Reviews

Pyramid Game, one of the best in its genre, but Baek Harin deserved better

Pyramid Game is honestly one of the strongest dramas in the school survival/psychological thriller category. The concept is addictive, the tension stays high throughout, and the way it shows bullying and power games inside a classroom is really intense and well done. It’s the kind of show that keeps you watching just to see how far things can go.

But for me, the most interesting part was definitely Baek Harin. She’s such a complex and intriguing character, and every scene with her feels important. The actress did a great job making her unpredictable and layered, not just a simple “villain” type character.

That’s why her ending in the drama felt a bit disappointing. She honestly deserved better writing and a more impactful conclusion. Compared to the webtoon, where her story is handled in a more satisfying way, the drama version feels incomplete. At least in the webtoon, her ending gives her character more weight and closure, which fits her better.

Overall though, Pyramid Game is still one of the best in its category. Just wish Baek Harin had the ending she really deserved.

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I only finished this show because of one character, and honestly that says a lot.

I’m not particularly into GL, and I wouldn’t even really call this a GL drama anyway. It tries to be a psychological thriller, which is usually my kind of thing, but the execution felt chaotic and all over the place from start to finish. I won’t spoil anything, but the story just didn’t hold together well.

The only reason I kept going was Hyeri’s character. She was easily the strongest part of the show. Her performance was so good that I found myself actually invested in her scenes, trying to understand her motives and what she would do next. She carried every moment she was in.

The other lead didn’t work for me at all. In fact, I remember starting this drama last year and dropping it halfway through the first episode because I wasn’t interested, mainly because of that character. I only came back to it after seeing Hyeri’s name and deciding to give it another try.

In the end, I pushed through the entire series just because of her performance. She was the only reason I stayed engaged. I even checked out some of her other work afterward, but nothing really hit the same. Still, this role stood out a lot, and I hope she continues doing darker psychological thriller roles like this in the future.

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Compelling story with some missed opportunities

I started watching Ticket to Heaven with some trepidation. A BL with a religious theme? Seemed like it had the potential to be great or a complete disaster. Here are my pros and cons:

PROS

ACTING. After watching them in mostly light fare, I was pleasantly surprised and impressed at the range of both Gemini and Fourth. I also liked many of the other actors. There were some serious scenes that conveyed real emotion.

POSITIVE TRANS REPRESENTATION. I don't know the name of the actor who played the trans character in Ep. 6, but she did a phenomenal job of creating a sympathtic, positive role model.

RESPECT FOR THEME. I appreciated that the story maintained respect for the Catholic religion while exploring the difficulties of young gay men growing up in that environment.

LENGTH OF SERIES. Six episodes felt just right to me.

CONS

DEPTH. While I was fine with the length of the series, I would have liked it more if it had gone deeper into Tan's struggles, which could have been addressed in place of certain other scenes, which dragged on and didn't offer anything important to the plot.

TIME JUMP. I get it, the story dated from 1996. But when they jumped 20 years at the end, it wasn't believable at all, with the exception of the Father with his added face wrinkles (good job there, makeup crew!). There was a reference to Kongdech having some grey hair. They tried to age Barth with different glasses and clothes (didn't work), and Tan looked exactly the same. No way someone is going to look the same after 20 years. They should have used different actors at the end, to make it credible.

DISAPPEARING CHARACTERS. Barth's mom was great. It would have been nice to know what happened to her. And what happened to the guy who was bullying Barth in Ep. 1? It would have been satisfying to see him get his comeuppance, like seeing him tied to an anthill and covered with honey or something...

While I feel there were some missed opportunities for a more powerful presentation, overall it was a pleasant experience for me.

I'm giving it 7/10.

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Something nice to watch when you're bored

Was feeling bored and honestly didn't know what to do, decided to watch this movie since i came across it, it was definitely cute and funny.

The introduction for Kanna was definitely funny, can't imagine how many she has been rejecting, her fujoshing out at the rooftops was something, the brainrot filter is a hilarious name but I definitely see it HAHA.

Was expecting Mihara and Sorami to get together, but I definitely understood Mihara rejecting him during the moment, it was a pity but Sorami was definitely still confused and unsure to fully admit being Gay himself, Mihara has definitely went through that same struggle himself but found his way to accept himself, and with Kanna too.

Speaking of Kanna, her confessing she had liked Mihara was definitely surprise, but considering he was the only one that truly understood what Kanna truly is, it was bound to happen that she'd actually love him, she knew it was doomed at the start, but she was brave enough to honestly confess that all out to him, but i'm happy overall they still stuck around for each other.

Because who wouldn't it be but just them? definitely adored their friendship, thought it was weirdly funny she wanted Mihara and Sorami to have a bad ending? was questioning it throughout the movie, but it was funny it backfired when both confessed to each other at the aquarium.

