Has flaws, but overall a good watch

Unlike all the reviews hailing and praising the source material, I'm going to HEAVILY disagree with that.

If you have not read the webtoon and plan to, maybe come back to this after you've read that.

Anyway, despite some shocking scenes in this series, the way the story progresses is very in-tune to the life stages that the characters are in. They're all teenagers, in a highly homophobic world, and they're all in highly emotional situations. I prefer the story in the series, as the source material involves not only a very concerning power imbalance between an older man/married professor and a student, but also how extensively abusive Juha is originally meant to be.

The common complaint is that Taeyi was out of line in one scene the most, but his development and the rage he felt means he was going to explode and Seheon happened to be the one not only making his way into Taeyi's life, but the one that Taeyi felt was making him have to process his grief. Unless if you've lost someone extremely close to you, you won't understand the rage that takes over you and your rationality. Grief is never a clear and straight path, and you don't always move forward. Plus, he's an actual child in this and I think people are going in a bit too hard on him after having such a traumatic and tragic loss then having to process how someone has come into his life and makes him happy (something he tries to convince himself he doesn't want).

Then there comes the whole mess between Juha and Doyoon... I do not think Juha deserves any kind of sympathy if we want to use the source material. In the series there is at least room for some different type of conflict, but the webtoon only highlighted how bad of a person Juha was.

Because of this and the gross the situation between Taeyi's brother and Seheon's father, I don't agree that the source material is better. Even the progress of the relationships is lackluster in the webtoon but I think we had a good thing starting with the series adaptation and the changes/omissions that it had.

Still, until LGBTQ+ productions are taken seriously, given proper funding, and are seen as actual necessary media in South Korea (which they are), we are going to have to take things as they are able to be presented sometimes. I only say this lightly, because even productions like Love for Love's Sake managed to pull of most of the original source material or adjusted it to create a more condensed but still relatively loyal to the story series without sacrificing the queerness it is based on.

Jazz for Two had so much more potential, and it saddens me we could've had more, but I personally enjoyed it and most specifically the complexity of grief that this series gives an insight to. The only real flaws are that it needed a lot more time and better dialogue between characters. And although others want to see more from Juha and Doyoon, I'm okay with never seeing that come full-circle.

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full of humanity in all it's forms

some films that give a gloss over feelings, but White Night brings you along into a whirlwind of chaos revolving one person's struggles, humanity, and an internal battles. it's the good with a lot of the bad, and the feeling of watching self-destruction take the wheel.

the story focuses on one person, wongyu, his pain and journey through processing the trauma he has gone through. though there is no sugarcoating to any of this, his one night stand brings him the grace he had not been given by anyone else. you can see the recognition of kindness, how it's foreign to him after going completely numb to the world, and how he holds back from any kind of expectations. yet, this person, a virtual stranger, keeps coming back to him and keeps being the one to support him in exacting some pain onto the people that have destroyed a part of him that he won't ever get back.

he had hoped things would be the same, at least that is my guess, so when he returns and taejoon has moved on, wongyu's tears are what i interpret as regret. regret that he didn't call taejoon when he left or afterwards as years went by. even as he's grown, the trauma and pain still haunts wongyu and i think that also reflects the untold and unacknowledged discrimination and hate that the lgbtq+ community in south korea goes through even up to this day as not much has changed to help protect victims of discrimination, attacks, and homophobia. (and yes, this continues to be a worlwide issue)

this film is a journey from beginning to end. we get the fear, pain, and helplessness from wongyu but we also get the desperation from taejoon and his anger as well. anger at the world for it's cruelness, frustration with himself for not being able to just walk away, that he is not what the other needs and he's already too emotionally invested, and the feeling helplessness while watching someone struggle to open up again once he learns what wongyu is really doing with the constant back and forth they have going on that night.

the cast is phenomenal and truly gave life to the feelings of these characters to a degree that it makes you go through the rawness of their struggles just within that single night.

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nothing notable

although i love both of the leads cast here, i can't say this is a good representation of either of their skills in acting. i also do not enjoy the way the story was written/directed here. there's a lot of lack of connection for both the characters, and it's hard to understand how exactly they developed feelings. part of this boils down to just how incredibly short the episodes are, but also the lackluster script & storytelling abilities from the producer.

this could've been a lot better, but oh well. it's just a casual watch so i don't recommend this to anyone looking for something engaging or with substance.

