Reviews

Cute

You can watch it on GagaOOLala: https://www.gagaoolala.com/en/videos/5924/school-trip-joined-a-group-im-not-close-to-2025

Unfortunately for me, school JBLs are my biggest guilty pleasure. They keep making them, and I keep watching them.
I know some people are tired of the school BLs, but I feel like Japan is just way too good at making these, so I'd rather they keep doing what they're doing best.
Now that I'm done with the rant, I can definitely say I enjoyed this series a lot.
It's a pretty easy watch, I personally binge-watched it in one sitting. It is a great school, BL, with a lot of cute and funny moments, good friends, and first love. Definitely a comfort series.

Things I liked:
1. Humor.
2. Friends. It is always nice to see when the friends are so nice and supportive.
3. Cinematography.
4. All of the cute and caring moments.
5. Good communication.

Things I disliked:
1. Some inconsistencies. Like getting drunk from one sip of alchohol, being dry after running through the rain, etc.

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My heart is somehow fleeting, and even sorrow is dyed in blue.

Stepping back into the dusty, atmospheric world of early 1990s Japanese television once again because apparently I enjoy digging through old dramas nobody talks about anymore. This time it's Tenjo no Ao (天上の青 / Heavenly Blue), a 1992 Fuji TV psychological suspense drama based on Ayako Sono's novel.

The premise alone is already unsettling. Fujio Uno is introduced as this perfectly polite, seemingly harmless man who wanders around the Shonan coast and eventually strikes up a conversation with Yukiko, a quiet Christian dressmaker who spends her days tending to her morning glories. It's such a peaceful, almost mundane encounter that you wouldn't immediately expect anything sinister from it.

Except Fujio is a serial killer.

And as his crimes become increasingly violent, he keeps returning to Yukiko's little world. There's something about her calmness and the fact that she doesn't immediately judge or fear him that makes her become his only real psychological refuge. She doesn't even fully understand what he's looking for from her, yet he keeps coming back anyway. The whole relationship becomes this incredibly uncomfortable contrast between compassion and violence, innocence and guilt, and whether someone's kindness can actually reach a person who has done terrible things.

Karin Yamaguchi is wonderful as Yukiko. Her performance is very restrained, which works perfectly for the character. She's gentle without feeling completely passive, and there's this quiet loneliness to her that makes it believable why she would become attached to someone society has already completely rejected.

But honestly, Hakuryu absolutely steals this drama. 🫠

His performance as Fujio is probably my favourite thing about the entire series. He could've easily played the character as a stereotypical “crazy serial killer” and called it a day, but instead there's this strange vulnerability underneath everything. He's obviously capable of horrifying violence, but when he's around Yukiko, you get to see this completely different side of him—the awkward, lonely and almost childlike part of Fujio that desperately wants to be accepted somewhere.

And that's what makes him so unsettling. The drama doesn't ask you to excuse what he does, but it does make you understand why Yukiko becomes so important to him. He's not suddenly a good person because someone shows him kindness. He's still responsible for what he's done. There's just this uncomfortable realization that even someone capable of terrible things can still crave affection, companionship and somewhere they feel safe.

The final stretch gets even darker once the law finally catches up with him. Fujio ends up on death row, writing desperate letters to Yukiko while she herself becomes increasingly isolated because of her attempts to help him. And I really appreciate that the drama doesn't try to turn everything into some neat redemption story. There isn't a convenient “love saved him” ending. Fujio still faces the consequences of his crimes, while Yukiko has to live with the complicated reality of having cared about someone everyone else sees as a monster.

The ending is bleak as hell, but in a strangely quiet way. There's no huge Hollywood-style emotional payoff. Instead, it leaves you sitting with all these uncomfortable questions about empathy, morality, loneliness, punishment and whether understanding someone necessarily means forgiving them.

Tenjo no Ao is definitely not the kind of drama I'd recommend if you're looking for something lighthearted, but if you like old Japanese psychological dramas with slow pacing, uncomfortable character studies and that very specific early-90s atmosphere, this is absolutely worth digging up.

