Reviews

A FEEL GOOD SERIES.

I gave it a solid 9.5 out of 10, just based on the warm, fuzzy feeling that we all need once in a while after watching 18+ BLs, and Only Boo! gave me a boat load of that nice feeling at the end of it.

That's not all but the strongest feeling I got after watching the final episode of Only Boo! The plot wasn't extremely unique but also not predictable which is a plus for the team.

I do have a weird love-hate thing going on in my head toward the end. It's just my personal opinion that they rushed the ending quite a lot compared to how long certain scenes or uneventful side stories were in the rest of the 11 episodes.

The cast was young enough to play school kids or else it's always 25 year olds playing 15 which leaves a bitter taste even if the plot line is engaging.

In conclusion, Only Boo! was an adorable, warm and nice series. I'd watch it again with no doubt just to feel comfortable (and to feed my delusion that love ends well for every single human being.)



P.S.- It could be a comfort series for many soft-love BL fans too.

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unbelievable

Calling this drama just a melodrama or a romance would be unfair and nonsense.
This is an unbelievably beautiful story, compelling and captivating based on a tragedy, which explores the way to redemption of the survivors, of the guilty, and of the people who are part of their lives, and who share with them the pain, the sadness, the will to go further and overcome a loss, a trauma, both of them.
Through the two leads (who were simply awesome), the story deals with the theme of collective tragedy experienced by the survivors after a disaster that broke almost 50 lives. As a sort of background throughout the show is the path towards the processing of mourning and loss , which is symbolized by the construction of the memorial that forces the survivors to tell their heartbreaking stories and face the tragedy once again.
The two main leads are the personification of that collective tragedy and while they take care of the construction of the memorial, actually they become the symbols through whom that way to redemption take form, through their story so tragic and at the same time so sweetly romantic.
The plot is written well, constantly credible, and consistent, not giving room to holes and flaws. Some scenes are brutally heartbreaking, some cruel, but it could not be different. Watching them you could feel moved, compelled, involved till even cry your eyes out.
The cast, was top. I liked a lot the women of the story: female characters who show up strong and at the same time sensible. Won Jin Ah / Moon Soo was perfect: I didn't know her so far, and I was well impressed not only by her beauty (stunning: the combo of her eyes and of her smile can kill), but also by her talent, and the ability to render her character without flaws. Kang Han Na / Yoo Jin perfect too: she made her role credible and strong, without falling into the stereotypes, which sometimes impact negatively on a character and on the story itself. Maybe the strongest and at the same time the most fragile woman in this story, for sure a very beautiful character. Na Moon Hee / halmeoni, who impersonated the grandmother of all the derelicts, was simply awesome, literally filling the scenes where she appeared with her presence. Na Moon Hee / Ma Ri too, while rendering a not easy character, showing the humanity where not expected, and able to try till the end to redeem on of the shabby villain. And so on... All the actresses did well in performing roles which sometimes were not easy at all. The actors and the men of the story were unmatched too. Lee Jun Ho / Kang Doo among all was sublime, and able to render his character so unlucky and so painful in a perfect way. And I wish to mention Kim Kang Hyun / Sang Man, because he was unmatchable in playing a character like this, making him credible and intense.
Direction and photography were very nice.
The OST is one of the best I found so far: complete and well sorted.
A masterpiece who shall be watched, absolutely.

