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We Best Love: No. 1 For You — Sometimes Losing First Place Is How You Find the Right Person
This review reflects how I experienced "We Best Love: No. 1 For You" in 2021. I am adding it to MDL much later, but I want to keep the perspective of the period in which I first watched it because this series has remained one of my favourite BL stories ever since. I have rewatched both parts several times almost every year, and the strange thing is that repetition has never made me tired of them. The first six episodes tell an extremely simple story: Zhou Shu Yi has spent most of his life furious because Gao Shi De always seems to beat him at everything. First in school, first in swimming, first whenever Shu Yi desperately wants to prove himself. College is supposed to finally free him from that rivalry, only for Shi De to appear again. What Shu Yi does not understand is that Shi De has never been competing because he wants to humiliate him. Being first was simply the only way he knew to remain somewhere Shu Yi would always notice him. That is such a wonderfully romantic reversal of the school-rival trope because the thing Shu Yi hates most about Shi De turns out to have been Shi De's clumsy way of loving him for years.
What makes the first part work so well is that the romance grows from personality rather than from a complicated plot. Shu Yi is proud, competitive, emotionally transparent when angry and completely blind to what is happening when the emotion becomes love. Shi De is calmer and appears more controlled, but underneath that control is someone who has organised an absurd amount of his life around staying close to one person. The progression from irritation to friendship and then attraction feels surprisingly natural because the series gives their ordinary interactions as much importance as the confession. The swimming pool, the infirmary, studying together, jealousy, embarrassment and the moments where Shu Yi slowly realises that Shi De's absence bothers him more than Shi De's presence all build toward the same conclusion. By the time Shu Yi understands that Shi De loves him, the real question is no longer whether Shi De's feelings are reciprocated but how long Shu Yi will need to admit something the audience can already see. The script by Lin Pei Yu had the advantage of a writer who already understood Taiwanese BL through works such as "HIStory2: Right or Wrong", "HIStory2: Crossing the Line" and "HIStory3: Trapped", and that experience shows in how efficiently six short episodes can establish not only the main couple but an entire social circle around them.
Sam Lin and YU are a huge reason the story became so memorable for me. Sam was already an experienced performer, while "We Best Love" was YU's acting debut and first leading role, yet that difference never makes the pairing feel unbalanced. If anything, it helps. Shi De is supposed to appear more certain about his emotions because he has loved Shu Yi for years, while Shu Yi is discovering everything almost in real time. YU's slight rawness therefore suits the character beautifully. He can be arrogant one second, wounded the next and almost childishly confused when feelings stop following the rules he understands. Sam gives Shi De a quieter kind of intensity; his expressions often reveal much more than his dialogue, particularly when he is watching Shu Yi without being watched back. Their chemistry never feels as though the production is forcing two actors into romantic poses and hoping viewers will do the rest. They look comfortable enough to argue, touch, stare and eventually kiss without the physical relationship becoming some separate performance labelled "BL scene". That naturalness is especially important because most of the cast did not build their careers around repeatedly playing BL couples. They simply played these characters, and that helped the relationship feel like a romance rather than a genre exercise.
I also love that the side characters are not decorative. Fang Zheng Wen and Jiang Yu Xin could easily have existed only to make Shu Yi jealous or to delay the main relationship, but their own heterosexual romance is given enough space to feel like a genuine part of the same group. Shu Yi begins the series believing he is in love with Yu Xin, only to discover that she loves Zheng Wen, while Zheng Wen is caught between his feelings for her and loyalty to his friend. Liu Bing Wei and Shi Zhe Yu are present with their own dynamic, Pei Shou Yi is far more interesting than the standard school doctor who conveniently gives advice, and Shi De's family gives him a life outside Shu Yi. This is one of the reasons the series remains so easy for me to rewatch. I am not waiting impatiently for everyone else to disappear so the main couple can return. The friendships and secondary relationships make the world feel inhabited, and even when a storyline is small, it usually belongs there.
Technically, "No. 1 For You" is also much better than its modest six-episode format might suggest. Yoiisz International Media was still a very young production company and this was its first major drama project, so there was not an established BL catalogue proving what the studio could do beforehand. What mattered more was the experienced creative team around it, particularly director Chiang Jui-chih and Lin Pei Yu. The production understands water extremely well as a visual element, beginning with swimming and repeatedly using reflections, enclosed spaces and quiet close-ups to make the emotions feel larger than the actual scale of the series. The soundtrack also works particularly well because YU was already a musician before becoming an actor, and music becomes part of the identity of "We Best Love" rather than something pasted over scenes afterward. Nothing about the production needs to be enormous. It simply knows exactly what six episodes are supposed to accomplish.
