This review may contain spoilers
WAY better than the movie
(Spoilers indicated below)Usually I prefer to keep my reviews private, but seeing as this has zero reviews, I decided to leave my very lengthy thoughts here to provide some insight to those who want to watch this but are reluctant since there aren't any official English subs yet.
This review is coming from someone who watched the movie version first and was left very, very disappointed at how messy and hilariously bad it was. The series version makes so much more sense plot-wise and we get to understand each character more as well as see the relationships between them develop. We get to see how much Hope and Tawan value each other, how big of an asshole Seki actually is, how and why Teacher Wong absolutely despises Tawan, and much more. Although, without English subs and a decent understanding of Thai, I do agree that deciphering all of this is pretty difficult.
Story: My Tempo follows the journey of Hope, a musically-inclined second-year high school student. Hope plays the classical guitar with Seki in a duet called Four Hands. Hope and Seki have a fight one day which results in their duet splitting up and Hope's scholarship on the line. In his lowest moment, he gets to know Tawan, his classmate and an extremely clumsy pianist. Tawan sticks by Hope's side and helps him get back to playing with Seki again.
Of course there's more than just this- like there's Seki's fiasco with his girlfriend Riko, Teacher Wong being an absolute asshole from the start to the end, Tawan's stage fright hindering his dreams of playing on stage, Taekhun simply existing but it seems like he's always at fault, and many more. In the end, the series concludes kinda abruptly, sort of like an open ending where we learn what Hope's priority is and wonder how the future is gonna be for him with this decision. Oh and before I forget, yes, the ending is completely different from the movie. They don't skip to the future so the entire competition doesn't exist (thankfully).
Acting: I'd have to say the ones who impressed me the most are Chokun (Tawan) and Gorn (Seki). Chokun was almost made for this loser-like, kinda awkward, cheerful and optimistic, kicked puppy-looking role as Tawan. He did a great job at bringing out Tawan's character and making him so lovable and adoring. I especially loved the scenes where he was clearly going through a hard time but still acted all cheerful and pretended like everything was okay in front of Hope. Tawan and Arthit also felt like genuine brothers from the way they fought, made up, joked and listened to each other.
Gorn did a good job at portraying Seki as a stuck-up, selfish student who was also serious about love and music. There were times where he was so despicable I hated just looking his face, but that just proves how good he is. Out of all the characters, I think Seki is the one who showed the most development at the end.
Onglee didn't do the best job at being Hope, but he wasn't bad, I just feel like there can be much more room for improvement especially during the dramatic scenes. Gun as Teacher Roj felt like Gun being himself as Proxie's leader, warm and understanding and cares about his students very much. Kim as Teacher Wong was quite hilarious (I'm sorry), his angry acting just made me laugh sometimes. But he was convincing enough to make me despise his character throughout the show. Our little Victor had the smallest role out of everyone, his presence was too small to judge if his acting was good or not. I spent too much time fawning over how cute he was everytime he appeared on screen ;w; Same goes for Keen, although his role was bigger than Victor's, all he seemed to do was play the piano and be a cute little obedient bean all the time.
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Music: The OST ขอบใจนะเพื่อน (Thank You My Friend) by Pchy and OMD was the perfect message from Hope and Tawan to each other. It hit especially hard when Tawan played it live at the end as a thank you to Hope, after hearing Hope play it only once during his evaluation. Whenever the Proxie members randomly sing it here and there, it always takes me back to this scene :")
Since this was a musical series, I had high expectations for live performances. It irked me a lot when their hands wouldn't match the notes when they were playing the guitar or piano. I know Keen is an extremely talented pianist and Gorn can play the guitar very well, so I'm glad that they got to show off their skills here. Hearing Onglee and Chokun's live vocals when they played Thank You My Friend was also very nice.
Rewatch: I'd definitely rewatch to pick up the details I missed and to see Hope and Tawan's cute moments together again <3
My favourite aspect of this is undoubtedly Tawan and Hope's friendship. Tawan did so much to help Hope that I'm starting to wonder if a friend this good actually exists in real life. Get you a friend who would be willing to dress up as a Thai mythical creature and embarrass himself in front of a crowd in exchange for winning back his former bandmates so that they can teach him how to play the guitar so he can have a chance at being Hope's new guitar partner and maybe by doing this he will stop being mad at me? The way Tawan's mind works astounds me. Hope also cared about Tawan no less, from taking the blame for him to delaying telling him about going back to playing with Seki and the Berkley scholarship because he was scared of hurting his feelings. The bond that they formed in such a short period of time was so special and irreplaceable. I also believe Onglee and Chokun got closer to each other after filming, and their chemistry in real life never fails to amuse me.
Another aspect I liked was the friendship between Tawan and the groups of seniors he encountered at the beginning of the series. It all follows a similar pattern- he tries to help them, he ends up getting them into trouble, he then makes up with them and they all become his friends who will become a big help to him in the future episodes. The journey they all went through together really highlights Tawan's character development.
However, this series definitely has its own downfalls. The overall plot was fine but some of the details just didn't make sense. How can a simple battle stage allow Tawan redeem a spot in the music program? What was the Mr. Jones evaluation even for then? Why did they decide to shoot this in Chiang Mai when none of the members can speak in Northern dialect? How has Teacher Wong not gotten in trouble for the things he has done to Tawan? And the entire ending scene was just unbelievable, there was no way Hope would've made it in time to watch Tawan's performance. But these are just minor details that can be overlooked and doesn't affect the plot that much, in my opinion.
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In conclusion, I'd say this series is really worth a watch even if you don't understand Thai. I'd recommend watching the subbed movie first to get an overall idea on what's going on. Majority of the scenes from the first 3-4 episodes are shown in the movie, with some extra scenes giving more context. To my fujoshis... frankly, I wouldn't label this as a BL at all. This is a series about friendship, music and dreams, so don't hope for much because really, nothing romantic happens. But it would be a lie to say that I didn't ship Tawan and Hope. The kind of bond and care they developed for each other can beat some pairings out there and their scenes together are really very cute. Hopefully one day subtitles will be added and Proxie's international fanbase will grow <3
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