Nolan Peale

This series is giving me I Am Your King 2 vibes, where I’m worried that Mr. Innocent but not so Innocent Ji Hyun would have been better off with anyone else besides the older man he fell for.

Sometimes, a satisfying emotional ending for a series involves a kiss after which two characters hold hands while walking off into happily ever after land. In others, an emotionally satisfying ending involves a bunch of characters laying dead on the ground while characters are handcuffed together marching off to prison. This is starting to feel like the latter type of series.

I think that’s Jae wan’s mom.

Yep. Thank you for pointing out that both boys are not "broken" or mentally ill. Tae Hyun is. Da Yoel isn't. He's just found himself doing something that doesn't give him a whole lot of pleasure that he started doing because it made his father happy. The closest he comes to being "mentally ill" is that he's tied his hippieness that he isn't experience into a keyring of flares that becomes something of a fetish object for him. He just has an epiphany that he's not enjoying archery and willingly gives that object up to boot. He's a sullen, unhappy and lonely teenager, who doesn't know what he wants, but...well, that's not illness.

What he could use, though, is probably a kiss on the lips from the person he's attracted to every now and again. Preferably at a climatic moment that would give us viewers an emotional payoff for sitting through 3.5 hours watching him be surly and making us worry that he was so drunk and passed out for so long that he probably should go to a hospital. Hey, right then, when he came out of his soju coma and they were overlooking the city while the sun was rising, having revealed their feelings. That would have been a great spot for a kiss. Especially since Tae Hun spent all that effort dragging him to that spot because he knew it was an important location for Da Yoel. Apparently, though, kissing at sunrise from scenic locations is what happens in porn and I'm watching the wrong porn.

Ace = Asexual which is the "A" in LGBTQIA+. This series makes sense if we used the labels the kids use these days with their 60 different flags. Da Yoel is makes sense as a character if you read him as demisexual and Tae Hyun makes sense if you read him as asexual. Not that I'm fond of using labels that the characters themselves aren't using for themselves. Heaven forbid! I'd never do that! Why would anyone ever be so bold! But basically on the LGBTQIA+ system, this is an A+ romance.

If you read it like that, though, the whole "I'm giving you a hickey" sequence makes a bit more sense because his friend is starting to recognize that Tae's lack of sexual interest in anything isn't normal.

Yep. The source material doesn't have anything to be censored out, so if this wasn't labeled a "BL", or have and LGBTQIA+ tag on it, it would just be a drama about a boy who finds himself attracted to another boy, but whose sexuality is undefined, and his traumatized, asexual companion. Their sexualities are "not normal" and that's as far as it gets. In a Chinese censored BL they at least somewhat nod to the fact that if the censors weren't there, they would be jumping into bed with each other. In this one, the source text doesn't really allow for that reading and even in their most supposedly intimate moment, where they go off alone for their "Lovers Leap" the plan all along was to cook a meal and dress in matching PJs. Its not even the standard "uke is a bit of a prude" and "seme is always horny" behind closed doors. It's the Ace fantasy rendezvous.

Even potential erotic conflicts with the side characters are non-extant. Actually, So Yeong is the only other character who has any attraction to the main couple. Rolling around together on the infirmary bed is nothing but teenage male horseplay. And all those long stares from Min Jung are mysteriously long stares that don't mean anything. He just shows up to the final round of the tournament to find out the results to stare at Da Yeol one last time. If you want to read that as "he's in love with Da Yeol and a potential rival in a love triangle" you'll have to write your own slash fan fic because it was all in your head. He's stares to misdirect and that's about it. He probably just stares like that because he's an archer and staring at things like that is what they do. He looks the same way at cans of soup in the grocery store when he's shopping.

I wonder if the plan is for Jeong Ho Gyun to make a career of being a pretty face supporting actor with nothing to do with any plot. Hopefully he'll get a promotion to third-wheel or owner of the coffee shop where the leads hang out in his next role.

Yeah. In a rare nod to realism, they decided that boys would have different haircuts after going to university. But it threw me off because Tae Hyun had straight hair and Da Yoel's hair was wavier. Like they had swapped hair.

I liked it and all, but it does give me pause about all the excitement fans of Kpop were feeling because "idols were going to do BL!". There's definitely going to be a tradeoff and its probably going to be that every Ace romance manhwa is going to be fast-tracked into production. And that's what this really is. I don't think this is a BL. Its devoid of any of the homoerotic tension, which I think is necessary for it to be BL. It certainly isn't an LGBTQ series since there aren't any LGBTQ characters. But it is an LGBTQIA+ series with an emphasis on the A. 2 years into their relationship and they are, what, jumping into a hot tub completely clothed? The problem with Ace romances when they involve 2 men is that they look a lot like bromances, censored Chinese BL, or soft Catholic morality dramas about how its o.k. to be "gay", just no sodomy, please. At least it isn't the old morality drama where one of them dies. At least they don't end up with sudden insta-girlfriends so they are clearly a monogamous couple in the end and so its not a bromance. They don't "straighten the characters out" and neither ever claims to be straight. But that's really about it.