And of course, Hakuryu's performance alone makes it worth watching for me.

I genuinely couldn't find much discussion about this drama while watching it, which is kind of a shame because there's so much to unpack here. It's one of those obscure pieces of 90s television that feels like it deserves to be remembered instead of disappearing into the archives.

Definitely something I'd rewatch someday.

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Love can be bought by Oranges

One of the most realistic portrayals of a relationship I have seen in a series. The later episodes totally crushed me about how we weigh love and career. Indeed, our high school life was one of the most memorable years we had; we were too carefree and had too much time on ouur hads, until we didn't.

The confrontation scene was so hard to watch. Both gave their points, and it's just so hard to watch knowing that you have felt the same dilemma both of the characters had. And both of them had their valid reasons. How do you expect the love of your life to adjust to you, just because you ARE the love of their life? You get to question how important you are to them. You get to see the reality about being practical. One of them even mentioned that they can't just stay rooted in their province.

It was a hard watch, honestly. I hated how realistic they depicted real life is because, indeed, that is how reality works. It is not a fairytale, where you get to wish upon a star. It is not some fictional story; you both get to live a happy ending. It's reality that you are facing.

With that, there were also 2 points raised between the 2 couples. The Ko Couple barely fought, but one of them was harboring feelings deep inside, but living together. While the A Couple was always fighting, but they were in an LDR relationship. I love how the show showed us how both couples addressed this. The Ko Couple was always reassuring and understanding, even to the point that it was "for the sake" of them not fighting. But it was indeed toxic, because if you keep bottling up all those feelings, there will surely be an outburst. On the other hand, the A Couple were always bickering, but they used that bickering as a way of showing communication, that both are always communicating. There was also a scene where Augar said that fighting made him realize how much he loved Achi, and that's when Ko opened his eyes.

It was such a feeling that even to the end, Ko said to Orange that it's okay to fight, to not hold on even if it means he "understands" his partner. It's just so realistic, because couples do indeed fall into this category, where many do fail at this level of relationship. Even I got something to learn from this series.

I also love and think that it's appropriate that this series didn't have any x scenes in it. It's a proof that intimacy, the person beside you, will always be enough and would be there for you.

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TG for Chen Si's height. He needed it to carry this whole drama on his back

This drama had just about everything that could go wrong in a drama. The plot was trying to do too much and sadly did not achieve anything. Messy plot holes and sporadic character Growth aside, this was a dark and toxic story with a terrible ending. She forgave her repeated 🍇, mother's death, and the destruction of her life all because he prayed for her and her child that his subordinate killed? Nope. He should have stayed dead. Her mother's death was not caused by her ex in that one final moment; it was all the little moments made up by the ML. And will someone explain why everyone got to come back from the dead except her mom? Finally, was there even a point to the ex's death, rebirth, and then death again? Other than to stimulate the ML? No? I didn't think so either. Do better writers.
Ironically, Chen Si carried this entire drama on his own despite having such a deplorable character to play.

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A very beautiful story telling ?.

A winter sun wakes the Wind in spring hills' dreams is so beautiful ❤️.
Ep 16 has to be the among very best and most beautiful episode in bls 🥹.
The 'dance of the moth' and sister lan voice telling a very powerful message made me cry because it portrayed all you need to know about one's self action and consequences.
The award speech where Qinlang accepted who he was and called changyang 'my hero' was a masterpiece 🥹.
The part where Qinlang said *'Do they have to dig up his grave even after his death'* was painful because it shows that humans will go as far and cursing the just being they were different 😢.
The message about fans being a moth was so beautifully and painfully told and shi yuhao said *'But in reality, moths don't die. They just fly towards the next fire.'* was true because fans will always look for a new victim to pry on.
And the wedding part 🥹, it was just them both no one else and I loved our they made the scene into a black background and the dead wished them good 😊.

