Not a BL; Thai best slice of life gay series

Before you start watching Moonlight Chicken, I would recommend you to not watch this series as a companion while you do something else: be it eating, chores, dishes, or working. This could be counted as a short/mini one with total only 8 episodes, so the pace is a bit fast, and not everything is pictured in actual scenes. You have to take a proper look on the background to understand the time, you need to listen to every dialogues to catch up of things that didn't show between scenes to connect the dots. Doing this might make you overthink and overanalyze, but believe me, that would be much better than questioning everything as every frame and every lines are too beautiful and important to be missed.

I would not count Moonlight Chicken as a BL, but this series is an actual realistic matured gay drama. A very human drama.
This series brings us a real struggle of life: connection between family, insecurities, grief, coming of age, society, acceptance and how to let go.

I personally love at how this series show how hard your surrounding to accept you being gay; unlike other BL series where people would ignore it is a same-sex relationships and treat it the same way like hetero couples. Reality doesn't like that. I also love, really really love at how this series portray the generation gap between Jim and Wen through their talk: of how they see how the society would treat them, gay community.

You would also find everyone here are here for a reason. BL series tend to have everyone in the story like boys for the sake of fan-service despite how unrealistic it is to have everyone around you are gay (the famous BL logic), yet here, all the characters are just happened to be there to complete the story.

This series is also very subtle with everything.
Like what I mentioned above, not everything is pictured in actual scenes. And yet, everthing hold much more meanings behind it. There are lines that actually implied of other things and if you remember the lines the said character mentioned couple episodes ago, it is all would had more meaning—deeper meaning. This subtleness is my favorite, because somehow show how Asia this is.

Everything in this series is perfect, but if I need to list things GMMTV could improve, it is their sound/voice recording. There are some parts where the sound is annoying, even so I still find them acceptable since all other components that make this story is beyond my expectations.

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Chemistry is good, acting is great, the OSTs are amazing (lord, how I love all the songs!!); the only regret I find from Intense Love is... I can call myself a romance-sucker but somehow it is too cheesy for my liking. I was kinda expecting an adult-ish and mature romance, especially since Dr. Zhou and Beibei are both professional and dedicated with their jobs, but for me, their relationship here is more like high school romance, as in their conflicts and how they treat each other. Dr. Xiao and Wu Di's relationship is the one that I think suit their age! Although sometimes he makes me wonder why a doctor can have so much free time (lol), but I think I just watched too many dramas with workaholic doctors who prefer to stay in hospital and take too many shifts rather than go back home. Even so, this drama is really nice to watch!

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Just like what icupchu said, the male lead, Xinliang, is a 'typical' second lead; and I'm here because I'm on my Ding Yuxi fever recently so I thought I won't be having any second lead syndrome, but I was wrong. Chen Xun portrayed Ji Xiao, the second lead who actually the 'typical' male lead, really really well. I am amazed at how the actors, especially the both males, brought their character alive.

As for the story, I really like(d) the plot and conflict Just An Encore brings at the beginning: jealousy between Yan Ze and Xiye. But the more the story goes, the more dramatic it is, the more I find this drama is another typical school romance. I'm not saying I don't enjoy watching this, I do; but starts from episode 20-ish, the acting of the casts (especially Chen Xun during all those Ji Xiao-Yan Zhe cute moments; like, lord, his eyes????) hard-carry my motivation to finish this drama.

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