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loses itself too much

although I love the cast, it’s the same issue again as far as writing goes: the story sucked.

chemistry is everywhere with everyone, but when the story just never really connects, it turns into a jumbled mess of bits and parts that never really give you the full picture.

the racing ends up being a background detail in general, which I was a little saddened about. we also never really get the full story on any of the characters, not even the main ones, so that was also just incredibly disorienting when trying to come up with theories (you can read the novel, I personally have zero interest in it). most of the characters were as complex as a cotton ball, so I wish the series would’ve changed that at the very least (north and sonic genuinely deserved better). there were a lot of unnecessary parts, but with the ending this series had, I don’t think im interested in a second season here. there’s not really anything left for them to do now, but I am still really impressed with a lot of the cast. Lee in specific I am really excited to see act in more series, he has one of the best scenes in the entire series and it left a huge impression on me.

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too much

the first episode was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever made myself sit through. it was a constant fight to finish and I kept dropping the show.

it took about five episodes for me to see any appeal to tutoryim, though i found leotai a lot more interesting. the script was all kinds of bizarre, the comedy was laid on a bit too heavy for me, and the times I did enjoy anything, it was really just a quick scene and would be over before I knew it.

it may just be that I don’t enjoy this type of comedy, but it bugged me that it had the potential to be a lot better. I do hope to see more of Leo and tai though.

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realistic to a fault

though it is dated, with some rather questionable language, this movie was easy to fall into. all of the boys did a great job and fell into their roles pretty seamlessly. The lack of a significant budget was visible (and audible) but they made it work. And though it likely was not part of the plan, this made it feel like you’re there hanging out with them too.

Overall it was enjoyable, though at the end I wasn’t really sure what was going on. Still, I think this is a good watch if you’re just looking for something to fill a boring night. Found myself laughing at some of their antics, reminded me of my high school days as well with some of the crazy ideas we get as teenagers lol

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new life to a tiring series

though I personally dropped the Thai original, I found this interpretation entirely more enjoyable! there was some nice, low simmer tension going on between the pairings that didn’t leave me thinking more was needed.

though I personally wished we could see a better amount of intimacy (hand holding, conversations, small moments between a couple) I can’t truly complain about the roles.

one thing I kept getting annoyed by was the bad sound engineering. the voiceovers were really loud and not mixed well so they would take me out of the scenes too much.

other than that, I found the series enjoyable! it was kind of funny seeing max & nat too lol. not sure what that was about but they were cute to see.

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needed a little more time

the story was interesting, and I’m frankly still surprised such young children were allowed to act in this. still, they conveyed the story and emotions very well. i found ren’s younger version to be done incredibly well.

as far as the series goes, I think it deserved more time/episodes. it was pretty complex, so it did suffer a little in terms of storytelling. there were too many wrinkles for the audience to truly feel like we got to know these characters or their stories completely. we learned quite a bit about ren, but the same can’t be said about kazuma. I would’ve liked a lot more story wise, but I do think this was very well done overall.

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too much chaos, not enough connection

this series was hard to get through. there’s a lot of chaos, many unnecessary layers of drama, and characters that kept taking me out of being immersed in the story. Inn did incredible acting that would draw me back in, but the random outbursts of violence against him would sour the good for me. nut was borderline abusive to everyone and I found it hard to feel much sympathy for him most of the time.

I do have to admit that the dragging out of the main story made it hard to connect to nut & his feelings. by the time we get the real picture of his life, the show is basically over. maybe I expected a lot more from the constant high praise I see for this series, but I can’t say I feel like I enjoyed this all too much. I am still giving it a high rating because the acting was good. I hated the parents/twins 97% of the time, so that was good on the actors.

overall, a very frustrating series that left me unsure I even connected to any of the characters.

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A bit of a let-down

I generally like to go into shows completely blind, so you can imagine my surprise when the story barely even advanced. Ping really sold the show for me, so he was the only reason I watched all of it.

what bothers me the most about this series is how uninteresting most of the cast is. Bua was also questionable for me, as she was portrayed as being someone plotting something… or I could’ve just had the wrong idea about her… who knows. I’m not that interested in knowing.

what I did truly love was how good both guitar and ping sing, they compliment each other so well musically.

other than this random praiseable moments, Low Frequency is only a casual watch. I was hoping for so much more, it’s a shame these series with high potential aren’t being written out thoroughly.

