This review may contain spoilers
Goddess Bless You from the Main Plot
Overall a solid watch, but it suffers from the same issue a lot of Thai BL/GL shows do when trying to branch out from a romance-only plotline, which is failing to balance the supposed main plot of the story with the romantic subplot.The first 6 episodes are incredibly well done and interesting, you feel curious about where the mysterious murder case is going and who could be the killer, and the horror scenes are very well placed within the narrative (props to the 2 female ghosts and the whole styling and photography team for creating such atmospheric scenes!).
However, the series already shows the first cracks in the romance department: we're supposed to believe that the police officer and the murder suspect-turned-witness-turned-spiritual consultant hit It off in the first episode and after literally noving in together are already making googly eyes at and falling over each other in the midst ot the most gruesome murder investigation. There's no investigation into Thup's background or the whole supernatural subplot, which is made even funnier when we find out who the killer is and how easily the hauntings are resolved.
From this point onward the supposed murder and horror plots have to fight for screen time with the romance, to the point where from episode 7 until the end of the series the characters start losing all their brain cells and start behaving in very convenient ways simply to move the plot along and allow space for the pairings' relationship development and love confessions. Even the reveals regarding the killer and their motives are underwhelmed by badly placed romantic scenes, which start feeling more and more like fan service.
The last 2 episodes are truly baffling, it's like the screenwriters gave up the pretence of caring about the plot and focused fully on the romance to the point where the very intricate murder case took the back seat and was fully resolved within the first 20 minutes of the last episode.
Overall, this is a series for people who like romance with a side of plot, and not people who like a plot with a side of romance. If vou watch it without trying to understand the murder case it becomes more enjoyable, because if you pay any attention to it you'll figure it out by the halfway point and the series starts feeling draggy and the characters start looking like they're getting progressively stupider. For those who prefer a focus on a strong plotline where the romance is still important but doesn't outshine the message of the story and all the characters, I recommend watching Khemjira instead.
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Hiding hurts the pride
This was a very cute series, short and sweet and just the right amount of goofy and serious. The cast were great, and I loved how each character had a distinct personality that shined through in their interactions with each other. The photography and lighting were beautiful, and the jazzy soundtrack was on point with the setting.I also loved the relationship between the niece and the aunt and how the script used them to show the differences between queer acceptance in Korea and how that changed a lot in even just one generation. I particularly loved the discussion around the ambivalence between hiding your true self for safety reasons and wanting to live as your most authentic self and how often times those two wishes can become hard to reconcile.
The best part of the series for me was seeing these women be out and proud about being lesbians. A lot of sapphic shows avoid labeling characters at all costs, and while that has its place and is important representation to have, it can quickly become an excuse to queerbait and sidestep actual representation of queer people, so it was a breath of fresh air seeing all the characters in this series be open about who they are. Overall, this was a lovely show to binge in an hour and I highly recommend it if you want to watch something light and funny.
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The Night beyond the Tricornered Window
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As long as you're with me, you won't feel scared
This movie adaptation was overall very solid. While it did have to cut several minor plotlines and at least one major one from the manga due to time constraints, I liked the writers' choice to rework the script in a way that preserved the feeling of the original while giving themselves enough wiggle room to abridge and condense some of the more complex subplots without sacrificing the overall internal logic of the story.The characters remained consistent with their original selves and the actors nicely captured the despair these lonely people were feeling, as well as their clumsy and desperate attempts to find connection with someone who understand them. The dialogue in particular was well utilized to explain important concepts while keeping the plot moving in a cohesive direction—while the first half of the movie can be confusing for people who haven't read the source material, I found that the second half tied the plotlines together rather nicely and provided enough context to help the viewer along, granted you aren't watching this in the background while focusing on some other activity.
My favourite aspect of this adaptation was the production quality, though. The photography and lighting were especially well done, giving a sharp and somber feeling to the movie that perfectly fit with the mystery/suspense plotline. The scenarios, while mostly made up of dingy streets and half-empty buildings, actually enhanced the gritty aesthetics of the story, as did the understated costume design. The editing was also very consistent, and it managed to balance the many different threads of the story without losing track of how all the subplots fit together or making the pace feel stilted or overly scattered.
Also, I want to emphasize that the BL aspects of this story are mostly unspoken and hinted at throughout the movie, so don't go into this expecting it to have any on-screen discussion or even resolution. Just like in the manga, the storyline related to the curses takes precedence and you have to read between the lines to infer the main characters' romantic entanglement. But make no mistake: the whole exorcism plot is a thinly veiled metaphor for their relationship, both romantic and physical, and you can see how it develops through sexual innuendos, casual touches, and one or two insane life-long promises (was it casual when they called each other their fate???).
