This review may contain spoilers
Cute but not the best BL of the year!
While watching this, I realized I cannot stomach this kind of insipid fluff any more! I am not the target audience i.e. I am not a 16 year old girl to swoon over two slightly cute boys in a trope filled diabetes inducing romance.
BaRam meets HanTae on the day he thought was going to be the best but turned out to be the worst day of his life. Seeing BaRam crying in the park, HanTae cannot do anything else but offer a friendly hand. A couple of years later, we find them out of high school and sharing an apartment: HT manager to BR's promising singer/songwriter. When BR's former guitar teacher turns out to have stolen one of his songs, BR comes out to HT catching him by surprise.
The boys' relationship goes from friendship to love but I must say I do not like this "gay for you" trope they used here. When BaRam confesses to him, Han Tea recoils unpleasantly surprised. Their relationship was never more than friends and HanTea always treated more like a younger brother who needs to be taken care of then a friend, let alone more. Even though they are the same age, BaRam always looks much younger in the way he dresses, speaks and behaves. We have here a classic example of seme and uke characters from mangas. Yes, I know the drama is based on a manhwa but is there a law prohibiting mangakas from trying to be original in their storytelling and do things differently? At one moment uke even explains to seme how to do laundry properly. Really, guys?!? Give me a break! It is not domestic bliss but gendered roles (male/female partners in a relationship).
Anyway I was not really convinced by their romance. They lacked that romantic chemistry, they were good friends but nothing really showed they had any romantic inkling. Bo Ram knew that and never really considered HT's expressions of love for more than they were which is literally brotherly affection. I actually liked the character of BaRam very much because behind his apparently fragile exterior, he is really a strong and determined young man who knows who he is, where he's going, what he wants and how to get it. He never made a pass on HT since BR knew that he was just like a younger brother to him.
And while Han Tae showed a certain growth as a character (except for being in love!) by becoming an adult, BaRam seemed to get infantilized as time went on. They rode on a bike together often and in the very last scene of the series which is on a bike, they looked (clothes & styling) more like a father and a son then lovers!
We do not know very much about them: there are no parents or siblings. Yes HT's mother makes a fleeting appearance when he goes home and she insists on feeding him. She has no influence on the plot whatsoever.
Then there is the guitar teacher and a wannabe idol. We meet him in the first minutes of the drama and he is creepy,touching BaRam all the time, being unnecessarily very touchy feely with him. So much so that BR thought he was in love with him. What the teacher wanted was to steal BaRam's music which provided a minor drama somewhere midway this fluff. What is it about BaRam that makes men around him want to touch him all the time? Both the teacher and HanTae were very hands on BaRam: touching him, hugging him, caressing him as if he were a cute little pet. Well, to be honest sometimes he looked like a lazy cat unwilling to move or talk....
This is a Korean web drama and it has the feel of a Korean WEB drama as it looks a cold and distant. There were some nice shots of autumn trees. The costume designer made an effort to choose clothes that match the colours of the nature. I spotted a few continuity errors: unimportant but still...
Music was boring. What kind of singer/songwriter writes only one song in a couple of years.Apparently BaRam can compose only when he's in love! So he's been in love twice and wrote two boring songs. The rest was just the most forgettable lift music.
The actors were cute and obviously worked hard, so their acting skills were adequate.
Well, apparently I shall never learn or follow my own advice, for that matter. I was again swayed into watching a recently released and universally loved drama just to be disappointed. I wanted something light and fluffy to watch and I got it in a shape of an almost sugar overdose.
BaRam meets HanTae on the day he thought was going to be the best but turned out to be the worst day of his life. Seeing BaRam crying in the park, HanTae cannot do anything else but offer a friendly hand. A couple of years later, we find them out of high school and sharing an apartment: HT manager to BR's promising singer/songwriter. When BR's former guitar teacher turns out to have stolen one of his songs, BR comes out to HT catching him by surprise.
The boys' relationship goes from friendship to love but I must say I do not like this "gay for you" trope they used here. When BaRam confesses to him, Han Tea recoils unpleasantly surprised. Their relationship was never more than friends and HanTea always treated more like a younger brother who needs to be taken care of then a friend, let alone more. Even though they are the same age, BaRam always looks much younger in the way he dresses, speaks and behaves. We have here a classic example of seme and uke characters from mangas. Yes, I know the drama is based on a manhwa but is there a law prohibiting mangakas from trying to be original in their storytelling and do things differently? At one moment uke even explains to seme how to do laundry properly. Really, guys?!? Give me a break! It is not domestic bliss but gendered roles (male/female partners in a relationship).
Anyway I was not really convinced by their romance. They lacked that romantic chemistry, they were good friends but nothing really showed they had any romantic inkling. Bo Ram knew that and never really considered HT's expressions of love for more than they were which is literally brotherly affection. I actually liked the character of BaRam very much because behind his apparently fragile exterior, he is really a strong and determined young man who knows who he is, where he's going, what he wants and how to get it. He never made a pass on HT since BR knew that he was just like a younger brother to him.
And while Han Tae showed a certain growth as a character (except for being in love!) by becoming an adult, BaRam seemed to get infantilized as time went on. They rode on a bike together often and in the very last scene of the series which is on a bike, they looked (clothes & styling) more like a father and a son then lovers!
We do not know very much about them: there are no parents or siblings. Yes HT's mother makes a fleeting appearance when he goes home and she insists on feeding him. She has no influence on the plot whatsoever.
Then there is the guitar teacher and a wannabe idol. We meet him in the first minutes of the drama and he is creepy,touching BaRam all the time, being unnecessarily very touchy feely with him. So much so that BR thought he was in love with him. What the teacher wanted was to steal BaRam's music which provided a minor drama somewhere midway this fluff. What is it about BaRam that makes men around him want to touch him all the time? Both the teacher and HanTae were very hands on BaRam: touching him, hugging him, caressing him as if he were a cute little pet. Well, to be honest sometimes he looked like a lazy cat unwilling to move or talk....
This is a Korean web drama and it has the feel of a Korean WEB drama as it looks a cold and distant. There were some nice shots of autumn trees. The costume designer made an effort to choose clothes that match the colours of the nature. I spotted a few continuity errors: unimportant but still...
Music was boring. What kind of singer/songwriter writes only one song in a couple of years.Apparently BaRam can compose only when he's in love! So he's been in love twice and wrote two boring songs. The rest was just the most forgettable lift music.
The actors were cute and obviously worked hard, so their acting skills were adequate.
Well, apparently I shall never learn or follow my own advice, for that matter. I was again swayed into watching a recently released and universally loved drama just to be disappointed. I wanted something light and fluffy to watch and I got it in a shape of an almost sugar overdose.
Was this review helpful to you?