I thought the series would be a confusing mess with seven different couples, but luckily it simply focuses on one couple at a time for Episodes 1-14. (Ep 15 features all of them but is rather pointless.) This approach is similar to the En of Love approach, but Y-Destiny does it better as it sufficiently introduces characters in the later episodes before the focus is on them.

I find the first two stories the weakest though the couples are cute.

1. Tue and Ake: The line between tension and attraction is blurred as two boxers’ hostility towards each other suddenly turns into attraction. Sometimes Tue looks bashful, but the dialogue is full of sexual double entendre, with references to “itchy”, “blowing” away the itch on chickenpox blisters, treating chickenpox with “injections”. I don’t mind this but wish there had been more subtlety.

2. Sun and Nuea: Sun is given an assignment to tutor a wealthy brat (they are both college students though) who is hoping to get an internship. Despite his initial dislike for Nuea, Sun starts finding Nuea cute, but it’s harder to tell whether Nuea really likes Sun or is playing a prank. The “story” seems more like an excuse for lots of BL scenes.

3. Mon and Team: A playboy competes against others of his ilk by trying to score maximum points in their depraved game (of seeing who can score more victories in bed). Managing to get an innocent virgin scores the most points, so this is what Team sets out to do. Oncewe know the premise, we can predict most other things, including how the playboy will fall in love for real and how he has a sob story of his own. Despite the cliched story, the two episodes of this story are competently made and the best of the three episodes so far.

The story is largely coherent and paced well. The acting and cinematography are quite on point too. Mon can be rather exasperating in that he isn’t even really being cheated because he has been warned about Team, but the actor manages to convey the foolishness of someone in love and arouse sympathy for him. The second episode could simply have ended happily at the point when Mon and Team patch up, but an additional scene after it helps to end the story more nicely, hinting at the trust issues that can continue to plague a relationship after the trust has been breached once. (There’s still a happy ending, but it’s not a simplistic one.)

4. Thurs and Pao (Pae): a ghost story with a dash of time travel. Thurs (Mon’s friend from Story 3) meets a ghost but soon enough falls in love with the ghost. Pao is cute though the cutesiness may have been overdone. There is a happy ending though the explanation of the events is a too reliant on the revelations of an apparently all-knowing monk. There seems to be some inconsistency in the script as sometimes Pao seems to be so clueless that he doesn’t even know who he is (Thurs gives him the name) but at other times seems to know more than he is telling Thurs. (It could be because his ghostly powers increase with all the merit that is accumulated for him, but there’s no clear explanation.)

This story has the cutest couple of the four stories so far, dispensing with the sexual tension in the earlier stories and presenting an innocent and sweet relationship instead. A pity that the subtitles were a little confusing, with a tendency to turn singular pronouns into plural pronouns and (I think) even reverse the subject/object of sentences (e.g. “I seem familiar to you” instead of “You seem familiar to me”),

5. Puth and Kaeng / Payu: Puth and Kaeng are both promiscuous players. Surprisingly, the focus seems to be a bit more on Kaeng – despite his reputation for being promiscuous, he is obviously in love with Puth, his sex buddy (a relationship that they can barely conceal from their friends). We see his inner thoughts and jealousy as Puth begins to fall for Payu. The characterization of Puth is a little baffling for he is a multi-timing promiscuous guy but he also appears shy and innocent when he is with Payu (and doesn’t seem to be pretending).

I thought the story could head towards a sad ending, but it doesn’t.

6. Sat and Choke: another story with supernatural elements, An eleven-year-old boy makes wishes that are granted by a wish-granting gundam. After wishing that he is a popular grown-up, he wakes up in a world where he (and everyone else) has aged by seven years. He does not remember what has happened in the last seven years, and visits his best friend, Choke. He has forgotten why he has stopped being friends with Choke (which doesn’t make sense since the broken friendship happens before he makes the wish to be an adult). This story is somewhat slow-moving at times, but it is fairly nice to watch. Nonetheless, it can be a little disturbing that Sat, who magically becomes eighteen years old but is still mentally eleven, starts doing adult stuff with Choke.

7. Masuk and Tir/Jia: This story gives quite a different feel from the rest of the stories in the series and one may wonder how much of a BL story it really is. The decision to put it as the last story may be because of this. The drawback, however, is that putting it as the last story may cause audiences to dislike it because it isn’t what they are expecting.

My opinion may not be shared by many, but I think this is the most serious and mature piece in the whole series. It is rather slow-moving in the first episode, but this helps to bring across the grief that Masuk feels after the death of his boyfriend Tir. Masuk’s grief is mixed with remorse as he feels that he could have prevented Tir from dying had he been punctual for their date. The story doesn’t let him change fate like the characters in in Stories 4 and 6, but he manages to find out something that helps him get over his remorse and move on even as he cannot forget Tir. Thematically, this story echoes Stories 4 and 6, but is more nuanced in the theme of the good being rewarded. It’s also surprisingly realistic in terms of how Masuk doesn’t just suddenly get over Tir and lovey-dovey with Jia.

Overall:
My favorite stories: Masuk X Tir/Jia, Thurs X Pao and Puth X Kaeng
My favorite couple: Thurs X Pao