Perfection!

This story is a classic one as it reflects an age-old tale of a ‘mid-life’ crisis. While season one is 5 years and the sequel movie is 4 years ago, both ‘hold up’ today as being relevant, funny, and still charming. Beyond that, both are wondrously entertaining. It is funny. Very funny – throughout. And it completely held my attention. That is hard to do. To sustain a level of humor and constantly recreating realities that are funny is not easy to do, but this series and movie does so with great skill. The comedic timing is sheer perfection, and the physical comedy is outstanding especially for Tanaka Kei as Haruta Sochi. Many others also displayed great comedic timing as well. That is a reflection not only of good acting talent but also of exemplary directing. Both the series and movie have their slow moments, but they are few and far between.

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A Series That Spins Its Wheels

This series looks and feels good, superficially. It had all the earmarks of being a very good story but fell so flat as the story progressed. It seemed to lack an ending that wanted to make a definitive statement; so, it chose to go cute. The series is just too short to develop any meaningful characters, which is a serious problem. It tried to be light fluff with a serious matter which I wish they would have treated with solemnity. Also, quit treating gayness with kit gloves. If you are going to show two men trying to be in love, give us something that shows that. It languished so much.

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A Good Popcorn Movie

Indeed, this is a visually stunning movie that is certainly entertaining. With a big bag of popcorn (or snack of your choice) and a relaxing chair, you will thoroughly enjoy this movie. Filled with handsome men, a relatively interesting but a bit slow-plodding plot at times, elegant chorography, breathtaking cinematography, and beautiful costumes, you are in for a treat. Is it memorable? Well, no, not really, but it sure is fun to watch. The plot is manifestly implausible, slow in the middle, yet it worked in the end as entertainment. The ending is to be expected. There are no hidden meanings, and the story does not go deep. To coin a trite phrase, admittedly, it is what it is. Do not read more into it. This is a beautiful, compelling, and colorful story. The costumes, choreography, cinematography, and set designs are all exquisite. So, grab some popcorn or your favorite snack and watch this very enchanting movie and then go to bed. It is that kind of movie. Fun but forgettable.

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One word: Eschew

This story is profoundly complex, made elementary. Yet, it should not. It presents itself in a superficial manner with a lot of voyeuristic sex scenes to help us with our escapism from its true reality. And its true reality is that it is a very sad story filled with toxic people doing awful things to innocent people. I found the story to be a rather ugly tale peppered with unnecessary eroticism. This series has a lot of diversion in it. Many hot, steamy love scenes, that felt very voyeuristic to me and sometimes laughable. Sure, these guys are sensual, cute, and sexy. To see them romping around in bed making love with their pants on is just plain ludicrous and silly. It was just not the main couple either. How about under the covers with simulation so we can use our imagination? Sometimes imagination is better. To show us making love in bed (or having sex) with pants on seemed extraordinarily contrived and silly. And completely and totally unrealistic. And I might add, insulting to gay people everywhere.

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Good Series; Really Lousy Script

The allegory behind this theme is fascinating. Its screenplay is where it fell flat. If they had followed the initiative of the story, the saga would have been a way more compelling BL. Instead, it became spasmodic. The receptivity behind this story is very good; the screenwriting is simply awful. Frankly despite its awful screenplay, this is well acted, and the actors and actresses did the best they could with a lousy script. This series is deeper than what it is given credit for. It gets lost in the endless and totally unnecessary cat-and-mouse, ‘enemies-to-lovers’ fiasco. Thai BLs absolutely need to get out of the rut of being formulaic. This series was a shameful waste. This was good; it just was not great. But it could have been.

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An Incoherent Mess

My sympathy goes out to those who started this series way back in August 2023 when it first began. I know myself too well to realize that a series of this magnitude and depth would not have held my attention for very long as it is an anthology of 12 short stories of two episodes each. I would have forgotten the plots to most of the substories. As it was, even with binge watching this and taking copious notes, there is not much here to capture your attention for very long, and most of these stories become forgettable soon after they are seen. With only two episodes per story, you got very little plot, no character development, and even less understandable conclusions of what the stories were about. Some were comedies, although I found none of them funny at all. Silly yes, but not funny. Some were metaphysical or occult which were incomprehensibly difficult to navigate the point to the story. Most were just drab and dull. Others were just amateurish confusing messes.

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I Did Not Find It Funny

I did not find this BL funny at least not with the main couple. Billed as a comedy, I did not see it as funny or even humorous. On the contrary, I found it sad and rather lonely. In the sense, you have two individuals who are products of their culture and society that are so terrified and fearful of being open and honest with each other that because of that, they nearly lost each other in the process. I just do not understand the horror of even hinting that you like a person. This is actually a deeply interesting and moving story with profound consequences to it. There is nothing wrong with the acting in this series. It is sharp, and at times rather poignant. However, who really runs away with their subtle performances are the two respective managers of these guys. This is a cute story that should have been way better. The Japanese use the voiceover to explain a lot of the action internally with the characters which I detest. It is a cheap way for performers not to have to ‘act’. And it robs the audience of seeing anything really meaningful.