Cheers to the ending 🥹😍.

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Head Over Heels — When the Explanation Comes Too Late for the Emotion

I will admit immediately why I started Head Over Heels: Choo Young-woo. I first fell for him back in 2021 when he played Song Si-on in the Korean BL You Make Me Dance. It was his first leading role, and even in such a small production there was something about him that stayed with me. Since then, watching his career grow has been rather satisfying. School 2021, Once Upon a Small Town, Oasis, The Tale of Lady Ok, The Trauma Code... By the time Head Over Heels arrived, he had even won the Baeksang Best New Actor award for The Tale of Lady Ok. So yes, I came for Choo Young-woo, but thankfully there was considerably more here to enjoy than simply looking at him.

The basic idea is actually wonderfully simple. Park Seong-a is an eighteen-year-old student who secretly works as a shaman. When Bae Gyeon-u enters her shrine appearing upside down, she immediately understands what that means: he is going to die. Unfortunately for her, he is also exactly her type, so she decides that fate is going to have to find somebody else. That beginning is funny, romantic and extremely easy to understand. The official description even sells the drama simply as two eighteen-year-olds trying to defy fate together. Somewhere along the way, however, Head Over Heels becomes considerably more complicated than that.

Suddenly I was trying to remember who was spiritually connected to whom, which shaman had done what, who was protecting somebody, who was hurting somebody supposedly because they loved somebody else, which spirit belonged where, and whether the person I was currently watching was actually the person whose face I was looking at. There were several moments when my brain basically went: “Wait... what? ... Haaaaa! Now I understand!” Unfortunately, sometimes that understanding arrived several minutes after the emotion. That was my biggest problem with an otherwise very good drama. If I have to spend an emotional scene trying to reconstruct the supernatural rules, I am not completely feeling what the character is feeling. Once I finally understand what happened, I can appreciate why the scene was sad or important, but the immediate emotional impact has already passed.

And I don't think that was simply me not paying attention. The supernatural relationships genuinely become dense. General Dongcheon is Seong-a's spiritual mother, but she also has a complicated maternal relationship with Yeom-hwa. Yeom-hwa manipulates Bong-su, Bong-su possesses Gyeon-u, Gyeon-u can sometimes re-emerge from within that possession, and eventually the question of whose body contains whom becomes part of the plot itself. By the final episodes, love, possession, sacrifice, guilt and spiritual obligation are all operating simultaneously. Even contemporary viewer reactions repeatedly asked exactly the sort of questions I found myself asking.

Knowing that the source webtoon contains 156 episodes makes this make considerably more sense to me. Twelve television episodes are not necessarily too short, but when you are adapting such a long supernatural story—and changing major elements of it—you need extraordinary clarity. The original webtoon and drama do not even use Bong-su in exactly the same way, and General Dongcheon's fate is different. The adaptation therefore wasn't simply shortening a story; it was rebuilding parts of it. That ambition is admirable. The execution occasionally needed another pass. Thankfully, the actors carry us through much of the confusion. Choo Young-woo was obviously the reason I arrived, and Head Over Heels gave me another reason to stay. Playing Gyeon-u alone would have required enough emotional range: this is a young man whose entire life has been shaped by inexplicable misfortune, loss and an understandable hatred of shamans after years of adults exploiting his family's desperation. But then Choo effectively has to share the same face with Bong-su. And they don't feel like the same person. The posture changes. The expressions change. The confidence changes. Even the way he looks at Seong-a changes. At points I didn't need the drama to explain whether Gyeon-u or Bong-su was present because Choo Young-woo had already told me physically. Considering that the screenplay itself sometimes made identity confusing, the fact that the actor could make it clearer through performance is quite an accomplishment.

