dodoubleg1785
Toronto, Canada and New York, USA
This review may contain spoilers
Desperately needed more time on the editing floor..
This one is hard to rate because there were things I loved about it and there were things I really didn't like. Most of this review may just end up being my thought process just trying to work it all out in my head so I apologize in advance if it's just as scattered as this series was.
If we go with the bad first, as the headline suggests, this series really could have used some better editing. There were many things that didn't make sense at the time or seemed to come out of nowhere, leaving me wondering if I missed a scene or a full episode entirely. (I guess I should also mention that there wasn't a great option for English subs... I tried multiple sources and the subs on all of them were rough. But you can still get the gist if you don't read word for word or know your thesaurus.) Sometimes something will happen in an early episode and then about 4 or 5 episodes later, they will throw in a flashback kind of thing that explains it... but at that point, it's almost forgotten about since so much has happened in between. And then there's the other side of the spectrum where suddenly Ai is telling Songkhram to go away and leave him alone out of the blue when just before that everything was honky dory... then we find out he was having an inner battle of feelings but there was no show of that.. so it made him look like he was either being unreasonable or someone was forcing him to break things off with Songkhram otherwise they'd do something bad. So it really didn't make sense at all.
I was glad for the reviews I read that said the beginning was rough but that it gets better because it was very true and, in the end, I really ended up enjoying the series.
While the acting wasn't the best, it's clear the actors worked on their on-screen chemistry because pretty much all of the couples (3 main ones) had good scenes together. As individual relationships, there was progression and storyline (mainly for the couples of Songkhram/Ai and Bright/Meen... unfortunately I feel like the 3rd couple's story suffered from the aforementioned editing issue.) There was a decent amount of spice too which I somehow didn't expect with the way the series started out. Most of it didn't happen until the latter half of the series but I thought it was well done. Especially Songkhram and Ai's first time.. it was practically perfect in the buildup from the way their eyes just locked from across the room, being drawn together and then they started slow kissing, making out, allowing the tension to grow and finally coming together to complete the cycle. SO many series forget about foreplay and build-up which is, in my opinion, more important than the act of sex itself.
I liked the different take on the university rivals trope.. even though they were all engineers, they were divided by other aspects completely unrelated to school, just so they could start out their university life surrounded by people who had similar interests. It was like they took the hierarchy of the SOTUS program but made it into something meant to benefit the freshmen. There were no bully subplots though there was plenty of good-natured hazing amongst the core group of friends. That scene at the amusement park where the friends were "bumping into" either Ai or Songkhram was hilarious and I loved it. It was another different take on "outing the secret couple" trope that wasn't obnoxious or overly invading.
I guess that's where my biggest confusion comes from.. like.. there were so many good ideas thrown into this series to make it different enough and they had actors that worked well against each other.. but it just got lost when trying to follow some of the plot. They needed to work on the transitional parts that explained how they got from point A to point B. Even the flashbacks they threw in here and there seemed like an afterthought.
Either way, I would recommend this series as one that doesn't need too much brain power (except for further translating the subs). It was a fun, easy watch and I'll definitely watch it again. I'll give it some time to get some better subs, hopefully. I'll keep my fingers crossed..
If we go with the bad first, as the headline suggests, this series really could have used some better editing. There were many things that didn't make sense at the time or seemed to come out of nowhere, leaving me wondering if I missed a scene or a full episode entirely. (I guess I should also mention that there wasn't a great option for English subs... I tried multiple sources and the subs on all of them were rough. But you can still get the gist if you don't read word for word or know your thesaurus.) Sometimes something will happen in an early episode and then about 4 or 5 episodes later, they will throw in a flashback kind of thing that explains it... but at that point, it's almost forgotten about since so much has happened in between. And then there's the other side of the spectrum where suddenly Ai is telling Songkhram to go away and leave him alone out of the blue when just before that everything was honky dory... then we find out he was having an inner battle of feelings but there was no show of that.. so it made him look like he was either being unreasonable or someone was forcing him to break things off with Songkhram otherwise they'd do something bad. So it really didn't make sense at all.
I was glad for the reviews I read that said the beginning was rough but that it gets better because it was very true and, in the end, I really ended up enjoying the series.
While the acting wasn't the best, it's clear the actors worked on their on-screen chemistry because pretty much all of the couples (3 main ones) had good scenes together. As individual relationships, there was progression and storyline (mainly for the couples of Songkhram/Ai and Bright/Meen... unfortunately I feel like the 3rd couple's story suffered from the aforementioned editing issue.) There was a decent amount of spice too which I somehow didn't expect with the way the series started out. Most of it didn't happen until the latter half of the series but I thought it was well done. Especially Songkhram and Ai's first time.. it was practically perfect in the buildup from the way their eyes just locked from across the room, being drawn together and then they started slow kissing, making out, allowing the tension to grow and finally coming together to complete the cycle. SO many series forget about foreplay and build-up which is, in my opinion, more important than the act of sex itself.
I liked the different take on the university rivals trope.. even though they were all engineers, they were divided by other aspects completely unrelated to school, just so they could start out their university life surrounded by people who had similar interests. It was like they took the hierarchy of the SOTUS program but made it into something meant to benefit the freshmen. There were no bully subplots though there was plenty of good-natured hazing amongst the core group of friends. That scene at the amusement park where the friends were "bumping into" either Ai or Songkhram was hilarious and I loved it. It was another different take on "outing the secret couple" trope that wasn't obnoxious or overly invading.
I guess that's where my biggest confusion comes from.. like.. there were so many good ideas thrown into this series to make it different enough and they had actors that worked well against each other.. but it just got lost when trying to follow some of the plot. They needed to work on the transitional parts that explained how they got from point A to point B. Even the flashbacks they threw in here and there seemed like an afterthought.
Either way, I would recommend this series as one that doesn't need too much brain power (except for further translating the subs). It was a fun, easy watch and I'll definitely watch it again. I'll give it some time to get some better subs, hopefully. I'll keep my fingers crossed..
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