4
16
Heracin
Sweet BL office romance with engaging premise but failing to exploit properly its concept
The drama depicts a sweet office romance between the two male leads with a super interesting fantastic premise. The story was promising and started super light and cute. However, it missed the mark along the way as it failed to exploit properly and in a mature way their concept. It stays platonic (-which is totally fine) but given the thematic, I would have expected a bit more concrete steps in the physical part of the relationship.
The central plot stayed quite superficial with relationship conflicts feeling a bit too artificial. Given the number of episodes, I would have expected more character development and growth between the heroes in order to believe more in their couple. It is also unfortunate that the screenwriters decided to spend time on not the right side-story. Instead of focusing on the friend writer of the hero, I think they should have focus more on the office colleagues who were some pretty intriguing side-characters.
The acting was not the strongest suit of the series. I found the actors overacting quite a bit, especially for one of the secondary characters: the best friend played by Asaka Kodai. Each one of his scenes brought a high level of cringe because of his over-the-top acting. As explained above, I would have honestly preferred for his narrative arc to be removed totally from the series. Regarding the main leads, I think their performance was okay but not great. Overall, their chemistry together was lacking sparks and the very few little skinship moments felt awkward to me.
I liked the opening song of the show, it suited very well the atmosphere of the story with the pop-rock vibe and the sweet and bright generic. Other than that, the soundtrack was quite subdue and not that memorable. The production was quite standard, and it is a bit of a shame that the directing team did not make more adventurous choices to exploit further their quite "magical" concept.
I would recommend this drama if you are looking for a short and platonic BL romance in an office environment. If you liked movie such as "What Women Wants" or tv-show like "Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist", it could totally be your cup of tea. However, if you are looking for something deeper or more mature overall, it is not the one to watch.
The central plot stayed quite superficial with relationship conflicts feeling a bit too artificial. Given the number of episodes, I would have expected more character development and growth between the heroes in order to believe more in their couple. It is also unfortunate that the screenwriters decided to spend time on not the right side-story. Instead of focusing on the friend writer of the hero, I think they should have focus more on the office colleagues who were some pretty intriguing side-characters.
The acting was not the strongest suit of the series. I found the actors overacting quite a bit, especially for one of the secondary characters: the best friend played by Asaka Kodai. Each one of his scenes brought a high level of cringe because of his over-the-top acting. As explained above, I would have honestly preferred for his narrative arc to be removed totally from the series. Regarding the main leads, I think their performance was okay but not great. Overall, their chemistry together was lacking sparks and the very few little skinship moments felt awkward to me.
I liked the opening song of the show, it suited very well the atmosphere of the story with the pop-rock vibe and the sweet and bright generic. Other than that, the soundtrack was quite subdue and not that memorable. The production was quite standard, and it is a bit of a shame that the directing team did not make more adventurous choices to exploit further their quite "magical" concept.
I would recommend this drama if you are looking for a short and platonic BL romance in an office environment. If you liked movie such as "What Women Wants" or tv-show like "Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist", it could totally be your cup of tea. However, if you are looking for something deeper or more mature overall, it is not the one to watch.
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