Cho Yi-hyun was equally important because Seong-a could very easily have become exhausting. She falls for Gyeon-u almost immediately and spends an enormous part of the series trying to save him, which in weaker hands could have made her feel like a character whose entire existence revolves around a boy. Instead, Cho Yi-hyun gives her enough personality, humour and stubbornness that I believed this girl would genuinely look at destiny telling her “no” and answer, “I don't care.” And there is something amusing about seeing Cho Yi-hyun and Choo Young-woo together again after School 2021. Back then, Choo Young-woo's Young-joo was the other boy in the romantic equation while Cho Yi-hyun's Ji-won ultimately belonged with Kim Yo-han's Ki-joon. Cho Yi-hyun and Kim Yo-han even won a KBS Best Couple Award for it. Four years later, Choo Young-woo finally comes back and gets to be her actual romantic lead. So perhaps Young-joo just needed to wait for another drama. The 2021 award was perfectly deserved for the couple being judged at the time, but retrospectively the reunion makes the history rather funny.

Then there is Kim Mi-kyung, who is one of those actresses whose appearance automatically reassures me. Her filmography is enormous, and she has spent decades playing mothers, mentors and women who can make supporting characters feel essential rather than decorative. General Dongcheon could have been little more than the experienced shaman who explains supernatural things to younger characters, but Kim Mi-kyung gives her genuine maternal weight. The writer even revealed that the performances of Kim Mi-kyung and Choo Ja-hyun during the test shoot were so charismatic that he went back and rewrote the shaman scenes. That does not surprise me at all. Those relationships are actually where Head Over Heels becomes more interesting than its cute premise suggests. Almost everybody is trying to protect someone, but protection continually becomes control. Love becomes sacrifice, sacrifice creates resentment, grief creates obsession, and people start hurting others because they have convinced themselves that what they are doing has a greater purpose.

The problem is that the drama sometimes gives us all of this at once. There is a very good story underneath it about accepting that loving somebody does not give you ownership over their fate. Seong-a begins by wanting to change Gyeon-u's destiny because she loves him. Other characters also interfere with destiny because of love, loss or grief, but gradually we see how differently those motivations can develop. One person protects; another manipulates. One sacrifices herself; another sacrifices somebody else. The distinction between love and possession becomes both figurative and, in this drama, very literally supernatural. I liked that. I just wish I hadn't sometimes needed a diagram. The unusual thing is that despite these problems, I still enjoyed Head Over Heels. It is beautifully produced, often genuinely funny, romantic when it allows the central couple enough space, and filled with actors capable of making complicated supernatural material feel human. I understand why some viewers became frustrated, particularly in the second half when Bong-su occupies so much of a story that originally appeared to be about saving Gyeon-u from his fate. That criticism was common even while the series was airing. But I don't think the drama collapsed. I think it became overcrowded.

Final Thought

Head Over Heels gave me a slightly unusual viewing experience. Usually a drama makes me feel something and I understand immediately why. Here, several times, understanding came first only after I mentally replayed what had just happened.
“Oh... THAT'S why she did that.”
“Oh... so THAT'S who she was protecting.”
“Oh... THAT wasn't actually Gyeon-u.”
And only then did the sadness arrive. That delay stopped the drama from becoming something exceptional for me, because emotional storytelling should ideally allow the audience to understand enough in the moment to simply feel. But when Head Over Heels was clear, it was very good, and its cast repeatedly compensated for a screenplay that occasionally asked us to keep track of one spirit, two bodies, three shamans and several generations of emotional damage at the same time. I came because the BL actor I fell for in You Make Me Dance was starring in it. I stayed because Choo Young-woo has become a considerably better actor than the young man I discovered in 2021 and because Cho Yi-hyun, Kim Mi-kyung and the rest of this cast gave me enough reason to keep chasing the story even when I wasn't entirely sure which ghost I was chasing.

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A sweet and entertaining story with a nice balance of romance and drama. I really enjoyed the chemistry between the leads, and the story kept me interested from beginning to end.


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The story quickly ran in numerous circles...Should have been shorter.

