assez

From my perspective, most of the cringe that ultimately drags the rating down—and which I honestly expect may make it drop even further—comes from the way certain things are delivered.

There is, of course, the ever-present discussion around age gaps. Personally, I have no inherent problem with them in fiction. I can absolutely appreciate a relationship between someone in their twenties and someone in their forties. That is a much larger age gap than we are usually given between fictional characters, but for me, that is not inherently a problem. The fact that the characters' age difference is roughly comparable to the actors' ages is also an interesting detail.

My bigger problem is that the subjects this series deals with could have been presented in a much more tasteful and effective way. The material is there. The premise is there. The production quality is there. With this level of audiovisual quality, you could do genuinely amazing things with the storytelling. Instead, a lot of the connective tissue between the different plot points seems to be built around things that feel mismatched, misplaced, or simply cringe-inducing.

What particularly bothered me were the verbal explicit declarations or confirmations of love shown in situations sexually driven. Usually, BL does almost the opposite: there are love scenes dressed as sexual. Here, we repeatedly get declarations of love in situations where what actually is driving the characters is sexual desire.

Strangely enough, the love confirmations that you can take seriously (and are meant) are there too, but elsewhere. The emotional and verbal cues feel mismatched. The story tells us, “This is love,” while the actual scene can feel like, “This is sexual desire.” And then, elsewhere, it manages to communicate affection or love - mostly through action and decisions. That mismatch (...where love is actually just sex...) is one of the main sources of the cringe for me.

And that is where I started wondering whether the creators actually knew this was going to be such a heavily cringed series (it is always confusing to me as I would cross that message differently than I see). Because there is also a serious undertone, and the topics themselves could have been handled in a much more effective way. But the actual construction of the story—the way the different plot points are connected—is very often built around these mismatched, misplaced, cringe-inducing elements.

I can't quite tell whether there is some degree of awareness of how these topics are perceived, or whether the original source material itself is constructed and constricting in this way. It doesn't really feel self-aware enough for the cringe to be entirely intentional. At the same time, it sometimes feels as though the creators were aware of how this kind of material is perceived and therefore never fully committed to developing it in a way that could actually work.

What I do think is quite clear is that they weren't really trying to make this a sexy series.

And I mean that as an observation rather than a criticism.

The actors aren't presented primarily as objects designed to seduce the audience. The production doesn't seem interested in constantly pleasing the eye or pushing the audience toward a particular romantic or sexual response. It feels almost as though the actors are simply inhabiting their characters, moving through the story and hitting the required plot points, while leaving us completely free to feel whatever we happen to feel about them.

It isn't like those Thai BL series with extremely attractive, muscular men where the whole presentation is clearly designed to please the audience visually and make us fall in love with the characters. This series wasn't made to seduce us, either romantically or sexually, in the way that some of the hottest BL projects currently airing or recently finished very deliberately do.

And strangely enough, that is part of what makes my feelings about it so ambiguous.

Visually, I actually think the casting choices are striking and memorable. The actors' appearances are probably the strongest thing I am taking away from the series. I may not be able to tell you much about the plot several weeks from now, but I suspect I will remember what these actors looked like and the specific impression they created.

That is something I would compare directly with Unexpectedly Naughty Fukami (2026). I would consider the two projects to be of roughly comparable production quality, perhaps with some differences in how interesting the material is. Unexpectedly Naughty Fukagami had a more interesting and, to me, less explored premise, and yet I was much more obsessed with it.

With Unexpectedly Naughty Fukagami, I remember being genuinely invested in the project. Here, I mostly remember being intrigued, confused, or outright cringing at various points.

At the same time, I think this series has made more memorable choices when it comes to its actors and their visual identities. With Unexpectedly Naughty Fukagami, I remember the project itself more than I remember exactly what the actors looked like. Here, it is almost the reverse. I don't think I could reconstruct the plot in much detail beyond the standard age-gap premise and the fact that the older character apparently has a sad backstory—something I mainly remember because I have seen other people discussing it. But I can remember the actors.

So I am caught between wanting to be strict about this series and knowing that many other people are probably going to be strict about it already.

I wasn't impressed (as in - this is not a masterpiece, not even in the cringe or lecherous department). I cringed at quite a few places. I don't think this is a gem from any perspective I can apply to it.

But at the same time, if I stop analyzing it intellectually and look at it more emotionally, I can somehow feel that this was someone's little baby. It feels like people genuinely tried very hard to make this work. And perhaps they knew from the beginning that they were starting from a much more difficult position than many other stories, even with the same level of professionalism or production quality.

And because of that, judging it purely on everything that went wrong feels almost unfair to me.

But I also don't feel like I have to make a definitive decision about it.

I think I'm perfectly comfortable leaving it in the middle in a very non-insulting way.

I can change my mind about it tomorrow. I can decide that it was worse than I thought, or that I was being unnecessarily harsh. I can appreciate certain aspects of it one day and cringe at them again the next. And I'm completely fine with that.

What I do know is that it isn't a gem. It's far from being one from pretty much any perspective I can apply to it.

If someone considers it trash, I can completely understand why. A lot of those people are probably going to be younger viewers, and there is also an entirely separate group of people who are fundamentally against large age gaps in fiction in the first place. Combine that with the cringe, and no matter what you do, the series/story is in a very difficult position.

At the same time, some people will simply love the actors' looks. Others may connect with the characters' backstories or with particular aspects of how the characters were written. Some people will inevitably find something in this story that resonates with them much more strongly than it did with me, and they will rate it accordingly.

For me, around a 7.0 feels like a fair place for it—slightly lower, slightly higher, depending on the day.

Not because I think it is objectively a 7.0-quality series, but because I think that is a reasonable place for something this fundamentally ambiguous: clearly flawed, frequently cringe-inducing, nowhere near a masterpiece, but also not something I feel comfortable dismissing outright.