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Cute and Unconventional in Some Ways

I decided on the whim to watch this, I was not sure especially after looking at the Kdrama cutesy pink poster if it will end up being too childish. It is a light romantic comedy but I like some of the unconventional direction it has taken so far. It looks like the ML was picked for the mobster role cause well he kinda looks like one, his look is unique and not idol like by far. Doesn't mean he isn't good looking in his own way, he certainly fits the part of what you would think of as a villain bad guy mobster. Even the way he speaks, its like the Korean version of the Marlon Brando of Godfather! LOL! At times its raspy and with a slight menacing tone to it. He is in contrast to the cutesy bubble gum FL who is the typical cherry and kind hearted character in these romantic comedies. He was a former mafia boss who went to jail and is trying to reform by doing legit stuff like running a food company while she's a struggling social influencer/marketer with children. Somehow, through a series of fated encounters they end up meeting each other. While it is light and bubbly and not meant to be realistic, it does gently probe our stereotypes of criminals and mobsters, do our preconceived notions of them mean they are far from ever being reformative much less a romantic lead to a FL who is completely opposite of him? There are some plot holes and would have like to see the romance build up more slowly at least on the ML's part. The ML doesn't seem to carry the inner darkness that we typically see in mobster criminal types but this is a comedy and it is refreshing they are flipping it around with a ML who is anything but conventional.

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Well, Goddamn. I Struck Gold!

I'm a big fan of wlw shows and since I discovered Thai GL, I made it my mission to see everything I can find. But, I've never been moved to give a full review until now.

Blank is the best GL series I've seen yet. The casting was perfect. The actresses managed to sell one of the most problematic tropes in queer shows. Age gap pairings are increasingly brought under scrutiny (and rightly so), so I'm glad a few details were changed from the book. There's only so much toxicity I can stomach, delusional as I can be.

Faye and Yoko brought a slow burn romance to life in Blank. I went into it with mixed feelings, but they pulled me in. I found myself empathising with their struggles; one was determined to give the love she felt and the other was determined to ignore/squash those feelings. The push and pull. The internal conflicts. The mess that was their history and familial connection. Everything pulled me in.

I think it also depicts the fevered enthusiasm of young love and how starkly it contrasts with older love which is more cautious from knowing the many possible troubles that lie ahead. Watching this series reminded me of my first crush on an older woman and how it had felt like a living, breathing thing inside me. It had taken all my willpower to keep it locked in.

I've already started seeing the second season and it only gets better. The emotions run deeper and the chemistry burns hotter. Their conversations are very stimulating too as they have to find ways (words, and actions) to communicate across their generation gap. As is expected of Gen Z and Millennials, their priorities are different too and they have to find a balance between prioritising their happiness or prioritising the comfort/desires of their families.

I'm rating this a 10/10. The actresses are amazing. The production is beautiful. The storyline is new and just the right amount of chaotic.

I highly recommend!

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Thought-provoking

This was an unusual story, with many layers of depth and meaning. The guilt, pain, suffering, and trauma experienced by so many characters was sometimes almost too heartbreaking to watch. The responses to trauma and loss, both big and small, were varied and realistic - and that made the story both poignant and beautiful.

The OST is beautiful, I'm sure to be listening to it for a very long time.

Incredible acting throughout, Lee Jun Ho and Won Jin Ha were perfectly cast and played their roles as survivors of a major tragedy well. Kang Han Na absolutely shined in her role as the conscience behind her brother and her ex-boyfriend - she kept them both doing the right thing even when they wavered. All the support roles were well-played, but I have to say that Na Moon Hee actually stole every scene she was in . Granny was one of those characters that will stay with me for awhile - which also tells just how good the writing is.

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Very Charming cast with flawed storyline

I am going to very honest and say it out here, in my opinion this show was carried by Nanon.
The set up was very intriguing, a hidden bar with mysterious men offering a night of joy to women. Obviously they are playboys and handsome and also gentlemen in their own way. But the story for each character is not that engaging. My heart was taken by Naanfah and Naannam story and the mystery that was brought my Pine's pairing. I was not a fan of Hack and Irin or Florence or Nathee. Phetai's story could have been better because that pair had chemistry but they were very quickly wrapped up. But the bartender Hunter's presence is definitely very alluring, what disappoints but him is his very sad backstory. Actresses did a fine job but no one leaves a lasting impression except August.

