Reviews

First impression

You can watch it on GagaOOLala: https://www.gagaoolala.com/en/videos/8563/hold-on-harutora-kun-2026
or Viki: https://www.viki.com/tv/41670c-hold-on-harutora-kun#episodes

I like it. It's a pretty good series. I really enjoy it so far, and I'm excited to see more. My eventual rating was 7.5 after the first episode, but I upped it to 8.5 after watching the second episode. It is definitely growing on me the more i watch.

Episode 1:
* Everything is happening pretty fast. I don't know how I feel about it.
* I like the contrast between the main characters and how they show their feelings.
* Those guys are disgusting. I really thought that if not friends, they at least were civil with Sui, but that couldn't be further from the truth. They had no right to out him in that way.
* I'm happy to see Harutora accepting Sui after all, especially with everything Sui had to go through before.
* Harutora trying to "become Sui's type" is weirdly adorable.
* And more fish kisses, eh... It is what it is, I guess.

Episode 2:
* Harutora is so down bad for Sui.
* Harutora really just wears his heart on his sleeve.
* I understand that Daiki is trying to be a good friend or whatever. But he just sounds mean, basically telling his friend to hide himself and to not trust anyone. So weird.
* Harutora finding a bathing place where he and Sui can go without Sui having to worry about other people is incredibly thoughtful of him. He is genuinely a giant green flag.
* So happy to see Harutora stand up for Sui.

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A good surprise

Usually i dont watch drama with 24 or less episodes, especially when each episode is 20-25 minutes, they are almost always cheap with bad writing and acting. BUT this time i dont know why i tried this one and it's a very nice surprise, its still have the problem of being too short.

The most important thing in this drama is the chemistry between the FL and the ML, very fast you forget about the global plot or side plots and you just want the scenes with the FL and Ml who are very powerfull. Even the set and the global production look very good, it's not cheap at all.

It's time to give at this FL a main role in a bigger drama!

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Development is a stronghold

Honestly this wasn’t anywhere in my watchlist as I like to read synopsis and plan out what I should watch. Came across it in a readily platform, clicked and stayed to the end. Even now as it’s ended, I still have lingering thoughts.

What I liked is the way this story paced. You’re introduced the plot clearly of two young people, clearly different backgrounds and struggles, to lovers. Hundreds likened plots but the pace here is good. Writing is very good as I became engrossed in the story. There isn’t a boring part as it developed.

Loved the acting. Main leads are very natural, no overboard. Just watch. Here is a great love story of growth .

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Is the series about Jet or about the two Janes? too much attention is paid to an imbecile who doesn't know how to behave, is illiterate, self-absorbed and self-righteous and everyone should tremble at him!

The house, pharmacy and land are valued at 5 million baht and the agency is asking for 10 million? Jet should not go to prison, but should stay there for the rest of his life.

The acting is very bad, Heng Thatpong Rojsangruang has pronounced ugly gums which presents him in a bad context and a very ugly facial expression. Tee Boonyakait Wongsajaem is a good actor but I think at 33 he is too old for BL series!

The story doesn't have any direction, little by little, it comes down to the people on the sidelines, instead of focusing on the main characters. Is Jet more important than the two Janes???

It's as if the director doesn't exist, when someone else is conducting the orchestra!

The series was watered down a lot, and then 5 years "passed" in a minute, everything could fit into one movie of about 100 minutes.

All in all, very bad, but it looked like it was going to be a very good series!!!

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Dreams don’t have to mean Goodbye

I really enjoyed this drama, especially the chemistry between the main leads and the way their relationship was built throughout the story. I loved watching them grow both individually and as a couple, and I also really enjoyed the side characters and their stories.

However, I was quite frustrated with some of the decisions towards the end. I had no problem with her going to Canada to study and grow professionally... I actually think that was an important part of her character development. What bothered me was the decision to end their relationship because of it.

After everything they had been through and everything they had built together, it felt unnecessary and, honestly, a little frustrating.

I also wish we had seen more of her perspective during the years they were apart. We clearly saw how much he suffered, but we barely got to see what she was feeling or whether she struggled with the separation too. Because of that, their reunion felt a little too easy considering how much time had passed.

