This review may contain spoilers
Amazingly Beautiful
I placed spoilers at the end of this review.It is always refreshing to watch a BL series with a more mature story concept. I also love how this BL series focused on many other underline themes about one’s own struggles. The artful simplicity of this script was incredible. Everything from the relationship development to the overall themes about family was well paced. The entire cast did an outstanding job with their characters. Unfortunately, there is one exception with the male leads which is very puzzling to me. The cinematography was beautiful and helped capture the undertone mood while the events unfolded.
Random Note:
I originally was undecided about watching this because the MDL series synopsis, which is very inaccurate, scared me. The one on GagaOOLala is much better.
******Potential Spoiler Alert******
The exception was the very inconstant chemistry between the two lead actors during the more intimate scenes. There were times that they were great, but then we get the standard dead lip kiss scenes that you usually see in Korean BL series. Although very puzzling to me, this was only a minor irritation.
Was this review helpful to you?
Brilliant, Heartbreaking, and Difficult to Watch at Times
I have such mixed feelings about this drama. A story can be brilliantly crafted and emotionally rich, but if the emotional cost—especially due to brutality or themes of cruelty—is too high, it creates an internal conflict.As a whole, the drama is absolutely wonderful—powerful and introspective. The narrative is an odyssey of sorts, telling an epic story across timelines that brings you into the characters’ hardships and evolving lives. The misfortunes speak to your soul and make you feel deeply. And there are comedic pauses and beautiful cinematography that engage the senses so that the trauma isn’t overwhelming.
But what made this drama difficult for me wasn’t the plot, which centered on hate and revenge—it was how the main character, Siling, translated those elements on screen. There was never enough justification, for me, for how she enacted her malice. Though I understood, intellectually, why she felt hatred and pain—I wished her choices had been executed differently. I think she could have delivered the same wrath without the vicious brutality. And that’s where Siling, and Feud as a whole, lost me. It’s just not my cup of tea to watch people be that brutal to one another. That’s also why I’ve struggled with other dramas like Love & Bid Farewell and Goodbye, My Princess.
So while I was immersed and highly engaged in the beginning and end, episodes 17–27 made it hard for me to imagine watching this again. And for a drama to make it onto my top watch list, my personal criteria is that I must be able to rewatch it. With that said, the performances were phenomenal—especially from Bai Lu and Zeng Shunxi. The supporting cast also shone, with many carrying the main storyline at different points. The show wouldn’t have been the same without them.
Was this review helpful to you?
This review may contain spoilers
Review (EP.19-20)I came for Tiger and Nao, but I stayed for Tiger's brother.
Tiger may be the captain of his football team, but deep down he's still a boy searching for a place where he belongs.What makes these episodes so enjoyable is not only the growing feelings between Tiger and Nao, but also the surprisingly touching relationship between Tiger and his older brother. Tiger has always seen him as someone standing on their father's side, yet it becomes increasingly clear that his brother genuinely loves and protects him.
The scene in the pink dessert café was both hilarious and adorable. The intimidating older brother arrived dressed entirely in black, trying to maintain his authority, while secretly being thrilled that Tiger invited him to a football match. His calm "Okay" could barely hide his excitement.
Tiger's feelings for Nao are also becoming impossible to ignore. Around Nao, he doesn't need to wear his usual armor or keep people at a distance. Nao is the one person who allows him to be honest with himself.
Unfortunately, just as Tiger begins to experience a sense of happiness and belonging, trouble arrives. With both Tiger and Nao carrying family burdens of their own, Episode 21 looks like it will test them even further.
The romance is sweet, but the family dynamics are what keep me invested in this story.
Was this review helpful to you?
Ehhh
Danger Dolls flirts with high concept ideas but, regrettably, never commits. Its world and premise are mildly interesting at best, yet the film does little with them, leaving both its themes and characters underdeveloped.The action is solid enough, but without emotional investment, it lacks impact. Combined with a noticeable but underutilized low budget, the film ends up feeling like a generic action movie rather than a thoughtful sci fi story.
