midnightskiez

This show is a delicate and messy exploration of how childhood trauma can affect people and impact their self-esteem and mental health even decades later, and it how hard it is to move on and relearn trust in both yourself and others.

The main character, Lee Dohoe, lives a suffocating life with an abusive father who manages a taekwondo gym in a small town, and his only ticket to freedom is studying hard to get into a top university. One day, a new boy named Shin Juyeong comes to the gym to train and the two boys quickly become each other's safe heaven. Unfortunately, life is not kind to either of them and they end up separating in a painful way. 12 years later, they end up meeting again and being trying to make sense of where they stand in each other's lives.

Dohoe is a purposefully messy main character. He went through so much trauma that his knee jerk reaction is to always ignore his problems and try to move on with his life by not thinking about them, and he does that by cutting all ties to his old life when he moves to Seoul. But complex trauma has a way of sneaking up on you when you least expect it and, if left unaddressed for years, it will slowly spread through all areas of your life, leaving no choice but to either face it or give up and ruin yourself in the process. Juyeong is the unstoppable force that meets this immovable object. He acts an anchor to Dohoe, but that in itself is a double-edged sword: while his presence grounds Dohoe to a reality where he can see himself becoming happy, the circumstances in which they met make Dohoe scared of reliving and getting stuck in his painful past again.

Both characters go through a lot of inner conflict to understand who they are and what they're even allowed to want for themselves, and that heavily affects the way they interact with each other. The actors did really well in their roles, they had the necessary range to act in both the lighter and the more emotional scenes, and on top of that they had amazing chemistry with each other. The dialogue was also well utilized and provided several emotionally impactful scenes.

But the stars of the show were definitely the soundtrack and the production quality. The scenes were always beautifully shot and aesthetically pleasing, while also adapting to the level of impact the show wanted to evoke in the viewer. And the original soundtrack (sung by Gogang, Yu Ra, and Jo Hwanji) provided the perfect accompaniment to the wide range of emotions the characters went through over the course of their 12-year journey.

All that being said, one thing I didn't love about this show was the pacing. It felt very slow at points only to rush through very important plot and character arcs, which made the overall story lose some of its impact, as the viewer wasn't allowed enough time to sit with and unpack all the sudden reveals being discussed. The choppy editing worsened this, as several important scenes were stitched together in a dizzying supercut that required way more screen time and breathing room than they were given, causing some frustration while watching as you need to piece together what happened in the past and how it continues to affect the present.

Overall, this was one of the best Korean BLs I've watched, both for its technical quality (script, production, photography, acting) and in its ability to stick the landing on the emotional impact. The storyline was overall solid and provided enough nuanced exploration of the themes it wanted to address to rise above the rest. I would definitely recommend it if you're looking for a more realistic portrayal of real life issues in your BL.