Overall, I really liked this drama and definitely got emotionally invested in the characters. The chemistry and the development of their relationship were definitely the highlights for me, but I think the ending could have been handled much better.

A very enjoyable drama, but one that left me wishing for a little more. 7.5/10.

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I can't find the right words...

(only minor spoilers) This film was phenomenal, really. It was engaging and emotional. It was sad. It started sad, it ended sad. Jeff Satur is such an amazing actor and he really sold his character to me. Keng was a ray of sunshine and I loved him. The visuals were very good and the OST was beautiful. Jeff Sutur's Rain Wedding is beautiful. That said, I probably won't watch this movie again. It was very sad and aggravating at some points. In the end, there was no winner in the feud. The end of the film shocked me into silence for a good while. I still haven't quite processed what happened. 10/10 but I don't recommend to people who are extremely sensitive.

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Am I in left field?

I had noticed the overall rating the MDL has by its viewers on Overdo and was really shocked by it being so low. I have now started it and am beginning episode 10, and I actually really like it! I think the costumes and sets are "right on" for this era. The acting is excellent (IMO Zhang Ling He and Chang Wu Ran only get better with each new series). The storyline is intriguing with mystery and twists.

There are reviews on this page left by people who supposedly watched all 33 episodes which are so hostile towards it, and I just don't get it. If it was so bad, why did so many keep watching it until the end? I can't help but think that, as I see quite often, that people who are so negative about a drama only watched the first few episodes yet felt like they had the authority to give a review of it which I find ridiculous. BTW, I have liked all episodes so far and the music is anywhere from enjoyable to lovely and appropriate for that era.

Since I am only on episode 10, I can only comment on my perception of it through this point, and at this point, I am eager to keep watching.

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TL;DR: A painfully stretched-out drama that had the potential to be an entertaining romance but instead buried its decent ideas under filler, contrived misunderstandings, inconsistent characterisation, and a villain who could never decide whether he wanted to be terrifying or sympathetic. Jung Hae-in and a handful of funny side characters were enjoyable, but there was nowhere near enough substance here to justify the length.


A more detailed review:

Our Sticky Love is a drama that desperately needed someone to tell the writers, "You can stop now."

There is a decent premise buried somewhere underneath all the unnecessary plot twists, gangster theatrics, memory loss, romance, family drama and endless misunderstandings, but the actual execution is so bloated that by the time the story reaches its conclusion, I was less interested in what happened to these characters and more interested in how much longer I had to sit through it.

The biggest problem is that this drama simply does not have enough story to justify its runtime. So instead of developing its strongest ideas properly, it keeps manufacturing new conflicts and stretching existing ones until they become exhausting. Entire sections feel like filler, and there are multiple points where the plot could have ended much earlier if the writers had simply removed the unnecessary detours.

The romance between Tae-ha and Eun-sae is supposed to be the emotional core, but even that is undermined by the writing. The drama seems terrified that viewers might fail to understand that Tae-ha is a good person, so it repeatedly shoves his "green flag" credentials in our faces.

The romance suffers from one of my least favourite K-drama writing habits: miscommunication for the sake of creating conflict.

Characters refuse to communicate information that would take thirty seconds to explain. People gossip. People assume things. People walk away instead of having conversations. Plans are kept secret for no convincing reason. And then everyone becomes upset because they don't know what the other person is thinking.

There was enough genuine conflict in Eun-sae and Tae-ha's situation already. The memory loss, Tae-ha's past, his connection to Sang-gil and Eun-sae's own complicated history were more than enough. The writers did not need to keep throwing artificial misunderstandings into the relationship.

Eun-sae's character had much more potential than the drama allowed her to realise. I actually liked the idea of her discovering that she had become an unpleasant person before the accident. Seeing her confront her former personality was one of the few parts of the story that felt genuinely interesting. But the writing never fully commits to exploring that. Instead, the memory-loss plot becomes another convenient mechanism for moving the romance and mystery around.

The gangster storyline is even worse.

