barely makes sense without the original material

i tried to be unbiased and review this as a stand alone work, but i find that really difficult, as i keep referring to the anime in order to fully understand what's happening in certain scenes, and that's not a good sign. i feel the way the original story was cut in order to fit six episodes, only works if you're already kinda familiar with the characters and their struggles.
making uenoyama full on the pov character is a wonderfully idea on paper, it makes us empathize with ue's intrigue and frustration while trying the decipher mafuyu's mind, YET, in practice, what results is mafuyu looking more like a depressed manic pixie dream boy than an actual main character facing trauma, and it's frustrating. i get you, ue (see? it works!).

on to the important part: the romance... it's alright I guess. two goodlooking boys staring at each other always looks cute, and you actually believe that uenoyama is interested in mafuyu. as of sato... most of the time you believe he's not a mannequinn. as of world building, there's none, and that also affects the romance, we know they're students and they're in a band together, done. there are so little scenes of them spending time together, you don't really get an ideas as of why they would have feelings for each other, other than pure proximity principle.

remember i talked about mafuyu dealing with trauma? man, did they brush over that part! we see other characters talk about it more times than we actually see sato dealing with it. i will go ahead and assume this has more to do with tv regulations and censorship, as it is quite a sensitive topic, but i insist they could've done so much more with sato's character building up to the last episode.

as a music drama... i will say its actually nice, like the outro song is something i would listen on a regular basis, and the final song, although didn't quite met the standard of the anime's (its alright, not even the movie sequel achieved that), it's a nice touch that they decided to do an original song, if not to separate the drama from the original work, to highlight Sanari's voice.

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IT IS NOT A BL

This is a mature, straightforward story about the relationship between two men. That's it, there's no heartwarming story about overcoming obstacles to be with the person you love, no dramatic coming out journey and most importantly, no unnecesary fan service.

The story builds up and then suddently just ends. At first I was kind of annoyed, but reflecting on it, I really appreciate that, it felt fresh and realistic. Not every story needs a huge conflict that changes the lives of the characters, because that's not how real life is. This is not a romantic story, and i think that's what some people were expecting to see here.

They play a lot with sexual fantasies, especially with Kuzumi's and I feel that's what makes the sexual scenes meaningful; they're not realistic and they're not meant to be, It's all about attraction and desire. That pretty much sums up the characters relationship, none of them were expecting a happilly ever after, they don't even know each other that well, but they're attracted to each other because of what they can get from the other.

The scenes can get problematic, I agree, but we're dealing with sexual fantasies within a fictional story on a 18+ rated drama, they're not meant to represent real life by any means.

The acting is surprisingly good, the characters feel real and you can feel the emotions. On the last episodes there's a lot more crying than i would've like to see, but they do a good job at it too.

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wasted potential-- a rant

I'll just say it: han geu ru is BARELY a character, let alone the MAIN one, and that makes me so mad. i won't talk about the portrayal of people with asperger's because I don't know enough about the topic, but come on, by the trailer i thought we were gonna get a show about how someone whose work revolves around death, deals with the passing of a loved one and their grieving process, but instead, from episodes 2-9, his whole role is of a plot device to help his broken uncle navigate his new job and teach him the power of family.

also, let's talk about how almost everyone treats him as a child? my guess is that he was supposed to be younger, but it would've been a hassle to fit in his school life so they just made him 20 years old. they even admit on the LAST EPISODE that we know nothing about him, and still, they told his parents' story instead. what was his life like between his mother's death and the start of the series? i don't know, find out in season 2... maybe.

still, i can't say this is a bad drama by any means. the stories about the clients are beautifully written and are heartbreaking yet inspiring. they manage to make us fall in love with them, empathize with they life journey and cry for their death in just a couple of episodes. SO WHERE WAS THIS ENERGY while writing geu ru's character?

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can good chemistry excuse bad plot?

for a drama under the action, thriller and crime genres, the way they handled this whole mafia/corruption business seemed not that well thought out; the characters are inconsistent, and the amount of plot wholes made it look like there were entire episodes missing between scenes.

as for the actors, i have no complains about their lovey dovey scenes, i can see why this drama is popular with fujoshis, hot men with convincing chemistry and a good amount of kissing and shirtless scenes. but when it comes to emotional scenes is where I kind of felt let down. specially with tang yi's character that is filled with emotional trauma, the performance looked forced and made me cringe at times.

another major issue with tang yi's character is that, for a mob boss, he has little to no conviction and most of his actions are based on what people tell him to do, if he's not fulfilling his master's last wishes, he's getting manipulated by his incestuous little sister, and by the end,
[SPOILER ALLERT]
all of his emotional baggage gets resolved in a quick chat with his boyfriend who basically tells him to just get over it -even though it's them refusing to "get over it" exactly what moves the story forward-