But OMGG!!! I was definitely in for Mihara and the guy from the volleyball club, they were definitely a cute pair, like dude did you see the way Nishiyanagi hold Mihara's hand while giving back the glasses???? and the convenient can making Mihara slip into him checked it for me, I'd love to see a spin-off with them! It would be interesting......

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Man, this one had so much potential! This is a sentence I have previously only used for Thai BLs, but here it is entirely deserved.

The drama had it all: Cute and talented actors, a tried-but-true premise of "opposites attract but have to put in effort to make it work", a solid technical crew -- but then the whole thing is watered down by an unnecessary rival and inconsistent characterizations.

The drama starts out strong -- we get a meet-cute between an outgoing Kansai dweller and a reserved man from Tokyo, a "love at first sight" trope and tasty-looking food. All of the cast give their characters life in just a few scenes.

The plot progression in the first few episodes, which focuses on the two men who slowly get closer and learn each other's likes and dislikes, and how to talk to each other, would be good too, if it wasn't for Soga's poor characterisation: He is a divorcé, so he should be able to recognize attraction and desire in himself, right? But he very much acts as if all of this is new to him, and he has never even thought of himself as someone who could be in a relationship -- and it's not that he is confused that it's a man; nor is he asexual (he very bluntly proposes sex in a later episode).

So, his character is already inconsistent (but somewhat in accordance with J-BL "rules"), but then it gets worse: Sakae's ex, who left him a while ago, is back and wants to restart the relationship. Much of the short runtime is wasted on this love rival side plot instead of further exploring how two people who have next to nothing in common could make a relationship work.
I think this as well as the inconsistent characterisation of Soga's is why other viewers feel that there's no "chemistry" between the leads.

And it's worth of note that as soon as this is resolved and our couple is again on the search for the middle-ground (quite literally!), their dynamics start to get interesting again. Unfortunately, that is the point where the runtime ends already.

This could have been a cute and light story about two people who are very different, who tend to pull back to make their partners happy and who learn that to make a partnership work you have to find compromise that fits both of you.

Was it good?
It has much potential to be one of the J-BLs with tight writing and interesting character dynamics which I so love. Unfortunately, it id not use this potential at all.

Did I like it?
I really want to. I liked the start and the end, but the middle dragged the whole thing down.

Would I recommend it?
Not really.

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hidden gem alert

i genuinely think the past couple of months have been one of the best kdrama eras we've had in a while because why is every drama suddenly so GOOD again?? and then there's reborn rookie, a drama i found completely by accident while doomscrolling. i clicked because the synopsis sounded fun, expecting nothing more than a silly body-swap comedy. little did i know i was about to find one of the biggest hidden gems of the year. this drama perfectly balances comedy with corporate politics, family drama, mystery, and just a tiny pinch of romance at the very end. every week i kept asking myself, "okay... but how are they gonna land this ending?" because body-swap stories can go downhill REAL fast. but nope. they actually pulled it off. i know it's adapted from a popular webtoon, but after hearing people's say about the original ending... yeah, i think the drama version is way better. the changes just make more sense and give everyone a much more satisfying conclusion.

the story follows kang young ho, the chairman of chaesong, who suddenly swaps bodies with young football player hwang jun hyeon after a car accident secretly caused by his own twin sons. and honestly? watching this old chairman casually speedrun rookie office life inside a young athlete's body was comedy gold. but underneath all the laughs, the drama slowly uncovers how terrifyingly greedy and cruel his own children have become, and that part hit harder than i expected. my biggest concern was definitely kang bang geul's crush on hwang jun hyeon because... WE knew that was technically her dad inside that body. i was stressing so bad wondering how the writers were gonna fix that without making it weird. thankfully, they cooked. after everyone returned to their original bodies, it turned out the real hwang jun hyeon had already fallen for bang geul while visiting kang young ho during his coma, so their relationship still worked naturally. and PLEASE... those last two minutes??? i was fully ready for the credits, then suddenly ITZY's Ryujin showed up out of nowhere and hwang jun hyeon ended up swapping bodies AGAIN. i actually laughed out loud. what an unserious way to end such a satisfying finale.

and can we PLEASE give lee jun young his flowers?? because wow. he wasn't just playing two characters—he was playing two completely different souls, and i could immediately tell who was who just from his expressions, body language, and the way he talked. that's insane. everyone else delivered too, from the main cast to the supporting characters, and even the villains were so good at making my blood boil. the writing stayed solid for all six weeks, the directing never lost its momentum, and every episode was just... FUN

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They Didn't Fail. They Just Didn't Succeed.

Disclaimer: I cried SO MUCH watching this that I don’t even know why myself. Please keep in mind that I just finished the series, so I’m feeling a little emotional. With that in mind, let’s get started.

