Reviews

"Life is money"

Dying to Survive seemed like a film written for me. Small time heroes clandestinely go up against a large pharmaceutical company bleeding terminal patients dry and by extension, the government. Goodness knows I’m nearly always up for a story socking it to the greedy companies who only care about the people who can pay for their products. But somehow, I never quite connected to the characters in this film, try as I might.

People suffering from Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML) are suffering and dying because the treatment is cost prohibitive. The international pharmaceutical company jealously guards its medications and profit margins. When a patient, Lu Shou Yi, approaches a small-time erotic supplement shop owner about smuggling a generic version of the cancer drug pirated in India, his and other patients’ fortunes change…for a while. Cheng Yong’s dad is ill and needs a surgery, but Cheng is broke. He takes Lu up on his offer and begins smuggling the drug in. The problems begin to mount along with his profits. The police and a counterfeit drug con artist both are on his tail.

I think part of the problem I had with this film was that Cheng Yong wasn’t very likeable. His recently ex-wife was not unaccustomed to being hit by him. He was brash and often self-centered. That he worried about getting caught by the police didn’t bother me. I can’t imagine anyone not being deterred by the thought of spending up to a lifetime in jail, something his customers didn’t have to worry about. Their concern was dying without the life-giving medication. When Cheng had his 180-degree personal transformation, it was dizzying. I could have also used more character development for the leukemia patients I was supposed to care about.

Xu Zheng gave a solid performance as the morally conflicted Cheng Yong. I might have had problems with how he went from a selfish capitalist to completely selfless savior, but Cheng sold it as best he could. If you are a Zhou Yi Wei fan, you might be disappointed as he doesn’t have much screen time as the detective in charge of hunting down the source of the “counterfeit” drugs. Cao Bin had no problem going after the actual drug scammers but began to feel his conscience prick him when he discovered the drugs Cheng’s customers were using were legit, just not on the national drug list. And at a fraction of the cost. Even people not suffering from poverty can be financially devastated when having to pay exorbitant prices for medications.

Large corporations and insurance companies should not have the power of life and death, so I was pleased that Cheng Yong and his crew bucked the system instigating changes to the health care system in China. I couldn’t read the explanatory credits at the end of the film, but I’m sure it said that policies were enacted to make cancer drugs much more affordable and available or I doubt this film would have been made. But I will always celebrate any win that bloodies the nose of those who prey upon the sick and the weak.

30 January 2026

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Hung on the Tree: How Goddess Bless You From Death Exposes Sacrificial Logic

Watching Goddess Bless You From Death as someone who loves horror BL, I didn’t end up with that fun “ooh, spooky lore” buzz at all. Especially once the finale hints that there might be multiple goddesses tangled up in this ritual, even the title starts to feel slippery. “Goddess Bless You From Death” sounds singular and almost comforting, but underneath it suggests this whole messy crowd of divine figures that can be invoked, misquoted, or even invented to excuse whatever people already want to do. Instead of cozy supernatural worldbuilding, it felt like the show was holding up a mirror and making me really look at what happens when belief becomes a cover for hurting people you’ve already decided are disposable.

What really got under my skin is how Bom and Aisun aren’t doing anything conceptually new. They’re just taking a very old, very human logic, sacrifice a few so the chosen one lives longer, and turning the volume all the way up so we can’t pretend it’s anything but monstrous. The show lays it out plainly: the ritual is about life extension. Seven people die so one person can keep breathing. On the surface that sounds like pure fantasy, but it maps onto so many real situations where harm is justified “for someone’s good,” a family member, a leader, an idea of order. The math is always the same. Some lives count more. The people doing the math never put themselves in the lesser category.

The bodies are what really drive it home. Those stitched eyes and mouths, in both the old murders and the current cases, are not subtle. These victims are literally not allowed to see or speak, in life or after death. The shaman spells it out: the stitching pins the ghosts down so they can’t go looking for justice or come back to curse the people who killed them. So the ritual does two things at once. It kills people, and it tries to erase the moral fallout of killing them. It’s murder with a built-in gag order.

As I kept watching, I started to notice who actually gets chosen for sacrifice. It’s never the rich or the powerful. It’s always people who are vulnerable, inconvenient, or easy to write off, people whose deaths can be reframed as destiny or necessity. Bom and Aisun’s almost complete set of seven includes people like Darin and King, and then finally Thup, who is already marked as “other” because he can see ghosts. The show is making a quiet but brutal point: sacrificial systems are designed to land on the people whose complaints won’t be heard and whose suffering can be explained away.

