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serendipityhope

italy

serendipityhope

italy
HIStory4: Close to You taiwanese drama review
Completed
HIStory4: Close to You
80 people found this review helpful
by serendipityhope
May 16, 2021
20 of 20 episodes seen
Completed 16
Overall 10
Story 8.5
Acting/Cast 9.0
Music 10.0
Rewatch Value 9.0

Best BL out there this year!

Not only one of the best BL of this year but one of the SWEETEST! Don't let reviews on this page here discourage you to watch this because of prejudices and wrong expectations, you would miss out.
If you love BL meant as shounen ai this is a story you will fall in love with because there's exactly everything that makes the genres what it is: fluffiness, a bit of angst, the one person destined to you concept, the overcoming of diffcuties to be together and so on and on.
It's all about the classical tropes, but well done, with great chemistry, good acting, and have i mentioned the sweetness? because really it's very very sweet and sometimes a bit cheesy, but hey that's what BL romancess are for.
This is not a realistic portray of love a relationship (unless you're cinderella in real life) but whomever truly knows and loves BL does not expect an imitation of reality in this genres, BL is for out-of-reality love stories, even exagerations and stereotypes and a flood of emotions that rarely belong to real everyday life, and Close to you delivers on all apects.

WATCH THIS IF YOU:
1 love BL tropes
2 love to laugh and cry with romance of the cheesy adorable type
3 love watching goodlooking guys being cute
4 love the sweetest candies (Teng Muren and Li Cheng in episode 13-14 are unparalleled, and Xing Si and Jong Jie are simply adorable in 19-20)
5 know the difference between gay stories and BL stories
6 know the difference between fantasy and reality
7 know that not everything happening on screen can be done in real life or is acceptable in real situations and you have no problem understanding this concept

Also i have to mention the amazing music! Some of the songs in this drama are AMAZING. and I am so hoping the production finally reveals the title and the artist singing the song played during most of the romantic scenes.

DON'T WATCH THIS
1 if you have no idea of what BL stories are and mistake them for LGBT+ stories (it's really not the same thing and you can start educating yourself on the difference between the two by reading what BL is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaoi#Before_1970:_The_origins_of_sh%C5%8Dnen-ai). If you expect realistic LGBT+ portrayal in BL you are going to be mostly disappointed.
2 If you are extremely bothered by 'rape' fantasies. And I use the world rape because in one of the situation depicted what happens would certainly fall under statutory rape in real life (but here is depicted under the law of BL which means it's real love on both sides so it's consensual anyway), while the other one is clearly an assault attempt with the malicious intent on rape (it's done by a third party not one of the couples)
3 If you do not like quite cheesy romances or a plot where every action and narrative device are subsidiary to the growth of the emotional attachment of the two couples
4 if you are looking for a heavy plot story with much more meaning than entertaining you throught the exploitation of easy emotions

Production 8.5 (camera work, photography, directing, make up are all good and costume department has done a great job epecially with Teng Muren)
Story 8.5 (the beginning could have been written better and the plot it's pretty standard)
Acting 9 (Chen Li An is amazing especially for someone with almost no acting experience)
Visual 10
Ost 10
Rewatch value 9
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