It is not bad, just underwhelming. You can see the better version of this film, but it never fully comes together.
Was this review helpful to you?
Comfort Detective Show
This is a comfort drama set in 1920s Shanghai. The male leads are an investment banker turned detective and a gangster turned cop who really needs the help. The female lead is a reporter and also the daughter of the head of a large and powerful gang (and that gang leader is effectively the boss of the cop).The cases are weird and resolved within 2 episodes of the crime, so there is a bit of a Scooby Doo effect here. There is an overarching narrative, generated by the setting, Shanghai in the 1920s.
It is a pleasant watch and the cases are unusual enough to keep the viewer interested, but this genre is usually not that challenging. I may be the one person here who thought the romantic relationship was telegraphed pretty early on, and the silly arguing and insults were an immature way to flirt. It helped keep the show light, which seems useful to me given “lots of murders in 1920s Shanghai” could be bleak.
Was this review helpful to you?
This review may contain spoilers
Tragically beautiful — sometimes two words are enough
There are series you finish and immediately know you'll carry with you for a long time. This is one of them.Two boys, a rural taekwondo hall, a father who makes home feel like something to escape — and then a boy from Seoul arrives and quietly changes everything. The first love that forms between them is tender and fragile in the way first loves are, and when it breaks it breaks before it ever really had the chance to become itself. Twelve years later, a funeral, a reunion, and all the wounds that never properly healed still sitting exactly where they were left.
What I find genuinely rare about this series is how it handles blame — or rather, how it refuses to distribute it neatly. People hurt each other here not out of cruelty but out of circumstance, out of silence, out of not knowing how to do better with what they had. That's a much harder thing to write than a villain, and the series pulls it off with real maturity.
Korean productions at their best have a particular relationship with grief and time that I don't think translates easily across cultures — a willingness to sit inside pain without rushing toward resolution. This series has that quality completely. And it still leaves you with something warm at the end, which feels almost like a small miracle given everything that comes before it.
Tragically beautiful. That's all it needs to be.
Was this review helpful to you?
This review may contain spoilers
The kind of series that makes you sit quietly afterwards and not want to speak
I'm going to struggle to be articulate about this one, which feels appropriate given what it did to me.Ji Hyun arrives in Seoul from a small town, can't find his footing, can't find his people — and then Jae Won walks in, older, freshly back from military service, and offers friendship with a directness that catches Ji Hyun completely off guard. The attraction between them is immediate and mutual and neither of them follows it, for reasons that feel earned rather than manufactured. Jae Won who pretends nothing happened after a kiss. Ji Hyun who carries his brother's death like something he deserves to carry, while Jae Won — with this tender, almost reckless devotion — keeps trying to reach him anyway. That dynamic broke something in me in the best possible way.
What this series does that I find genuinely rare is make you feel the weight of two people finding each other at the wrong moment and choosing to try regardless. The surfing, the city, the quiet scenes between them — all of it adds up to something I can't fully explain but felt completely.
I don't hand out scores like this lightly. This one earned it.
Was this review helpful to you?
A comfort series I keep going back to — and AouBoom need their own show immediately!
I've rewatched parts of this multiple times already and I'll probably do it again. That alone tells you most of what you need to know about how I feel about it.What genuinely moved me about this series beyond the couples is what sits at its center: healthy male friendships, the kind that are affectionate and present and unashamed, and the idea that friendship itself is worth celebrating as the foundation of everything else. That's not something BL series always remember to do, and I found it quietly powerful here.
Yes, it's a little ridiculous that essentially everyone ends up with someone. I made my peace with that early and simply followed PondPhuwin and AouBoom, which was more than enough.