So, overall, well done for a series about finding your true passion and starting to overcome childhood trauma and the complexities of same sex male emotional connections. But as a BL, it fizzles.

One of those things that might end up playing better in Thai fans than me, but I'm finding the band-o-friends really annoying. Like no wonder Fuse hasn't found anyone. His friends talk shit about him whenever he brings someone around. LOL. I hate that I have to call out the one named woman in the cast, but Paula is very annoying and is no replacement for Yiwah. "You abandoned me!!!!!" "You stole my man!!!!" "Tell me whether or not you had sex last night." Bleh. Why Fuse wanted Ana to kiss him while she was on the phone is beyond me. I would just ignore her calls.

Well, the other bit of info we were supposed to take away from it was that Ana, despite his reputation, wants to have a relationship. I mean they also had a long scene at the end of last episode where some rando came up to them and called him a slutty slut slut to his face. So they needed to undo that information. That said, I agree with Ms. Odessa that it was an odd placement for a flashback.

I think it was to set up the reaction Ana had to Fuse playing video games during breakfast.

I'm kind of hoping the next KBL will have 2 equally fearless and chatty men meeting and bantering their way into love without social reserve getting in the way. These pairings of Mr. Formal with Mr. Sprightly are all starting to run together. If this weren't labeled a "BL" and we didn't find out that TJ had an ex, I'd get no sense that this wasn't a bromance since there's really no erotic tension between them. It could easily just be a story of a gay man mis-interpreting friendliness as flirting.

Oh, great. So when I go to Korea and need to exchange currency, I'll be guided to a bunch of screaming fans and not a booth with someone with a stack of won waiting for my dollars.

He doesn't actually seem to have that many friends. We don't see him talking with other people. That said, we have no idea who ran against him for class president. It might be that no one else wanted it so it was his by default, the alternative was more unpopular, or it just automatically goes to the number 1 student. He apparently has the best grades in the class.

I guess the whole episode had only one mood, so they only needed that same bit of light and lively background music. They do need to change it up a bit.

Episode 2
I'm assuming that this is going to turn out like other series and Tae Hyun has like Da Yeol for awhile but the only way to get him to notice him is to pick on him. I don't think its like semantic error or MODC where through picking on someone you fall for them. Although the leads share couple dynamics with those series. This is probably (and because I won't read the web comic, I won't know) more like the first 4 episodes of My School President.

I do think Tae Hyun doesn't understand that something like archery could mean so much to someone, especially if they don't ever smile while doing it. He needs to work on his empathy a bit. He's immature that way, and for an A student, he seems to lake discipline, but I'm not about to declare this the most toxic of all toxic beginnings.

It does seem like an odd choice to cut out the parts of the prequels that gave the reunion scene dramatic weight, as well as the explanation, but include a 4 minute long set up for a gag where an incompetent, pervy boss sits on a vibrator. If you didn't watch the prequels (which I didn't), this was a very mediocre opening act. Its almost like those series where "if you didn't read the book, you can't understand the series, and if you have read the book, its great!". Like we need to take the remedial Promise 10 as a pre-requisite before we can take Promise 101.

Ep 1 Notes:
-Kim Achita Panyamang is the go to child actor when it comes to playing a BL lead with the baby fat still on him. I hope 8 years from now the BL industry returns the favor and casts him as a lead.
-I wonder what neighborhood they filmed the street scenes in in front of the coffee shop. It looked like it might be in a soundstage. The streets were so clean. I don't think Chiang Mai is an exceptionally dirty city, mind you, but if that is an actual street, kudos to whomever keeps the streets clean in Chiang Mai.
-I thought the first 20 minutes were great quality-wise. Then...well...they went full cliché with the early death of a father. Followed by an unexplained ghosting. Followed by missed connections. Throw in the pervy boss who doesn't fit in the series, and I had to downgrade this to average.
-I hope they have a better reason that most for the ghosting this time. Not "I chickened out" or "My mommy found out and told me to leave you, so I did so in the most cowardly and abrupt way possible". Give me space alien abductions, secret spy missions of great importance to the King of Thailand. Maybe a 3rd wish to a genie that wasn't well as well sought out as I thought it was. Coma brought on by a strawberry allergy. Anything but "because I was young and a coward."

I think he was more suffering from the realization that he and beam should have had life insurance policies and gone to a lawyer earlier to make it clear that the business was a partnership and not comingle so many funds together without a will so that the parents could just waltz right in and take everything from him.