Thup hurts the most in that context. His ability to see and talk to the dead gets described as a curse all the way through, this misfortune he just has to live with. But the ritual takes that ability, which really is a gift, the power to witness and carry the stories of the dead, and twists it into a reason he can be used up and thrown away. Instead of being valued as someone who connects worlds and advocates for the forgotten, he gets treated like another consumable resource. That flip makes the whole thing feel less like one bad guy’s evil plan and more like a pattern. Societies have always taken what’s strange or liminal about certain people and turned it into an excuse for violence.

One thing I really liked is that the show never says “belief in spirits is the problem.” From the very beginning, with the novel excerpts and the shaman’s explanations, it’s clear that honoring gods, ghosts, ancestors, local spirits is just part of daily life in this world. Incense at crossroads, ribbons on trees, little shrines in overgrown corners, all of that is shown as normal and even comforting. The horror doesn’t come from belief itself. It starts in that moment when someone decides their personal desperation matters more than everyone else’s right to exist.

Bom talks like a priest and carries himself with this careful piety, but the details of the ritual scream control, not devotion. The exact rules, seven bodies, specific preparations, stitching the dead shut, feel less like worship and more like a technology, a system for manipulating power, keeping some people “pure,” and locking dangerous others out of sight. By the time the finale suggests there might be multiple goddesses in the background, it doesn’t feel like “ah, new lore” so much as “of course there are many names you can grab when you want divine cover.” There isn’t one clear divine voice here. There’s a tangle of symbols that humans can bend to justify what they were already planning to do.

Coming at all this as a BL watcher, I really love that the show argues about faith and ethics through relationships, not sermons. The shaman tells Thup he’s going to see things he doesn’t want to see and hear things he doesn’t want to hear until this tragedy is resolved, which basically frames his whole life as an unwanted prophetic calling. But the thing that actually pushes back against Bom and Aisun’s fake religious framework isn’t a better ritual or a rival priest. It’s Singha simply refusing to accept that extending one life could ever be worth what’s being done to those bodies.

That’s where it feels like the show is poking at a certain BL comfort fantasy. In a lot of stories “love conquers all,” and we don’t look too closely at the systems underneath. Here, love doesn’t override ethics. It intensifies them. The more Thup and Singha care about each other and about the victims whose stories Thup carries, the more impossible and wrong the ritual feels. Their relationship doesn’t make the sacrifice beautiful or tragic in a romantic way. It exposes it as something that cannot be cleaned up, even if keeping quiet would be safer.

So watching the ritual play out left me in that strange space between fascination and disgust, and I’m still sitting with it. The worldbuilding is rich. The imagery is striking. But the show never really lets you relax into it. Under all the candles, the chanting, the arranged bodies, there’s a very simple question: are some people’s lives worth killing for, and who gets to decide that? With the finale’s hint of multiple goddesses in the background and a title that sounds singular on the surface, it almost feels like the series is side-eyeing how easy it is to package violence in a pretty religious phrase. In the end, it answers its own question not with big speeches but with where it puts its focus: whose pain it centers, whose voices it lets be heard, whose deaths it refuses to forget. That act of remembering and witnessing, of saying “this is not acceptable,” is what ends up feeling sacred in this story.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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one of the better short series from Flying Penguin

Overall: first aired on Likey and later on Shortime (app information below). 6 episodes about 5 minutes each.
Content Warnings: past death, grief, blood, homophobia, manipulation

What I Liked
- visuals
- using Flying Penguin for the real estate company
- that a character was chill in the beginning because he'd had the ability since he was young
- tension in the beginning

Room For Improvement
- the very NSFW did not enhance the story, I didn't feel the chemistry
- ending was not satisfying as there was zero explanation, the other character didn't seemed very shocked but just went along with it
- odd transition shot of a child's dress

Shortime Information (should be able to watch this series in a couple days for free, each episode is 60 popcorn so you need 300 for the 5 paid episodes)
- watch some free episodes first for 25 minutes to get the watch reward challenge popcorn (if you watch later you might accidentally use the popcorn you've accumulated) = 50 popcorn
- my invite link is https://playground.shortime.app/en/invite/NKNIWI - the code is NKNIWI (those are all capital letters, that's the capital letter i) and it should get you a bonus
- daily check in 5 popcorn (increases over 7 days)
- visit Amazon every hour to get 5 popcorn
- 3 always wins (most are 5 popcorn) = 15
- watch the 10 ads

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Lord cleanse my brain!