Tae-ha supposedly had no choice but to become a gangster because he needed money for his grandmother, yet the entire setup made me wonder why literally nobody around him helped. This is a tiny town where everyone knows everyone's business, and Tae-ha is apparently adored by the villagers, but somehow the adults around him just allow a twenty-year-old boxer to become a criminal instead of intervening.

Coach Hong is supposed to be Tae-ha's moral compass, which makes his passive role in all of this even more ridiculous. If Tae-ha's transformation into a gangster is such a tragedy, why did the people who supposedly loved him allow it to happen?

Then we get Sang-gil.

What an absolute mess of a villain.

The drama spends ages telling us how powerful, dangerous and ruthless he is, but his actual behaviour rarely matches the reputation. He has money, connections and resources, yet repeatedly behaves as though he needs to wait for a ten-step confirmation process before doing anything. At one point, his entire approach to discovering whether Ji-won is alive feels like the gangster equivalent of two-factor authentication.

The show desperately wants Sang-gil to be intimidating, but it also desperately wants us to feel sorry for him. So we get the evil gangster behaviour alongside flashbacks showing that he was abused as a child and softer moments with Tae-ha.

I am not against complicated villains. In fact, I love them. But Sang-gil is not complicated so much as poorly balanced.

The writing keeps oscillating between "look how evil he is" and "please understand his tragic past," without doing enough to make either side feel convincing. By the time the story started pushing his redemption potential, I was already completely uninterested.

And then we get the reveal that Tae-ha is his son.

I genuinely did not see that coming, but not necessarily in a good way. It felt less like a carefully constructed revelation and more like the writers suddenly needed another dramatic twist. Worse, it arrives after the story has already spent so much time trying to establish Sang-gil's relationship with Tae-ha that the twist felt like another attempt to squeeze emotional significance out of a character whose arc had already become exhausting.

Thankfully, the drama does not force Tae-ha into some grand forgiveness of Sang-gil. Because after everything that happened, I would have struggled to take that seriously.

The pacing is probably my biggest complaint overall.

There are simply too many scenes and storylines that feel like they exist because the drama needed to fill time. The plot repeatedly stalls, then suddenly remembers that it has an actual storyline, then stalls again.

Even some of the supposedly major developments lack the impact they should have had because the show has spent so much time dragging its feet. When a major reveal finally happens, I should be sitting on the edge of my seat. Instead, I was thinking, "Okay, can we please move on now?"

The action does not help much either. The drama wants Tae-ha to look like this incredibly dangerous former boxer / gangster, but some of the action aftermath is laughably unconvincing. Watching him supposedly fight an entire group of people only to see a few pathetic-looking marks on his face completely destroyed the intended impact.

And speaking of wasted potential: Kaito.

Lee Jun-young's cameo had so much potential, and the drama did practically nothing with it. The possibility of a proper confrontation between Kaito and Tae-ha could have given the action storyline some much-needed energy. Instead, we got a cameo that felt like the writers were teasing something exciting that they had no intention of actually delivering.

The supporting characters were honestly more entertaining than some of the main plot. Gang-rok and Gi-jun provided some much-needed comedy, and the village setting occasionally gave the drama the warmth it was clearly aiming for. But even the side characters could not save the increasingly repetitive storyline.

Grandma Go's storyline also felt like a giant neon sign announcing exactly what the audience was supposed to feel. From the moment the drama establishes how important she is to Tae-ha, it becomes painfully obvious where things are heading. There is no real subtlety to it.

And that sums up my biggest issue with Our Sticky Love: *almost everything is too obvious, too stretched or too forced.

The drama constantly tells us what to feel instead of trusting its characters and story to make us feel it ourselves. Tae-ha is good. Sang-gil is evil but also tragic. Eun-sae has changed. Grandma Go is important. Tae-ha loves Eun-sae. The village loves Tae-ha. Sang-gil is powerful.

Yes. I understand. You can stop telling me now.

There are certainly some funny moments and some genuinely sweet scenes, and Jung Hae-in remains watchable even when the writing gives him questionable material. But good performances cannot compensate for a story that keeps running in circles.

By the end, I was relieved more than satisfied.