Kasuga Yuma (Ito Kentaro) and Hasegawa Itsuki (Sato Kanichiro) are a gay couple who recently went viral in an interview about co-parenting. With the popularity the couple achieved, a proposal came up to make a documentary about their dynamic as a couple. The problem? They had actually broken up a while ago.

My goodness, what an important series! At its core, it’s a slice-of-life show, filmed to some extent like a sitcom (like *The Office*), because it mimics a documentary, I personally thought that was a brilliant idea. Setting aside technical aspects and performances, which, by the way, were flawless, I have no negative criticism, not only for the protagonists Kentaro and Kanichiro, who made me rethink the nature of all the relationships around me, but also for Narumi Yui and Nomura Masumi, who played Shiho and Naomi, respectively. They didn’t just act; they did so with excellence, highlighting how patriarchy affects women in the workplace in a unique way.

IN SHORT

The protagonists’ relationship which, by the way, initially seemed to suggest they would indeed end up together proved to be something so complex and delicate in and of itself, culminating in a line Itsuki said in the final episode:
“The people who will shape the world are those who yearn to live in the light.”
And that alone defines the series; their dialogues when they’re alone lead us to understand that there’s no right or wrong in this story, they just didn’t work out. In the end, when they both talk about the relationship they had, and as shown in the scenes that unfolded there was indeed affection between them. Itsuki was built to live one day at a time, while Yuma lived several days ahead; he wanted his place in the sun as a “””””””””normal””””””””” person, so to speak; he wanted to get married and start a family. In the end, it becomes clear that Itsuki isn’t the kind of person who worries about what he’ll have for dinner the next day, but even so, he sacrificed a lot in terms of his lifestyle. Over the course of six episodes, we got to see what their relationship was like before all this happened; we could see the difference in their approaches to life. Everything became very clear, and I think that really impacted me, because it wasn’t the kind of thing I expected to see.

From what I’ve said, you can tell that I really liked Itsuki’s character, because as he himself said, Yuma is an ordinary person even if he doesn’t want to believe it. But Itsuki isn’t like that, he’s afraid of being forgotten, even if he hasn’t admitted it in those exact words; he lives one day at a time. And he doesn’t feel the need to fight for a collective; he just wants to live his little life, he’s minding his own business. Personally speaking, I appreciate people like that in real life and, eventually, the characters who represent them.

I think the line “We’d never work out. Because the things I want to throw away are the things he wants to carry” suggests that they tried, and in the end, it’s okay that it didn’t work out. The series almost seemed to convey the message that, just because we share the same letter in the LGBT acronym doesn’t mean we’ll work out. Shared suffering is also part of who we are.
10/10

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"It seems you've chosen death"

Shaw Brothers’ Mission Impossible was written and directed by the prolific Joseph Kuo. In many ways it was a typical SB film shot in Taiwan but this story had a nice twist thrown into it.

The 10,000-year-old Golden Dragon Sword has been stolen from the Imperial Palace. Chaos is sure to reign without its magical light. Soldiers, martial artists, bandits, the good, the bad, and the ugly are all desperately searching for a sword so sharp it can wound a person from five steps away. The legendary swordsman Huo Yun Shan wrested the sword from thieves and now has to entrust it to his daughter Huo Xiao Fen. Her mission is to deliver the Golden Dragon to the Prime Minister, protecting it from all evildoers, but especially the Jade Child Xia Zhao. The Jade Child is 130 years old and impervious to most weapons and poisons, he is not someone Huo should tangle with.

Ching Li is one of my favorite female leads in these old martial arts films. Not a martial artist, but could look properly fierce and also vulnerable when the occasion called for it. Chen Hung Lieh had an unbeatable resting bitch face and was nearly always cast as the villain. This role gave him a chance to expand past his trademark snively laugh and sinister smirks. There were plenty of minions with colorful makeup, weapons, and costumes for Huo to cross swords with, played by familiar Taiwanese actors such as Yi Yuan and Tsai Hung.

The swordfight choreography was fairly typical for 1971. Ching Li wore a veil for a few of the more rigorous and acrobatic battles to hide the stuntman underneath. That or she had very masculine hands. There was a lot of light body wire work and trampoline work. Due to Shaw Brothers producing the film, the sets and costumes were higher end and more polished than the usual Taiwanese martial arts fare. The fight scenes weren’t shot in dark forests or at night either. There was even an underwater scene including special effects fish!

Mission Impossible followed a fairly standard format about a lost sword and the desperate need to return it before it caused societal upheaval. And then it wasn’t. The final “fight” was pretty entertaining. As usual, I grade these old kung fu films on a generous scale and in comparison to other similar films.

5 July 2026

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