FrothyMix

Thanks for posting your review. I got the rough outlines of what was going on, but you put into words what were still scrambled hunches about what had, and was, going on between these two.

I will say that even before Fan went to get the ice cubes he was starting to seem more than a little pathetic in his lack of self-respect. Even after these two have been broken up for months he is knocking himself silly trying to do this and that here and there to take care of Tien; and I began to wonder if part of the reason Tien dumped him was that there comes a point at which a person does TOO MUCH for another all the time and it becomes annoying and servile. Maybe Tien just got sick of all the constant care-taking, as though he couldn't even wipe his own ass. Maybe it began to feel as though Fan was doing all this because he was AFRAID of being dumped, and there isn't anything less attractive than a lack of self-respect.

You didn't mention their kiss, very much a two-way thing, I think. What do you make of that?

I think this is my third watch, but I also think I only now "got" it. lol Love the way the kid with the crush on the other was puppeteering the other one into seeing what was already going on. Kind of an interesting vibe somewhere between weird, dramatic and comical. Not sure what the attraction is for that repulsive troll-like guy, but whatever.

I liked it!

Beautifully done. Ambiguous ending, but for me at least, given the scenes of the two of them practicing together just before the last match, I feel like I know where the story will take them after the end of the film. There is something ineffably touching about a short like this, where so much feeling/emotion/angst is packed into such a brief amount of time.

Once again, excellent chemistry and vibe between the two actors from the first moment they meet, which is something that comes from careful casting and can't be manufactured.

As someone who avoids pain at all costs, I still was able to appreciate the amazing choreography/staging of the boxing scenes, which were utterly convincing. The hours of rehearsal these two actors and their director must have put into preparing and executing those scenes is worthy of praise. That is not easy.

Finally, Rong in his tightie whities near the beginning of the film are the image around which my universe now revolves.

Certainly nothing new here, as this plot has been done a zillion times in BL World. However, it's nice and refreshing to see the usually selfish and horrid mother do some evolving and come around to sanity. The couple is adorable and have great chemistry, which is not easy to establish in such a brief time; it's either there from the first scene or it's not.

I would love to see a BL with this basic plot take on the issue of the epic dishonesty of asking a young gay man to stay in the closet, marry and have children by DECEIVING SOME UNFORTUNATE YOUNG WOMAN, who will unknowingly enter into a marriage with a man who is simply not able to love her as she deserves to be loved. Most likely she'll end up finding out at some point and by that time her life will possibly have been irrevocably destroyed. I don't think I've seen this issue taken on in a BL.

BRAVO! Second watch here, but I'd forgotten how charming and angsty this was. Doesn't hurt that they're both drop-dead handsome/sexy in their own ways, but the acting is perfection. I absolutely believed this. I love how the professor was good at teaching one thing, and the student at another and they complimented each other perfectly.

And for once, at the end there was no evil, jealous girl with a cell phone camera hiding in the bushes. lol "I know you want me." hahaha God, they were so cute at the end. I died.

A full-fledged sequel to this, done right, could be a thing of wonder, to let us know where these two go next on their journey. Just beautiful.

Oh...and that kiss. That kiss. Love that he kissed him, then paused...and kissed again. None of this inand out mannequin kissing we so much of in BLs.

BRAVO! Second watch here, but I'd forgotten how charming and angsty this was. Doesn't hurt that they're both drop-dead handsome/sexy in their own ways, but the acting is perfection. I absolutely believed this. I love how the professor was good at teaching one thing, and the student at another and they complimented each other perfectly.

And for once, at the end there was no evil, jealous girl with a cell phone camera hiding in the bushes. lol "I know you want me." hahaha God, they were so cute at the end. I died.

A full-fledged sequel to this, done right, could be a thing of wonder, to let us know where these two go next on their journey. Just beautiful.

Oh...and that kiss. That kiss. Love that he kissed him, then paused...and kissed again. None of this inand out mannequin kissing we so much of in BLs.

Who said it was "bad" that they put their undies back on? Did someone say it was "frustrating?" No, no one said or wrote that, but I will assume you are reacting to my comment anyway. It is highly unrealistic. How many people, after a night of hot sex, get up and put their panties back on and then get back in bed? Why would they do that? Are they suddenly embarrassed to have the person they were just exchanging body fluids with and f**king see their naked body? Doubtful. Much MORE likely they would STAY naked for extra-sweet cuddling.