PondPhuwin's physical chemistry felt more natural to me here than in Never Let Me Go — something about Pond being allowed to be a little bolder, a little less passive, seemed to free up the dynamic between them in a way that worked. That's a personal read, but it's a consistent one across rewatches.
And then there's AouBoom. Aou's character is a lot — genuinely, unapologetically a lot — but sometimes full-volume cheesiness is exactly the right energy, and Boom matches it perfectly. They secured a permanent place in my BL heart here and I will stand by that. They need their own series. Someone make it happen.
Was this review helpful to you?
Less like a BL series, more like a quiet film that breaks you carefully
I came to PondPhuwin through a Zach Sang interview, decided I needed to see them for myself, and started with what everyone said was their best work. That instinct was right.What surprised me immediately was the texture of the series — it doesn't feel like typical BL. The production, the atmosphere, the pacing all lean closer to indie film than genre television, and that distinction matters. This is a show that takes its time and trusts its silences, and for most of its runtime that approach pays off completely.
The story earns its heartbreak quietly. There are moments in this series that genuinely sat with me — not because they're loud or dramatic, but because they're devastatingly considered. The kind of scenes where a character makes a choice out of love that causes pain, and you understand completely why they did it even as it breaks something. I won't say more than that.
Towards the end a few story decisions landed less convincingly for me personally, and the intimate scenes occasionally carry a tension that reads as uncertainty rather than chemistry — understandable given how young both leads are, but noticeable. Neither of those things undoes what the series builds in the hours before.
This one stays with you. That's not nothing.
Was this review helpful to you?
The car scene. That's all I'll say.
I'll be honest about something that might sound petty but anyone who watches Korean BL will understand: I went in with low expectations for the physical chemistry. Korean productions have a reputation — earned or not — for kiss and intimate scenes that feel stiff, disconnected, like two people pressing faces together rather than actually being present with each other. That was not this.These two knew what they were doing. The car scene alone is worth mentioning by name, even if I'll leave the details where they belong. For me personally it was a genuine turning point in how I think about Korean BL and what it's capable of when the actors are actually committed.
The series also carries that very specific K-drama flavour in its storytelling — a particular kind of dramatic tension that exists almost nowhere else and that I've grown to appreciate on its own terms. It works here.
My one personal gripe is how polished everything looks. The locations, the interiors, the people — all of it has a slightly sterile quality that kept me at a slight distance. And the drama does pile up at times in a way that tested my patience a little. But that's very much a matter of personal taste rather than a flaw in the series itself.
Overall — genuinely good, and a reminder of what this genre can do when it commits fully.
Was this review helpful to you?
Came for SurfJava, stayed for their storyline — skipped the rest
I'll be upfront: I watched this almost entirely for SurfJava. After Love Me If You Swear I just wanted to see them together again, and from what I understand this is actually the series where they started as a pairing — which made it feel like essential viewing. I skipped the second couple almost entirely and followed only their storyline, so take my perspective on the overall series with that in mind.What I genuinely liked about their arc is the honesty of it. Friends falling for each other and then discovering that wanting a relationship and being good at one are two very different things — that felt real to me. But it also quietly broke my heart a little to watch them not be good for each other in those early stages, risking a friendship that clearly mattered for something neither of them quite knew how to handle yet.
The ending is sweet, and I was glad to get it. It just felt slightly rushed to me personally — like the writing suddenly remembered it needed to wrap up and squeezed the resolution into less space than it deserved. A little more room to breathe at the end would have gone a long way.
Still, SurfJava delivered. That's what I came for.
Was this review helpful to you?
Playful, original, and completely at ease with itself
This one caught me off guard in the best way. Two rival gangs, a superstitious vow, and both leaders ending up on the same nine-temple merit-making journey with no choice but to figure each other out along the way — it's an oddly specific premise that the series commits to fully, and it's better for it.SurfJava are genuinely sweet together, and what I appreciated most personally is how unforced the whole thing feels. The humour lands without trying too hard, the silliness never tips into something that made me cringe, and the dynamic between the two reminded me a little of War of the Buttons — that kind of playful, slightly chaotic energy that somehow manages to be completely charming. It's the kind of lightness that's actually difficult to pull off without it feeling hollow.