This rom-com started very well : interesting concept, an intriguing fantasy twist, a very attractive male lead and adorable heroine. The fated mates aspect of the main couple relationship was so good...But the plot itself got so repetitive with a lot of dumb choices, noble idiocy that really made the drama lost its appeal to me.

The series clearly would have benefited from a shorter length (8-12 episodes), this would have prevented a lot of the filler moments with a bunch of rather boring secondary characters, that never really got attaching to me (with the sole exception maybe of the grandma).

Having said that, I quite enjoyed the soundtrack and I was pretty impressed with the production and the making. The skillful framing of the leads and the way they played on their height difference, was super smart and butterflies inducing.

I would recommend this to people that love fated mates stories. It has a solid start and the production value as well as the chemistry between main leads is worth it (especially if you are a fan of Byeon Woo Seok and/or Kim Hye Yoon).

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slow burn

not very good with words . used Gemini help to write this

If you are looking for a fast-paced, instant-gratification love story, this isn't it—and that’s precisely what makes it so special.
This series is the ultimate slow burn, grounded in the messy, realistic journey of growing up. Starting in their innocent school days and moving through the transition into university, the story focuses heavily on personal growth alongside the central relationship. Progress is far from linear; life gets in the way, timing is rarely on their side, and a prolonged separation lasting a few years forces both leads to mature independently before they can ever truly fit together.
The romance is subtle, quiet, and earned. Instead of grand cinematic declarations, it builds through years of shared history, unsaid feelings, and subtle shifts in dynamic.
The absolute highlight, however, is the female lead. Her genuine goofiness and quirky charm keep the drama grounded, adding warmth and lighthearted humor that balances out the ache of their long-distance gap and non-linear romance. It’s a bittersweet, deeply satisfying coming-of-age drama for anyone who appreciates the patience it takes for two people to truly grow into each other.

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Did the job

This drama reflects a mature entertainment industry that needs serial productions to keep the cash flowing, which, in my view, isn't a bad thing, since the drama did its job.
The main leads' chemistry was very good, and it was the backbone that helped the drama succeed. As support, they relied on simple physical scenes and exaggerated (almost comic-book) characters to entertain viewers.
As usual, they showed a world with plenty of bad people, extreme Asian puritanism, social-class differentiation, and successful people coming from humble origins. It seems that coming from the orphanage is a must to be successful.
Unfortunately, the opportunity to develop a good story of mature adults was lost in the need to make the show entertaining by relying on easy-to-achieve licenses such as exaggerated fights, extremely bad characters such as the gangster (it seems incredible to find people like him in Korea), and the village sisters who could beat armed gangsters.
They missed the chance to develop a strong second-lead story about overcoming social differences to stay with someone you love, beyond a Cinderella cliché.
Of course, to make all that fit, tons of potholes emerged in the script.
In the end, I had a good time and felt satisfied, since my expectations were very low for a smart script after seeing a good gangster fall in love with a very important prosecutor who disappeared after a near-death torture, as if the authorities were stupid.

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Pretty good better than I expected

LIKE

So many new faces I cannot keep up - no special features cannot even remember all of them

What Luo Nu Xia and her elder did at the bridge - my tears and heart!!

Mu Qing Yan only treats Cai Zhao well

Li Yun Rui always playing someone’s dad - lol he has 5 daughters and 1 son and still counting

You Guan Yue just can read Mu Qing Yan’s mind lol the Shangguan Hao Nan so oblivious...

Why Mu Qing Yan can always be in Zao Zao’s room?? lol

Scheming and loving at the same time - love this kind of relationship

The amount of blood omg lol

DISLIKE

More love and hate not enough

MUSIC - personal fav

清风醉 Qing Feng Zui - 李宇春 Li Yu Chun
应如是 Ying Ru Shi - 王铮亮 Wang Zheng Liang 黄龄 Huang Ling
江湖夜雨十年灯 Jiang Hu Ye Yu Shi Nian Deng - 崔子格 Cui Zi Ge

REWATCH VALUE

Shall re-watch when I'm free one day

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