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when the drama was airing, I watched some scenes on youtube and knew it was not my type of drama. two years later, 3 in the morning, I decided to start watching out of simple boredom. and I couldn't stop.

now don't get me wrong, it is BAD, maybe the worst drama that I've seen this year, but the worst it gets the more you want to watch. at some point I thought they were doing it on purpose, no one can make such thing and not realise the quality of it.

the story is a mess.
the acting, horrible
there was no chemistry between the protagonists.
the female lead was annoying and her "tragic" story made her look like a b*tch.
every episode they introduce two new useless supporting characters.
there was that episode with unnecessary and incredibly bad cgi.
the antagonist seemed more like a steven universe villain reject.
and the wigs... THE WIGS.

now if you want a reason to watch: KRYSTAL. yes, her acting was stiff and soulless, but she served looks on every single scene that she was on

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childish plot, childish characters

so the story is about pete and kao, this handsome couple with serious trust issues living their best live until pete, a grown ass man, gets into a feud with a teenager called non. now grown ass pete doesn't want his boyfriend to tutor non even though he knows that kao's family is struggling financially, and even goes into several violent tantrums to stop his boyfriend from doing his job. kao is a people pleaser, and he can't bring himself to come out to his mom in fear of letting her down. that also upsets pete >:(

there's also sun, who runs a coffee shop, and his brother's friend mork, a troublemaker whom sun has a savior complex with. they're cute overall. mork is probably the only main character i like. sun's supposed to be this self-made hardworkig man but is kind of insensitive about mork's situation at times.

see i blame myself here, i know gmmtv dramas aren't my cup of tea, but once again i let myself get influenced by my love for tay tawan's cleavage and gmm fans telling me this is "one of the best bls out there".

you don't need to watch 'kiss me again' in order to understand this drama, but i recommend watching the 'pete-kao special cut' to get to know the characters, then episode 4 of 'our skyy', and just skipping 'dark blue kiss' altogether.

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this is not a bl, but it may be better than that

this is the story about pan, who after an accidents, ends up in kim's body. this drama is about her learning about kim's life through his eyes, while trying to go back to her body. that's it, she is the protagonist. I see a lot of people confused (myself included) about the lack of gay romance? but I don't think that is a reason for you to drop it.

note: I will refer to the main character, pan, as a her, even though she spends most of the time trapped in kim's (a male) body.

I wouldn't consider romance the main theme of this drama. for the most part, it is a comedy, with an overall innocent vibe and a hint of supernatural. the characters are around 15-17 years old? so I would say that's the target audience, but it's pretty enjoyable for everyone.

this series actually reminds me a lot of a shoujo anime, especially on how the ending song is very telling on how the story evolves. the first one is a very cutesy fun song, I actually really love it and it goes perfectly with the credits screen animation and the cartoon-like edition and mood. the second one is more like what we're used to see in dramas, kind of a romantic but melancholic feeling I would say? this is one of the few dramas that has made me put that much attention to the music.

I want to highlight ohm pawat's character here. he starts as a side character, but as the story progresses, you realize he's kind of the mediator between the characters, and has a very touching plot of his own. that is if you decide to block from your mind the part about him being in love with his brother? i know i did, i almost forgot about it until everyone else brough it up. i wanted to think about it more like "the beauty inside"-ish, where he can see the real person behind the appearance... buit still thats his brother body wtf. that aside, i think ohm's performance is the stand out.

lastly, I think it's important to point a few problematic things that may cause discomfort for some people:
(spoiler/tw: sexualization of underage kids)

around episode five, we discover that one of the characters is having an affair with a professor. they play it out like it's a joke or that said character is being "manipulative", but let me remind you that these characters are all under age. apparently, there were complains about it, because starting from ep.6 they include a disclaimer addressing it.
another thing is that on ep.3 we see a scene on the boys' locker room, where they all share an intimate video of a classmate, taken in secret (they make that very clear) and of course shared without consent. this is portrayed as a funny skit on how the boys behave different from the girls. again, they're all 15 years old.

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the romance ruins it

i actually enjoyed so much the comedic moments of this drama. edan lui's face acting is genius. the plot is beautifully absurd and that's the magic of it. then we get to the romance... what romance? two people being hopelessly in love with a man that has literally no interest in neither of them is a great scenario for comedy, but then he allegedly falls for one of them? sure, law of proximity or whatever. so why does it look like he's being held hostage? the lack of romantic chemistry between them is actually painful to watch. okay, everyone has a different "love language", but tin had more believable feelings towards the girl he was too quick to reject than with the guy he's dating.

kk is my favorite character in this, i actually want to see what happnes to him, but the cringe i feel from the main plot makes it impossible for me to continue this drama. this is the first version of ossan's love i've watch and it might be the only one i'll be watching. i've read the romance is better on the japanese versions, but honestly even if the acting is way better, i don't really see the reason for it to even happen, let the man be straight.

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