I also found myself enjoying the glimpses of everyday Thailand woven into the temple tour storyline — the way those spaces work, what that kind of journey actually looks like. It gave the series a texture that I didn't expect and genuinely appreciated.
The show knows exactly what it is and never pretends otherwise. For me personally, that self-awareness is what makes it so easy to like.
Was this review helpful to you?
The series that opened the door — I'm just not sure it holds up the same way anymore
This was one of my entry points into BL — manga first, then the animated version, and then the genuine surprise of discovering a live action adaptation existed. SeoHam and JaeChan carry it well, and the rivals-to-lovers dynamic actually works: a rule-obsessed computer science student and a charismatic design star who collide by accident and can't quite untangle themselves from each other afterwards. It's still sweet, and I mean that sincerely.What I notice more now, watching it with different eyes, are the lines along the lines of I'm not gay, I don't like men, I just want you. I understand the context. I know what queerness looks like in Korea and I'm not asking a BL series to carry the weight of political commentary. But when a show touches that territory, I personally find myself wanting either genuine engagement with it or none at all. The half-distancing — acknowledging the feeling while quietly disclaiming the identity — is something I've grown less patient with the more BL I've watched.
I think I need to rewatch it. I came to it early, before I had much of a reference point, and I'm genuinely curious whether it still lands the same way now that I do. The fondness is still there. The questions are just louder than they used to be.
Was this review helpful to you?
The mythology pulls you in — the couple keeps you at a distance
The mythology pulls you in — the couple keeps you at a distanceReview:
The premise genuinely hooked me. A family curse that kills every male heir before their twenty-first birthday, a young man raised under a girl's name to preserve the protection, and then at twenty the veil starts to lift and he begins seeing things he shouldn't. As far as I'm aware this is one of the first Thai BL series to put Thai mythology this centrally at its heart, and that alone makes it worth paying attention to. That part of the story stuck with me.
Where I personally struggled was with KengNamping as a couple. They're beautiful to look at, but the dynamic felt overly familiar to me — Namping feminine, androgynous, delicate, in need of protection; Keng sexy, mysterious, powerful. I've seen that pairing before and I wanted something more from it here. The added layer of Keng's priestly vows — his purity at risk if he gives in to attraction — could have created real tension, and occasionally it does. But with neither character willing or able to make a move, and both of them leaning heavily introverted, I found myself wondering at times whether these two would have anything to say to each other if the supernatural threat wasn't conveniently in the room.
Circling each other without really closing the distance gets exhausting after a while. The world the series builds is genuinely interesting — I just wished the people at the center of it felt a little more alive to each other.
Was this review helpful to you?
WilliamEst carry it — and I'd watch them in anything
I'll start where my attention kept going: WilliamEst. Not just in the series, but in everything around it — live shows, behind the scenes moments, the way they exist together on and off camera. There's a young-love energy between them that I don't think you can manufacture, and whether that's fanservice or something more genuine doesn't really change how it reads. It's there, and it's sweet.The backstory also adds something for me personally. Est is a professional swimmer, William is an idol in Thai pop group Lyken — and somehow they end up as the leads in a BL series together. I find that kind of accidental pairing genuinely charming.
I believe them as a couple and I'd go back for them without hesitation. Where the series itself loses me a little is in how it handles the dynamic between the characters. Po has relationship experience — with a man — while Thame has none, yet Thame is consistently the one driving things forward. That imbalance felt slightly off to me, not wrong exactly, but like the series didn't fully explore what that gap between them could have offered. The overall tone also skews younger and more naive than I personally needed it to.
Still, WilliamEst make it worth it. And I'm genuinely excited to see what they do next together.
Was this review helpful to you?
