this casts future projects, whether that's a new series or their Desire4 group. They're quite literally doing what no other could do from China and I'm so very invested in what the future holds for them.

TLDR:

Pros:
- Actually ABO - the first of its kind
- Great cast / great acting
- Amazing sets and clothing
- MPREG!!!!
- Enigma Hua Yong is everything

Cons:
- Story flow could've been better: felt like the tires were spinning in place at times
- 2nd couple didn't have a good enough resolve by the end - JUSTICE FOR GAO TU SPECIFICALLY
- While I know the time skip was necessary, I never really like them in any series and that feeling didn't change here
- I'm not sure if 16 eps was enough for this series, or if the writing / pacing of the story was just too slow.

Overall:
- I would watch it again and it's solid series for the first of its kind.