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better as it progresses

the first couple episodes were hard to understand and a little too boring for me, but once you power through them, the stories really start to come through. it takes close to the end to really get the essence of the main pairing, but i found it to still be enjoyable.

for the main pairing's story at the last couple episodes, chin in particular had a lot of insight into his character, but i'm disappointed it took so long to understand him. U is a great character, and i found dong to give a really close aura to mix so it was interesting just watching his acting. though i did find him a little flat at times, he gave a bit of sass that i think made up for some of the lack of development. as for the love triangle bit, it was frustrating to see since patt was so sincere. he was a little overbearing for my taste, but it makes sense in this story. just wish he had been given a better storyline, he was a genuinely nice character.

the only other couple i really enjoyed was zeemai and zo. they had such a great little funny bit in every episode so they were genuinely fun to see. and it's a real shame but i would love to see a spin off of just jang and ano. i didn't really see anything between them during the series, but at the end it just felt right to see them together.

overall, i think this series is good, though the sound production is off in a lot of parts and makes immersing into the story hard. i also didn't like most of their wardrobes, so it was distracting seeing such ugly shirts on some of them lol there were some moments where the acting was stiff, but it might just be the nerves getting the best of some of the cast. still, worth a watch, just don't expect groundbreaking production in this. i do think that dong and pie have great potential if either of them wants to continue acting.

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has its flaws, but still shines

story-wise, there’s a lot of unnecessary stuff. the general idea is great as-is, so a lot of the additional weird characters was distracting in a bad way.

you get so engrossed in the main characters, that suddenly dealing with the supporting character having some kind of history with aliens ruined the vibe for me. and I’ll be honest that I did not care for any of the other characters’ storylines.

I only watched it for the main leads, so I skipped a lot of things.

anyway, I actually enjoyed this a lot despite everything I hated in this. ended up crying at the ending too. genuinely felt glad that at least we get closure in this bl. I loved phob, he made it so hard during the last episode because I kept tearing up. supanut is a gem, I would love to see a lot more from him.

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sweet & charming innocence

the story feels like a prequel to a love story but it does so in a cute and charming way. went into this not sure what to expect due to such a wildly mixed bag of opinions, but I found myself laughing a lot throughout the episodes. loved seeing winny and satang in this too, they both added so much to the already great story. in fact, the supporting cast were all amazing, this felt really well in terms of their performance together.

this is lighthearted, with a great representation of fearful, timid, yet entirely sweet dancing around with the idea of confessing. thoroughly enjoyed all of this.

my only subtraction to my score is having to see joong be so serious for most of this. would’ve loved to see him act cutely more lol

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some hits, mostly misses

if I had to pick, the ones worth watching, to me the episodes are from Star In My Mind, A Boss and a Babe, and Vice Versa. they give what I wanted from their series and then more. there was growth, some development to the characters, their stories, and, dare i say it, some actual entertainment.

The Eclipse episodes were half-assed at best in terms of the writing and it upset me a lot they were given some weak story filler that, being brutally honest, felt like a waste of both first and khaotung's time and efforts. i also wanted more from NLMG. their episodes were good, though the beginning just felt like a car ad (get that coin, boys), but it just made me wish for pondphuwin to get another series. i missed all of these characters a lot. the MSP episodes were just okay, it was basically a speedrun of the show with a new song + merch drop. didn't hate it, just was boring.

When it came to the ATOTS episodes, which were the ones i was really looking forward to, ignoring BBTS characters made it so much better. I personally found no charm to both stories getting put together like this, so I didn’t really care for the BBTS story at all. it felt like a waste of time having their episodes if they were just going to be flat as they were, time that i think we could've spent giving earthmix the flowers they deserve for acting in one of the best series gmmtv ever made. a positive is that i did like seeing drake and jimmy give us their ghost ship one last hurrah, but that was all for me.

either way, there’s not much in terms of being groundbreaking here if that’s what you’re looking for, it’s all a mess to some degree and a lot of wasted potential for some of the better series from this company. i do have to say that VV and ATOTS were the only ones that genuinely made me tear up. which leads into me harping onto how i hope that we get to see more of earthmix, they've truly become my favorite pairing within the general bl world.

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a float serve at best

you start this series and think it’s going to go a certain way and try to track it, but it ends up just dropping in front of you without making it to a real significant point.

I am still giving this a high rating because frame and ryan genuinely carried the entire series, both in acting and promotions. more so that frame being able to pull off two roles, and make me feel very different things for each character, deserves to be praised. they both poured so much into this and don’t deserve to be overshadowed by some of the worst writing to exist. it rivals mame in the sense that there is minimal critical thinking from characters, no world building, dialogue is not a thing, and production that just accepts bare minimum in editing, filming, and sound.

which leads into my second point: there’s too many couples. I would let sam and that other guy get a pass if they actually had chemistry, but team always looks so tense it was actually uncomfortable watching him. I had hoped he would loosen up a bit or even give some unscripted type of improv but it didn’t happen. I hope he gets more comfortable if he continues in this industry, but that couple should’ve been written out of the series or changed how their scenes went. generally, I find second lead couples to take my interest, but this one was a hard pass.

overall, it’s fun but suffered a lot from keeping zee as a relevant part of the plot. this needed more thought put into it from an outside party or something. disappointing, but I still think it was a good watch just to see rising actors like frame and ryan.

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