Now the main reason to watch this is Nanon. I am soooo glad they put him in double role. Reminds me of Gun in Not Me. GMMTV know who their strongest actors are. And the way he play two characters well, you can recognise them easily by the way he carries each of them differently, expressions, smiles, way of walking talking and whole demeanour is masterfully done by Nanon. Both the brothers are kind of conman and liars and the way Nanon is using his smile is supposed to be illegal. Whenever he is on screen, he captures your attention over other characters.

Special mention to Mix and Off, because these two also did very well. I wish Mix had more backstory. But these two very also very convincing in their roles.

Watch this ! For gorgeous FLs and MLs, for charming bad boys falling in love and definitely for Nanon.

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Great acting and fascinating story

I stumbled across the OST by accident and was intrigued, even more so when I found out it was for a series centereing around a Cyberpunk theme. I gave Infinity a shot and boy oh boy was it a wild right!
The total runtime of this Chinese Mini series is only about ~45minutes, hence it's very fast paced and straight to the point. This might be something not everybody enjoys, but I found it really refreshing and enticing. It centers around a singer named Jake who gets one of his concerts crashed by a man (La Qi) with a gun who tells him to remember the abbreviation "FTI".
What does he want?
What does "FTI" mean?
And why does Jake have the feeling he experienced something similar before?
The series scores with an amazing storyline (I give some extra points for the Matrix reference, which made my nerdy heart very happy), extremely well choreographed and executed fightscenes, great music choices and even greater actors. The lead actor is nothing short of brilliant and would be able to carry a whole movie based on his facial expressions alone. Chapeu! I hope to see more of that one in the future and not only because the guy is drop dead georgous.
The support cast deserves a lot of praise as well. Please forgive me if I won't talk about La Qi too much, but praising the actor without including spoilers is pretty hard, so just trust me on this one. He's great! So is the actor who plays Jakes PA. If there was an Oscar for the best side eyes, he would deserve one. I never related so much to a character in my life!
All in all this series drew me in and entertained me extremely well. It also contains a pretty high rewatch value since a couple of details just hit different once the viewer knows what's coming next and where everything leads to, for example: Why is there only one gun and why does it have an Infinity logo?
I hope to find out in season2!

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It was a struggle to get all the way through to the end

My man didn't have 10 lives. He gotta go through 90 lives, because he had to have 9 lives for each life.
How many times can you die without dying? Sifeng: Yes

lol

I tried really hard not to hate the FL the entire time, but it was frustrating af. I kept yelling, "AHHHH! JUST GIVE HIM TO ME THEN FFS!"
Luckily, the ML carried.
Once it finally got going, the chemistry was 🔥 Thankfully.

Also, if I had $1 for every time someone said 'Sifeng' in the show, I'd be a millionaire. I stg, I was hearing 'Sifeng, SIFENG' in my sleep for days while watching this.
My husband even nudged me asking me who this 'Sifeng' was because I said his name in my sleep. Show gonna get me in trouble! LOLOLOL
Was just so repetitive 😂😭

I'd rewatch again, but definitely would skip through 2/3rds of it if I did.

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What this show lacks on drama and acting it compensates with cuteness

The first thing to say is, this show is the cutes BL I have ever seen.
While fresh actors are always a risk, Keen did a superb job, Sea was a bit stiff in some scenes but he hold up well. The side couple was not as interesting and cute, but it worked ok for me.

This show was made for teens I suppose, but while the story is not really dramatic, it was fun to watch, was executed in a great and cute way. Production value was high, the OST much better than most GMMTV shows and the commercials inbetween were kept to a minimum.

There is not much else to say, if you like cute, this show is for you!