Lastly, a fun fact: Akutami Gege, the author of Jujutsu Kaisen, is a fan of Yamashita-sensei's work and used some of the plot points from The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window as an inspiration for his own series! You can see it more clearly in the manga as it delves into curse manipulation and curse users, so I recommend checking it out if that interests you.
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This Link did not Click with me...
Oof, this turned out to be a long one. Let me start this review by saying: I'm a huge fan of the original Link Click donghua, but I am by no means a purist when it comes to adaptations of even my favourite works (watching enough Chinese adaptations that completely change the source material while still managing to be excellent in their own merit will do that to you...). In fact, the Chinese live-action adaptation of Link Click falls in this precise category: it changed most of the plot of the source material, to the point where it can only be considered an alternate universe reinterpretation, and yet for me it worked perfectly within the new self-contained world it created, and I consider it to be nearly as good as the original.All of that to say: I was prepared for this Japanese live-action adaptation to also be its own thing and was expecting to enjoy it for what it was no matter how much of the source material was changed. Unfortunately for me, this series suffered from the exact opposite problem, namely that it relied too heavily on the original story to construct its plotline while at the same time refusing to commit to it fully. The result is that it ended up not having enough identity of its own to stand out as a separate thing.
This can be seen throughout the whole series. There is only ever a suggestion of an overarching storyline (related to Toki's mother), which is introduced in the first couple of episodes only to be quickly abandoned and to forever remain as an afterthought that gets obliquely hinted at by Hikaru vaguely staring into her picture every other episode and sometimes muttering cryptic things to himself until the bitter end. Speaking of, the main characters Toki (Cheng Xiaoshi) and Hikaru (Lu Guang) were mere shadows of their original selves—they were either stripped of their original personality (Lu Guang/Hikaru) or had it dialed up to 1000 to the detriment of the character depth (Xiaoshi/Toki). And because there's no cohesive story linking the episodes together, the characters themselves evolve very little outside of the immediate consequences they experience in response to each case they investigate, and they end up almost unchanged from who they were at the start.
Another issue is that, since the series doesn't seem to have a clear endpoint and therefore any logical progression to follow in order to reach it, the cases Toki and Hikaru investigate start out by copying the ones from the donghua with little variation (except when they conveniently decided to turn the noodle lesbians into brothers, I wonder why that was) and go back and forth between that and convoluted original stories that mostly fall flat as they take place over a single episode, making it hard to care or root for any of the newly introduced characters that will never show up again. This scriptwriting choice made the series feel meandering and lacking in emotional depth, with some misplaced virtue signaling at the end of each case that was supposed to pass off as a "conclusion" but instead just felt heavy handed and poorly written.
There are some positives to this adaptation, though. Firstly, two particular cases were standouts for me: the amnesiac lady with a mysterious past from episode 6 (which introduced a more complex plot and emotionally driven plotline), and the one with the cute teenage romance problems in episode 7. This one was especially interesting because it focused on Rin (Qiao Ling), who was for me the highlight of the series. While her characterization is very different from the donghua, I found it to be well utilized within the story. She often breathed some fresh air into the otherwise clumsy storylines, and in fact far outshined the protagonists with her sweet charm and charisma. The production quality also deserves a shout-out: the set design, styling, wardrobe, and photography were all on point, making the series look polished and avoiding the dated look which I often find issue with when watching Japanese TV shows.
Things did, in fact, start looking up in the second half of the series—mainly due to the two episodes mentioned above—, but by then it was already too late to make a comeback, let alone try to introduce the most important case from the donghua at the eleventh hour (I still get war flashbacks every time I hear her name). By this point the nachos had been reheated so many times that they became a bland, soggy mess, and not even the cute interactions between the main trio could salvage it from being relegated to its final destination: the trashcan.
In the end, what disappointed me most about this series was the writing choices made, as it seems the writers either didn't fully know in which direction they wanted to go or simply couldn't commit to one over the other, which caused the series to lack focus and just never quite manage to stick the landing. And while I was willing to overlook the over-reliance on the original source material for the first couple of episodes (after all, the Chinese live-action also reused a couple of cases), I just don't think an adaptation of a series that already has a (very good) live-action adaptation deserves to take so many episodes to find its footing. After all, if they didn't have a strong enough story to tell, whether it be a faithful adaptation or a fresh retelling, why remake the same story yet again? (The answer is money and a previously established fanbase, obviously).
Honestly, my suggestion is to just skip this one and watch the Chinese live-action adaptation instead. While it mostly reworked the original story from the donghua, I find that this decision actually worked in its favor and the writers were able to utilise the characters and the mostly original script to keep the spirit of the original series alive, something that I personally think this Japanese adaptation thoroughly failed to do. You're not going to find anything other than a lackluster story here, so unless you like the actors or are craving more Link Click in your life, stick to the Chinese versions and spare yourself the disappointment.
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True love's kiss is not enough to break the curse. Only loving yourself is.
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.
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