Whoever in Kung Thee’s green earth wrote this trash-bag needs their computer tossing into an overflowing volcano!
In all the BLs I’ve consumed, Type will go down as the character I hate the most. That tantrum throwing, bigoted abuser needed to be thrown out of a window. I lost count of the times he punched and hit Tharn – no apologies, no consequences for the domestic abuse and Tharn just smiled and took it. Since the story was about homophobia, I was ready to be open-minded and learn from the author. However, unless I blinked and missed it, there wasn't anything to learn. Type was the same prick from start to finish. Even Tharn’s ex asked, “What’s so good about him?” I was screaming EXACTLY!
Tharn was supposed to be the good guy but even he crossed boundaries in the early episodes, and then continued to be an absolute spineless drip for all his exes which irked my eyeballs.
I'm so annoyed that I made myself watch this entire show, hoping for just one good part. So, out of all the great shows, this is the one they picked for a second season? And you expect me to believe they’re still together after 7 years! Get out of here with that nonsense. There’s no way Tharn hasn’t pushed Type out of a window in all that time.
My opinion is entirely for the plot only and not towards the actors – they did their best. You can’t expect a Mona Lisa with dried out pens.
I’ll end on a good note.
Techno was the cutest dummy lol.
And Lhong’s surprise baddie plot twist was impressive, dude played the long game – though no consequences for his actions? Okay, author, trashy, trashy.

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A comedy mystery horror all in a box with a sprinkle of lesson for life.

You cannot tell me this is not one of the best GMMTV series with the most amazing cast chemistry. The plot, the emotions, the elements, all were so perfectly placed I had to finish the whole drama in one go.

Having multiple elements in one plot is so difficult, that too if they all are the opposite ones. The brought horror, added comedy to it, while having mystery towards the end. None of the moment felt boring. Every dub story had soul in it. Every character played a role. Everything fell into piece slowly as we unravel the truth. This is how a plot needs to be made. Characters that are realistic, a story investing enough to keep you till the end.

The cinematography was clear cut winner. Loved every bit of it. The thematic concept of neon, which represents the young generation was so greatly incorporated throughout the whole show. The camera work was great. Even the outfits are a reflection of each character. Everything just enhanced the overall vibe of the whole show. Great work by the crew.

Acting, gosh the seasoned actors are called seasoned for nothing. New, Tay, Janhae, Mook and the cameos of Ciize, Force, Book, Perth, Foei and the whole cast did a fantastic job. The way I was loosing my mind at the ending just made me realize how great they are as actors.

A show not to be missed but not talked about.

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Tian Jiu Luo embrace real Yun Qi.

Finally there is MDL page about this drama since i want to make an ode to this drama even i wont give them 9.5 but i need to write this.

Yun Qi 's unparalleled beauty needs to be portrayed like this. Tian Jiu Luo perfectly captured the Princess's alluring, desireful, ruthless, scheming, cute, and aggrieved sides, showcasing her exceptional acting skills and she is sole winner based from the characterization. Too bad she stills underrated actress in duanju.

Ming Chuan as FL ex-husband was still being likeable unlike other version. This version makes the ex-husband, the general, a bit more shy.

This version has kisses with several fish, finally showing the proper way to handle a 1vN dynamic! Did the screenwriters and directors see this? This is the correct way to handle multiple male leads! I love the scene where the Eldest Princess kisses her younger brother and then slaps him.

The cons in this drama beside abrupt ending is filters and skin smoothing are way too heavy.

I hope there is season 2 of this version since i love this Yun Qi version.

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Lack of Everything

Premise: I’m not into heavy, highly realistic, plot-driven dramas, so I chose this one because I knew it would be cozy (or at least I thought so).
However, I think it’s much lighter than it’s supposed to be.
How can a murder suspect have time to flirt with his lawyer?
Why, at the very beginning, does the autopsy doctor say that the wounds were too perfect not to have been planned in advance, while at the end of the drama it turns out to be an accidental murder?
I usually hate angst, but this time it was actually needed.
Despite the very good acting, the plot is weak and pointless.

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I just can't explain how good this drama is

This drama just got better the more i watched it. The 1st half is kinda more focused on Da On and Tae Kyung and the 2nd half is more focused on Shin Wu and Tae Kyung. This was something new i saw in a drama where the drama is split equally sharing both the lead's story.

I think i pretty much treasured all the characters except Da On and So Hee. So Hee for obvious reasons. She was straight up annoying and Da On cz of his bad decisions if not for his friends the situation could have been way worse. But I'm happy both of them changed and learnt their lesson by the end.