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Good performance, your enjoyment might vary depending on your views on the subject matter

The actors' performance was very good, particularly ML's actor who is always exceptional. The enjoyment of the story might vary about your views on the subject matter, thought. I do think that there is a bit of what I would call "self serving cynicism" in terms of the way some people try to equivocate/evade about affairs, when it really comes down to basic golden rule stuff. Would FL like to be betrayed and deceived like she did to ML? Obviously not. Would Yoon-ki? We know the answer, and it is "no". Would she like to be in the position of her lover's wife, deceived forever and not given a chance to make an informed decision about her own relationship? Again, I would bet "no". No PhD in Ethics required, it's something that anyone without a broken moral compass or completely inverted set of priorities should be able to agree on: basically, one shouldn't betray others if they don't want to be treated the same way, and if they do, they shouldn't act surprised if those people don't feel any inclination to be loyal to them in return. To deceive and betray someone that is loyal to you and didn't deserve it, and to be ready to do so indefinitely without any guilt, is pretty toxic, manipulative behavior (notice the caveat "didn't deserve it", because I did feel sympathy for the cheating wife whose husband had previously had a kid out of wedlock behind her back, see more below... but in general, I don't have an issue with "manipulating the manipulator": loyalty is a two way street, if you are disloyal you are not owed any loyalty... I wouldn't have been against Yoon-ki's wife giving him a taste of his own medicine, for example, and we know he would have objected to that, as he explicitly told us in the show, talking about his "dream").

The good news is that it would have been perfectly reasonable to expect FL to simply stop being uncommunicative and actually talk about her problems with her husband, and that most people would have done that. The choice to have a lover a non sequitur in that regard: it didn't in any way help with her schedule or address her problems, in fact if anything it should have made her schedule situation worse, though very strangely she seemed to suddenly have enough time to carry on a full blown affair.

To me, My Mister had a much more realistic and truthful approach to this, separating the unhappiness, divorce and affair pieces, because the reasons for one's unhappiness cannot be used as the reasons for the affair: the question of happiness is a distinct and different matter from the affair. One might well feel unhappy, and maybe even want to get a divorce, but that does not imply that they would feel inclined to actually treat their partner with no loyalty, honesty and respect: that's simply a non sequitur, the second does not simply automatically follow from the first, in fact it shouldn't, and there is no reason it should, if your partner never did anything to deserve such treatment. So the question becomes not "why you feel unhappy", but "why when push came to shove you chose to actually do this to someone that didn't deserve it", and in FL's case here, I would add "to do it without guilt". FL admitted that she didn't feel any guilt at the idea of betraying and deceiving him indefinitely while she had the affair, and that him and the kid were not even a consideration during the affair. That's not exactly what I would call "expected behavior", even for someone that is unhappy.

I do think that the way this drama dealt with the topic was not particularly realistic. I mean, her mother in law's reaction? The way characters that were cheated on excused away/trivialized/diminished cheating and didn't consider loyalty, honesty and respect cornerstones of relationships? FL's husband, mother in law, husband's friends, even most netizens, engaging in fawning hagiography of FL given how she turned out to be, factually speaking, unworthy of ML's loyalty and trust, by being disloyal and breaking his trust (the netizens part being particularly unrealistic, given that netizens in reality argue even about something as uncontroversial as the Moon landing). The very "tame" flashback scenes, appearing only as a plot device and then forgotten when they didn't suit the plot, with ML suddenly "healing" from his trauma, as if people could decide to heal from trauma or be happy on command? Compare this with the depiction in My Mister, the much more realistic images with him thinking about his wife with the other man, etc. And My Mister also had a much more nuanced and mature approach to cheating, as explained above, while this drama's arguments tended to heavily equivocate and evade (with some double standards, I have to say, and other double standards being used as a non sequitur: if women don't hold men accountable, for example, that's an issue that is resolved by holding men accountable, not by not holding anyone accountable, and in any case this is not some sick societal score setting exercise, ML had never slept with anyone behind FL's back).

