John Master

Class Crush Crisis goes down easy and provides the kind of escapism fans of the high school BL genre enjoy. Put another way: Class Crush Crisis provides yet another Thai high school BL where very little of substance is actually at stake; yet, to the fraught teenage characters, their whole existence is on the line. This iteration of the set-up is agreeable enough, even if entirely lacking in originality.

CCR is notable for a cast comprised of actual high-school aged students (nearly all making a professional debut). They are game enough, winsome enough, and energetic enough to inject some life into a tepid plot dependent on familiar story beats. Its two original elements: offering a high school student pursuing a side hustle as a fortune-telling medium (he reads Tarot cards) and another who aspires to turn pro in e-sports. (At least, I don’t recall another e-sports playing character, although I don’t watch every series in existence either.) Otherwise, every plot element feels recycled. Our leads take an immediate dislike to one another; we have a student(s) who dream(s) of playing in a band; the student(s) who persuade their parents to let them live in a condo near school; we have the two who dislike each other forced to co-habitate; we have the inevitable thaw between the two who dislike each other; we have gossipy fellow students who feel compelled to pry into every corner of others’ business; we have a self-imposed rule against dating within the friend circle; and we have The Breakup That Neither Party Wants But There is a Stupid Misunderstanding. Naturally, that arrives about two episodes shy of the finale. The breakup, whose aftermath dominates the final three epsiodes, relies on “logic” only teenagers could deem sound. (The discussion boards were awash in fervent, yet pointless, debates about which party bore more responsibility, which suggests the foolishness landed with the target audience.) If all these elements come across as retreads, at least the production team managed to reassemble them into a final product lacking in serious angst. Somehow, Class Crush Crisis is fresher than the sum of its recycled parts warrants.

The finale includes coming out scenes where the Rocker and e-sports player confess to their parents both their unorthodox career aspirations and their romantic “truth.” The moment feels quite inauthentic, but in true BL finale fashion, only parental support and love flows from these revelations. Everything then wraps up smoothly and easily. Indeed, “smooth and easy” provides an innocuous requiem for this innocuous series.