I feel Tae Kyung did thing right thing by choosing shin wu (spoiled myself). No matter how rude he was to TK he was his true self and Da On was well🙃. I loved how they showed 2 guys who were in the same situation deal with love. Both DO and SW were victims of homophobia. SW was someone who stood his ground and even when his friends were bullying him his priority was to protect TK. While TK did the opposite he went into hiding instead. Never worried about TK and ghosted him on top of that. It's never a good choice to go for someone who's nice to everyone like DO. also for the 1st time in a drama i didn't see the typical 2 leads fighting for 1 guy and gives up when 1 of them start dating. Here we saw SW backing off the moment he realized TK liked DO. He tried his best to make his love get his love eventhough it'd mean he wouldn't get his love. Everytime he comforted TK and pushed DO to make a move my heart broke for him. He deserved TK's love. Also i felt TK was more carefree with SW than DO you could see him teasing SW, having fun, happy, sad and angry with him but with DO he was more worried about DO to show all these emotions. I really liked how SW became more expressive by the end of the drama. Damn he was soo cute🥺.

Also we cant forget our cutie Si Un. I love how he was cute, caring, cunning and fun all at the same time. I feel his character which although looked simple was the most complex one. He was the kinda friend who was there for them during their lows. Love how he didn't push any of them to do anything instead just let them make a decision and helped them with it. It was never "go confess ur love or wrongdoings" it was always "don't regret not confessing ur love or wrongdoings". If i were to be in the student council he'd be my choice. I kinda did ship him with so hee for a while cz i felt they had good chemistry but that ship didnt sail.

I feel this drama was made for a season 2 but never had one cz they showed the teacher meet a guy but we didn't get any context about him. Also Si Un giving love advice he got from the teacher. Who did he love and not confess that he regreted? My guess is he likes So Hee but never confessed cz he liked DO. He definitely has a sad back story which we didn't get. My guess is this drama probably has 2 or 3 more seasons. 1 with the teacher's love story, 2nd with Da On finding his love, 3rd Si Un and So Hee love story.

Overall watch it guys it's a really unique and entertaining high-school BL..its gonna keep u hooked. Watch it or you'll regret it. It was soo good that i just realised the drama barely had a kiss scene😆 it had 1 at the end of the last episode.

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Supernatural Crime Romance?

The concept of GBYFD was really intriguing to me, and I loved the direction it went with the supernatural elements. While I do wish we got a little more backstory on the rituals and people performing them, especially before the big reveal, I still very much enjoyed how this show played out, including the investigation of the crimes. I do think there was a bit of a lull about 2/3 of the way through the show, where it felt like very little progress was being made each episode to move the case along, but I still very much enjoyed it - though watching it after it's aired might be even more enjoyable because of that lull.

Thup (Pooh) has always been able to see ghosts, and now that he's on his own, it's become overwhelming. It doesn't help that Thup ends up the only suspect of a string of murders connected to a ritual. Singh (Pavel) leads the investigation, and while he once suspected Thup just as everyone else did, it turns out Thup's knowledge of the supernatural might come in handy. Singh decides to trust Thup, and as the two grow closer, a relationship starts to form between them.

I think anyone who enjoys crime and supernatural shows will really enjoy this one. I thought the main actors did a great job portraying these characters, and the story was fairly well paced and the ending didn't feel too rushed. I did think they could have expanded on some of the characters a little bit more, but overall it was still a super fun watch! Sometimes I did think the romance was being treated as more important than the investigation, and I know we were all expecting romance with Pooh and Pavel, but I always find that too much romance ends up feeling out of place when there's murders happening....maybe I just don't find murder investigations as romantic as these characters do. Regardless, this is still definitely worth the watch!

