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DaddyBrioche

USA

DaddyBrioche

USA
About Youth taiwanese drama review
Completed
About Youth
2 people found this review helpful
by DaddyBrioche
May 3, 2023
8 of 8 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 9.5
Story 8.5
Acting/Cast 10.0
Music 9.0
Rewatch Value 10.0
This review may contain spoilers

Best Kiss + Finding your voice.

Some of us have grown up in the shadow of dominating people. When, in our heads, we ask ourselves what we should do, we only hear the voices of our parents, teachers or friends. We can't seem to find our own voice. This drama is for you. Queer and LGBT audiences will generally like this as well.

If you always knew what you wanted to do, have no patience with those who don't know, and just love a good action movie, go somewhere else.

This drama is full of tenderness with good acting by the leads, good scripts, good directing and professional production values. The music is fun and the sound track is fairly good. Musicianship of the characters within this drama is better than the average BL. The best reason to watch this is the completely realistic scene at the end of the last episode (19:43-21:29). So many BLs are ruined by terrible kissing scenes, unwilling lip mashing, or porn kissing. This was the best kiss scene (as in most realistic) that I've ever seen. It catches the excitement, nervousness, delight, enthusiasm, joy and pleasure of the moment. Especially amazing considering this is the first movie for Shen Jyun and Li Zhen Hao.

Story telling is a bit uneven and editing is a bit choppy. There are bits of a plot here and there, but despite this appearing to be a story about Xu Qi Zhang and his pursuit of Ye Guang, it is really about the personal growth of Ye Guang. Anything that happens serves to move Ye Guang through his development. While the drama around Ye Guang's parents is heavy handed, bordering on the unbelievable and could have been done with more finesse, the point of the parents within the narrative is to drive Ye Guang to his final awakening in the last episode (starts at 6:10-8:12 and 17:00-17:43).

Ray's gender fluidity is a nice touch, especially the scene in the cafe/tea house. Ray's fem presentation allows a broader audience to see themselves within the story. As its presented in a single night, it sort of begs the question if Ray's fem presentation was not a choice, but rather a necessity in order to be accepted by the older ("bad") boyfriend. In the real world trans people are sometimes fetishized / dehumanized. While I appreciated seeing more of my world, it made me wonder what the point of that scene was. A subsequent repeat of Ray's fem presentation would have been more affirming.

Overall maybe an 8, but with that fantastically well done ending, I'm calling this a 9.5. It makes up for all the terrible kissing scenes I've had to sit through in piles of other BL dramas.
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