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Could Have Been A Masterpiece!

This gem comes along with its stunning, nearly perfect love story that crashed and burned at the end. It just had to make it have a ‘feel-good’ happy ending. Unfortunately in that process, it transformed into a trite overblown conclusion. I cried as hard at the demise of this fantastic series as I did during the whole of this series. The ending completely ruined it for me. The series starts out so exceptional and I felt the curse of Thai BLs would finally be broken where it would not be so epigonic. It is a beautiful story of privilege meeting non-privilege with the union becoming one precariously in the middle. This is one of the few Thai BLs that handled a story about a disability with a sense of maturity, commitment, and a level-headedness, and a realistic albeit not always positive outcome or solution. One overriding theme that they presented and telegraphed throughout was the abhorrence of pity in dealing with people with disabilities. Again, having spent my entire professional career in that field, that is a compete truism. Yet, somehow, I knew that theme would also be its downfall and it was. This was an exceptional series until the last 2 episodes and then it completely fell apart. The ending simply destroyed and ruined this otherwise brilliant series.

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A Labor of Love

Another labor of love. Sure, it has a ton of production issues. And the story is a bit lame, but the effort is still there. Its sincerity is real. There is surely nothing deep about this series and the acting is quite stilted and one dimensional. They are all in desperate need of acting coaches to create a greater range of emotions for all of them as they seem to be relying on their past experiences to get through this series. Perhaps I am overrating this series a bit. And admittedly I have a soft spot for productions who operate on a shoe-string budget as this one does. Parts of this series have some well written dialogue in them as well. But also admittedly, this schtick of theirs is wearing thin even for me. The production is simply awful. Editing, sound, and cinematography need a lot of work. And investment needs to be made in acting coaches for all of them to deepen their ranges. Sincerity and good story telling can go only so far; now you need greater technical skills. It might be better to save money for one big production with a good story and intensive acting classes and better production equipment and better-quality acting than all of these little productions that only highlight what is wrong and not what is right.

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Raw, Gritty & Intense

This is a movie that lays out in detail all the ugliness of the darker side of Thai society that we do certainly not see in BLs. Since I honestly know little about the political inner working of Thailand, I do not know whether this chronicle is based on some semblance of truth or not. However, as in any premise, I do believe some kernels of truth and honesty are no doubt in this screenplay and part of it must be taken at face value. We tend to not want to think of or perhaps see that a fantasy land of ours (such as Thailand) has a darker side to it, but it does. And this movie presents a very dark, depressing, look at that reality. There is no romance here nor any hint of a BL; but it does present a side of the adult entertainment industry we tend to dismiss or pretend does not exist as we glaze over or gloss over the geo-political strife that might also exist in that part of the world when we watch BLs in the comfort of our homes.
You can read my full review of this movie at BLBliss.com.

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Lost Its Way

This is a touching, sentimental journey of young love that was brilliantly done in the beginning but then got lost in its time journeys to recapture its past. While in some ways the story was exceptional, its execution was unfortunately lacking in logic. Initially it had me hooked on the strength of its young actors playing the parts of their younger selves. Simply put, they were brilliant. This is a story of destiny but not on a linear trajectory. It is a destiny of love between two young men who were meant to be together but had to traverse different directions to get to the promised land. Something seemed missing and to was obvious that the physical age of some of the actors was definitely not compatible with the characters they were supposed to be portraying and it showed in the uncomfortableness of the chemistry of the performances. The ending seemed empty to me as well. Unfulfilled to be sure.
You can read my full review at BLBliss.com

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A Meteor Called Dumbness Destroyed This Series

There is no mythos here; that went extent along with the dinosaurs. Instead, it is a jumbled incoherent mess of disorganized shifts of scenes packed with individuals for the most part that are astonishingly unlikeable, dumb as a box of rocks, naïve, and caricatures. Some are decidedly despicable creatures as well. The whole universe of this story centers around one of the densest characters I have ever seen. Not only is he naïve and remains so throughout, but he is also the biggest milqutoast and nebbish individual ever in any BL. There is only one character that is worth watching this series for and the only reason why this is not on my 10 worst BL list. That character is Charlam. Watch it for him and enjoy.
You can read my full review at BLBliss.com.

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Hard Series To Dislike

This is a hard series to dislike, even if it is a bit unpleasant to watch. While these guys are ‘bad guys’ they have sanitized them so much and made them redeemable, you literally sympathize with their plight. And honestly, I was completely entertained by them, even though the story is nearly incomprehensible. It is another ‘Mafia-type’ criminally related series with a lot of tropey chest-thumping bravado ‘action’ that I frankly did not understand and was disturbed by its gratuitous violence. None of it made a lot of sense to me and it had a feel of familiarity about it as it is full of clichés. What is really essential are the two solid love stories and the third, rather peripheral and underlying one.
Read my fill review at BLBliss.com.

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