Final Thoughts
"No. 1 For You" remains one of my favourite first-love BLs because it takes something incredibly simple and executes it with almost perfect emotional clarity. Two rivals discover that the competition between them has never meant the same thing to both people, one boy realises that the person he spent years trying to defeat was actually the person who had spent years trying to remain close to him, and an ensemble of friends makes their university world feel much larger than six episodes should allow. Sam Lin and YU are excellent together, the supporting stories matter, and the ending is genuinely sweet enough that, if this had been the whole story, I could have accepted it as a complete little romance. Fortunately, it was only half of it, because "We Best Love" had something much more painful waiting for us.
Sometimes the person you spend your whole life trying to beat is only running beside you because he never wanted to reach the finish line without you.
What makes the first part work so well is that the romance grows from personality rather than from a complicated plot. Shu Yi is proud, competitive, emotionally transparent when angry and completely blind to what is happening when the emotion becomes love. Shi De is calmer and appears more controlled, but underneath that control is someone who has organised an absurd amount of his life around staying close to one person. The progression from irritation to friendship and then attraction feels surprisingly natural because the series gives their ordinary interactions as much importance as the confession. The swimming pool, the infirmary, studying together, jealousy, embarrassment and the moments where Shu Yi slowly realises that Shi De's absence bothers him more than Shi De's presence all build toward the same conclusion. By the time Shu Yi understands that Shi De loves him, the real question is no longer whether Shi De's feelings are reciprocated but how long Shu Yi will need to admit something the audience can already see. The script by Lin Pei Yu had the advantage of a writer who already understood Taiwanese BL through works such as "HIStory2: Right or Wrong", "HIStory2: Crossing the Line" and "HIStory3: Trapped", and that experience shows in how efficiently six short episodes can establish not only the main couple but an entire social circle around them.
Sam Lin and YU are a huge reason the story became so memorable for me. Sam was already an experienced performer, while "We Best Love" was YU's acting debut and first leading role, yet that difference never makes the pairing feel unbalanced. If anything, it helps. Shi De is supposed to appear more certain about his emotions because he has loved Shu Yi for years, while Shu Yi is discovering everything almost in real time. YU's slight rawness therefore suits the character beautifully. He can be arrogant one second, wounded the next and almost childishly confused when feelings stop following the rules he understands. Sam gives Shi De a quieter kind of intensity; his expressions often reveal much more than his dialogue, particularly when he is watching Shu Yi without being watched back. Their chemistry never feels as though the production is forcing two actors into romantic poses and hoping viewers will do the rest. They look comfortable enough to argue, touch, stare and eventually kiss without the physical relationship becoming some separate performance labelled "BL scene". That naturalness is especially important because most of the cast did not build their careers around repeatedly playing BL couples. They simply played these characters, and that helped the relationship feel like a romance rather than a genre exercise.
I also love that the side characters are not decorative. Fang Zheng Wen and Jiang Yu Xin could easily have existed only to make Shu Yi jealous or to delay the main relationship, but their own heterosexual romance is given enough space to feel like a genuine part of the same group. Shu Yi begins the series believing he is in love with Yu Xin, only to discover that she loves Zheng Wen, while Zheng Wen is caught between his feelings for her and loyalty to his friend. Liu Bing Wei and Shi Zhe Yu are present with their own dynamic, Pei Shou Yi is far more interesting than the standard school doctor who conveniently gives advice, and Shi De's family gives him a life outside Shu Yi. This is one of the reasons the series remains so easy for me to rewatch. I am not waiting impatiently for everyone else to disappear so the main couple can return. The friendships and secondary relationships make the world feel inhabited, and even when a storyline is small, it usually belongs there.
Technically, "No. 1 For You" is also much better than its modest six-episode format might suggest. Yoiisz International Media was still a very young production company and this was its first major drama project, so there was not an established BL catalogue proving what the studio could do beforehand. What mattered more was the experienced creative team around it, particularly director Chiang Jui-chih and Lin Pei Yu. The production understands water extremely well as a visual element, beginning with swimming and repeatedly using reflections, enclosed spaces and quiet close-ups to make the emotions feel larger than the actual scale of the series. The soundtrack also works particularly well because YU was already a musician before becoming an actor, and music becomes part of the identity of "We Best Love" rather than something pasted over scenes afterward. Nothing about the production needs to be enormous. It simply knows exactly what six episodes are supposed to accomplish.
Final Thoughts
"No. 1 For You" remains one of my favourite first-love BLs because it takes something incredibly simple and executes it with almost perfect emotional clarity. Two rivals discover that the competition between them has never meant the same thing to both people, one boy realises that the person he spent years trying to defeat was actually the person who had spent years trying to remain close to him, and an ensemble of friends makes their university world feel much larger than six episodes should allow. Sam Lin and YU are excellent together, the supporting stories matter, and the ending is genuinely sweet enough that, if this had been the whole story, I could have accepted it as a complete little romance. Fortunately, it was only half of it, because "We Best Love" had something much more painful waiting for us.
Sometimes the person you spend your whole life trying to beat is only running beside you because he never wanted to reach the finish line without you.
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