To me this is a classic early BL. Lots of intrigue, sexual tension, secrets, lies, temptations, violence, everything I love in a good, dark gay-themed movie amped up a little in that unmistakable Japanese style of acting. Not unnatural, but a little...extra-natural. The hair is horrible of course, but given the time of production, not unusual. I knew when Amakami got that hair back off his face and rid of that stupid center part he'd be gorgeous and he was. Love the twists and turns in the story. This is my third watch and I'm still noticing and catching new things in the plot and characterizations.

Can't believe someone in a review up above seriously warned viewers they might see a lot of naked Japanese butts in this film, which they will...and do. Never ceases to amaze me how many people who watch BL and other gay-themed dramas are also major-league prudes. "oooohhhhh...people have butts, oh my god..." lol I think Ichiyo had the best one. Unfortunately, t he teacher never joined the boys in the showers so we could take a look.

Maybe my only objection to this film is what a reviewer above liked about it: almost EVERYBODY in the student body, it seemed, was gay. And yet being gay was still a taboo. Kind of like a K-Pop boy band. Anyway, for me, I don't care for the extremely unrealistic portrayal of drama in some parallel universe where every dude is gay; it takes away from the overall feeling of the film's real-ness.

Finally, the brutal incident near the end...very poorly staged, acted and choreographed. I was not the least bit convinced that what I was seeing was what I was supposed to think it was. Just looked like some guys pretending...which is what it was.

So anyway...I still love the film, especially the ending. We get our BL hearts ripped out often enough; a little joy and hope won't hurt a bit.

Maybe I'm just too old for this kind of silly shit, even in a BL, but to me this is terrible and I'm dropping 3/4 of the way through the first ep. Silly fantasies premises can be fun and can work if they're done right. This one isn't. I just find myself constantly asking questions about obvious stuff the writers were too lazy to take care of.
Why did the unicorn appear to Love?
Since it made her into a boy to win Vier's love I guess Vier is gay but I don't care enough to find out.
Where did Love get that school uniform and tie in her/his size?
Is Love attending classes at GMA and living in the dorm without having passed any exams or gone through any registration process to get in? Magically he's enrolled and has a dorm room.
Why doesn't he get rid of the girly beauty products?
Why does he wear a towel up over boobs he doesn't have? It was supposed to be cute, I guess, but I thought it was just stupid. Also, a lot of fun could have been had with Love washing her/his new male body for the first time. I mean, she/he has male junk for the first time and thinks nothing of it apparently.
How did Love dry off after dipping in the lake? No towel, no nothing and he's dry as a bone.
Why would Love openly stare at guys in towels and/or naked in the locker room without even trying to conceal her fascination?
My lands, Captain looks great with the dark hair, but man is he ever skinny.
Ice is gorgeous.

So basically, this series seems to be far too juvenile and much too dumb for me to enjoy. The thought of watching all the episodes made me nauseous, so I'm checking out now. It's one thing for a show to ask for your suspension of disbelief, but this asks for your assumption of absolute stupidity.

Oh good. Let me know what you think of it, OK? Do people read the reviews? I know I rarely do.

Wow. This is so stupid and so bad that I have to stop and drop it. I'm about 2/3 of the way through the first episode. The main character is NOT a character, he is a CARICATURE, and they are very different things. He's not being his true self, he's being a stereotypical imitation of the classic effeminate, screaming queen that he puts on like a costume when he gets up every day. This feels like a Filipino BL in that regard. They are usually full of such unoriginal types. There is nothing about him or his mannerisms that sets him apart from all the other queens just like him. He lives life in performance mode and it's extremely annoying. If this person was in my circle of acquaintances I wouldn't feel like I knew him at all; just that I was familiar with a role he plays, maybe to protect himself from having to expose his actual, real personality to the world.

