Earth
Shishigami's Forest
This review may contain spoilers
Beautiful and deep
If love, unblemished with ego, jealousy, and attachment, was to come alive as a person, they would be like Tofu I guess ....<3
What an absolutely beautiful and deep series this is...while many other Thail BL series have hinged on magic realism, this seems to have taken it to another level altogether. 16 episodes with an average duration of 1.5 hours, that is a whole day/24 hours, and yet, I binge-watched it.
Should you watch it? The short answer is YES. It has avoided many usual tropes and pitfalls of Thai BLs. Hats off to the team that they stuck to their guts to keep the episodes at 1.5 hours length and refused to cut corners, which helped with a layered and nuanced portrayal of sensitive and difficult issues such as mental health, childhood trauma, toxic social-cultural traps that many parents forced their children through, and so on....
It also beautifully captures how we get caught up in our own lies, even with the best intentions, how jealousy, attachments and inner insecurities stop us from being our authentic selves and hurt everyone in the process.....and how love (Tofu personifies love to me in this series) is the only force that can ultimately brings us towards closure and peace, so that we can look towards the future with some hope and happiness.....
Off course I also have my axe to grind with the ending, not because how it ended, but more for the pace of it. It felt completely rushed at the end without giving the characters and viewers some time to grieve and adjust to Tofu's storyline, and also find some closure before being able to 'move on' and look to the future with hope....I just don't get why the team, after making such long episodes without cutting corners, had to rush through the ending...I'm wondering if they faced the same pressures as Nut's boss in the series, Juea.
It would have been much better to show a break in the storyline like '2 years later' or '3 years later' before showing how the characters moved on with their lives....that would have given Nut, Na and all others a reasonably acceptable time to grieve Tofu (yes, the Teddy's presence notwithstanding) ...without that closure curve, it seems like all the people who were so deeply touched by Tofu and his love, just quickly went past him and went on with their lives...which is plain disrespectful and insensitive to a character who was as important as Tofu.... and that is why it seems so painful and unacceptable for most of us, I believe...it would have been also good to spare 5-6 minutes for the Saen-Jan storyline to show what happened to them afterwards....If not for these gaps, this series would have figured in my list of Top 5 Thai BLs so far, but because of this issue it will only do so in the top 10.
Nevertheless, I maintain that this is an absolutely beautifully crafted series ...the only other Thai BL series that I think comes close to talking sensibly about such difficult issues is probably '180 degrees longitude passes through us', and 'Khun Chai', though both of them only scratched at the surface, while this series goes deep and is thus a cathartic experience. It somehow reminded me of the series '13 reasons why' which also dealt with difficult subjects of mental health, jealousy, suicide, guilt, trauma, power and the likes, though it was way more triggering and raw...
Kudos and a BIG THANK YOU to the entire cast, crew and team for making this series. Definitely recommended!
What an absolutely beautiful and deep series this is...while many other Thail BL series have hinged on magic realism, this seems to have taken it to another level altogether. 16 episodes with an average duration of 1.5 hours, that is a whole day/24 hours, and yet, I binge-watched it.
Should you watch it? The short answer is YES. It has avoided many usual tropes and pitfalls of Thai BLs. Hats off to the team that they stuck to their guts to keep the episodes at 1.5 hours length and refused to cut corners, which helped with a layered and nuanced portrayal of sensitive and difficult issues such as mental health, childhood trauma, toxic social-cultural traps that many parents forced their children through, and so on....
It also beautifully captures how we get caught up in our own lies, even with the best intentions, how jealousy, attachments and inner insecurities stop us from being our authentic selves and hurt everyone in the process.....and how love (Tofu personifies love to me in this series) is the only force that can ultimately brings us towards closure and peace, so that we can look towards the future with some hope and happiness.....
Off course I also have my axe to grind with the ending, not because how it ended, but more for the pace of it. It felt completely rushed at the end without giving the characters and viewers some time to grieve and adjust to Tofu's storyline, and also find some closure before being able to 'move on' and look to the future with hope....I just don't get why the team, after making such long episodes without cutting corners, had to rush through the ending...I'm wondering if they faced the same pressures as Nut's boss in the series, Juea.
It would have been much better to show a break in the storyline like '2 years later' or '3 years later' before showing how the characters moved on with their lives....that would have given Nut, Na and all others a reasonably acceptable time to grieve Tofu (yes, the Teddy's presence notwithstanding) ...without that closure curve, it seems like all the people who were so deeply touched by Tofu and his love, just quickly went past him and went on with their lives...which is plain disrespectful and insensitive to a character who was as important as Tofu.... and that is why it seems so painful and unacceptable for most of us, I believe...it would have been also good to spare 5-6 minutes for the Saen-Jan storyline to show what happened to them afterwards....If not for these gaps, this series would have figured in my list of Top 5 Thai BLs so far, but because of this issue it will only do so in the top 10.
Nevertheless, I maintain that this is an absolutely beautifully crafted series ...the only other Thai BL series that I think comes close to talking sensibly about such difficult issues is probably '180 degrees longitude passes through us', and 'Khun Chai', though both of them only scratched at the surface, while this series goes deep and is thus a cathartic experience. It somehow reminded me of the series '13 reasons why' which also dealt with difficult subjects of mental health, jealousy, suicide, guilt, trauma, power and the likes, though it was way more triggering and raw...
Kudos and a BIG THANK YOU to the entire cast, crew and team for making this series. Definitely recommended!
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