At least the drama gives its characters closure, and I appreciated that it did not try to redeem Sang-gil completely. Tae-ha and Eun-sae get their happy ending, the loose ends are tied up, and the story finally comes to an end.

And honestly? Thank God.

Our Sticky Love could have been a charming small-town romance with a crime-thriller edge. Instead, it became an overextended mess that constantly introduced ideas it either failed to develop or dragged out far beyond their natural lifespan.

There are moments worth watching, but there are nowhere near enough of them to justify the journey.

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They ruined Jack and Ten

I just finished episode six and am kinda stumped as to why the producers sanitized the Jack and Ten storyline so much.

There is literally zero tension between them in the show and it's just Jack giving in so easily and doing all the major emotional heavy lifting.

I'm the most recent episode, Jack goes to "confront" ten, but winds up reassuring him that he'll wait for ten and give him the chance to explain himself after the competition. Ten is solely framed as this misunderstood character instead of the reality that he has legitimate grievances while still having no loyalty or respect for others. They just completely undermined the weight of him helping Jack's girlfriend cheat. I read the book specifically about them and it's rife with tension and true expressions of anger, but the adaptation just takes all of that away.

why even include the cheating if they aren't going to give it the emotional focus it deserves?

I think the other characters were so well done and I actually like the heavy Lakorn aspects. When cheesiness is well done, it really does add a lot of wholesome energy to the narrative.

I love how restrained Bas' performance was. He was so expressive and whimsical in Fourever You, but here he is quiet and observant - the emoting is silent a lot of the times. I think it's the perfect role for him. I hope he continues to get both drama and comedy roles throughout his career.

Overall I like this show, just didn't understand the bizarre creative choices in regards to Jack and Ten's adaptation.

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Empty house 2004

Meditative movie about loneliness.

A guy traveling to empty houses and a married woman who was abused by her husband. These two people are definitely lonely.

Clean arthouse. There were no words from the main characters in this movie, but their feelings, emotions and attachment to each other were clearly visible. They understood each other so subtly that words were not needed - it was fascinating.

I think that was the message. True understanding can live in silence, in a gesture, in a look. And when it happens, it's fascinating.

A masterpiece.

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Great show but not for me

I watched it because it was interesting. The revelations from both of them before and after reconnecting were different in such a way that Naoya, whichever social status he was at, always held the power. Takaaki was born to do his bidding, which he understood and willingly accepted. The eccentric portrayal by the father grated against the grain but was fully played to the max. The series ran along as expected and didn't go above or below the meter.

A few things put me off:
Naoya always looked disheveled and in need of a good wash. I said looked not was.
The unseemly mullet seemed to be his signature, an extension of himself. His internal growth happened, externally no.
Takaaki's devotion was single minded but came off at creepy at times.
The foot scene. While it was a power dynamic, for me it was the actual dragging of his tongue over it. The angle covers it from showing it really being done but like a dog with its tongue hanging out doing it was too much. The flashback repetition of numerous scenes didn't help.
The ending felt like an assembly line tying up the loose ends. Father. Next. Brother. Next. Restaurant. Next.
Naoya's face. Flash backs made him look like 25 when he should be 18. Now in present day, a struggling druggie. His walk alone was interesting. Was this the director's vision, could be.

It was very watchable and for the most part engaging to keep me to the end. I enjoyed listening to their internal conflicts and the end results. I loved that though they had some selfish thoughts they never let it get the better of them. For example, Takaaki enjoying Naoya's helplessness and his need of him. He put it aside to see Naoya happy and thriving.

I would recommend a watch because I cannot find any fault with their acting. They all can deliver.

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No romance nor comedy

It is a drama that had lots of potential but somehow the delivery failed.
Everything seems too much, the villagers scene, they are all trying too hard it is like watching an amateur version of hometown cha cha cha.
The characters have no connection whatsoever, the male lead caught between being a gangster and lover boy is stuck somewhere in awkwardness.
The female lead is also trying too hard, and frankly, the cute scenes are very hard to watch.
The villain could have been strong had the story been developed properly.
I could not help it sitting through all those episodes, a greater chore I haven't known.

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