Then there is his overwhelming narcissism, which I wouldn't like in anyone, gay/straight/male/female/non-binary. The incessant posing and selfie-taking in every silly little situation, as though the world cares what he does with every moment of his day. As Warren Beatty said of Madonna 30 years ago: "If she's not on camera, she doesn't exist. If you're not going to do something on camera, why would you do it?" THAT is who this guy is. He'd be annoying enough as a side-character, but as the LEAD...no, not in a million years.

Oh..the last straw was when he and his first potential "girlfriend" started chatting online about whether they'd "fall in love" or something close to that. wtf? The guy is gay as can possibly be. He is sexually, emotionally, romantically gay. What in god's name are they babbling about. That's when the stupid began to bang on my head like a drum. omg...just horrible.

I agree about YO's reflexes, BUT they specifically showed him standing frozen stiff and staring at the car as it bore down on him, as BL cars always seem to do. Which means he may have had time to leap out of the way if he didn't just stand there staring, lol. It was kind of cool though, how the special effects showed YO frozen up in the air after being hit by the car but before he started coming back down. That was a nice touch.

But why don't directors ever have people get hit by trains or stumble off a cliff or step in front of a bus traveling full speed that they don't see, in which case they'd be hit and killed instantly, no freezing and staring. I've seen BLs where the driver hits the horn for like a quarter block away but still keeps coming full-speed. lol There is one BL that is actually pretty good overall, but they kill off a mom with one of the most hilarious stop-stare-and-die car deaths in BL history. She throws up her arms/hands dramatically in front of the camera and I laughed out loud.

I agree with most of what you say but to me Mr. Yu did not "cause" the accident. None of what happened could have been foreseen to be coming; he didn't yell at YO to make him step out into the stree, that was YO's reaction. I think YO's mom forgave Mr. Yu and absolved him of guilt. I don't think he's legally responsible either. There was no intent, it was an accident. But of course it was also YO's fault for having the typical, stupid BL freeze-in-the-headlights reaction to an oncoming car, and it was the driver's fault for having the typical BL see-the-pedestrian-in-the-headlights-and-honk-your-horn-but-don't-hit-the-breaks reaction to someone in front of them. Lazy writing, which was all over the place in this series.

I think YO's mom forgave Mr. Yu. It was not in any way his intention to kill YO and what happened could not have been anticipated. I don't think he's legally responsible either. I am disappointed that we had yet another BL character who doesn't know how to instinctively try to get out of the way of an oncoming car, and we have another BL driver who sees a pedestrian in their headlights, honks the horn but doesn't try to stop. THAT's the person who should be going to jail.

I think he is returning AS a cup of coffee.

I don't know on the ending...meh. I loved this show for three eps and it was downhill from there. The story this show told was beautiful but it could have been told much better and more effectively with a lot of questions/situations fleshed out and a lot of dorkiness cut out. Ended up giving it a 6.5.

Jun Ae Yung, who played YO's mom, should get an Oscar for her performance. She's a Meryl Streep level actress.

For some reason I wanted to like this movie. The two main actors are cute and appealing and it seemed like the story might go somewhere interesting...and then it never did. Pretty much nothing major really happened, there was a LOT of walking around slowly on sidewalks talking...and talking...and talking and more of nothing happened.

This director even managed to make that final hotel room scene boring. Again, I kept waiting for something, anything to happen and it was a situation where a lot of things could have happened and then nothing did. Except the one guy got the sniffles and they just kept sitting there listening to that guy mumble in aimless questions and insults...why the hell didn't they just get up and leave? I have a feeling that entire scene was improvised and ad-libbed, and then the director convinced himself he had captured something really deep and meaningful. Two handsome naked young men in bed together in a room with a hot client and...nothing. I mean, give me something...anger, violence, something. But I feel like he told the hookers to improvise too but they just kind of sat and laid there doing nothing. Yuck. I was so bored.

Also thought the dinner scene at that girl's house would never end, and yeah, I recognized you know who...but the point was MORE than made, and then the scene went on 15 minutes more...give me a break. That instance kind of summarizes the film as a whole.

BORING

SO agree about Nut. I loved him in "Grey Rainbow."

I have to agree. The whole thing is embarrassing, especially since it features Nut, who was so excellent as half of the MC in "Grey Rainbow."

We must have watched different versions of the same show. I thought this was atrocious.