In fact, I would say that, while she, like Yoon-ki, was willing do betray and deceive her spouse for entirely self serving reasons (well, it's not as if there are non self serving reasons for an affair), to keep doing this indefinitely, without a shred of guilt or any thought about her partner (and kid, in this case), as she herself admitted in the end, at least Yoon-ki had a reason that was connected to his actions: he wanted to have sex with other women, and he did. FL's betrayal, by contrast, was not only cruel, but also needless and entirely and easily preventable: she could have easily just reconsidered her priorities, schedule and commitments, and stopped being uncommunicative or outright lying to her spouse, who for his part was already helping out, and would have been more than willing to do more. They also had family and friends they could ask to help.

I feel that in general it is not particularly helpful to frame this in terms of the cheater's perspective or happiness, the question should really have been whether the people that were cheated on deserved such treatment. Imho they didn't, because they never did anything similar to their partners. There are those who did: for example, the cheating woman that they mentioned in the show, whose husband had a kid out of wedlock behind her back. I was 100% supporting of her sleeping with another person behind her husband's back, because if he didn't abide by their promise, she had no reason to hold up her end of the agreement. So in that way I don't consider cheating a "black and white issue", for example I would have been completely in favor of FL's lover's wife divorcing him and having an affair on her way out (maybe with ML, as in the episode of At The Moment with a similar premise). Actually, I don't even know if I would call it "cheating" if it was done against someone that had cheated on you and had therefore shown themselves to be unworthy of your loyalty: turnabout is fair play, or, to paraphrase Ji An's words in My Mister, "don't make me laugh, you have done worse", so you have no right to complain. Though I guess that it's a matter of definition, or semantics, the point being that I do think of the act in such a situation as having entire different moral implications. Besides that, though, lying and cheating "are" a rather black and white situation: nobody likes it if is done to them, they are obviously wrong, it's not exactly a situation where you need the nuanced take of a PhD in Ethics, it's basic golden rule stuff. Don't do to other people what you wouldn't want be done to them.

I think that there was more moral clarity in the small dialogue Astrid had at the end of the movie Crazy, Rich Asians than in all this drama, to be perfectly honest. It felt kind of like the emotional abuse equivalent of seeing a Stockholm Syndrome or battered housewife going back to the criminal/wife beating drunk that mistreated them. It was exemplified, for me, in ML's female colleague thinking that Yoon-ki's wife was cool, while she had walked away from her marriage after her husband's affair. But the truth was that she did exactly the right thing: basic loyalty, honesty and respect shouldn't be something she has to fight to have, they are the basis of a relationship and if you are going to be loyal and honest, you have every right to expect your partner to treat you with the same loyalty and honesty in return. Yoon-ki's wife was miserable, and thankfully ended up dumping him. FL's lover's wife was another example of this tendency of the drama: she was very good in seeing through FL, but she couldn't see that her own husband was the same kind of person as FL: a toxic manipulator willing to betray and deceive a loyal spouse indefinitely, and to risk jeopardizing his children's happiness over a whim, by sleeping with a married woman with a kid.

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Know what kind of BLs you like

I can only say this series confirms for me that I am indeed a part of the Japanese BL target market - I am one of those audience members who really enjoys the slow-pace and the sensitive unfolding of a tender romance. This is one such drama, heartfelt and rewarding, with two well-cast leads, far from the clamour of the need for speed and thrills and urgency.

From my experience to date, the Japanese writers, directors and actors, do this kind of series very well.

I don't know the actors from previous shows, but it's interesting to note that, like their characters, they differ quite significantly in terms of their Main Role experience.

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Time Travel Can Get Weird

So, this drama was fine. Until it wasn’t. I loved the performances, and the plot was interesting, but something to note about time travel is that it can make no sense if not done well.

The ending, at least in my view, made everything the FL did pointless. Her only achievement was making the original villain have a conscience, but he still maintained the same position as emperor in the end.

You could argue that the world would be better with a kind Emperor, but he also ends up with an illness he doesn’t originally have. Who is to say that the ML won’t end up as emperor? But that is all speculation.

The ending is based on the fact that a change in conscience will result in a change in action, and I simply don’t agree. The ending in the context of time travel ruined the drama for me.

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