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Stellar and yet boring

I genuinely don’t know whether to recommend this drama or not. There are entire episodes, and parts of others, that are true works of art. And that’s exactly why I’m writing this review, something I almost never do.
At its best, this drama is stellar. Visually unforgettable, gripping, exciting. In those moments the story feels unstoppable, the relationships are intriguing, and the editing is genuinely brilliant. Everything works.
And then… it fizzles out. Not visually, because the care for images and editing never really disappears, but narratively. Boredom creeps in. Long stretches of boredom. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, something beautiful again. And then back to boredom. Over and over.
The actors were generally good, especially the FL, who really carried the show. The ML was fine, neither particularly good nor bad, but nothing memorable either.
One major issue for me was the whole FL–Do-Ra-Mi storyline. Is it magic or schizophrenia? If it’s schizophrenia, the medical aspect should have been explored much more seriously. If it’s magic, then the rules of that magic needed to be clearly established. Leaving it so vague just makes it feel unfinished rather than mysterious.
The love triangle was completely pointless. I honestly don’t understand why writers do this: if in twelve episodes she never shows even the slightest interest in him, not even by accident, what is the purpose of this character? The entire time I just kept thinking, “poor guy.”
And finally, the romance. Between the ML and FL? For me, zero chemistry. Between the FL and Hiro, on the other hand… there was something there. If only the show had allowed her to even think about it, or shown us that inner conflict instead of just telling us about it in a detached way. What a missed opportunity.
That’s what makes this drama so frustrating. It had the potential to become one of my all-time favorites. Instead, it remains a near-miss.
And the last episode… I honestly don’t know what happened. Did they run out of money and have to wrap everything up in ten minutes? Who knows. Boh.

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Easy watch. Just romance, nothing special.

Personally I started this drama because of Lu Yu Xiao. I've liked her since Time and Him Were Just Right and My Journey to You (both of which are amazing) and so I decided to take the leap with this one too. She has done it once again. She never disappoints.

Firstly, its a great modern drama. I'm not mad about it. But I'm just a bit let down because I thought Rongcheng would have a bigger role in the drama. I would say, the drama is very romance heavy but the side plot with the designer/construction company was VERY prominent. And that being said... since this drama was mainly advertised with Rongcheng being the main aspect... umm where did it go?? LOL. Like it was only a few episodes in the beginning to get the main leads interested in each other and um ??? I guess I could interpret it as how Rongcheng was designed to be the ML's place to "escape reality" and since he got with her its not exactly needed anymore but still... I just wish there was more scenes with the games or just something. Felt a bit lacking in this aspect.

The romance plot is very average. Dives into a few themes like love at first sight, workplace romance, cohabitation, and past family connections. There's really nothing new. And everything that happens was pretty predictable.

Two more negative things about the plot to note. The ML's mom is actually the dumbest character in this drama. Time and time again has she pmo and its not even funny anymore. I don't want to go on a whole 'nother tangent but let's just say if your husband gets caught in a scandal and he offs himself... don't get with his business partner. Just don't. Like were you not curious to why he offed himself and just about the scandal in general?? And how is it that when you found out the truth, you just cried... on the couch next to the man who killed your husband... I cannot with this woman. The second aspect is the side plot with the friend's ex husband. It played out so tamely?? IDK what else to say with that. Like I was definitely way more invested in this side story and it was so short lived. Plus, the ending could've dived into the new romance with the ML's best friend.

On the brighter side, both the leads have pretty good chemistry (I think) and the kiss scenes... well let's just say cdramas nowadays have gotten a lot steamier than before! I was (pleasantly??) surprised haha. To preface, I'm not the biggest fan of Chen Xing Xu. Well its not like I dislike him or anything he's just not my type and I see he's conventionally attractive but its just not the look for me LOL. And because of this I'm just very indifferent to seeing him lol. And thus, I wasn't too interested in the romance plot of this drama. Definitely stayed for Lu Yu Xiao tho lol.

Lastly, this drama has the best OST I've heard in a while. Wasn't iffed out by a single song! They were all so good. Would definitely be adding a few of them to my everyday playlist!

p.s. makeup and costumes were insane. Hu Xiu's outfits were always so good. Lu Yu Xiao is so pretty.

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A beautiful closure to the denied love story.

I want to keep it simple and don’t wanna spoil it too much, but if you like me, liked Denied Love despite it having a chopped and trash directing but stayed for EnjoyJune's chemistry and potential untill the very end but felt robbed and betrayed in return with the rushed ending, don’t worry, our time is here, after 7 months of wait just to see little more of them, the wait felt so worth it! With a beautiful happily ever after one could ever dream of. I have always liked the special book more than the main book and they did justice with the book this time. Absolutely did. From hating being called as her wife to becoming her bride willingly. Rin truly shaped herself into a new and better person. “with you I feel like a new child again” KhemRin truly came a long way. I believe there’s more to them behind the off cameras too. (KhemRin of course)
P.s. THEY FINALLY KISSED. A REAL PROPER KISS.
MY HORSE ARE GETTING WORKED UP TOO SEE MORE OF TOP JUNE MOMENTS. (LOVE ON HIRE PLEASE I'M COUNTING ON YOU!!)

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